First Days In Our NEW, HOMEMADE Milk Parlor!!!
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- First Days In Our NEW, HOMEMADE Milk Parlor!!!
Wholesome Living Dairy Homestead is our family farm. We are building an A2 raw milk Guernsey cow dairy farm from scratch, one nail, one glass bottle, one cow at a time. This channel chronicles our family's journey from the very beginning through the present. Follow along as we celebrate each milestone we make toward our ultimate goal of a fully functional family dairy farm offering premium quality, nourishing food.
Come and join us as we work to grow our family's new channel and connect with like minded folks within the UA-cam homesteading community.
Facebook Page:
WholesomeLivingDairy
Email us:
farrierak@gmail.com
I love the dairy set up you have.
Thank you!
WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE TYPE OF HALTERS ? THE FLAT NYLON ONES REALLY AGGRAVATED OUR GUERNSEYS. THOSE ROUND ONES LOOK SO MUCH BETTER. THANK YOU.
Amazon has large rope horse halters!
If you copy this design, I would suggest installing a gutter behind the cows, and also room for a trough for feed and windows for the cows as they will be less stressed looking outside while being milked. With no gutter the floor will become quite a mess.
It's been a year now since this video - the cows enjoy their routine and rarely poop or urinate in the milking parlor - we have a shovel and floor squeegee that does a great job cleaning up and then we just hose it all down. There are 4" drains behind the cows as well. Windows aren't necessary and wouldn't be possible for our building anyway. The cows have feed tubs they eat from while being milked, so there's plenty of space for them there - we call it the Alley Way
@@wholesomelivingdairyat some future date, would love to see a video about what you would do differently or advantages / disadvantages that you feel with your setup...
@@wholesomelivingdairyalso, do you have a video on care and setup /cleanup of the milking equipment?
My dad had guernsey cows when I was a little boy I to your cows thanks for sharing God bless you
It is lovely video
Nice to see that here 🎉
Thank you so much to choose MELASTY ❤
Thank you for such a great product!
this is so cool
Keep it up. You're going to have a real nice operation.
Thank you very much! We're working hard, one little step at a time.
Best of luck with the new milking parlour it looks like a smooth operation 😎
Thank you! We've been tweaking things here and there to make it even better over this last year and are really happy with it!
Just a small observation guys If you were to put a 10 inch platform of concrete on the area where your cows stand to be milked it would make it much easier for u to put the clusters on the teats I had that system when I was in the dairy business The cows will step up no bother once they are getting some dairy nuts I used this system up to 30 cows
We considered that but at the time didn't have the ability to make it happen, it's ok though, this is our starter farm and we intend to grow in the future. Maybe, if we don't move to a larger property we could consider the step up - it would sure be nice!
@@wholesomelivingdairy you guys can always do in the future You have a great setup anyway Enjoy your farm and God bless from Ireland
Awesome!
COOL Nice little parlor you have built. Like the milk bucket portable system.
Why the Angus bull?
Angus bulls produce calves that are lower birthweight, resulting in easier calving. Common practice dairymen often use, especially on first-calf heifers. Downside is you have crossbred calves that don’t make great replacement cows.
Its always nice to see hard working people and their achievements. How much milk do they get per day i wonder?
(city guy, apart from chickens and dogs i know nothing of raising animals 😂)
It depends on the time of year and who's in milk, but it averages around 25-40 gallons per day, but soon it'll be around 55 gallons a day.
You have a beautiful setup. I'm new subscriber. I will enjoy watching your videos. As I'm a small dairy farmer too. (goats). Till next time. God Bless
Thank you so much for watching and subscribing, fellow farmer!
Have you though of hanging a wooden plank on those dividers ? to create a impression as they are separate areas for each cow ?
Since cows can see the color yellow, we placed yellow chains on the working aisles they shouldn't go down. So now the ladies know exactly where to go and rarely, if ever, get confused with which aisles they should use.
Do you think there is a benefit to texture the entire floor? I could see value in grooves for traction in the areas where the cows turn.
We actually considered that - we do have texture down on the floor so it isn't smooth, the stalls are at a 15 degree angle so they don't have to make sharp turns. We may still put grooves or another texture down later, however
Traction at turning points means great force on the hoove, not desirable. Floors should be just a little slippery.
Great to know! We put some texture down since this video but it isn't extreme
May I ask how much of their hay is provided for them as opposed to pasture? I have limited space and wonder if it would be sustainable if I were to need to purchase the bulk of their feed.
Well, for our situation in TX, we hauled in all feed. Any grass grown was not counted as part of their feeding program. The best grass for high traffic in pastures is Bermuda grass. So if you have limited space in a warm climate, that's the best way to go! Then, in the winter have ryegrass planted. I still wouldn't count it towards their daily feed ration depending on how much space you have.
@ I’ve got 2.5 acres of field.
Nice setup
Thank you! It's coming along more and more. Since this video we've completed a few more things and the cows have settled in so it isn't so messy during milking time!
Very nice set up , your hard work is paying off . How many cows are you milking now and how long does it take you ?
Thank you!! It has been a lot of blood sweat and tears but it feels good to see that hard work paying off. We are currently milking 9 girls, a 10th will be calving in a couple months and we have 3 younger heifers that will be growing up to be part of the dairy as well.
So so good
What do you do with all that rich Guernsey milk? Great temperament cows to work with.
We have a dairy shop and sell products to our members!
Nice setup. If possible can you please share the design.
7:00 Do you plan to raise your own replacement heifers? Sired by Mr. Black?
We're just using Mr. Black (aka: Big Boy) for this season as we wait on our purebred Guernsey bull calf to mature. So all the half Angus calves will be beef animals until we get back into purebred next season.
In India, we feed them black Chickpeas, sprouted corn, brewery grain, mustard, sesame, sunflower seed cakes (you can get seed cakes for cheap from places where they extract oil from these seeds) and some dried neem leaves crushed as stomach cleanser all mixed in with rice husk or wheat husk 5 kg for each cow additionally along with green Napier grass silage every day especially in winter.
I still remember their coat become so shiny.
The breed in India for A2 milk that we had was Gyr and sahiwal. Their milk per day was 13 Liters. With the above it reached upto 15 to 17 liters.
The good thing about non hybrid cows are that they adapt very easily. I heard this breed is non hybrid compared to that common black and white Holstein.
That sounds like a wonderfully rich diet! Unfortunately we don't have most of that available in our area. Our favorite to feed is Ryegrass haylage - the cows make so much rich milk on it!!
Wow your milk must taste divine with a diet like that Lucky Cows
Beautiful
I think you would have been better of with a moveable milking setup moved to the cows on weekly basis depending on which paddock they would you have them planned to be in using your Holistic Planned Grazing chart, that way you wouldn't have to have all that mud and cleaning to do everyday.
Our farm is currently too small to make a mobile milking set up and we are completely exhausted from milking outdoors - it's quite miserable! Now we're milking faster, are cleaner, and a million times more comfortable plus all our equipment, feed and the bulk tank are all in the same building making it less work overall! We've improved our time efficiency by 50%, which means our family has more time for other things
We milk 4 cows with a small simple pulse machine looking yo up grade can you tell me more about your Milking machine and bulk tank ?
We like our Melasty machines, they're trusty and do a great job. They also come with maintenance supplies and fantastic customer service. Our bulk tank is a Milkplan made in Greece - it's stupendous and works very well for our operation. We regularly have customers report of milk staying fresh and sweet for 3-4 weeks with our current cleaning and equipment set up.
@@wholesomelivingdairy thanks I will look them up !
Where is this? Which state? Looks down south. Music is a bit too much for me. Thank you.
Just north of Houston TX!
Beautiful cows why dont u breed them to proven guernsey bulls
❤❤❤
Lovely video, what breed is the black bull.
Thank you! He's an Angus
Can we get a update on how you like the new parlor it almost bean a year like and dislike if aney
Yes! That's a great idea. We can definitely make a video about our thoughts on our set up a year in. Thanks for the suggestion!
Need to put cowbell on them
We actually want to get a nice Swiss bell one day!
How wide & How Deep are the stills in the Parlor???
I'm forgetting the exact dimensions at the moment but will measure them for you later today!
What state are you in?
Texas - but soon to be Pennsylvania!
@@wholesomelivingdairy Why build a new set up in Texas only to move to Pennsylvania? Especially since Texans are much more generous when buying direct from the farmer that the cheap Yankees are.
What’s with all the unnecessary metalwork, it must have cost a fortune. I’ve never seen the need for a cow to be milked in a crush in a tie-stall barn before, they all stand as quiet as lambs waiting to be chained to milk
The metal for the stalls was $1500 and $200/head lock - labor was free. We like our set up very much and fashioned it after some 1940's style milk parlors - you also see a lot of headlocks like this made of wood for family milk cows.
Forget that bending down.
It's our first dairy farm, we couldn't afford a big fancy parlor to start off with. But one day we'll get there!
@@wholesomelivingdairy I never said it should be big and fancy.. In about 15 years your knees and hips will be wore out like mine are.
I'm sure, but we don't plan on staying here for 10-15 years. It's our starter farm
Bloody video.
The cow was struggling to come out.
This was the first days of our cows learning to back out of the stalls. They're professionals now 👍