Selling Cows (93)

[@JHofman666]

Thank you for your work. Great to see the dedication and respect for the animals.

[@victordaniels9894]

I'm a retired dairy farmer from Michigan and pleased to see that you handled and loaded your cull cows quietly and like you said with respect

[@timjorden8329]

Love what you said Piet. Your respect for your animals is commendable. I wish anyone who is sceptical about farming could hear your words. My respect to you sir

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

Thank you!

[@BasJanssen-u2j]

How many cows are replaced every year? Great to see the dedication and respect you have all for the cows and a good explication that the cow is taking care for us!

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

Our cull rate is 30%. My long term goal is to be below 30%, around 28% is where I'd like to be. I think that would give us a good balance of older more productive cows and younger higher genetic/ higher potential cows.

[@geraldfrench3287]

Piet. This is real dairy farming. Now retired i made these decision many times. Cows are like family. Thanks for your videos.

[@johnhughes2113]

I admire your recpect for the cow Piet, i was allso dairy farmer with a few less than you (320) here in the UK, you mentioned that some of those cows were giving 65-80 lbs daily! cows giving that amount here in the UK would be kept on and monitered to the point of profit / loss on production what Is the lifetime yield of that 9th calver it must be considerable. Thanks Piet yet again a good video your time in the making is much appriciated.

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

The cows that we sell strictly based on low milk production are sold when they reach a point of non profitability. The lifetime production of that cow was 230,000lbs over 8 lactations since she just started her 9th lactation. She was never a huge producer, but consistently a trouble free cow! I would love to have many like her in the herd!

[@davidgilliland2658]

You're a credit what u do. You're cow's are amazing..Keep up the good work

[@user-zu2bw7ig5v]

Really good video Piet!

[@MrRobert1603]

Good job ! Lifes circle ! Thanks from NYC

[@christianjoly4351]

Good morning, I am pleasantly surprised to see how much you respect your cows despite the large size of your herd!

[@bobaganooshy]

That's the biggest gooseneck I have ever seen

[@anneoreilly4900]

Lots of good information.

[@tublifer1]

Good video Piet nice to see how the process of illumination works for your cows. So you always have about 200 dry ones then?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

It fluctuates a little throughout the year but stays fairly consistent.

[@pete9705]

Nice looking cull cows. They must have been well cared for.

[@bertjordens9666]

can you make a video of the sorting gate and how groups ar changed during milking? cow traffic from and to the parlor

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

Yes. We don't have sorting gates, but I can show how we sort cows in a future video.

[@davidkimmel4216]

Thank You. 👍

[@karolschulz48]

Hey Piet, just wondering why you have different breeds of cattle in your herd. Do you have some for increased butterfat content? Couldn't you cut down labor costs with robots to milk?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

We have a few Brown Swiss and red and white holstein just to have some different colors in the herd. Our brown Swiss are fairly similar to our holsteins on butterfat content. We could reduce labor a little by switching to robotic milking but currently the labor savings would not be enough to offset the added equipment and maintenance costs of robots. Retrofitting robots in existing barns is also a challenge.

[@pirate4ever562]

Great video… your comments at the end were very poignant and true.

[@mikesfarmmikesfarm3977]

the cattle trailer in the thumbnail is huge. Will be decades before a EV pulls one of those. Lol Def made for long, straight open roads out west.

[@mikesfarmmikesfarm3977]

a few vids back i asked if you gps steered in the fields and you said yes. If you plant using gps, is gps accurate enough to use later if you spray or fert ? Meaning it can steer with crop rows 12" apart or less ?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

In corn planted 30 or 22 inches apart it's possible to stay inside the rows with GPS but I'm not sure about more narrow rows.

[@mikesfarmmikesfarm3977]

how do you know if they are low producer ? does the milking parlor auto read ear tags ?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

We test individual cows for milk production, components and milk quality once a month.

[@shirleysousa1133]

What is the average age that the cows start not to produce as much milk. What is the oldest cow you’ve ever had on your farm

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

It's not necessarily down to age. Genetics, reproductive success and milk quality all play a role. Cows of all ages can be sold based on those criteria. I think the cow in this video may have been our oldest cow to date, but I'm not certain.

[@dogwoodish]

is there an advantage to sale culls to buyer like this vs cattle auction ?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

We have had more consistent competitive prices for our cattle. In the past, we went through a local cattle auction and would get very little for our cows if there were only a few buyers. It's also convenient to have them picked up off of the farm.

[@jerseyscows8553]

Bonjour, faîte vous de la sélection génétique dans votre élevage ?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

We are using DWP$ index or hhp$ index to select which animals are bred to sorted semen and which ones are bred to beef semen.

[@jerseyscows8553]

@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 d'accord, mais vous faites des concours et vous vendez des taureaux pour des centres d'inséminations ?

[@boertjejanvh3696]

Beter kan je het niet uitleggen aan de burger. Good job Piet

[@jansky7063]

9 lactations 10 years old is a great performance

[@sawboneiomc8809]

Hamburger cows

[@holadihokappa9886]

To be honest, i'm happy to be not a dairy farmer, this animals are so kind i would not be able to sort them out at their end of milk production and send them to slaughterhouses where you cant see how bad they are treated, especially not at a 10 year old cow.

[@Flower3394]

I agree. I've seen videos on KZbin of how animals are treated. It's awful. I'm a vegetarian, but not because of animal cruelty or saving the animals. I'm just one person, one minority. There's still millions of people that do eat meat. But after seeing the amount of cruelty in the slaughterhouse. I'm glad I'm a vegetarian.

[@subratamu9773]

That's a great thought! it feels like who fed you so long, now at their retirement age farmers killing them... no loyalty!

[@Flower3394]

Exactly. Some people don't realize that just because a cow is an animal. They can't feel pain or emotions. Which isn't true at all. All living things can feel pain, love etc. They just aren't as complex as a human. But they love their babies enough they lick the birthings off, and Feed it. I didn't even know how they put the animal down. Till I searched the internet. Wouldn't you know they electrocute cows. I was shocked. I have more emotion towards animals now.

[@richmondbeckard216]

How many Swiss do you have?

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

It's not easy to sort cows out to sell, but even when a cow is at the stage where she is no longer a productive milking cow she is able to provide us with many different products we rely on every day alongside meat. Some of those products include medicine like insulin, shampoo, adhesives, brushes, deodorant, lotions, the list is more than 100 products long. Products most of us use every day without knowing cows had a part in making them. A cow is a truly remarkable animal, which is why I respect and care for them so deeply. A cow should not be humanized, but she should be treated with the best care we are able to provide for them. It hurts me to see videos of animal abuse on farms or slaughterhouses, but these instances of abuse are far from commonplace and should never be treated as normal ways to care for cows.

[@johnhatt1219]

I inscribed give u a clue

[@johnhatt1219]

Unscrubed

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

Sorry to hear that.

[@augiepepple2142]

Too much repeating.

[@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047]

Thanks for the input, I'm still learning and trying to improve the videos!