The below is an excerpt from a recent story featuring Hillview Dairy on dairystar.com.
The partners at Kerfelds' Hillview Dairy knew they needed to do something to change the way their calves were raised. Heifer calves on the 165-cow dairy were housed in Poly-dome hutches during the spring, summer and fall; in the winter, calves were kept in individual pens inside the old dairy barn.
"The calves did fine in the hutches, but as our herd has grown and we've had more heifer calves, it just wasn't working well in the winter. We were trying to move too many calves through the barn," said Tim Kerfeld, a partner at Hillview Dairy, along with his wife, Carrie, and his parents, Art and Rosie Kerfeld. Tim and Carrie have five children - Nicholas (17), Jessica (11), Nathan (9), Isaac (5), and Riley (3) - who help on the farm, too.
The Kerfelds initially planned to replace the concrete floor in their old dairy barn and install individual stalls with poly dividers. But after seeing an automatic calf feeder at a farm show, they reconsidered their decision.
"After comparing the costs between going with the stalls and putting in a calf feeder, it was almost a no-brainer to put the calf feeder in," Tim said.
Their calf-barn remodeling project started in the spring of 2009. The concrete floor in the old dairy barn was removed and replaced with a new, level floor. The old floor had always made cleaning the barn a challenge due to the uneven surface.
Two pens were constructed with swinging gates, long-day lighting was installed, and forced-air circulating tubes and exhaust fans were added to the ventilation system. A section of the barn was also fitted with floor drains to accommodate a row of individual stalls for housing calves during their first week.
Finally, a Lely CALM automatic calf feeder with a powder mixer and two feeding stations was installed.
"We considered putting in a pasteurizer as well, but decided to stick with milk replacer. Art does a lot with the calves, and he's looking for less work, not more. We thought the extra chore of saving milk and getting it over here to the calf barn wouldn't be worth it," Tim said.
The first calves moved into the new barn last August. Ten months later, the Kerfelds couldn't be happier with their new set-up.
They had to make some adjustments in the beginning, Tim said, but overall the transition to group housing and automatic feeding went very well.
Click here to read the full article from Dairy Star.
To learn more about the Lely CALM, visit Lely's website for more information.
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