Sonibrand Farm | Dairy farm

Barn

We first built our dairy barn in 1994 to house 50 milking cows and all young stock in a free stall barn, sand bedded stalls with a double 4 tandem parlour. In 1996 we expanded the barn to house another 50 cows with additional space for young stock. After growing gradually to the point of overcrowding and overfilling our milk tank we decided to finally make the move and build a new barn for milking cows. In 2014 after 2 years of research and designing we finally built.

Our new dairy barn houses 134 milking cows with 2 Lely A4 milking robots. The barn features include a European stall design, deep bedded stalls with straw-lime mixture. Bedding is added using an automated bedding system. We also have 2 sorting pens which we use to sort cows in heat, as well to hoof trim cows or when one is sick. At the back of the barn we have 2 bedding packs with shavings for the close up dry cows/heifers which gets stocked up approx. every 3 weeks. In the old barn we now house all young stock and far off dry cows.

Cows

We have a calving interval of 12.4 months. The average days open is under 100 days. All cows are breed with artificial insemination (A.I) using high milk component type bulls. We try to breed longevity and a cow which produces a calf a year and functions well in a free stall. All A.I is done by us.

We have been a registered herd with Holstein Canada since 2006.

We feed a TMR ration to all livestock, we try to use as much of our home grown forages as we can and get the most out of that. Hoof trimming is all done ourselves. We schedule to hoof trim each cow before going dry and do the rest as needed.

Bedding

Over the past 2 years we have had a lot of farmers inquire about our straw-lime mixer for bedding.
So for those of you who are interested here it is:

Ratio for base:
1 part straw
6 parts lime
3 parts water

Ratio for top bedding:
1 part straw
2 parts lime
1 part water

**IMPORTANT: Must buy correct lime to ensure no heating occurs. The lime we are using is Celtic Lime (CaCO3) Must be over 8.5pH and finer then 0.1mm**