• Aquila Farms LLC, Bad Ace, Michigan – John Verhaar’s family’s home farm with 2,200 Holstein, Swedish Red and Montbéliarde cross cows.
• Aurora Farms, Fairgrove, Michigan – Receiving fresh cows from Aquila Farms, Johnny Verhaar (son of John) and his wife, Maria, milk 750 cows at this site using 12 robots and two employees.
• Bos Dairy LLC, Fair Oaks, Indiana – Tony Bos milks 3,300 cows in a 72-stall rotary parlour. These cows are housed in a cross-ventilated barn with deep-bedded digester solids in the stalls. In addition, six groups of 120 cows each are milked by 12 robots in a 12-row cross-ventilated barn with waterbeds in the stalls.
• Roto Z Dairy, Snover, Michigan – This 3,500-cow dairy built by Jake Zwemmer featured a 15-row, sand-bedded freestall barn and 100-stall external rotary parlour.
• Z-Fresh Dairy, Elkton, Michigan – The Zwemmer family’s dry cow and calving facility with a double-12 parlour.
• Shuler Dairy, Baroda, Michigan – Located in a heavy tourist area, Bill Schuler focuses on cow comfort with a compost-bedded pack barn, hybrid tunnel ventilation system and two milking robots.
• Vanderploeg Friesians, Ithaca, Michigan – Klaas and Mares Vanderploeg combine love of horses and cows at this 3,500-cow dairy equipped with a 72-stall rotary parlour and separate parallel parlour for fresh cows. Sand bedding is used and recycled on-site.
• Westvale-Vu Dairy, Nashville, Michigan – This family dairy milks 200 Holsteins with four robots. Milk gravity flows downhill from the dairy to the on-farm creamery where it is bottled and used to make ice cream, cheese, yogurt smoothies and butter under the MOO-ville Creamery logo.
Non-farm stops included a sugar beet processing plant, Mensch Manufacturing, Fair Oaks Farms tourist experience and Michigan State University’s WK Kellogg Biological Station. The pasture-based research station rotates 85 cows twice a day through pastures and milks them with two robots.
This tour was so popular, PDO is hosting it again Oct. 17-19. Registration and tour details are available at the PDO website. 
Photos provided by Harold House.
