The van Moorsel family held a twilight gathering at their Morrisburg farm with its newly renovated barn. (Nelson Zandbergen photos)

FLASHBACK:

Silo collapse kills 16 cattle

FAST FORWARD:

New barn with robotic milker and feed pusher offers more family time

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

MORRISBURG — Early on the morning of Oct. 3, 2022, dairy farmer Jeff van Moorsel headed to the barn to milk the cows as usual. The scene that greeted him was anything but.

Overnight, one of the farm’s three concrete silos toppled over the east end of the traditional tie-stall barn, crushing the hip-roofed structure just outside Morrisburg. No one was hurt but 3 of the 35 production cows and 16 heifers were killed.

Jeff’s wife, Louise, said that they didn’t hear the noise from the farmhouse.

“We’re so lucky nobody was in there,” said Louise van Moorsel during a recent July twilight gathering of farmers and neighbours at Vanglen Farms new freestall-and-milking-robot barn, which went into service 18 months ago.“You’re kind of in shock there for a few days,” Jeff recalled of the disaster.

It was in October, 2022, when Jeff van Moorsel walked out to the barn and found the concrete silo had toppled over in the night.

In hindsight, he said he would advise farmers with concrete silos to check their condition. Concrete silo collapses are enough of a risk that Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness issued a fact sheet highlighting the deterioration of silos from feed acids over time and noted an increased number of collapses in recent years.

For the van Moorsels, recovery began immediately. The surviving cattle were fetched from the barn and sent to Joe Jansen’s Iroquois dairy farm to continue milking until a new barn was built.

“The neighbours rallied. They came up with trucks and trailers. They were amazing,” Louise said. “The farm community in general just came together and helped us out. We were grateful. You can’t say thank you enough.”

She said there was no thought of exiting the dairy industry. The couple’s 31-year-old son, Brian and his wife Breanne are partners in the operation, so there was no question. The farm has been in the family since Jeff’s grandparents immigrated from the Netherlands in 1952.

They hired Steve Robinson of Finch to handle the construction of a modern dairy barn to replace what was destroyed. “He was phenomenal,” Louise said.

The two-row barn with a drive-through feed alley was a nice to handle 35 milking cows.

Lawrence’s Dairy Supply, of Moose Creek, supplied and installed all of the ventilation (Ventec), and alley-scraper manure-handling (Houle) equipment, as well as the stabling (Ferbo) in the two-row barn with drive-through feed alley. Perhaps the biggest wow factor comes from the single GEA cow-milking robot and a GEA RoboRebel feed-pushing robot, both supplied by Lawrence’s Dairy.

Jeff van Moorsel and wife, Louise, say the new barn with the robotic milker and feeder offer the family more together time. They farm with their son, Brian and his wife Breanne.

In the end, there is so much upside. “It was unfortunate the way it happened,” Louise said. “but in the long run, it was for the best.”

The modern set-up and robots have “made life a bit easier. You have more family time.”