Gord and Lucy McFadden, daughter Sara, sons Devyn and Travis, and their wives Alanah and Charlene — as well as grandchildren Delilah, Cole and Myles and dog Buckshot. The family is enjoying the flexibility of running a dairy farm without twice-daily milkings

State-of-the art rises out of storm wreckage

Dairy family rebuild and now its ‘fun’ to be in the barn with a soaring ceiling and the first GEA robotic milker in North America

Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum

NAVAN — A quiet spring afternoon abruptly turned violent and forever altered the McFadden family dairy farm when a frighteningly powerful windstorm — known as a ‘derecho’ — blasted through their Navan-area neighbourhood in 2022. The merciless ‘wall of wind,’ which travelled west to the east across Ontario, left their tie-stall production barn a twisted heap of rubble and several other buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.

For Gord and Lucy McFadden, their sons Devyn and Travis, and their wives Alanah and Charlene — as well as their sister Sara — it was a nightmare that tested their resilience. Yet, from the wreckage emerged not just a new barn at Cecilbay Farm, but a quantum leap into the future of dairy farming — with a state-of-the-art GEA robotic milking and feeding facility that has redefined their lives and livelihood.

They say they intended to upgrade to robotic milking but the storm forced them to accelerate their plans by at least five years. They had just renovated their traditional tie-stall barn, about a year earlier, and were looking to expand their land holdings rather than immediately invest in dairy upgrades. That all changed in the fallout from the storm on that fateful day.

In 2022, Gord McFadden’s Navan-area dairy barn was flattened by a windstorm. Today, Cecilbay Farm milks 76 cows in a bright and soaring new barn with a state-of-the-art milking system.

The vicious wind hit around 3 p.m. Gord was inside the unscathed heifer barn and scrambled for cover under the silo unloader in the feed room built up against the farm’s four Harvestore silos, which groaned and dented in the wind but remained upright.

Travis, who runs a construction and trucking company as a sideline, was in Rockland delivering a piece of equipment. “A big tree fell in front of me, and one fell behind me. And people were flashing their lights,” Travis recalled. “My phone was ringing away. My friend called me up and said he would be right over with a cattle trailer. And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Your barn is gone.’

His brother Devyn was discing a field and watched helplessly as dirt and debris whipped up and made it impossible to see. He turned on his GPS to navigate and anchored his tractor deeper into the soil to avoid being swept away.

“I thought OK, this is a bad storm,” he said, adding he caught a glimpse of the roof flying off the shed beside his parents’ house.

Devyn said he feared having to look into the wrecked dairy barn. “Everything had collapsed. We didn’t know what kind of pain we would be looking into.”

The devastation was staggering. The structure, housing 70 cows, had been shoved sideways, its roof collapsed just enough to trap the animals inside. It was quiet as Gord looked in to check the 70-head milking herd. “The cows weren’t even bawling,” he said. “They were scared or I don’t know what. It was crazy.”

The family set to work getting the cattle out of the collapsed structure through a couple of passable doorways.

Four cows were euthanized on the spot— with broken legs and irreparable injuries—while others lay exhausted after being led out of the barn. Others bolted for the exits when freed. “Some girls just wanted out,” Travis said, marvelling at their will to survive.

They also had to fetch calves and hutches that were strewn about the farmyard. One calf landed on the other side of the dairy barn. “Only she knows how she got there,” Alanah said. The family believes it’s possible the heifer, now a productive dairy cow in her second lactation, might have flown right over the roof.

The McFadden cows were already housed and milked in a temporary home — at the Schouten family’s large milking-parlour farm in Richmond — by 9 p.m. that evening.

“It was amazing, all the people that came down and helped out,” Lucy said.

The neighbour — Ben Bakker—who initially called Travis with the bad news was first to turn up with his cattle trailer. Even though the storm left Bakker’s trailer laying on its side, he used a front end loader to put it rightside up.

Only very briefly did the McFaddens take a moment to consider the option of exiting the dairy business, as that would have been the time to do it. “It was a very quick discussion,” Travis said. “Mom brought it up. We shut it down.”

“We never really thought we had an option,” Devyn quipped.

They booked their building contractor, Zanutta Construction, at 10 p.m. that same night. They broke ground on Nov. 22, 2022, and in January 2024 moved their cattle back from Richmond to begin life in their new robotic facility. Ultimately, about 40 animals never made the return trip. They had to be culled because they never properly recovered from the stress of the disaster to be good milk cows anymore.

“Some girls didn’t want to breed back, some girls didn’t want to milk. They couldn’t get over their pain,” Travis explained.

Today, Cecilbay Farm milks 76 cows in a bright and soaring 135 ft. x 196 ft. dairy barn with two GEA robots supplied by Lawrence’s Dairy Supply. They have room for a milking herd of 120, and they’ve been buying quota in small quantities since embarking on the rebuild.

The feeding system represents another major advance: The McFaddens have the first GEA F-4500 robotic mixer feeder in North America. The big unit trundles around the barn’s perimeter feed alleys dispensing and pushing feed into the manger seven times a day. It refills itself with feed automatically conveyed out of those four blue Harvestore silos (now mostly repaired). It also charges itself in a separate, warmer area of the barn to ensure maximum battery life.

Devyn and Alanna went to Germany to see the feeder unit before the purchase. “It was really impressive when we saw it, and GEA really pushed to get it here,” Devyn said.

While the family declines to discuss money, the replacement value of what they lost was in the millions of dollars. They estimate spending an additional 50 % on top of their insurance settlement because it’s a much expanded barn with the latest technology.

With one year in the new facility under their belt, production is up 20 % with almost the same number of cattle as before. That number should improve further as 65 % of the herd is younger animals in their first lactation.

The family members have also adjusted to the flexibility — and sheer enjoyment — of running a dairy farm without twice-daily milkings.

The McFaddens have the first GEA F-4500 robotic mixer feeder in North America.

The new barn is spacious and bright.

“With the old barn, sometimes I found you went in there to do chores and that was it. It’s not that you didn’t want to be there. But now, I don’t want to leave the barn,” Travis said, sitting in the spacious new office and family-esque room overlooking the free-stall.

“Now, it’s fun,” Gord said.

Devyn has gotten accustomed to handling the feeder robot alarms that come to his cell phone, while Travis does the same for the milker robots.

“It’s got a jingle,” Alanah laughed. “It’s not so fun at 3 a.m. when the alarm goes off.”

The McFaddens, who are hosting an open barn event on March 29, advise fellow dairy farmers to check their insurance policies to check for wind damage coverage.

They also advise farmers to be aware of all the costs they will incur if a disaster occurs. Soon after the derecho, a helpful farmer who suffered a barn fire visited the McFaddens to let them know about the need to submit claims not just for their buildings, but also a host of other costs, from lost manure production to the cost of travelling back and forth to see their cattle while they were kept in Richmond.

“He gave us a lot of tips of what to do, which was a lifesaver,” Lucy said.