The environmental rules and his expansion plans don’t allow him much manoeuvring. The new barn costing close to $1 million will be built in a 50-acre field and have capacity for 200 cows in a parallel milking parlour. The facility could be expanded to 800 cows.

Though he needed to move, Bill 184, the Quebec environment bill, was like a firecracker under him, propelling his thoughts into action.

His family was with him. His son Scott, 29, one of the three Judd children farming with their father, said "I never had much of a negative feeling toward it because it had to come."

But the bill is changing how people farm. If all the cattle remain inside, a farmer is okay, Chris Judd says. But keeping cows outside on a paddock and giving them green chop might become a thing of the past. The paddock has to be treated as a feedlot and has to have drainage tiles under it. The water drains to a well. It is locked. "If the water is brown, if it is not of drinking quality," then the farm comes under censure. "You require a cement pad and a roof," he says. "You might as well build a barn."

In the spring, summer and fall cattle can graze on pasture, as long as they are fenced from a water course. He says the setbacks from watercourses are not making sense in some areas. In the Gatineau Hills the valleys are so narrow, once the setbacks are established, there’s no room for the cattle. "Environmental regulations in Quebec don’t have to make sense. They just have to be legal," he says.

Manure storage is the central problem. A farm with 30 animal units or fewer is exempt, but few dairy farms, if any, fit into that category. For an average size dairy farm – 44 milking cows in Quebec – the cost of manure storage is about $60,000, he says. The province pays 70 per cent of the cost or $42,000. The cost includes engineering and construction. But Judd warns that there are often cost over-runs.

The grant eases the pain, he says. And the new system will improve the efficiency of spreading manure. In the new location, the farm will build three lagoons at a cost of $150,000. Seventy per cent will be paid for by the province.

Without the grant many farmers, especially older ones, would not have complied with the regulations, he said. Said Scott Judd: "We (Judd family) asked ourselves: Are we going to quit or are we going to farm? When that question was answered, we asked ourselves how we were going to do it."

The Quebec government was aware that draconian rules and tough enforcement would have a disastrous effect on rural communities. "The government has to maintain the farm community so that the rural community doesn’t disappear," he said. Agriculture is the economic engine in many rural Quebec communities.

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