It now has been about a year since we first shared with you our plans for new facilities at the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm. Despite a few snags, the project has moved along well.

As a recap, we now have about 190 cows. For the past couple of years, our farm employees have been milking between 140 and 160 in our 82-head tie stall barn. That means they have been shifting cows in and out for milking. Anyone who has been a part of that situation knows the extra work and stress on cows and people that results. We also have filled our heifer barn to capacity and now have a couple dozen head at a custom grower. In short, like many of you, we have more than outgrown our old and labor-intensive facilities.

We will be relating many of our planning, permitting, and construction experiences in the magazine over time. But, here is a brief preview:

The milking center will include a double-10 herringbone, rapid-exit parlor. We will have electronic ID, including transponders that will monitor cow activity. We hope to breed as many cows as possible on the basis of activity and visual heat detection and cut down on use of reproductive hormones.

The milking center has a larger-than-normal basement where we have located as much equipment as possible. This means less space taken up on the ground floor, a more secure place for some chemicals, and a quieter milking area. To the extent we thought feasible, we have chosen a number of energy-saving features, as well as done extensive planning to reduce the possibility of voltage problems

Our electronic ID system will enable us to use sort gates, catch pens, and a palpation lane. We will use feed bunks rather than flat mangers. This is being done as a biosecurity measure and to trade more clean-up time for no push-ups.
Our initial 60-foot-wide free stall barn has 232 stalls. It is clear span with a drive alley and two rows of sand-bedded, face-in stalls. Sand in the manure, hopefully, will settle out in a 20- by 60-foot sand trap located between the barn and the earthen storage.

Our permitting went well. We were the third dairy to apply for a permit under Wisconsin’s new livestock facility siting law.

We broke ground on November 11, 2006. The next 60 days were remarkably mild and dry. That enabled us to get much of the initial excavation done and foundations poured.

As well as the project has gone (knock on wood), it is difficult to say when we first will be able to use the new facilities. That could be as early as sometime during the month of June. However, there were two things we were warned about by many people . . . everything takes longer than you think, and everything costs more than you expect.