800 Cow Dairy 50 Cow Rotatory Milking Parlor Cool Lawn Farms

So yeah, we came to Kulan Farm in Remington, Virginia to check out the merry-go-round and their 600 plus Holsteins. Thousand cows he says. And I got the two milk tankers backed up to the barn. Got a 4020, a Fent, and a 4755 sitting in the barn, in the shed. They're John Deere people. So I guess they decided to try a Fent. That cow must like to kick or she's got leg problems because she's hobbled. Never stop moving. Milking cows on a carousel. They just stand there nice and nice, keep on milking. It's like a milking parlor in here. 50 cows on this rotator. This one here wants to dance a little bit. She don't like somebody touching her udder. 4320 running the hay ride wagon. They have a robot to do the udder sanitizing. That's why you see all the yellow on the back of the cow's legs. It's because they have a robot that does it instead of a person. So you get some overspray because it just sprays the whole underside of the udder instead of each teat. It's very nice and cool in here. They got a giant fan up there. They got all these big open doors and they got more fans up there. There's an observation room right there. There's probably another one above over there. Over here is the milk trucks. There's two milk trucks backed in. There's enough room to back three tractor trailers in here. Park them on the concrete. Currently one of them is hooked up. Here's the milk house. They got plate coolers. Actually this isn't the milk house but this is part of it. That other room back there is also the milk house. The milk tank. There's no milk tank. They cool the milk and load it right into the tractor trailer. Back here they have all kinds of fans in the holding area and the exit lane. They've got one, two, three, four on this side. Five fans on just this side of the room. On this side of the machete as they go out. They all carry the ID necklace to identify who they are when they come into the self-feeding unit for the grain. They have their own ice cream parlor just up the road. Right there on 29th. Go in there and get all the ice cream you want all day long. Every day except Monday. As you can see the cows milkers are coming off at a half rotation. Some of them are milking longer than others but they all end up coming off at the half rotation and then they drop. They lose vacuum pressure and they drop all the way down to the next to the floor as they go around. Some cows give more milk than others and it stays on longer. Some of them milk slower than others. Now we used to milk 12 at a time. That's a lot different than milking 50. We only ever milked about 100 to 180 cows most of the time. We didn't have this fluid system like this. Our barn was not as nice as this. I took y'all in there. Y'all can go back and look at it. If you go far enough back in the videos there's a video of me walking around the barn checking out the parlors and stuff talking about it. But anyways we used to milk cows from 1951 until 2013. Kulon here has been milking cows probably just as many years. Although they continue to keep getting bigger. Right now they're milking about 800 cows. Something like that. But they just built all this last year. Actually the beginning of it. Not last year. They built all this last year. But in Bulkier County here in October they have farm days. Today is Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday. You can go around about 12 or more different farms and other places and check out what they got going on for two days only each year. Go around and check out the farms and check out some of the breweries and goats and pigs and different things like this. This here is obviously our largest dairy in the county now. We have eight dairies in this county. All the other counties around us have quit milking cows. We are the last county on this side of the mountain milking cows pretty much. You go around Harrisonburg and on the Shenandoah Valley you got a lot of dairies over there. I think there's one dairy in Loudon County and there's one dairy in Page County and that's it. I mean like that's it. There's nobody milking cows anymore around here and on all the other surrounding counties. That lasts about three years now. I think Spotsylvania and Orange and Culpeper and all of them are pretty much done. There might be some I think there's some down around Orange. I think there might be two or three or something like that down there maybe still left but I'm not sure but pretty much most of the counties are all done. Cows in the Holden area got automatic crowd gate keeping them pushed up. This used to be a feed alley down through here for many years obviously. The original parlor was right here. The original parlor was right here where this big turntable is but they changed things when they put this in. That building right there in front with all the big fans sticking out the back wall that was the new updated milking parlor like 10-20 years ago or whatever it was. It's like 20 years ago because there's the Holden dairy shed right there on the other side and that was the new updated parlor. They came in there and they ripped the roof off raised the roof up five feet put them big fans in there and I don't remember what it was a double 10 or something like that probably. It was like a double 10 parabone. I think it was a parabone. I'm thinking of the herringbone. One of those I can't remember now. It's a long time ago but those fans sticking out the back wall is the entrance into the parlor to the old parlor and that was the updated version of the original parlor. So I don't know how many different times they've done it but it's at least the third rendition here anyways but yeah but yeah you see the old crowd gate the old crowd gate over there on that side so the cows would come in. I assume the cows would come in and then come out this way before. I believe that's how it worked but this gate keeps the constant pressure on them to keep them moving up. Every so often it'll it'll bump into them and stop keep them moving forward. This floor right here is a manure pit. This whole area here is a manure pit. They don't have to scrape this out. It is a constant manure pit. They just they just have to pump it out from underneath. They have a pump that keeps it pumped out from underneath down there. As you see it's graded. This is how they do pig floors like hog barns and stuff. At least that's how they used to do them. Over here on the way out they got one of those automatic brushes although I don't think it's working because it's not turning on but the cows go up there and they rub against it and it'll turn it on and it gives them a back scratch in and all that good stuff but clearly it's not working so they still rub up against it and stuff but it's not automatically working. The constant flow of cows just taking their sweet time going back out. So you see the crowd gate is still down. Here comes the new herd in. The next group of cows is coming in from the big barn. That cow right there is shooting milk out so when they get done milking in that group that gate will lift up and go over the top of all these cows and then sit back down on the back end but these cows are probably organized in I don't know at least 100 cows 100 cow groups or so maybe bigger than that I don't know but here comes the next group in though but they stay separated in different groups. Some of these are all most of these got names on them that one says Moscow. This is Olivia, Olive, Oliver. Somebody's pushing them down from the big shed now because they're all coming on in here now instead of just wandering in themselves. Delva. That one's uh no Oliva. Olive. Yeah Moscow. All the cows got tags names looks like they got birth dates everything on those tags. They got birth dates um dates and double sets of numbers and names and everything on those tags. Dad got a little bit too close to the cow dipper he got dip all over himself. Yeah we found several of the cows with the same name so I don't know where the name comes from but there's they found at least three of the three cows with the same name so maybe that's the bull that they came from don't know but but we found three cows with the same name. The crowd gate raised up and then it'll move back to bring up the next group of cows. Are they? Yeah they're they're pushing the cows in and here comes the crowd gate moving back. It'll move all the way back and once the cows get in it'll drop back down again. So I broke my selfie camera otherwise we'd use that but anyways y'all we got a new phone coming. This one here got ran over by a tractor so we got a new phone coming hopefully here in a couple days so hopefully it's a little bit better. Anyways y'all let's just cool on farm and we're going to go take a tour through the big barns. All of that over there is for the baby calves that big barn over there they like their dodges around here John Deere's and dodges. All these calves are kept in individual pens they'll stay there for about 45 days individually and then they go into group pens and stay in group pens for about 20-25 days then they go into larger pens so you're welcome to come up here and walk through the calves after tour take a walk around. Right here next to us there's no calves in that pen now we've eaten about seven different ingredients in the ration and it's a total mixed ration where all the ingredients are mixed together and they're fed to the dairy cows so the cow has a balanced diet all the time. As the calves leave they get weaned off they go to the barn on your right they start down at the other end as they get older they move forward through the barn. When these calves come out of this pen here they go over to the next farm over and they're on grass for the next time until they're bred. When they're ready to deliver a calf they come back to this is the maternity barn right here there's about 70 animals there and they'll deliver a calf in the next 14 to 21 days. This barn right here all these are expected mothers all their waste falls through the floor there's slats in the floor and all the waste is stored below ground there. Dry cows we bump it out twice a year. Now we're going into the big barn this is a cattle housing barn 780 cows in the barn these are all the new new heifers here on the right these are all two-year-olds the group to the left is all the mid-lactation cows they're right in the middle of of their gestation period most of these are pregnant about 90 percent are pregnant the next group on the right after we go past these gates those are all the high producers coming to the center of the barn here and the group on the left are all the low producers and they're being milked right now. We've got a brown chocolate one this is there in the milking parlor now yeah my son has a couple brown Swiss. The alleys are scraped 24 hours a day this barn is completely computer controlled all the fans all the lights and the curtains the sprinklers everything's controlled by the computer according to the environment. The scraper is coming up through the middle one goes back one comes up we're going to add some more automation to this barn so that if the cows aren't in this pen the sprinklers don't come on we don't want to waste any water we use the water twice here we pull the milk with it first then we water the cows on the second it's about 180 to 200 cows in each group. The chain is moving in the floor as the scraper goes up it's got a big oscillating chain that goes back and forth they're not cows yet we separate all the water from the solids through that orange separator right up there on the steps where the water is pressed out of the manure the manure is used to re-bed the cows back it's just like manure bedding it's about 65 percent moisture right now but it will go down to about 40 percent cows lay on it yeah that's what they sleep on yeah after after it's dried out these are the fibers that are harvested off the fields this is part of the corn stalk part of the strings like that that pass through the cow's stomach so these are fibers manure bedding waste pond that holds four million gallons six years and some cows are in there 10 12 years old majority of the herds are about four to five years old and yeah they're not available for people to just stop by but this is a once a time once a once a once a year thing but that over there is all the silage shed grain bins all that stuff over here bunkers they got came down around 66 or 495 really a big self-propelled chopper sitting out there hey daddy hey dad there's a big chopper it's an ox that is wider on this end than it is on the tractors silage trucks a big log there's a big uh there's a big tree cutter big uh forestry forestry cutter right there that's a heavy one there big old forestry cutter right there a whole bunch of great big trailers out here next to the bean field underneath the giant power line there's a whole bunch of cows right across that field they got over there with headlocks that they go down there and feed hey y'all definitely like and subscribe that helps us out the most and uh so we can grow this channel we'd love to get we'd love to grow this channel so catch y'all later this is headings farm and we'll catch you on the next one