We come from the Brabant Baarle-Nassau. Here we milked cows were milked and with sows on the farm. In 1990 I took over the cows of my father and my brother took over the sows. The yard was split into two and all trucks of food and animal transport to all manure transport was all over our yard, which certainly was not ideal.
In 2005 my son went to Ontario, Canada for 10 weeks internship. After his internship, he saw no future in our company in Baarle-Nassau, where we milked 60 cows plus heifers and 20 hectares of land had, which was in eight lots. After land consolidation in autumn 2008 it was in 4 lots. We had to dispose of half of the manure and it had been increasingly difficult to buy maize.
Thus it was in November 2006 decided to apply for our visas. It took a long time before we finally had our visas, but in February 2010 was the day. Meanwhile, the quota system was changed in late 2009 in Canada making it not easier to buy a suitable company. The sale of the company in the Netherlands did not go so smoothly. Eventually we had sold everything in the Netherlands but still didn’t find anything in Canada.
After many times up and down we came in contact about a year after the sale (August 2011) with Cor van Gaalen, emigration supervisor for Interfarms. With his help, we bought an older dairy farm with 63 kg of milk quotas and 96 ha of land, provided that we could build a new dairy barn. There was at the time of sale an old, worn stable and there were 86 cows milked, but unfortunately did not have enough common.
On November 3, 2011 we emigrated, we took over the farm on November 15 and that same night we first milked on our new company. We have just started in the old stable and with the existing herd. In the first year we have sold more than half of those cows and bought good, fresh heifers back. In October 2012 we could begin with the excavation of the new barn, and we have opened it on March 27, 2013. We have dairy cows, dry cows and calves from about 5 month old in the new barn. The smallest calves we have in huts and in the old stable. After building the new barn, we started to build three new bunker silos as the blue tower silos at the company were too expensive to maintain and stream while the food quality much to be desired.
We are currently milking 62 cows on a milk quota of 71.5 kg. We grow grass / alfalfa, corn silage, grain corn and soybeans for feed, the surplus of grain corn and soybeans is sold.
We're talking good sense to us and have good friends here. Sometimes there is sometimes asked whether we regret our decision... of course we regret that we did not do this ten or fifteen years ago!
Jan, Greta and Peter Hendriks
