For those of you unable to attend Tour B during Host Day this week, you missed an awesome day!  Not only was the drive north on I-29 absolutely beautiful, it is teeming with agriculture…not something that this New Yorker sees everyday!  I can tell you that our stop at Sipka Holsteins was almost like a visit to Canada itself!  The newly renovated dairy barn, that used to be a hog barn, is almost two years old now.  Tiestalls are 5′ x 6.5′ for the massive cows that the Post family has….and those cows fill the large stalls completely.  With lots of hay piled in front, also a good Canadian sign, the cows were extremely comfortable on their water mattresses.  Sires included Linjet, Integrity, Citamatt, Ultimate, Counselor and Warden.

Prairie Gold, a 15-month old facility that’s completely full with 3,600 cows is quite impressive in its own right.  With 5% registered Holsteins on the farm, Randy and Jennifer Gross have their hands full developing the registered herd, while also managing 28 full time employees.  “From a labor standpoint, we chose to farm in the I-29 corridor because we knew we could get quality help.  There’s also a tremendous amount of great feed produced in this area, as well as a strong milk market,” explained Randy. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 7:32 pm by kknutsen and is filed under 2006 National Convention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.