Agro-Soyuz - Our Entrepreneurial Hosts

The bus ride from the DP train station to Agro Soyuz.  (High-Res)

Around 2 PM, Jon, Sarah, Sean, Orin, Gary, Vitaliy and I headed to the train station to meet our Entrepreneurial students, who were traveling from all corners of Ukraine to attend the program.  We all boarded a bus provided by Agro Soyuz - our host and sponsor for the program - and headed to the farm.  Agro Soyuz is a very large experimental farm in eastern Ukraine.  Vitaliy (who attended a LEADER program in 1997) works at Agro Soyuz as their Chief Veterinarian, and he helped arrange the program there.  You can read more about the operations at their web site.  

 

Sean, Orin and a few of our students atop one of Agro-Soyuz' state-of-the-art tractors.  The day before we arrived, this tractor had set a world record for wheat seeding, covering over 570 hectares in 24 hours.  (High-Res)

 

 

We arrived at Agro Soyuz after a thrilling 90-minute bus ride and were given a tour of the farm, which is much larger than any of us were expecting. They've done some really great work and research & development with dairy farming and are also trying to get into Ostrich farming. They're not really sure what they're going to do with the ostriches yet, but they have a ton of 'em (and boy do they smell). One of the projects they were hoping to work on with us was to develop a marketing plan to sell ostrich eggs, leather, meat, baby chicks, etc......But unfortunately they hadn't informed us of this in advance so we weren't sure if we'd have the manpower for it.

Flags outside the Agro-Soyuz farm headquarters.  They had raised a Canadian flag next to the flags of Ukraine (right) and Agro-Soyuz for our stay.

 

 

They also gave us a tour of the dairy farming operations, which are quite impressive and would not be out of place on any farm in North America.  They have roughly 1100 dairy cows on the farm, and a fully automated milking system that can process 12 cows at once in a very cool batch process. 

Automated milker, with two rows of cows waiting to be hooked up to the milking machines.  The cows walk into the stalls and position themselves and, then the worker standing below the cows connects the hoses and turns on the machines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cows leaving the milking machine and returning (by themselves!) to their pens.

One of the key beliefs at Agro-Soyuz is that a free cow is a happy cow, and a happy cow produces more milk.  As such, none of the cows are chained or roped - ever.  They are allowed to roam free at all times and are trained to walk through the appropriate aisles to get to the milking machines when they're ready to be milked.  I stood and watched about a dozen cows lining up - literally lining up - to get into the milking machines.  When the previous batch was done and left to return to their pens, the gates to the milking machine opened, and the waiting cows calmly walked in, one at a time, 6 to each side.  When the machine was full, there was one cow left standing outside, and it proceeded to pace back and forth, waiting for its turn.  Just amazing to see. 

 

A calf in its private pen.  Or as I like to call them, Veal-in-Training.

The farm also has several hundred calves, each occupying its own little calf-house with a 6'x6' pen outside its house.  The calves are raised this way until they reach a certain age and then they are allowed to join the adults in the larger communal pens. 

Adult cows in their communal pen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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