David Ford's Canadian Blog

Tuesday 4th August 2009 was a very proud day in my life so far as i was presented with an award of recognition from The Honourable Leona Dombrowsky (Minister of Agriculture in Canada) for my success in being awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship in 2009. I was invited to the ministers office where i was presented with my award scroll and certificate. We then sat down and discussed agriculture and the many differences between british and canadian agriculture and how agriculture was a huge part of the canadian economy. After a series of discussions with the minister, i was taken to a number of very productive and profitable farming enterprises. I was given a guided tour of the farms and told about what plans these farms had for the future and how they planned to cope with the canadian economy. That evening i was invited to have dinnar with the canadian minister and another guest at one of the top restaurants in Guelph. After dinnar i was driven and dropped of at an all expenses paid accommodation residence for visiters of the minister. This had been arranged for me to stay in over night.

Dairy

The Elora Dairy Research Centre has a unique combination of tie and free stalls with access to a common parlour, physiology, maternity and biotechnology wings. A separate barn at the centre serves as a heifer rearing facility for replacement animals, housing 154 heifers in 26 pens. There are 124 stalls in the tie-stall barn and 48 stalls in the free-stall barn. The maternity barn consists of 12 box stalls, adjacent to which are 3 calf nurseries each housing 10 animals in individual pens. There also exsists in total  64 tie-stalls between the biotechnology and physiology wings. The parlour is a 16 unit, double eight herringbone design equipped with automatic cow identification, take offs and production recording. Currently the centre milks twice daily and has around 150 mature cows and 160 replacement heifers. The physiology wing is serviced by a pipeline and the maternity area by a bucket milking system, allowing for collection of colostrum and milk. 

Fistula Cows (To view photograph click attachment)

One of the studies being carried out at the centre on Fistula cows was the use of a cordless system for continuous recording of ruminal pH in dairy cows. This looks at different techiniques to measure ruminal pH and to assess rumen acidosis in cattle. Rumen acidosis is often caused by over feeding of highly fermentable carbohydrates and low fibre diets to meet the high demand for milk production. Rumen acidosis is classified as acute and sub acute. Sub acute ruminal acidosis (SARA) is defined as reapeated bouts of depressed rumen pH from 5.2 top 5.6, and is associated with mild transient anorexia, decreased milk production, intermittent diarrea, poor condition and laminitis. The common techniques used to measure ruminal pH include rumenocentesis, oral stomach tube and cannulation.

Rumen cannulation is considered more accurate as it provides direct access to the rumen. Rumen pH  is evaluated by either collecting rumen fluid samples through the cannula or by positioning an indwelling probe inside the rumen. The latter method provides a more accurate tool to evalute the diurnal variation in pH and the severity of the SARA based on the three daily pH profiles.

The system was designed to enhance the accuracy and reliability of continuous rumen pH recording by implementing more advanced software and hardware bearing in mind cow comfort. This system allows researchers to record pH under different management settings such as free stall operatios or during grazing.

After staying over in Guelph University Accomodation. I was picked up the following morning by Doug Green who is Dairy Genetics officer for a company called Gencor which is part of the Semex alliance in Canada. Firstly we drove to the Gencor headquarters in Guelph where i was given a guided tour. It is here that seman is collected from the bulls between 7am and 10am everyday between monday and friday. This is carried out by 13 full time barn staff. There are 531 bulls of different breeds presently housed at Gencor. The bulls are all fed hay, corn silage, balage and a ration which contains 15% protein. All the bulls are bedded using shavings for there pens, which are 10x14 for the older bulls and 10x10 for the younger ones. All the bulls have an ear tag identification, which includes their name and bullcode aswell as registration numbers. All bulls are photographed when they arrive at Gencor. The bulls start to be collected from when they are 10 months of age. They are collected until they reach about 5,000 doses unless they are royally or high LPI bulls. These bulls usually get collected until 7,500 doses. They are housed here until they get a proof which usually takes 3 years. While here all the bulls get groomed. They are clipped and have their hooves trimmed when they arrive for their picture. The bulls get routine hoof trimming and are clipped regularly. Gencor currently has 550 acreas of land in which they harvest corn and grow hay for the bulls.

We left the Gencor headquarters and headed to Frank and Don Donkers farm, which is based near to Branchton in Ontario. They use the prefix Fradon (Fra -Don). This was a herd with some excellent cow families and a combination of Black and Whites aswell as Reds. This was a well established dairy operation that had been running for a number of generations. It is managed by Frank and Don who are brothers and Dons son aswell as a number of staff. Alot of the animals i saw were show animals and alot of time and preparation went into the grooming of these animals so that they could be taken to shows as the family has a long standing reputation for showing their animals.

I decided to catch the greyhound bus from Vancouver to Banff. The greyhouind is a bus service that runs across the whole of Canada. Going from the west coast to the east coast and vice virsa, stopping only to change drivers and for a service to the bus itself, before continuing on. It runs throughout the night and usually stops of at very remote places to pick maybe one or two passengers up along the way before continuing on its journey. This tends to be one of the cheapest ways of travelling around in Canada. I booked a seat on the bus for 1.45pm leaving vancouver. The journey took me through the Rockie Mountains, where most of the mountain sides were covered in pine and other various species of trees. As i sat on the bus i noticed the bus had really started to struggle as it went further upwards into the rockies....some greyhound this has turned out to be i thought to myself....haha.

I arrived in Banff at 4am the following morning after being on the bus for the entire night. As the bus pulled into Banff railway station i was the only person to get of and as the bus left i looked around to see nothing but a couple of staion lights lighting up a notice board. I then noticed a car parked up with what turned out to be a security guard in. I walked over and asked him if he knew of accomodation. He called me a taxi which took me into Banff itself and dropped me of at a Samesun Backpacker Hostel where i checked in for the night. After over 14 hours on a bus i was happy to just get some rest for the night.

Having flown into Vancouver on the 3rd July 2009 to start my 10 week Churchill Scholarship tour of Canada, i was to be met by outstanding weather conditions. Although quite humid the sun was out in full force, which meant for ideal outdoor weather. With no definite plan of where i was going to be staying i decided to find accomodation in Vancouvers Downtown area which is where i stayed for the next 4 days. Aswell as getting a good insight into the city of Vancouver, i visited Stanley Park which is famous in Canada as a major attraction, as people travel far and wide to walk around this 1200 acre area of parkland. When i first started to walk around i saw the coastal mountains from Vancouvers Harbour Front and was amazed at some of the views that i was able to see while standing at the harbour. What caught my attention the most was the vastness of where i was and how huge the mountains were in comparison to everything else.

In the summer alot of canadians decide to go on "Vacation" and decide to hire a rental vehicle and take it across canada for a break. This to amazed me as canadian people think nothing of driving 10 hours in day to get from one place to another. The bridges, rocks, waters aswell as other features i saw as i walked around were spectacular. As i came to the end of my walk around Stanley Park it levelled out into a beach area, from here i could see far into the distance and was able to see a selection of boats passing from vancouver over to the nearby vancouver island. Vancouver island itself is a similar size the the whoile of the UK. This just to give a picture of the distance and magnitude of the journey ahead in the coming weeks.