ONTARIO --- When Mike Hansma became interested in purchasing a Harvestore, he sat down with Gary Folkema of Ontario Harvestore to discuss the pros and cons.
The Hansma dairy was milking 75 cows and had been striving to increase milk production and components to increase profitability under Canada’s quota system. This would mean getting more out of its feeding program and profit per cow.
The dairy stored its forages in open-top concrete stave silos. Rather than sell Mike on a new Harvestore solely based on what it can do to improve forage quality, Gary discussed the role of nutrition on the health and productivity of the dairy cow.
“When we met with Mike, we had to show him the benefits of better forage quality, the impact of feed on performance, and what the feed savings could be,” says Gary.
“We crunched the numbers together,” says Mike. “Gary put a lot of information in front of me. I have a lot of respect for him – he really knows his stuff on nutrition and dairying.”
Gary showed Mike the lifetime value he’d receive by investing in Harvestore.
With a focus on upgrading forage feed quality, its impact on milking performance and how that could make the Hansmas more money, the two calculated the economics and came up with a very positive cash flow improvement over the Hansmas past feeding program.
Gary and Mike put together a new system that includes a 25 x 90 Harvestore, two push button fill doors, external breather bags and the new, powerful Harvestore XL unloader for fast feed removal. Gary oversaw the delivery and installation of the Hansmas Harvestore system every step of the way.
Hansmas’ Harvestore XL 400 has unloaded haylage at up to 630 lbs per minute. “Most of the time we get 400 lbs per minute, which is a lot better than we had been getting. We put up an oats and peas mix last year that was a little wetter and, man, did it hoof it out.”
Since purchasing their Harvestore, the Hansmas have been saving approximately $1,500 (CA) per month in feed supplements the herd no longer needs. In addition, they have been receiving an additional $3,000 per month for added butterfat. At the same time, they have shrunk their herd size from 75 to 67 milking cows to stay within Canada’s quota.
“We’ve seen butterfat go up nicely since we put up the Harvestore,” says Mike. The dairy used to struggle with butterfat, particularly during hot summer months. “Our butterfat would be 3.3 or 3.4 and we couldn’t get it up for anything. After feeding that dry haylage last summer, our butterfat rose to just under 4.0 percent and we’ve hit a high of 4.28 percent. There are two reasons for this – that blue silo and a high haylage ration.”
The Hansmas are so happy with their Harvestore for haylage, they also are putting up a 20 x 70 unit for high moisture corn.
