Virtual Farm Tours

Tuesday, October 4
10:00 a.m.	Walnutdale Farms Wayland, Michigan Sponsor: Allflex Livestock Intelligence
Wednesday, October 5
10:00 a.m.	Homestead Dairy, LLC Plymouth, Indiana Sponsor: Quality Liquid Feeds
Thursday, October 6
10:00 a.m.	Bateman's Mosida Farms Elberta, Utah Sponsor: Balchem Corp.
Friday, October 7
10:00 a.m.	Skråmered Våxtorp, Sweden Sponsor: ProCROSS

Tuesday, October 4, 2022 - 10:00 a.m. 
Walnutdale Farms
Wayland, Michigan
Sponsored by: Allflex Livestock Intelligence

Walnutdale Farms is a fourth-generation family dairy located in Wayland, MI. Today, the Lettinga family manages 2,600 Holsteins and Jerseys at two separate facilities. After a fire destroyed their milking parlor in 2010, Walnutdale Farms rebuilt with a 50-stall rotary parlor. The Holstein herd, the rolling average is 28,042 pounds of milk with 4.1% fat, 3.3% protein, and an average somatic cell count of 109,000. The farm raises its own replacement heifers and utilizes a beef on dairy breeding program to control the number of replacement heifers on site. 

Walnutdale Farms takes initiative in practicing environmental preservation with several programs. The farm is MAEAP (Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program) accredited, which is a voluntary program in Michigan to verify the on-farm and cropping practices are in line with environmental preservation. Walnutdale Farms is also part of the FARM Environmental Stewardship program.

The Lettinga family has made sharing their passion for agriculture and their dairy farming story a priority with local and international communities. Walnutdale has hosted many in-person and virtual farm tours and welcomes people to learn about the dairy often. In addition to teaching their local community about agriculture, they are also involved in a dairy project with “Growing Hope Globally” program with their local church. This program uses dairy farming education within the community to raise money to provide aid to Kenyan farmers, teaching them how to grow food for themselves and for income.

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 - 10:00 a.m.
Homestead Dairy, LLC
Plymouth, Indiana
Sponsored by: Quality Liquid Feeds

What started as a nine-cow dairy in 1945, Homestead Dairy, LLC is now a fourth-generation dairy managed by the Houin family milking 4,900 cows on three sites. At the Legacy Dairy location, a calf barn was built in 2015 introducing the farm to automatic feeding stations. The first lactation animals are also milked at this site in a double-12 parallel parlor three times a day. Cows that need extra attention - fresh cows and hospital cows – are cared for at the namesake dairy, Homestead Dairy, as it also houses the maternity area and utilizes a double-25 parallel parlor. The third location of Homestead Dairy, LLC is an eight-and-a-half-acre facility featuring 36 Lely robots, constructed with a focus on cow comfort.

The Houin family also embraces progressive management of their manure. A methane digester, built in 2013, creates enough electricity to power 1,000 homes, and a manure dryer, added in 2019, is creating dried manure solids for bedding and liquid manure used as fertilizer on their fields. With the addition of the robot barn, Homestead Dairy, LLC is also able to recycle water four times before it is used to irrigate crop land. 

Thursday, October 6, 2022 - 10:00 a.m.
Bateman's Mosida Farms
Elberta, Utah
Sponsored by: Balchem Corp.

The Bateman family started in the dairy business in the early 1900s with the mentality of ‘always look for ways to do things better.’ That mentality rings true for the late Lance Bateman and his three brothers, Steve, Brad and Jason Bateman, who manage the largest farm in Utah on the shores of Utah Lake in the Wasatch Mountains

Bateman’s Mosida Farms is considered one of the most progressive dairy operations in the country. In recent years, they have been on the cutting edge of sustainability technology, including testing a revolutionary robotic forage-growing system and constructing a new robotic dairy that will serve as a research facility to evaluate new technologies, products and processes.

In 2017, the Batemans added a solar farm that powers the dairy on the heals of a 2016 US Dairy Sustainability Award as an Outstanding Dairy Farm. Their commitment to the land, livestock and their employees highlights the Bateman’s passion for quality and sustainability. These practices drive them to improve and preserve the future of their dairy — for the family and the community. 

Friday, October 7, 2022 - 10:00 a.m.
Skråmered
Våxtorp, Sweden
Sponsored by: ProCROSS

Skråmered is regarded as one of the most exemplary dairy businesses in Sweden and was awarded Sweden’s Dairy Business of the Year Award in 2021 along with being a top-three production herd in 2020. A primary objective of the farm is to adapt their genetics and management of cattle around the facilities they have compared to constantly building new facilities.  Their herd statistics reflect their ability to excel at this.

Featuring ProCROSS genetics – crossbreeding with VikingRed, Montbeliarde and Holstein – Skråmered’s breeding program is fine-tuned to maximize natural reproduction with the aid of SenseHub. Currently, they meet their herd target calving interval of 13.4 months and a conception rate of 65%. 

Milking 350 cows in a SAC double-seven tandem parlor, Skråmered has a rolling herd average of 30,218 lb. of milk (13,707 kg) with 4.1% fat and 3.6% protein. They farm 1,236 tillable acres (500 hectares). Cows are housed in a freestall barn, where stalls have rubber mats and are bedded with a mixture of ground straw and peat, as sand is not allowed in Sweden.

Skramered manages their business to emphasize balance between business, family, and community by creating healthy cows, satisfied employees, and economic sustainability.