CHILLIWACK, B.C. — It’s all about the cows for Peter and Nicole Tuytel.
Born and raised on dairy farms in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, the Outstanding Young Farmers award winners for B.C.-Yukon have built up a herd of purebred Holsteins that has earned them international recognition.
Peter is the youngest B.C. dairy producer to receive the Holstein Master Breeder title from Holstein Canada, an award that recognizes at least 15 years of superior dairy cattle breeding.
With good breeding and selection, the couple has increased milk production to 43.6 kilograms per day in 2011from an average of 24.5 kg in 2000.
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Active in the show ring, the pair met at a cattle show. They have been married for 12 years and have two young children: Caitlyn, six and Brayden, 19 months.
Work and social life at Elmbridge Farms revolves around the dairy business.
“All our friends are cattle people. They are all purebred people who like to show and classify. It is a good group of people,” Nicole said.
Both have a lifelong passion for cattle and a keen understanding of what makes a superior cow. Peter began building his herd at age 14 while Nicole can trace her herd back to two calves her grandfather gave her when she was four.
Peter began farming after high school and started a broiler chicken operation on his father’s dairy farm.
When he and Nicole wanted to expand the dairy side of the business, they sold the broiler operation and built their herd to 130 cows on 80 acres within Chilliwack city limits.
The farm is currently undergoing renovations for better cow comfort and environmental care.
They installed a system to separate liquids from solid manure that releases a compost that is reused for bedding. Excess compost is used on their garden or sold off the farm. The liquid can be used for irrigation or goes to a nearby lagoon.
The soft, brown fibrous material compost is replacing sawdust bedding for the cows. It is sterile and appears to inhibit bad bacteria from causing problems like mastitis.
In recent years, the Tuytels have faced increasing competition from farmers turning land over to fruit and vegetable production.
“You are competing with a lot of other commodities as far as renting land,” Peter said. Land rents for about $1,000 per acre.
“People think it is a novelty to live out in the country but when you start doing fieldwork at five or six in the morning, they don’t like that,” said Nicole.
The Tuytels milk cows three times a day and cut hay every 30 days in the summer. They can grow silage corn but rainfall of up to 1,800 millimetres annually limits growing alfalfa and requires them to import some feed.
Finding hired help is also challenging.
“It is probably more demanding than they expected. The hours on a dairy farm are not a nine-to-five job,” Peter said.
They are considering adding robotic milkers.
“I always said no, never, but now I actually would not rule it out,” said Nicole. “We don’t want to manage employees, we want to work with the cows.”
Nicole and Peter share milking duties and work closely with the animals.
“We can walk through the barn and look at a cow and tell she is sick by looking at her eyes. It is just from years of experience because we know the cows,” she said.
They recently added a heat monitoring system to check heifers for estrus and are also installing a camera to monitor cows during calving periods.
They raise their own heifer replacements and bulls and use sexed embryos and semen to get more fe-males. They have sold embryos to seven different countries and consign heifers to various sales.
Their cattle have won major awards across North America.
“Anybody can go and buy a good one but to breed one is different,” Peter said.
Their most famous cow, Elmbridge FM Loveable, a two-time Canadian national champion, is a cross of Peter’s maternal line with Nicole’s paternal line. It was named the best bred and owned cow in the red and white Holstein show at the 2011 World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.
They also own Davidsons Raider Bronze, the first Canadian cow to receive a 97/100 rating. That cow produced 155,000 kg. in its milking lifetime.
“We like cows to last. We have a bunch that are eight, nine, 10 years old,” Nicole said.
In the future, they plan to build a barn to separate the show cows.
“Our kids are out there all the time but it is going to be their choice. We’re not going to force them to do it,” said Peter, whose daughter is already showing calves.
This November, the Tuytels will join other provincial winners at the national OYF conference in Prince Edward Island.
