The farm started actually in 1978 with 200 milk cows on their own. Now, at the main dairy here we're milking 1900 cows and at the secondary we're milking 1100 cows. My name is Jason Shean. I'm a dairyman in sunny side Washington. So two years ago we had one freestyle barn that had milk cooling in whatsoever and we went through a hot spell and noticed from the milk meters in the barn that we were down 20 pounds per cow in that pen but the other pen with the old style cooling was only down 10. So we knew we had to do something and I had heard a lot about the newer technology with the soakers rather than the mistors. All the rest of our pens had mistors in them and so rather than doing the same thing and getting the same result we decided to try something new that other dairymen in the area as well as hotter regions of the country like California have been doing with the soakers. So we put soakers in the one pen and just a quick setup to see how it went and then we continue to follow the milk production in that pen and as we had more heat waves and hot temperatures that pen never seemed to drop near as much as the rest of the dairy. Everybody involved with this are main focuses to take care of the cows. That's what we're here to do. We have a true passion for cows and their well-being and when it's 100 plus even when it's 90 out you know cows ideal temperatures in the 40s so anytime we're elevating to where you or I are uncomfortable because of the heat the cows extremely uncomfortable. Everything that we do is for the cow but when it's when we challenge the cow we also challenge our workforce because everything becomes more difficult. Not only are the people uncomfortable when it's 110 degrees out the cows are extremely uncomfortable and the health issues increase so it becomes a lot more work to care for. It is a it's a twofold it's very it takes the stress off the cow which in turn takes the stress off the people. The cooling system is different than your mister system that was maybe a thought of the past. This is called a silker system that puts a fairly large amount of water on the cow and it goes in a series of it's on for a short time and then it's off for three or four minutes depending on the temperature it's controlled by PLC it kind of runs itself. We turn on at 75 degrees and it's on for 30 seconds inside and under shade and for 40 seconds outside and sun depending on which penance in and then it's off for 14 minutes. This temperature gets up to 80 degrees it goes to a 10 minutes cycle time so it's off for 10 minutes and the same on times and then once it gets over 90 degrees it stays on for off for four minutes and the same 30 and 40 second run times and thing in the pen. That's been nice because the more water you create the more water you've got to handle with your mister system and that's one of the downsides of it so we want to make sure that we're doing enough to cool the cows but not too much to have more water to deal with on the backside with the mister system. The pregrate through this summer has been significantly higher than it has in previous summers after the installation of the soakers. We have last summers data and then part of this summer's data already to look at and in comparison with what it was in previous years it's considerably higher and so we've seen good success both in maintaining intake for the cows in maintaining milk production and in improving reproduction. So we're continually impressed with the cows and how well they respond. You can tell immediately on milk production that they like it that they're cool and then the reproduction is something that you never know what's going to happen until later in the year but we've seen positive results on both and it's positive enough results to know that the system's paid for itself. I think if you're considering a system like this you have to make sure that you have the capability of taking care of the water on the other end. That's probably the most significant impact that it has outside of the cows. Now that we have the equipment in place and we've learned a few things on how things are going to flow, where we're going to go and how we're going to deal with it, it's going very smooth. The system went to its install, this fairly low maintenance, there's not a lot of operating costs that are involved with it. So even though the upfront cost may be fairly large you can be amortized over considerable number of years so that helps reduce the cost per year and the cost per cow because it's in place for a long time. The return investment is very high. It's definitely worth the investment for us on the difference in the milk we lost before and after. We figured it paid for itself in the first summer alone and then you add in the reproduction benefits of it and it's a pretty quick payback and then you just see the health of the cows and how much happier the cows seem to be through the summer and anytime it's hot you're already out working in yourself, much less your cows being out there miserable through it so if most dairymen anything they can do to keep their cows happier and healthier that it's going to be good for them all the way around and that's probably the primary focus we're looking at is how to make the cows more comfortable.