It is sited on the ex-DARABEEF farm, covering an area about 500 acres. Presently there are 284 heads of Jersey cattle housed in three closed-house free stall barn with internal temperature of 22-26 degrees Centigrade and the wind chill effect will make the cows feel 5 degrees C lower.
At the moment the farm produces about 1,000 litres milk per day out of 84 milking cows with an average of 12 litres per cow.
I was impressed with their modern Rotary milking parlour. Fifty cows could be milked at one go with only two-three workers operating. The milk collected will then be chilled to 4 degrees C within a matter of minutes, thus ensuring quality of the milk.
Dairy ration consists of both concentrates and grass which are mixed in TMR machine and delivered right smack into the barn!
Each barn houses 100 heads of cows. The cows seem happy to be able to walk freely inside the barn. Water is made available at the end of the barn. This will ensure that cows have enough exercise while they are in the barn.
Droppings are scrapped into a drainage system that lead into lagoons by an automatic scraper, thus dispensing the need of human labour.
Another amazing thing about the barn is that there is no bad odour, both inside and at the outlet fans!When completed, the farm will have 1,200 heads of dairy cows with the expected milk production of 14,000 - 16,000 litres of milk per day!
There are two lady Veterinarians working at the farm.
All the barns and milking parlour are monitored by CCTVs. We could see what happen in all these places.
Verses from the Quran are played in the barns and the milking parlour. This makes the animals calmer and calm animals perform better - at least that was what being told by Alwi, the farm's owner.
Till now FIDAF has invested RM25 millions in developing the farm. I sincerely hope that FIDAF will one day become the most important dairy farm in Malaysia.
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