Barn Life Suits Stock and Farmers | Farmers Weekly

It’s all about lifestyle – for humans and cows – at Rene and Ereine Vos’s Huntly dairy farm, with the addition of an Aztech composting barn.

Written By Rebecca Greaves

Caption: At Vos Farms, Rene and Ereine Vos worked with Aztech to design a composting barn that keeps cows warm, dry and settled while protecting paddocks and lifting overall efficiency.

The barn has given them an extra tool in the toolbox, taking the stress out of winter on their farm, which is prone to getting very wet, and will provide relief from the heat in summer. Life is easier for staff, cows are warm, dry and content, and feed utilisation is improved. Most importantly, they can save their paddocks ready to head into spring with optimal production.

The couple milk 320 cows twice a day. The farm milking platform is 130 hectares, with the total farm size at 230ha, giving them a self-contained unit to run young stock and rear beef animals. They rear about 70 heifers as replacements and the beef system comprises of 80 yearlings, 80 R2 and 80 calves, which are taken through to finishing.

Their Artificial Breeding (AB) policy means they breed from the top of their herd, using recorded bulls over their youngstock to breed better animals with good genetics. Ereine explains that their AB is more precise now with the use of sexed semen in the top of the herd, as well as some nominated straws. They tail off using Hereford bulls, which gives them good beef animals to rear and finish.

This hard-working couple, who both grew up in town, were share milking on three farms. “We were busy and we started out doing the beef to use them as topping machines on the farms, rather than running around with the tractor. Now, we still use the same sort of principle.”

With their milking shed being only 24 aside they would prefer to have a smaller number of milking cows, and the beef complements the milking operation nicely.

Having given everything to farming over the last 25 years, it was time to make life a bit easier, and that’s where the Aztech composting barn comes in.

“It’s time for the farm to give us something. This was the goal, to have our own farm, and we want to enjoy the goal,” Rene says.

They did their homework before making the commitment to build a composting barn and the main reason, initially, was to give them more control in winter.

“Our farm gets very wet and we have never been able to feed out. We wanted to have somewhere to stand the cows off and feed them, to take the winter stress away. Winter is supposed to be a quieter time, but we always seemed to be just as busy because the cows were making a mess of the paddocks,” Rene says.

“Making mud was the one thing that was really stressing Rene out in winter. We wanted to leave the paddocks in good health so we could get good production in spring,” Ereine adds.

They looked into feed pads, but felt a composting barn gave them more options, as they were not keen on standing cows off on concrete for long periods.

With the addition of the composting barn ahead of this winter, they found they were also able to calve everything inside. This eliminated running around looking for calves in the mud and getting the bike stuck in the process.

“All we needed to do was check them and sort them out after breakfast. This made life much easier for staff, the cows were warm, dry and content and we were amazed by how little feed was needed to keep them happy.

“There was no feed wastage. Now we would be feeding 7-8 kilograms of maintenance feed in the barn and that’s it, with a bit of hay and palm kernel or maize. We can focus all of the grass into the milking cows.”

The barn is designed in two halves, allowing them to run two herds in winter, with 160 cows on each side of the barn. As they started calving, springers were housed on one side, milkers on the other. Rene says it was basically like having two feed pads.

The big benefits here were saving grass and better feed utilisation. The change in diet means they have reduced the amount of money spent feeding the cows in the milking shed. They now spend the same amount of money per cow, but feed double the amount.

“We have better control of our costs and our production has been up around 100kg milk solids (MS) per day steadily for most of the season. We are doing .2 to .3 per cow a day more.”

While it is early days, they have seen gains already, and believe there are further gains to be made in summer when the farm gets dry and cows can come under heat stress, dropping production.

“We can drop 50 MS a day out of production when the heat comes on in December. It will add up quickly,” Ereine says.

“Over summer they will come in during the heat of the day. I think it will make a big difference and I’m excited to see what happens,” Rene says.

“It’s a real animal welfare thing in summer. In winter it’s more about looking after the farm and in summer it’s about the cows, and not over-grazing. If we don’t hammer the grass as hard, we will be growing more grass.”

They chose to go with Aztech for their build for a number of reasons. They wanted a permanent structure, which they felt was more aesthetically pleasing. They also liked the idea of the Smart Ridge Vent on the Aztech barn, providing passive ventilation and airflow, while ensuring everything stayed dry inside.

They spent a year and a half researching barns and visiting different structures to understand what worked, and what didn’t, before settling on Aztech.

“We had built with them previously, a six-bay calf shed, which went really smoothly. We were impressed with their professionalism.”

Rene ‘rips’ (tills over) the self-composting bedding, which is a mixture of woodchip and sawdust, daily to aerate it. They are careful to keep the outside edges, where the cows are feeding, clean and hope they can get four to five years out of the compost.

“Hopefully, if we take care of it, it will last. It’s dry as anything and looks really good.”

They have been amazed how warm the compost is, when you dig down, indicating the presence of good bacteria. And there is no odour at all.

It’s the little things that add up for the Vos family, all the benefits coming together to make the whole farm system run smoothly and profitably. “It seems to be more enjoyable. At lunchtime the cows just come running to the barn by themselves for a feed before milking. There is no more following a slow herd to the shed.”

The barn means no more sleepless nights for Rene in winter. He can lie in bed listening to the rain on the roof happy in the knowledge the cows are tucked up and his paddocks are not being churned into a bog hole.

“This is the first winter that I haven’t had to be out of the house before 8am to move the cows. That’s been an underestimated bonus, it’s given me a few months of the year where I can take it easy. Being able to listen to the rain at night and it was a good feeling – you can’t put a dollar value on that.

“You have to enjoy what you do. We really built it (the barn) to have more control over the whole farm, and I like being able to fine tune the cows and the farm. Seeing everyone happy and the cows happy, that’s the main thing.”