The participants of the Motor Rally "Way to milk!" visited a farm with the lowest cost of milk production in Canada

Carl, Dave and Ben Lowit met the participants of the Motor Rally "Way to milk!" on their free stall farm with deep sand bedding and a milking parlor consisting of two sites with twelve parallel stalls, built in 1999. The main objective of the farm with an area of 800 acres (approx. 320 ha) is to achieve high milk production rates through the use of unique protocols for the health maintenance and housing of the herd.

According to Holstein International and Holstein Canada, the farm Summitholm has raised the largest number of cows in the world with a lifetime production of 100 000 kg of milk. Among operating sires there are Mainstream Manifold, RH Superman, Misty Springs Supersonic and Silverridge Envious. The purpose of the farm is raising functional, high-productive cows staying on the farm as long as possible through paying most of attention to the selection indices LPI (Lifetime Profit Index) and Net Merit.

Currently, the Lowits use approximately 25% of young genomic bulls with high indexes, but in the future plan to increase their percentage.

According to the owners, the farm was founded in 1947 by Rodion Lowit on 325 hectares of land. Today, there are 420 milking cows on the farm; the milk yield per cow per day is 42-43 liters.

- We have achieved such success thanks to the people who work with us. In addition to three family members, there are three permanent employees and twelve hired employees. We also listen carefully to the companies that supply us with seeds, genetics, and assist in feeding - told the owners of the farm.

The price per liter of milk is 70 Canadian cents. Produced milk contains 4% of fat and 3.2% of protein.

Today the farm operates at the Bank's interest on loans up to 3%. Milkers receive 15-23 Canadian dollars per hour.

It is interesting to know that while the average cost of production of a liter of milk in Canada is 0.75 Canadian dollar, the cost of the farm Summitholm is 0.55 Canadian dollar.

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Organizers: The News Agency The DairyNews and the "Russian Dairy Research Center"