Main Program |  Keynote Speaker | Post Conference Tour 

Producer Panel

The opening night Producer Panel of innovative dairy producers provided participants with practical information on making technology work on the farm and what they see as priorities for the future.

Thomas Wynker, Artique Farms Ltd., Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, has 250 milking cows and makes extensive use of cow management technology, RFID and DairyComp305 and Feedwatch electronic monitoring of feed ingredients.

Poul DeGier, Pilgrim Dairy, Ponoka, Alberta, Canada, milking 110 cows with two DeLaval VMS in a feed first application. Production averages 1.4 Kg of butterfat per cow per day (4.1% in 33 litres).

Dale Hemminger, operates 2,800 acre Hemdale Farms Inc., of Seneca Castle, New York, USA. He started with 4 milking robots in a 240 freestall barn in 2007. By 2009 he has converted all of the 800 cow dairy herd to robotic milking with 12 Lely Astronaut milking robots. Read more about Dale Hemminger.

Bram Prins, President of Global Dairy Farmers and a dairy producer in the Netherlands, has adopted both robotic milking with 4 Insentec Galaxy stalls and automated feeding with a Pelon batching and track feeding system. He and his partners operate two herds of 310 dairy cows on 230  ha producing, 2,600,000 kg of milk. All milking and feeding is done by robots.  Energy production  is from biogas with a capacity of producing 530 kWh electricity per hour. (Annual 3.500.000 Kwh).

Chair, Gerrit Wensink, along with his wife Margriet operate Hoenhorst Farms near Woodstock, Ontario. They milk 320 cows using Lely robots.  Gerrit is the current Chair of Progressive Dairy Operators.  Read more about Hoenhorst Farms.