Making daily videos about his dairy farm in Germany is no easy task, but it is one that Amos Venema carries out with a passion, in order to keep consumers connected to how milk is produced.
Amos uses a number of social media outlets, such as X and Instagram, as well as MyKuhTube, to interact with the public, educating them on where their food comes from.
With a reach of over two million people per month, Amos says the goal of his videos is to allow consumers to approach him with openness and curiosity and take the time to understand how farming works.
He said: “Appreciation begins with understanding. Talking to one another is always better than talking about one another.”
German dairy farm
The 55-year-old farmer runs the dairy farm with his brother Jan in the East Frisia region of northern Germany. Dating back to its formation in 1865, the farm extends to 130ha and runs 150 milking cows.
Amos said: “I started working on our traditional family farm in 1989 after finishing college. My younger brother Jan joined us on the farm in 2010.
“Today we farm in partnership with 150 milking cows on 130ha, 122 of which are used for grassland and eight for corn silage production.
“We achieve about 14t of dry matter (DM) per hectare from the grassland and 15t/ha from the corn silage. Our average rainfall in this region is around 850L/m²/per year. Most of our land is just about 1m below sea level,” he added.
All the cows are Holstein Friesian and are milked twice per day, at 4:30a.m and 4:00p.m. The cows yield around 9,000kg of GMO-free milk per cow per year at 4.4% butterfat and 3.4% protein.
Milk is sold to the DMK co-op at an average price for 2024 of 47c/L.
Amos said: “Our top 25% of cows are bred with hornless AI [artificial insemination] bulls, usually via sexed semen, with bulls such as Skalla PP, Member PP, Keane PP, Solist PP, Advokat PP, and Signum PP.
“Over 50% of the cows are bred to a beef bull, usually Belgian Blue and the remainder with plainer dairy bulls.
“For us, it is important to have cows with good longevity and a good health index. We do not prefer cows with a very high milk yield, because these types of animals often need a lot of maize in their diet, which is an extra cost as we need to purchase it in. We prefer cows with a low lactation curve,” he added.
This year the farm will reach the animal welfare standards of HF3 or QM++. The cows graze outside about 180 days per year, the heifers graze about 200 days per year.
The brothers get an extra 2c bonus for the higher standard of QM++ milk.
German farm operation
During the grazing season the cows receive a high energy content ration in the barn. In the winter time the ration contains even levels of protein and energy.
Both rations include grass silage, maize, hay, beet pulp, rape, and grain.
Amos and Jan are the only labour on the farm carrying out the day-to-day tasks, while local contractors carry out all the fieldwork. If any of the brothers are travelling or are sick, they hire workers from a farmers’ organisation.
“We use a 16-point swing over herringbone parlour from Lemmer Fullwood fitted with cow management sensors and tools from Afimilk,” Amos explained.
“All aspects of herd management are controlled by software from Afimilk, and the cows wear pedometers to generate data from their behaviour.”
The milking cows are fed a total mixed ration (TMR) in the barn using a Sgariboldi Gulliver self-propelled machine with a horizontal paddle system.
On top of that, each cow receives 3kg of concentrate in the milking parlour, while the best performing cows that are yielding over 25kg of milk per day are able to get more, depending on their milking average, of up to 7kg of concentrates at the feeder stations in the barn.
Future
In terms of looking to the future, Amos said they do not want to expand the herd, because labour at an affordable price is becoming increasingly hard to find.
Amos said: “We just rented the neighbour’s farm which means we will invest in modernising the whole set-up in the barns. We are not planning to expand because to get good farm workers for a payable price is a major problem.
“Looking ahead, I can see how the carbon footprint of a farm will have a major effect on farmers as we will be forced to spend money to cut our emissions, as per regulations.
Animal welfare and environment regulations will be other challenges that Amos expects to face in the future.
“Already, on our farm we have around 80% of our fields participating in special environmental programmes and we are paid extra for them,” he continued.
“Two years ago, we calculated our carbon footprint and since then we have reduced our footprint by 300/kg of milk produced by reducing our electric power consumption for the milk cooling.
“For 150 cows we now need around 43,000kWh per year, and that is down from 55,000kWh for the same amount of milk two years ago.
“Another challenge we face on this farm regards wild birds migration. During the winter time from September almost until the end of May we have lots of wild geese, up to 150,000 of them, on our fields that destroy about 60% of our first and fourth cuts of silage,” he said.
