By Larry Kleiner
While attending the recent Illinois State Holstein Show at Lincoln, IL, we took a few minutes to make a quick visit to nearby River Valley Dairy.
River Valley is owned by Gregg and Cindy Sauder and their children Tim, Nic, Jeni, Ben, Andy, Blessing and Grace. All family members are actively involved with the dairy.
The main barn contains 20 box stalls for cows and 20 tie stalls for heifers. Currently there are 16 milk cows in the box stalls, these cows are milked twice a day in a flat barn. Just to mention a couple of the cows in the stall barn, South Mountain Voltage Spice EX-91, All-American in 2010, and 2011 was fresh in May and ready for the 2012 Show Season. L’Ormiere Fusion Christine, EX-94, the 2011 Canadian National Champion and Grand Champion at last year’s Royal Winter Fair is due any time with a Tequilla heifer. Pine Haven SSM Marmie, EX-94 the 2011 U.S. National Grand Champion and Reserve Supreme Champion of World Dairy Expo – she has nearly 30 calves coming that are sired by eight different bulls.
Many other famous cows also live in this beautiful barn.
Inside the stall barn
The front side of the stall barn.
The back of the stall barn.
Rainyridge Talent Barbara now resides at River Valley, Barbara was unanimous All-American and All-Canadian in 2010. They recently transferred nine Goldwyn invitro embryos from Barbara and she will be mated soon to Atwood. Barbara will be flushed more in the future.
The heifer/dry cow barn features head locks with a scrape alley and a compost bed pack area.
In January, the larger milking herd was moved into the new robotic-milked free stall barn.
A large viewing area allows visitors to watch the robots at work without disturbing the cows.
Among other things, these robots are equipped with rumination sensors, activity monitors and somatic cell sensors. Currently 180 cows are being milked an average of 4.2 times per day with a 55lb average in the heat. The barn has future capacity for nearly 300 cows. The barn has a drive through feed alley in the center with 2 robots on each side of the barn to handle pens separately.
The barn has gel-filled mattress free stalls with alley scapers.
Feed is pushed up once every hour by a robotic feed pusher.
The calves at River Valley spend their first 10 days in an individual stall.
After 10 days of age the calves are moved to group pens and spend the next 100 days on the automatic calf feeding system, there is room for 100 calves at a time in this system.
Justin Powell, D.V.M. works full time for River Valley, Dr Powell manages overall herd health, reproduction and both invitro and conventional embryo transfer. The goal is to have 75% of the calves born at River Valley be from the breed’s top Jerseys – both from a type and index standpoint. In the future more high-impact Holsteins donors may also be added.
David Jordan has consulted with the Sauder’s since the beginning of River Valley in 2006 and assists the family in managing A.I. relationships, acquiring females and overall marketing efforts.
River Valley is well known for their success in the show ring but focus has also been put on producing top JPI males and females as well. Several bulls have been sold into AI already. And a number of heifers and cows on the farm rank on the top index list for JPI and Cheese Merit.
Just a couple miles from the farm is the headquarters of family’s start-up company, Precision Planting. Precision Planting was purchased earlier this year by Monsanto from the Sauder family.
If you ever travel through central Illinois, take a few minutes to drive a little South of Tremont to visit River Valley where the tagline “Style & Perfomance” comes to life.