A tour of Rosecamp Farms Inc., the only registered egg farm in Lanark County. Courtesy Photo
By Barb Keith
AgriNews Contributor
LANARK COUNTY – Elected officials from across Lanark County recently discovered high tech farming in their own backyard as they toured farms in Drummond/North Elmsley and Tay Valley Townships.
The tour started at Rosecamp Farms Inc., the only registered egg farm in Lanark County. Owner and seventh generation farmer, Stephanie Nanne, welcomed everyone and walked the group through the biosecurity protocols required to visit the farm. Biosecurity is essential on poultry farms to protect the health of the birds as humans can be carriers of disease. Visitors were asked to put on protective footwear before entering the egg packing area and were given disposable coveralls if they wanted to enter the barn (guests with their own poultry were asked not to enter this area). Once inside the state of the art barn built in 2023, guests got to see the enriched poultry housing that included perches and nesting boxes as well as view the displays connected to sensors in the barn that monitor the building temperature as well as the consumption of food and water. Eggs are collected on a belt system so Nanne’s father, Robert Campbell, continued to stack the flats of eggs while chatting with the group.
“We think it’s important to educate people, and especially our elected officials, on where their food comes from so they can understand not only the unique challenges involved, but also see the innovation within agriculture” says Nanne.
From there, the tour headed to Elm Creft Farms, Inc, located just south of the Town of Perth, where they were greeted by 7th generation dairy farming brothers Derek and John Oliver to tour their new barn that welcomed cows in Nov. 2025. Guests were also asked to put on protective footwear as they entered the barn. The tour started in the milk collection area where Derek discussed the operation. He shared that between 4800 and 5000 litres of milk is collected every two days and stated that at each collection, the milk is tested for fat percent, protein content, somatic cell count as well as the presence of bacteria and antibiotic residue. Guests were then led out to the barn where they witnessed Oliver’s brand new robotic milkers in action. Dairy cows are frequently handled and many of these ladies were eager to sniff their visitors and pose for photo ops. Besides the milking area, cows close to calving as well as those who had just calved were also housed in this large, open barn. The cows had recently received their TMR mix so Derek was able to demonstrate a robot sweeper that travels down the barn pushing food closer to the cows as they sort through it for their favourite parts. Derek said the cows are milked an average of 3.3 times per day and they have seen an average increase in production of 3 to 4 litres since switching from the old tie stall barn to the robots. Since reducing the hours spent milking, the Olivers are able to spend more time focussing on the cows themselves. Derek and John’s mother Mary said they had very few cows that didn’t adjust to the robots.
The last farm they visited was DBM Land and Cattle, near Dewitt’s Corners, owned by Don Badour and Barb Keith. Don’s family has farmed on the edge of Bob’s Lake for at least five generations. DBM is one of the first farms in Ontario to use virtual fencing (cow collars) to rotationally graze their cattle on pasture.
The tour wrapped up at Temples Sugar Bush for a maple-themed lunch and to hear from Sherry Fortune, about maple syrup production at Fortune Farms.
When asked for his thoughts on the tour, Lanark Highlands Counsellor Bill King said “I met four wonderful multi-generational farm families. I learned an egg farm in Lanark County produces 2,000 dozen eggs per day. I saw a high-tech beef farm and discovered cows can now milk themselves!”
