Dairy Exporter February 2022

Learn, grow, excel February

Wise WATER USE

The life force we need to collect, monitor and use wisely

CONTRACT MILKING PART II The professionals’ perspective

AGRIVOLTAICS: Harvesting the sun while farming animals

OBSERVANT OWNERS : Train your team to tell you when they are sick

THE EVOLUTION OF NEW ZEALAND’S FAVOURITE FARM BIKE

YOUNG COUNTRY

76 Honours in the dairy

78 Future’s on the farm

WELLBEING

82 Resilience: The struggle is normal

84 Smart ideas to reduce working hours

RESEARCH WRAP

85 Season impacts on 10 in 7 trial

DAIRY 101

86 All that bull

SOLUTIONS

88 Autumn transition – Why is it so easy?

89 Proven inoculants deliver maize difference

OUR STORY

90 50 years ago in the NZ Dairy Exporter

65

OUR COVER

The Mayfield Hinds Valetta Water irrigation scheme is a mix of water races and piped network from the 6.3 million cubic metres of water storage at Carew providing environmental support to 58,000ha of highly productive Mid Canterbury farmland.

Photo by Holly Lee.

DAIRY DIARY

February 22, Nelson; February 22, Amberley; February 23, Blenheim; February 23, Ashburton; February 24, Timaru; February 24, Westport; February 24, Twizel; February 25, Oamaru; February 25, Hokitika; February 28, Napier.

Taranaki; March 29, Ashburton; March 31, Winton. To find out about each event visit www.dwn.co.nz/events.

February 16 – Dairy Women’s Network is running a live webinar on Managing and Diffusing Conflict. Ideal for team managers and farm owners. The webinar runs between 12.30pm and 1.30pm. To find out more and register visit register.gotowebinar.com/ register/4613164181619839503.

February 17 – Dairy Women’s Network has an onfarm technology workshop in Taranaki. The day runs from 10.30am to 2pm and looks at onfarm reporting systems to robotics. For more visit www.dwn.co.nz/ events/on-farm-technology-taranaki.

February 16-17 – National Freshwater Conference explores the Essential Freshwater Package, Resource Management and the Three Waters Reform. Find out more at www.brightstar.co.nz/events/nationalfreshwater-conference-0.

February 17 – DairyNZ takes its Ag Emissions Pricing Feedback Roadshow

February 24 – Dairy Women’s Network runs a live webinar: Getting back on track with NAIT. Understanding NAIT’s timeframes for registration and movement recording, and why this is important for biosecurity. It runs between 12.30pm and 1.30pm. For more details and to register visit register.gotowebinar.com/ register/2787583453568014861.

March 3-5 - Northland Field Days are held near Dargaville. Visit northlandfielddays. co.nz.

March 8 – Dairy Women’s Network is running a workshop in the Far North on building resilience and managing yourself in stressful situations. To find out more and register visit www.dwn.co.nz/ events/the-challenge-of-change-far-north.

March 9-10 – The Farmax Conference is being held in Hamilton and will feature discussions about alternative ways of using

March 10 – Quorum Sense is running a bale grazing and regenerative agriculture field day near Wendonside in Southland. For details visit www.quorumsense.org.nz/ events.

March 17-19 – Central Districts Field Days in Feilding. Visit www.cdfielddays.co.nz.

March 20 – Entries close for the Fonterra Responsible Dairying Award. For more about the award and make a nomination go to www.dairyindustryawards.co.nz/responsibledairying-award.

March 30-31 – DigitalAg is the rebranded MobileTECH Ag and will take place in Rotorua for the 2022 event. It will showcase new agritech developments and provide a platform for the sector to come together, discuss the issues and encourage collaboration. The programme will be split into five sessions: technology trends post covid, ag-data digitisation, applying machine vision and Al Smarts, rethinking agritech business models and agclimate technologies. To view the two-day

Please check websites to see if events are going ahead under the Covid-19 Protection Framework or what restrictions apply.

Staying strong onfarm portrays an innovative programme run by Reporoa dairy farmer and cancer survivor Sarah Martelli, who helps other women find their balance and build strength and wellbeing to be the best they can be.

Strong Woman is an online community for women to work on their fitness with a workout to do at home, find quick and easy healthy recipes, goal planners and to connect with other women on the same journey.

Her philosophy is to help women create healthy, sustainable habits around moving and feeding their bodies and their families.

If women can prioritise their own health and fitness, they can inspire their partners, their children and their community around them, Sarah says (p82).

She is an inspirational woman creating a moment of lift for many women.

THE RIGHT DROP IN the right spot

In this issue we take a look at the regenerative agri journey some NZ farmers are already on, and that the government has signalled they want others to join in on, in our Special Report.

The regen debate has divided the farming community in a big way - many scientists are affronted that NZ would need regenerative methods from overseas countries with highly degraded soils - would that then infer that our conventional methods were degenerative?

Kiwis love water - we love to swim, surf, dive, fish, and just float around. We love to talk about it - the weather, how much rain have we had? When will it stop raining? When will it start? And farmers even more so!

Sadly, this summer has seen many drownings - a testament to how much we collectively love the water but many don’t respect it and the danger of it. A great case for renewed efforts to teach every child to swim and to respect and understand the power of wild water in our rivers and at our many beaches.

for forecasting exactly when and how much to irrigate and the strategy of the irrigation industry group. They say the best way to mitigate adverse weather is to plan for itrequiring more investment in capturing the precious drops when it falls, storing it for when it doesn’t arrive and conserving and using best irrigation practices for when we need the water the most. (pg 50)

They say the methods won't work, and that research has already shown that, and also our farmers are already following regenerative practices. Others say that the methods are not prescribed and each farmer can take out of it what they want. It has been called a social movement rather than a science and the claimed benefits of improved soil and stock health and building soil carbon through diverse species, use of biological fertilisers and laxer and less frequent grazing practices along with less nitrogen is something that resounds emotionally with many.

As I write this, the West Coast is being pummelled with up to 500mm of rain, possibly its second 100-year rainfall event in six months. I feel for those who haven’t quite finished remediating their houses and farms from the last dump and are facing a repeat.

And other parts of the country are in drought and crying out for rain.

What is this change if not climate change?

We also have part II of our contract milking feature - while it’s an excellent way to build equity, it is important to ensure the contract is set up for success at the start, and that new contractors are encouraged and educated to make the best of it.

We have taken a snapshot of thinking by scientists in MPI and DairyNZ (p46) and portrayed what farmers using the practices are finding, including ongoing coverage of the comparative trial work by Align Group in Canterbury

Well-structured contracts are a win for both parties and allow people to move through the business and put down roots, which is great for families and communities, says Dairy Holdings’ chief operating officer Blair Robinson in Canterbury. (pg 34)

(p42). We also cover the Heald family of Norsewood (p52) who have transitioned to organics, OAD philosophies and are enjoying the less intensive more resilient system they have moved to, along

There is more research to be done in the NZ system context, says MPI’s chief scientist John figure out what will and won’t work, but he encourages farmers to engage and learn more, and to embrace regenerative as a verb - saying all farmers could be more regenerative, more resilient, lowering

If you are interested in getting into farm ownership getting out but retaining an interest, read about Moss’ innovative idea for a speed-dating weekend potential partners (p11). We think it could be a

NZ Dairy

@YoungDairyED

@DairyExporterNZ

@nzdairyexporter

Sneak peek

JULY 2021 ISSUE

In the next issue:

New Zealand does not face a lack of water, but rather a lack of the right drop in the right spot, and our special report attacks that from a multitude of angles. We talk to farmers who are sharpening up the efficiency of their irrigation practice, others who are getting certainty from community and onfarm water storage, new technologies

In The Year of Yes - Phil Edmonds delves into the mood of the banking sector and finds that farmers seeking extra funding stand more chance this year. (pg14)

March 2022

• Special Report: Farming/business investment – if you are starting out or bowing out.

• Wildlife onfarm

• Ahuwhenua winners

• Breaking down your mating reports to plan for greater success next time

• Sheep milking conference coverage

• The latest science in pasture renewal

• Deer milking? You can milk anything with nipples…

• Dairy 101 on getting the best from casual staff

@YoungDairyED

Above: Sunrise over the irrigator.

ONLINE

New Zealand Dairy Exporter’s online presence is an added dimension to your magazine. Through digital media, we share a selection of stories and photographs from the magazine. Here we share a selection of just some of what you can enjoy. Read more at www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

IRRIGATION IMPROVEMENTS CREATING RESILIENCE

The Woodhouse family’s irrigation improvements are creating resilience. Good data and investment into spray irrigation that allows lower rates to be applied at shorter return intervals will help maintain pasture production levels as nutrient inputs reduce with regulation.

Take a look: https://youtu.be/bivsGOWbM9Q

Factum Agri is dedicated to New Zealand’s primary industry, working with the Rural Support Trust. Each week Angus Kebbell talks with farmers, industry professionals and policy makers to hear their stories and expert opinions on matters relevant to both our rural and urban communities.

Sinead Lehy

Interview with Sinead Lehy, principal agricultural science adviser at the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.

Emma Taylor

Interview with Emma Taylor, general manager of Vineyard Plants in the Hawke’s Bay about viticulture. The company supplies vines, predominantly sauvignon blanc, to the New Zealand wine industry.

Fiona Bush

Interview with North Canterbury sheep and beef farmer, Fiona Bush. Fiona is giving her perspective on MPI’s Primary Industry Advisory Services available to the rural sector as well as the key issues farmers face today such as the environment and the rural/urban divide.

Find these episodes and more at: buzzsprout.com/956197

Going contract milking or thinking about it? Flo and Jen Coetzee have worked their way through contract milking to equity management in an 1100 cow farm near Methven – Highveld Pastures. Take a look at our story in our February issue where they share some of the lessons they learned along the way on their journey.

Take a look: https://youtu.be/DXcvspYGA08

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NZ Dairy Exporter @DairyExporterNZ

NZ Dairy Exporter @nzdairyexporter

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NZ Dairy Exporter is published by NZ Farm Life Media PO Box 218, Feilding 4740, Toll free 0800 224 782, www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

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ISSN 2230-2697 (Print)

ISSN 2230-3057 (Online)

AM I walking away?

After digging a tractor out of the mud, Richard Reynold’s goes digging into the He Waka Eke Noa proposals.

Ihave been going through a grief cycle lately. No major deaths, hand-cutting or job losses this month - just coming to terms with the Zero Carbon Act and resulting agricultural emissions pricing options to be found in He Waka Eke Noa.

I, like many people, years ago was in the first stage of grief - DENIAL. I am still meeting many farmers and, more concerning, rural professionals in this stage.

The argument tends to go that the Government is not that stupid to shut down New Zealand’s economic engine, it’s all too complicated and I just don’t have time to follow it. Most commonly though is, ‘it does not affect me and what can I do about it?’

The five stages of grief do not have to follow the prescribed order. After getting a tractor stuck in a marginal block of land, failing to get it free with the second tractor and failing with the brute force of a digger, I managed to free it by showing a helper how to tie posts on to the wheels.

This all happened 17 days ago when we were wet. I look out across paddocks turning a new shade of brown every day and wish I could get a tractor stuck now.

So when DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb sent me an email about He Waka Eke Noa or emission taxing for agriculture I entered the BARGAINING stage. Here I had a block of land that was starting to cost money. I can plant it in trees, earn money and save the world, winner!

After reading through the proposal I started to feel ANGER. The more research I did the more anger I felt. My area could only be planted in natives and this can cost upwards of $13,000/hectare versus my plan for poplars homegrown approaching $700/ha. It looks to me like there is some choosing of which science we want to accept.

I am also told that for dairy the rate of tax will be about $0.05/kg milksolids (MS) in 2025. There are no predictions on what the cost would be in 2050, which is not that far away really.

When the tractor got stuck at Punakaiki and the bigger tractor and the bigger, yellow digger all failed to pull it out...thus began Richard Reynolds’ stages of grief.

The lack of information and research that I have found has led to DEPRESSION. I have asked many rural professionals, from bankers of varying colours to a senior member of the Reserve Bank, and DairyNZ and I have not found any that have done research as to what this could mean for their clients.

From the look of it for dairy farmers a bit of pain, but for sheep, beef and especially deer this could mean lots of pain. All this work at present may be of little use as the modelling shows a reduction in greenhouse gases of 1%. This has not made James Shaw the Minister of Climate Change very happy and there is still the option of the Government taking stronger action.

A pop quiz on the subject with a group of farmers over beers showed very low engagement on a topic that will have more impact on farming than clean waters.

The line that is repeated is that the less feed eaten the lower GHG emissions, a more truthful line is the less produce made the lower the GHG emissions. I have to say I am depressed about the innovation and patch protection that has happened from our industry leaders and also the level of farmer interest. A pop quiz on the subject with a group of farmers over beers showed very low engagement on a topic that will have more impact on farming than Clean Waters rules.

I am now ACCEPTING that I have to go to one of the meetings coming up and organised by Beef + Lamb, Federated Farmers and DairyNZ. I have also accepted that walking away from the land where I got stuck makes both financial and environmental sense.

The beef side hustleA REVIEW

Ihave heard that the majority of beef cattle reared and killed in New Zealand today have a dairy origin. We are contributors to this statistic by running a small, leased beef farm alongside our role as contract milkers on the family farm.

Is this a profitable addition to our dairy business?

This is yet to be determined so I thought I’d review how we run the operation and go over a snapshot of the 2020 financials.

The beef farm is 61 hectares with medium-heavy soils that hangs on to moisture well into Wairarapa summers.

The heavy soils can be challenging during winter and early spring so we limit the stocking rate over this period. This property is separated from the dairy by a country road and water is supplied from the dairy, this is a major bonus as we don’t like wasting time either driving too far afield or fixing a dodgy water supply.

My advice for any dairy-come-beef farmers, is to do your budget and due diligence before starting. Farm conservatively and build from there and if you get into trouble, you can always sell store.

We predominantly finish beef cross cattle that are bought from the dairy operation as 4/7-day-old feeder calves. We have dabbled with selling store one-year-old cattle in October-November and do like the potential returns this trade can provide.

Balage is harvested in spring and fed out in late summerautumn and winter. We renew about 10% of the farm’s pasture each year. This is done by planting a summer brassica and then returning it to new pasture in the autumn.

In terms of workload, we figure this side of our overall business takes up about an hour a day, each day of the year. Some days we do nothing, on other days we may be drenching or feeding out for a few hours. We can spare the extra hour being a once-a-day milking farm but most likely wouldn’t have spare time if we were twice-a-day, with just three full-time staff.

Now the 2020 numbers:

• Revenue: $126k

• Farm working (including rent but not labour): $104k

• Profit: $22k

• Minus a deduction for our time: $9k (365 days *1hour*$25/ hour)

• Operating surplus: $13k

We knew from the beginning that this enterprise would not be making us millions. We had budgeted on earning an additional profit of $20K. It didn’t quite make that amount in 2020, but the beef schedule wasn’t flash and we were still working out how to operate the farm.

We are however happy with our weaner rearing costs of $220/head (including the calf) and how the property worked alongside the dairy farm. The biggest lesson learnt is that beef farmers need to focus on the market more than their dairy counterparts, and one week can make a huge difference in the schedule price.

My advice for any dairy-come-beef farmers, is to do your budget and due diligence before starting. Farm conservatively and build from there and if you get into trouble, you can always sell store.

Talk to stock agents, meat buyers and read the farming news to keep a pulse on the markets. Lastly, make sure you factor in, and cater for, the additional time and money beef farming requires to rear quality animals, don’t under budget on these. In this regard, as dairy farmers first and foremost the last thing we need is extra stress during calving, so don’t get too distracted by the beef! Cheers.

Wairarapa dairy farmer Hamish Hammond has a piece on the side with beef.

MILKING

Hamish Hammond’s beef enterprise.

NOT ALL heroes wear capes

A couple of weeks ago, Suzanne Hanning got a phone call she never wants to be repeated.

An often overlooked group of people who work in agriculture, don’t milk the cows, feed the calves, or shift the ewes. Without them, we would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. They have the skills, knowledge and professionalism we call on when we come across something we would otherwise put in the too-hard basket.

I’m making a feeble attempt to describe our rural veterinarians. We often talk about mental health in the rural sector and that’s great, but our vets are just as susceptible if not more so than the rest of us. We may have had one or two cows with a messy calving over the whole spring, but a rural vet could have dealt with four or five a day. Every call-out is a job that was too hard for us to deal with, but we expect them to perform miracles, sometimes in the pouring rain, in the middle of a paddock.

They listen to our descriptions of what we think is wrong with Daisy and try to decide if we’re on the right track or have taken the scenic route. They see tears in our eyes and feel the same sadness when they have to end the suffering of our beloved pets, our favourite cow or the kid’s pony. Then there is the scale of some farms where a routine task like vaccinations can become an assembly-line procedure. Again, we do it a few times a year, but our vets can spend weeks vaccinating one herd after another, day after day.

I guess what I’m trying to say is we often take vets for granted. We expect them to have all the answers, be instantly available and fix everything at a bargain price when we don’t see that they are people too, they usually have a huge geographical area and … they are human too.

I can hear some of you saying, “yeah, but they signed up for it, that’s what they’re paid for”. Yes, but one could argue the same for farmers and as with farmers, they love what they do and are emotionally invested in doing the very best job they can. They often have huge student debt and need to eat too.

We expect them to have all the answers, be instantly available and fix everything at a bargain price when we don’t see that they are people too.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call I never want to get again. Our vet who had been with us nearly from the beginning of our dairying career had ended his own life. We had an inkling things had not been quite right for a while as our usually jovial, chatty, swearing (like a trooper, but it was almost a part of their personality and for some weird reason, not offensive) friend and close adviser in all things animal health had become stoic and a little distant. To me, the most heartbreaking thing was that our vet felt they were in such a dark place that the only solution was to leave this Earth, when in reality, they were well respected by those who knew them and truly loved by all who call them a friend. If only our vet had felt this when they were alive, would it have made a difference?

I’m not sure how to make this better, but maybe we all need to remember our vets are people too. Not all heroes wear capes, some wear overalls. We will miss you.

Making the most OF LOCAL…

The importance of getting a break from the farm has never been more real than now. With two Covid years behind us and ‘normal times’ seeming to be forever changed, a new normal of what getting a break from the farm looks like might need to stick around a bit longer than we thought!

Like others this summer, we have been making the most of what ‘local’ can offer with the challenges of farming meaning getting away off the farm for a break has been tricky. Whether it be staffing, farm requirements, the worries of travelling away with Covid conditions or just other ties and responsibilities, we have been determined to make the most of what ‘local’ can offer us.

The farm had great rain in December, crops were going gangbusters, cow production was steady and mating had (we hope) gone well. We went into the festive season with good grass cover and finally got some supplements made and in the bunker.

So it was time to get off-farm and find what we could do for mini-breaks off-farm that were local.

While the farm definitely needs rain, the benefit is that the beach has been a great place to go between or after milkings for a quick dip.

We haven’t been disappointed. We have mountain-biked at Mangamahoe mountain bike park, walked many times on Mt Taranaki’s numerous trails, camped in the back yard and swam regularly at the local beach.

With our two older kids as lifeguards and younger kids involved in Junior surf, there haven’t been many days where we haven’t been at the beach for some surf lifesaving club-related activity. While the farm definitely needs rain, the benefit is that the beach has been a great place to go between or after milkings for a quick dip.

Our Christmas and Boxing Days were spent milking and at the beach. Our kids were on lifeguard duty, and while Christmas day wind made it pretty miserable, Boxing Day was busy. It was so great to have a Christmas lunch of ham off-the-bone sandwiches

Getting off farm, but taking the likes of Covid-19 into account, is part of the new normal for Trish Rankin and her family.

and a box of chocolates instead of eating too much and wondering how we were going to survive milking that afternoon!

We have had best friends come to camp at ours for New Year. This has been a tradition for many years and this year’s theme was Las Vegas Pool Party! We dress up, have themed food and cocktails and dance the night away. When I got in from milking that morning, they had made brekkie and we all went and walked around Lake Rotokare reserve.

January has been a mix of milking, catching up with friends, and snatching time off farms when we could. A highlight was a community water activity day where a group of the Awatuna/Auroa Farming for the Future catchment group, funded by MPI and run with the help of Taranaki Catchment Communities, held a day where the community could come along and learn about all the different types of water testing and participate in some communityled insect investigation. The kids had a ball with a net and a white container, catching water bugs and checking out the water clarity and other water testing techniques. The adults watched on and learnt about their streams too. It was two hours well spent, and finished with a BBQ.

Our Taranaki summer theme though has been “Connect and Explore Local”. When getting ‘off-farm isn’t practical for days on end, getting off-farm in between milkings can be. Hopefully by the time you read this you have had rain, crops are going well, cows are milking consistently and you have had some time off-farm - even if for just a little bit to connect and explore local.

A NEW HERO EMERGES A NEW HERO EMERGES

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When facial eczema threatens, you turn to a hero that has a few tricks up its sleeve.

The year of the

Farmers seeking extra finance from banks stand a better chance this year, Phil Edmonds reports.

Should I borrow? $ Can I borrow? $

$ $ $

How much is it going to cost?

$hould I borrow, can I borrow, and if I do, how much is it going to cost?

These may have been three questions farmers contemplated as the year kicked off. If this was the case, the first question was likely the easiest to answer, the last probably the hardest while the second, might well have provoked a disgruntled “who knows these days?”.

Although not specifically relevant, answering the middle question will no doubt have been influenced by hearing the daily stories of rejection being faced by borrowers following the implementation of Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA) at the end of 2021. But it will also have been prompted by the experience many farmers have now become used to when dealing with banks – the longer list of boxes to tick and criteria to meet.

There is however the potential for that to change – ironically, due to the introduction of the CCCFA –and farmers could well now be courted by banks in a way that hasn’t been the case for some time. First though the questions again.

Should I borrow? Well, right now there’s plenty to encourage a positive response. Farm revenues are manifestly higher than they have been for some time, and broadly predicted to remain that way for the next 18 months.

This should provide farmers with some confidence in their ability to service that debt (in the foreseeable future). Many farmers will also have spent the past few seasons chipping off existing debt and at a macro level the sector has continued to deleverage from unsustainable highs. With those conditions in mind, now is as good a time as any for farmers to invest in future-proofing their businesses to an extent that may not have been possible in the recent past.

Next. Can I borrow? A trickier one, which has a potential bank answer and a farm answer.

In theory, the bank answer should be increasingly yes. Because banks have been forced to curtail lending to house buyers with modest deposits and particular spending habits, they’ll be

losing business. Banks need to keep lending in order to make money, so logic suggests they will need to look to other sectors. Surely agriculture.

Andrew Laming, director of rural financial advisory firm NZAB, thinks the CCCFA should probably be a net positive for farmers with the sector’s overall debt level now more manageable and business viability (at least in the near term) looking more prosperous.

“Agriculture lending is now being repaid as fast as it is being lent out (making this unique compared with other sector lending). By default, banks need to ‘run to stand still’ which means continuing to write new loans.”

Bank lending data and a survey of credit conditions released by the Reserve Bank in the final quarter of last year also suggests farming is better placed than it has been in the recent past to encourage banks to continue capitalising the sector.

In October the Reserve Bank noted “demand for agriculture lending has proven resilient throughout Covid-19, due to strong commodity prices and low interest rates. These conditions have allowed farmers to increase their principal repayments, providing confidence in the sector and helping banks to become more comfortable pursuing quality growth in their agriculture portfolios.”

It also reported that credit availability to the agriculture sector has increased slightly over the past six months, with some easing in lending terms due to strong commodity prices, low interest rate environment and increased cashflow. As a result, it said banks were expecting around a 25% increase in demand for credit from the agri sector by March 2022, and that expectation would be broadly met by banks. In terms of the ‘easiness’ of accessing credit compared to the previous three years, banks were reporting that it had become ‘somewhat easier’ although a slight majority reported ‘about normal’.

That said, a sector lending summary released at the end of December showed that for the month of November, total agricultural lending had fallen by $187 million, and dairy lending was down for the sixth consecutive month, by $175m. In fact, agri lending ‘growth’ had not moved out of negative territory since the end of 2019.

Taken together, the ‘feel’ for the sector and the actual lending numbers perhaps reads as optimism lies ahead, but there’s no evidence of it yet.

The most recent ANZ New Zealand Business Outlook cautiously points to a near future that reflects what banks are anticipating. While overall

business confidence was reported to be falling (understandably given the Covid-19-related uncertainty), the monthly trend for agriculture showed its level of confidence to be improving.

The sector’s activity was identified as having risen sharply, as was profitability. But the sector’s own view on ‘ease of credit’ was however thought to have worsened.

This discrepancy between what appears to make sense (banks loosening their purse strings for farmers given their improved bankability) and what farmers are thinking (banking is getting harder) is what makes the question of ‘Can I borrow’ a difficult one to definitively answer.

Andrew Laming says that as ever, banks will want to make sure farmers have good financial history and good governance. They’ll also be increasingly wanting to know if farm resources are well known and certain (land use consents are in place), the production system being employed is relatively ‘normal’, and the farm is not in a naturally sensitive area. Laming says where lending can be a problem is when a farm might have a high stocking rate which the banks might view as likely to be creating lesssustainable nutrient losses and unsustainable GHG emissions.

The best answer then, maybe yes and probably yes with a capital Y – as long as you’re thinking what the banks are thinking.

How much is it going to cost?

The final question – How much is it going to cost? The hard one, but potentially solvable.

Multiple interest rate hikes are expected this year to quell inflationary pressure.

How

The Reserve Bank’s official cash rate sits at 0.75%, but economists are variously picking it could end the year more than twice as high – above 2%. The arrival of Omicron could stifle that though, if NZ’s economy mirrors what has occurred in Europe and Australia since the variant emerged.

For farmers though, it’s not just looking at OCR moves that make it difficult to determine the cost of borrowing.

Andrew Laming says that despite farm financials looking rosier, banks are pricing other sector risks beyond income into their interest rates, which are effectively pushing fixed rates higher for longer than they might otherwise be set. Banks are managing the risk they

foresee (regulatory changes having impacts on farm returns) by setting rates with a margin buffer.

“It’s noticeable that some banks are uncertain about how much additional capital they might have to hold against loans in the future, so they are making up for that by pricing the longer-dated fixed interest rates higher.”

The answer to the ‘How much is it going to cost?’ question might then instinctively be ‘Too much’.

But Laming suggests farmers might think a bit more deeply on this, which involves calculating whether that cost (albeit elevated) is still manageable, and particularly what they can do to reduce the uncertainty on what that looks like.

“If, for example, an average farmer was geared at $20/kg milksolids (MS), a 2% rise (as economists are anticipating) would just add an extra 40c/kg MS. Farmers should be in positions to manage that if their farm systems are agile (flexible enough to reduce variable costs), have supportive balance sheets, and are able to deploy product price hedging.”

The last point – hedging (beyond fixing interest rates) – is something NZ farmers are coming to see as a useful tool, and there’s plenty of scope for it to play a bigger role in de-risking financial decision making.

NZX dairy insights manager Stuart Davison says as interest rates as well as feed and other costs climb, there are more and more conversations about how farmers can create some safety buffers for their businesses.

“Most farmers that feed palm kernel or maize silage look to forward contract their required volumes, but fewer have been willing to realise fixing their milk price has the same benefits.”

That’s changing, however. There has been a massive increase in the use of NZX Milk Price Futures – up 33% on last year, with 20,868,000kg MS more milk contracted via the market. And a similar trend is holding for milk price futures for the 2023 season. Farmers see the opportunity to lock in milk price for next season at about $8.70/kg MS already. There are already 5714 lots of open interest in the September 2023 contract, 169% more than at the same time the year before.

Davison says this trend represents a change in mindset where farmers appear to be starting to lose their fear of missing out on the highs in favour of more certainty. This will inevitably appeal to banks, who like known quantities more than anyone.

2022 could be the year of the yes.

Andrew Laming, director of rural financial advisory firm NZAB.

NZX dairy insights manager Stuart Davison.

much is it going to cost?

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Futures forecast passes $9/kg

The start of a new year signals a fresh view of markets, and horizons being pushed further afield. Following a Christmas break of checking if I can still milk cows, mow silage and repair fences (which I can by the way) I’ve started to look to the coming season, to gauge where things may be sitting at this time next year. A very real challenge.

Please don’t take these assumptions as gospel, the following are simply thoughts at this point in the season, things in the global market move quickly! So, here we go.

First, where are we now and why? Well, the current season is well over halfway completed, and Global Dairy Trade (GDT) events have already sold some tonnage for next season, so we have a fair idea on where this season’s milk price will land.

The caveat here is that there is still enough time to see some movement, but we’re no longer talking whole dollar movements, we’re down to a 20-30 cent range potentially. So, on

current indications, the SGX-NZX Dairy Derivatives market is pricing the Milk Price Future contract for this season, the September 2022 contract, at $9.20/kg milksolids (MS).

This price is a contract high and is pricing in expectations of whole milk powder (WMP) prices appreciating at GDT events over the coming five months, along with the other reference products remaining in their current price range.

This milk price future contract price is above the top end of Fonterra’s forecast range, and leads most economists’ (and ours!) milk price forecasts by about 20 cents/kg MS.

Is it achievable? Definitely! Why? Supply and demand are out of kilter, with demand growing faster than supply over the last 18 months. China has been the big player here, growing their appetite for dairy over the last 18 months at a rate producers haven’t been able to keep up with.

Where are we going? Well, as said above,

this is really looking into the crystal ball stuff, but let’s give it a shot.

Market fundamentals, which basically means supply and demand dynamics in the global sense, point to a slight continuation of milk supplies squeezing for some time yet. Global milk supplies are tracking below demand, which is why dairy commodity prices are above their historical averages.

There is also an odd mismatch of products being supplied by the normal dairy exporters, creating a further oddity to the market. The European Union is producing less milk, while also processing this lower volume of milk into products away from their norm, exporting larger volumes of cheese, whey and fat-filled milk powder, while exporting far less skim milk powder, whole milk powder and milkfats.

United States milk production has finally faltered, and their output is no longer growing at the extremes it was

Stuart Davison.

Stuart Davison checks out the crystal ball on global dairy action for 2022.

Pasture & Forage News

Which ryegrass?

Picking the right ryegrass for renewal depends on several things, especially how long you want the new pasture to last for.

For example, if your paddock is destined for spring crop later this year, you’ll need a six to seven month pasture option. Tabu+ Italian ryegrass or Hogan annual ryegrass are the best choices here.

Don’t let dry weather rain on your pasture parade this season

For new pasture you can be proud of – even if it feels too dry to think about it right now – consider sowing seed before it rains, instead of waiting for the weather to smile on you.

Research shows ryegrass seed sown early in dry conditions germinates well after weeks with no rain. It can also grow more feed per hectare than seed sown later, and will probably persist longer too, giving you a better result all round. Plus, you’ll beat the rush for contractors when the rain does come.

Yes, you can!

We’ve been asked so many times if it’s okay to sow seed in the dry we did a trial to confirm the answer for you.

In hot Waikato peat during an autumn drought, we sowed perennial ryegrass seed with NEA2 endophyte in February, March and April.

The earliest sowing had it the hardest – the soil reached over 49 degrees C at seed depth (2 cm), with no rain for 43 days.

Even so, this February-sown seed went on to grow 2 tonnes of dry

matter per hectare more than seed sown post-rain in April, and the endophyte was fine.

Ready to grow

Seed sown before the rain comes is poised for growth as soon as conditions are right.

If seed is still in the bag when the weather breaks, it can’t grow until you drill it. By then everyone else wants to do the same thing, so contractors are flat out and delays are inevitable, especially the way things are now.

First up, best dressed

The benefits of sowing early don’t stop in the paddock. If this technique suits your farm and your soils, it will also help you get organised ahead of time.

That means no rushing around at the last minute trying to get hold of seed, and a lot more peace of mind knowing you’re as ready as you can be for one of the most important jobs of autumn.

If you’re renewing paddocks which you want to deliver great performance for the next two to three years, sow Shogun NEA hybrid ryegrass.

For longer term pastures, your best option is a perennial ryegrass - Maxsyn NEA4, Governor, 4front NEA2, or Trojan NEA4. Check out our website for details on all these cultivars.

In all cases, remember the old adage – you get what you pay for. Cheap seed can be expensive feed! Always buy certified proprietary seed. There is always a reason something sounds too good to be true, and with cheap seed it may be poor germination, high weed content, minimal endophyte, poor persistence or simply poor genetics.

earlier in 2021, however US dairy exports haven’t fallen over just yet, with more and more US skim milk powder finding its way into market holes left by the EU recently. However, this trend is expected to fall over soon enough.

Outside of these two powerhouses of milk production, the rest of the top milk-producing countries have all reported declining outputs. As you are aware, New Zealand’s milk production has been a shocker so far this season, with expectations of the entire season’s production coming in at least 1.6% behind last year’s stellar production.

Potentially, NZ’s total milk production could be much lower than this 1.6% drop forecast by the end of the season. All of this cumulatively points to a milk retraction globally of about 0.4% year on year; significantly massive, considering that population growth is far larger, and positive, than this number.

When will this dynamic reverse? Not in a hurry is the easy answer. Too much inflationary pressure is on the horizon to see milk supplies really turn around in a hurry. Basically, costs of milk production globally continue to climb faster than milk prices are increasing.

EU farmers have just spent a season losing money producing milk, though some processors have recently lifted farm gate milk prices to a point where producers are making money again. But as feed, fuel and fertiliser prices continue to lift, farmers’ profit margins are being obliterated once again.

The same can be seen in our market, with profit margins being quickly squeezed –from interest rates increasing, to feed costs remaining high, to labour costs continually increasing, not to mention everything else that gets spent on increasing over the last season due to a multitude of factors.

The same brush can be used across US dairy producers; they are fighting high feed and fuel costs too, and things don’t look likely to turn around in a hurry there either.

So, now that you’ve read through all of that, you want to know what the magic number is likely to be next season? Well, I’m not going to put a straight answer

NZX milk price futures (NZ$/kgMS)

NZX milk price fututes (NZ$/kgMS)

down in ink, as that never ages well, but I will put some ranges out there, and give some reasons.

First, let’s look to the SGX-NZX Dairy Derivatives market, which is citing next season at $8.87/kg MS, which, working off forward curves of dairy ingredient commodity prices easing into the middle of this year, makes sense. However, those futures curves assume Northern Hemisphere milk production will increase during their spring flush as a response to high commodity prices.

I’m not so sure of that assumption, as mentioned above re costs of production. So, this would lead me to think that next season’s milk price will most likely be above this price, maybe starting with $9.

On the flip side, just like dairy producers, the buyers of dairy commodities must deal with inflationary prices also, along with monetary issues as financial markets move, which always needs to be factored in when looking this far ahead. There will be a constant tension for dairy buyers, between the prices they buy and sell their goods for, and the affordability of dairy for consumers.

So following all of this, next season’s milk price forecast is for good things, but take these insights with a grain of salt, things change quickly. Remember also, as inflation increases, even a $9 payout can quickly have the shine taken off it!

• Stuart Davison is an NZX Dairy Analyst.

Market fundamentals, which basically means supply and demand dynamics in the global sense, point to a slight continuation of milk supplies squeezing for some time yet. Global milk supplies are tracking below demand, which is why dairy commodity prices are above their historical averages.

UK farmers rue BREXIT

Britain’s dairy farmers are waking up to a new nightmare as their government turns against livestock.

By Tim Price.

Some British dairy farmers thought leaving the European Union would bring freedom and prosperity; others that loss of EU markets would leave them on a limb. None expected the Conservative government to ditch its promises and adopt a radical green strategy and sign a series of trade deals that undercut their markets.

Led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his latest wife, new environmental campaigner Carrie, the vision for Britain’s landscape is ‘rewilding,’ creating a parklike countryside where wildlife thrives and the public can roam. Under a new support mechanism called ELMS (Environmental Land Management Schemes) farmers will be paid for a variety of activities that deliver ‘public goods’. Food production is not on the list.

As payments under the EU’s Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) are phased out over the next six years, farmers are still unsure how ELMS will work, and whether delivering them is worth the effort and masses of paperwork and inspections that goes with them.

As blame for rising methane levels continues to be laid at the livestock industry, Agriculture Minister George Eustice further alarmed farmers by suggesting a tax on meat and dairy products could be needed to curb livestock numbers.

To underline the government’s disinterest in farming a series of postBrexit trade deals have been triumphantly revealed. All offer easier access for food imports to the United Kingdom.

On January 11, the UK and New Zealand announced an agreement in principle on a free trade agreement. Widely viewed as a further indication of the UK’s desire to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership despite being thousands of kilometres from the ocean’s shores, the deal gradually opens up the UK market to tariff-free NZ butter and cheese imports over five years.

Reacting to the announcement of the UK’s trade deal with Australia, National Farmers Union President Minette Batters summed up farmers’ bewilderment: “There appears to be extremely little in this deal to benefit British farmers. I hope that MPs will now take a good, hard look at this deal to see if it really does match up to the government’s rhetoric to support our farmers’ businesses and safeguard our high animal welfare and environmental standards. I fear they will be disappointed.”

While farmers pin their hopes on politicians waking up to the reality of growing food to feed the nation and boost

trade, the combined effects of loss of EU markets, labour shortages and production cost rises are providing a massive challenge to dairy farmers.

Loss of EU markets

Brexit has reduced trade between the EU and UK by 40% in its first year. Leaving the EU saw an end of hassle-free trade between Britain and EU neighbours. Farmers exporting milk, cheese or dairy products now face a mass of form-filling and checks. The costs, including onfarm vet inspections, have forced many exporters to abandon EU countries.

Simon Spurill, of the Cheshire Cheese Company, says: “We lost £270,000 (NZ$ 542,000) in one go. Brexit is the biggest disaster that any government has ever negotiated in the history of trade negotiations”.

His online retail business was hit immediately after the UK failed to secure a frictionless trade deal with the EU.

Simon says he lost 20% of sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 (NZ$361) health certificate on each EU export order.

He is now pursuing the domestic market with greater vigour but says the cost of marketing has gone “through the roof” because all his competitors are having to do the same.

Labour shortage

Brexit brought about the end of open borders for workers from EU countries. For years farmers had relied on workers from poorer EU countries for harvesting and dairy work. The labour shortage has seen wages double in some places and has hit farming hard with truck driver shortages disrupting milk collections.

Production Costs

Farmers across the world are being hit by higher input costs, from fertiliser, feed to machinery, but Brexit is increasing the impact. The challenges of labour availability and cost, alongside higher feed, fuel and energy bills, are likely to drive structural change in the dairy sector next year, with farms looking at robotic

milking and reducing fertiliser use to cut costs.

While many have made decent profits over the past two to three years, depending on their milk contract terms, the rapid inflation of fuel and fertiliser costs is predicted to add 2p (4c)/litre to production costs in 2022.

Current labour costs for housed herds are at about 3.5p (7c)/litre and for grazing herds at about 5p (10c)/litre.

Others have swallowed the extra costs and mastered the secrets of the reams of paperwork now required to get products through to the EU.

In the north of Scotland, Connage Farm produces delicatessen cheeses for home and export markets from the farm’s 150-strong herd.

The cows, mostly Holstein Friesian with Jersey crosses and Norwegian Reds, graze clover pastures around the dairy and along the shores of the Moray Firth.

Owned by brothers Callum and Cameron Clark and their wives Jill and Eileen, Connage has expanded its direct sales through online cheese marketing and its milk and cheese sales through vending machines.

It has built up a strong social media presence to spread the word about the dairy and is growing steadily, with a team of 13 full and part-time staff.

Unlike many UK food producers, Connage has worked hard to learn how to deal with new EU paperwork – including laboriously completing hand-written forms in different coloured inks as now required, and put in place costly vet inspections to enable it to continue exporting cheese to EU countries following Brexit.

In the short term, Britain’s dairy farmers know they will need to make better use of grass and other fodder crops, control labour costs and avoid over-borrowing to stay in business longterm despite higher input costs. Despite continuing bad press and the huge impact of Covid-19, dairy product consumption has risen slightly, giving hope for the future for the industry.

Left: Callum Clark of Connage Highland Dairy is continuing to export cheese to the EU despite now having to complete reams of paperwork for each consignment.

Taking the big leap

Flo and Jen Coetzee are finally catching their breath after a whirlwind couple of years that saw them go from contract milking 1000 cows to variable order sharemilking for a season and then take the big leap to equity management in an 1100-cow farming operation they now call home.

Near Methven, the irrigated 320-hectare milking platform includes 100ha of lease land, a 54-bail rotary farm dairy with Westfalia plant and automated drafting.

Eight months in and the couple say it really does feel like home.

Their equity partners in the company have made sure of that.

The farming business is called Highveld Pastures Ltd, and shareholders are Waterton Agricultural (Glenn Jones and Sarah Brett, featured in Dairy Exporter August 2021), Camden Group and personal investments from several Camden Group shareholders and staff.

“As smaller shareholders in an equity partnership you get warned by everyone when you’re going into it,” Jen says.

“But we’ve all gone into this knowing what each other wants and knowing we want to grow,” Flo says.

That’s meant an increased voice for Flo on farm operational decisions and direction and first option for the couple to purchase 50% of any shares other shareholders put up for sale.

“We actually feel very safe in this partnership, with these people around us because for years it’s been just us two, on our

Farm facts

Farmer Owner: Highveld Pastures equity partnership

Location: Methven

Area: 220ha owned and 100ha

leased

Farm dairy: 54-bail rotary Cows: 1100 Friesian cross and Kiwi

cross

Production: 430kg MS/cow

Supplement: 200kg/cow grain

Milking frequency: Three times in two days

Irrigation: centre pivots, sprinklers, linear spray

A shift to the South Island, contract milking, has led a couple to an equity management role, with the prospect of growing ownership. Anne Lee reports.

Left: Flo and Jen Coetzee. Photos by Holly Lee.

own making decisions, dealing with the bank or suppliers,” Jen says.

Neither Flo nor Jen have family in farming and say they’re not really the sort of people who like to rattle anyone’s cage.

“We’re both quite passive by nature and I guess if we look back knowing what we do now we might have been more assertive when we were dealing with banks and suppliers and people like that.”

Flo is originally from South Africa and came to New Zealand in 2003 on a working holiday. He worked on dairy farms in the North Island and met Jen who is involved in medical research and sets up clinical trials. She works with district health boards and drug companies, negotiates contracts and budgets, and carries out the Medsafe and ethics approval processes.

“My Dad grew up on a dairy farm in South Taranaki but he didn’t become a dairy farmer himself,” she says.

In 2013 they decided a shift to the South Island would help move their dairying career along. Canterbury provided the larger herd sizes they were after and for Jen it meant they could be near a major airport so she could continue her work.

Their first season was managing 1000 cows for Dairy Holdings Limited (DHL) which was in itself a big jump from the 500-cow jobs Flo had been used to.

But the next step was even bigger.

“Going contract milking the next season was a massive learning curve,” Flo says.

Not only was he still coming to grips

with managing irrigation and a large herd, the shift to contract milking also meant employing staff and running their own financials.

“It was a whole new world as a contract milker – employing staff was probably the biggest learning curve,” Flo says.

Being the boss was probably the hardest step for him. It took him a while before he was confident in dealing with tricky people situations at work.

“It’s something I’ve got a lot better at over the years. I don’t like conflict but I’ve got a bit firmer and it’s about good communication really,” he says.

A lot of issues could be headed off right at the recruitment stage, the couple says.

“Unless I’m looking for someone to fill a role like 2IC, I’m going to employ people on their attitude and their fit with the team.

“I can teach them what they need to know but you can’t teach them how to get on with people or attitude – not easily.

“We often recruit people through our existing staff,” he says.

“At the start it was harder because we didn’t really know what our rights were as employers or the processes you should go through when people weren’t working out.

“We’re more confident in that now,” Jen says.

Having employment contracts for staff, deciding what payroll system to use, what accountancy package - they were all new too.

“From a business perspective the

paperwork was overwhelming to start with when you didn’t really know what you were doing – there was payroll every two weeks, monthly bill payments, coding invoices and paying GST.

“When we first started there wasn’t a system that imported your bank transactions, it was all a lot more manual.

“But the more you did it the easier all of that got,” Jen says.

Their advice to anyone starting out is to get help to start with.

Most online systems now have help desks where they can log into your computer and see your screen and that’s an enormous help, she says.

“We’ve used four different payroll systems over the years – I really loved PaySauce because it worked well with a dairy farm business where it’s not Monday to Friday.

“We’re using Smartly now because we run our payroll through Camden and that works well too. We’re also using Figured and Xero now with Camden, running our accounts through their office so I don’t have to spend as much time on the admin side anymore.”

Jen says they used Farm Focus – formerly Cash Manager, when they were doing their own accounts because it worked well for their farming business and quickly helped them see how they were tracking to budget.

Your accountant and other rural professionals can log into it to make sharing information easier too.

‘Unless I’ m looking for someone to fill a role like 2IC, I’ m going to employ people on their attitude and their fit with the team.’

Right: Flo Coetzee, left and Gill - Satveer Singh. Left: Tarun Bagga, left and Prabesh Thapa.

“I think that’s something you don’t realise at the start – just how important a good accountant can be.

“They see hundreds of accounts and they can quickly see if a cost area is a bit high or pick up on something you haven’t noticed.

“When you’re looking at jobs and going through a budget for a contract, they’re really valuable,” Flo says.

The couple say they use their accountant for advice not just to process their accounts each year.

They say it’s important you have an accountant you feel comfortable doing that with, someone who makes themselves available and is prepared to take a good look at your situation and give you advice.

Bankers, too, should be part of the team but they’ve often found that without family connections and movement of bank staff it wasn’t easy to build that relationship.

When they started out contract milking they were able to get a loan of $150,000 to get the gear they needed.

They paid that back quickly and then each year took out another loan to buy stock – again each year paying debt right down.

They were disciplined with spending but also took a friend’s advice when they started out - “Don’t let it run you into the ground.

“So, we always made sure we had a break each year and we saved up and took holidays,” Jen says.

After six years they had 320 cows leased back into the herd and they decided it was time to have a crack at 50/50 sharemilking.

“That had always been our goal – we’d had a go at it a little earlier but we couldn’t get the finance and, in the end, it was lucky because that next season the payout crashed to $3.90/kg milksolids (MS).”

Flo says they gave notice in October 2019 they were leaving their contract milking job but then it was much tougher than they thought to find a 50/50 sharemilking job.

“We kept getting down to the last two or three at interviews or they’d want us to buy the cows on the farm so we’d have to sell ours to get the finance sorted and we were struggling to find buyers at the right price because it was getting late.

“It was pretty stressful and, in the end, we took a job variable order sharemilking and leased the cows out but then we went into lockdown so it made getting things sorted a bit harder.”

The pair say that while they had goals, they hadn’t written them down in a formal way and when they couldn’t make the 50/50 sharemilking step that probably contributed to them feeling a bit lost in where they were heading.

But then, their friends Glenn and Sarah started talking with them about equity management as part of plans they were trying to pull together.

“In the end that all came together really quickly and here we are,” she says.

“We did our due diligence and we were

sure that if we were going to do this, these were the right people to be doing it with.”

The equity partnership has brought a whole new level of learning in terms of business structure and governance.

“We never really had a mentor as such but this feels like that now,” Flo says.

They’ve been watching and learning with farm business and board meetings structured with agendas and notes taken.

“We have the same mindset and values,” he says.

It’s been a tricky season to start the venture on but they’ve been realistic with budgets.

They’ve used a three in two milking schedule, due in part to long walks for cows and for the people side of the business.

It’s worked well and cows are on track to produce about 430kg MS/cow with about 200kg/cow of grain.

“We’ve made a fair bit of silage so we’ll look at our stocking rate for next season.

“We treat it like it’s our own but we’re not alone – we’ve got a great team to be in business with and that’s a good feeling.”

Highveld Pastures.

Get it all in writing

No matter how well you know them or how great you think it is that someone’s giving you an opportunity – never go into a contract milking agreement on a handshake, warns Jon Jarman, chartered accountant and director of Leech and Partners in Christchurch.

“For some there’s a temptation to think - well this person is giving me an opportunity so I won’t push them too much on the detail. They get caught up and think it’ll be okay in the end – well, often it’s not.

“You can get burned badly.

“You must have a legal agreement and have the detail down on paper in a formal contract.

“You can use your accountant or rural professional as the bad cop if you like – tell your farm owner that they won’t sign anything off unless there’s a proper contract with all the details.”

In setting up your budget to calculate what the contract rate will provide, he says wages are likely to be the biggest cost “by a country mile”.

“So, understand the staffing requirements – the number needed and the salary bands.

“Then sit down and do a draft roster, will you have a 2IC, how many dairy assistants will you need?”

Do a draft roster for each seasonal period and work out what the wages bill is likely to be for each pay period over those different seasonal times so you can work out what your cash flow needs will be.

Unless the agreement offers contract payments through the winter months, you’ll have to meet the wages bill from savings or overdraft.

Ask for records for shed running costs and production history and get right into the detail of other costs.

Understand the policy on supplementary feed and the effect of lower nitrogen inputs on production and seasonal production variability. Have good insurance cover - look at income/profit protection, key man insurance, talk with a broker who understands the risks in farming.

It’s easy to get burned with a handshake arrangement. Set up a formal contract, Anne Lee writes.

If it’s your first year it will be difficult to prove income.

“Look into using ACC’s CoverPlus Extra (CPX) – you can nominate the amount of income you want to be covered for if you can’t work so it’s a set amount and doesn’t fluctuate with your annual income.”

Tax is the cost people forget about.

It can be almost two years before the tax from your first season contract milking has to be paid given you don’t have to file a return until 12 months from the end of the season and you then have until April 7 the following year to pay the tax owing.

“The problem is people think great, I have all this money in the bank but they’ll also have to start paying provisional tax for the coming year as well as their tax from the previous season.

“Talk to your accountant early on about tax and how much it might be and think about setting up a tax account so you can start putting money into it.

“You’ll pay roughly 30% of your profit as tax and in a good year that can be a significant amount.

“If you’re not a good saver and know you’ll be tempted to dip into that tax account, then make voluntary payments to the IRD monthly as you go.”

Some accounting software will include a tax calculation so you can see your tax position as you go.

“Do your budgeting and financial work in the morning, not late at night after everything else. The best budgets are done at 10am not 10pm.

“If you’re doing them the night before you go and see the bank, there will be holes in it – you won’t have had time to think about it.

“Your accountant should be someone you feel comfortable to pick up the phone and ask questions, not just someone you see once a year when you pick up your accounts.

“Likewise, it doesn’t work only telling the bank manager as much as you have to – put them on your team and make sure they understand what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve.

“Work with them early on and keep them in the loop.”

Business structures for contract milkers

There are three main business structures –partnership, sole trader and company.

Each has its own benefits depending on your situation and each has its pitfalls. A company structure is the most common.

Partnership

“Jointly and severally liable” - so if one partner runs up a debt the other is liable for the full amount, not just their own share of it.

It’s quick and easy to set up but the downside is the liability. There are also tax advantages in the ability to split the profit between the partners.

Sole trader

If you’re a sole operator this is a good structure because it’s quick and easy to set up with minimal paperwork required.

The downside is you’re the only person liable for the debt rather than any other entity – so if you have debts all of your assets are up for grabs. Tax is calculated on your personal tax rate, so the tax rate could be high with good earnings.

Company

The most common structure, a company is a separate legal entity to you personally so if things don’t go well the debt is limited to the company assets and not your personal assets. However, a bank may want a personal guarantee which would override this.

This limited liability also doesn’t extend to health and safety or wages – you personally must pay if the company can’t.

The company pays tax rather than the individual which gives you more flexibility –profits can stay in the company or be allocated out to shareholders in recognition of the work they undertake for the company.

It costs approximately $500 to set it up and there are increased compliance costs due to a few extra hoops for preparing accounts, so ongoing costs will be higher.

Also, be aware that directors of a company have serious responsibilities, particularly in terms of health and safety so if you’re a director make sure you’re aware of how the business is being run. If you aren’t actively involved in the business – for instance working off-farm and don’t have an influence on policies or actions relating to health and safety, don’t be a director.

Chartered accountant Jon Jarman, Leech and Partners in Christchurch.

‘Do your budgeting and financial work in the morning, not late at night after everything else. The best budgets are done at 10am, not 10pm.’

both parties

Words by: Anne Lee

If washing your hands of staffing issues is your key motivation for taking on a contract milker then you probably shouldn’t do it, FARMit Accountants director Brett Bennett warns.

Employing a contract milker requires effort and care in setting up the system so it works for both parties.

It’s not simply a farm manager minus the staff employment, Brett says.

“It will cost you more to run your farm business because the contract milker is taking on a level of risk and additional responsibilities and they need to be rewarded for that.

“So, it can be financially more expensive but it comes down to how you value your own time – the time you get back as a result, what does it allow you to do?

“A good contract milker may also add more value so shouldn’t always be looked at as being more expensive.”

While it may mean many of the responsibilities of employing staff are handed over, there are some responsibilities you can’t contract out of.

“Health and safety for one – as the farm owner there’s still a legal responsibility to ensure the farm is safe for people to work on, that any hazards are identified and any infrastructure issues are dealt with.”

Minimum staff numbers should be stipulated in the contract – not only to

ensure the farm is run well but to ensure hours worked or burnout don’t become a health and safety issue in themselves.

“That’s a minimum requirement and really you have to remember that even though the staff are being employed by someone else they’re still there working on your farm, milking your cows.

“You want to be supporting your contract milker, especially if they’re in their first season and being an employer is new to them.”

Wages and fuel have had the biggest cost increases over the last year and are both costs born by contract milkers so it’s important the budgets drawn up to calculate contract rates are adjusted accordingly.

Brett says when working with potential contract milkers it’s important to give them accurate and up-to-date budgets.

“You want to give them evidence of real costs – we’ve had to go back to a couple of farmers and say actually we need to review the contract rate because specific costs have gone up over time and the farm owner hasn’t looked at that detail for a while.

“I think farm owners understand there has to be something in it for the contract milker, in terms of margin over costs and what they could earn as a farm manager – to reward them for the additional risk they’re taking.

“I have seen contract milkers with contract rates that mean it’s just a wasted season –they’ve pretty much made nothing.”

“So, you need to give them evidence of those real costs and evidence of production and a realistic expectation of budgeted production.”

Contracts must work for

‘A contractgood milker may also add more value so shouldn’t always be looked at as being more expensive. ’

Work through the what if scenarios when discussing the contract so everyone’s clear on what will happen given different situations such as drought.

A well-documented, formal farm plan is a must so the contract milker is clear on the owner’s expectations on how the farm should be run and what the targets are for the season.

They need to understand your health and safety plan and how their plan dovetails into yours and they need to understand their responsibilities within your farm environment plan.

Brett says contract milkers should never sign the contract until it’s been reviewed –preferably by a rural professional who has a good understanding of farm budgets and contracts.

“There have been a lot of changes to legislation and compliance and that has to be factored into the contract.

“We’d want to see the costs are realistic

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and go through the detail to make sure there’s enough money dropping out of it to be worth it.”

Brett says his company has put together a booklet for farm managers who are looking at moving to contract milking.

“There are plenty of managers out there breaking their necks to become contract milkers but they’re not fully aware of all that entails and what they need to know.

“One of the biggest things is improving their financial literacy and ensuring they have financial acumen.

“They’ve got to understand PAYE, GST and ACC for instance.”

He uses a three-stage process to bring people up to speed so they aren’t overwhelmed at the outset.

Having good online systems for accounting and paying staff that their rural professionals can have visibility into means they can get help quickly.

“The aim is to help them grow their own

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financial acumen and build those skills quickly because that enables a better understanding of their business, helps cost control and empowers them,” he says.

“We help them get their heads around using a cashflow planning tool so they can see where costs come in and how to manage that with their income flow.

“We also want them to have a personal spending budget and a cashflow for that too.”

It’s important at the outset to ensure expectations are understood between contract milker and farm owner, he says.

• “Be clear about the farm plan.

• “Be clear about the contract.

• “Be clear about what’s on offer.

• “Be clear about your vision.” Communicate well throughout the season both with the farm owner and with rural professionals – make them part of your team, he says.

Be clear about the farm plan. Be clear about the contract. Be clear about what’s on offer. Be clear about your vision.

Brett Bennett: “Go through the details to make

sure

there’s enough money dropping out of it to be worth it.”

Staying in the business

Having accurate data on what it costs to run the farm is a must for contract milking agreements, Dairy Holdings Ltd (DHL) chief operating officer Blair Robinson says.

The company runs 75% of its 60 dairy farms under contract milking agreements which offer higher contract milking rates and opportunities to rear stock, along with a bonus if payout surpasses a set threshold and a guaranteed minimum return in the contract but also include a share of a wider range of costs than typical.

“Contract milking provides a pathway for progression – we have a small number of farms with a farm manager and contract milking allows managers and good 2ICs across any of our farms a step up.

“It means we can keep people in our business longer as they develop.

“We have sharemilked farms that range from sharemilkers owning 51% of cows right up to 100%.

“Structuring the contract milking agreement the way we do gives people an opportunity to stay in the business and go all the way from dairy assistant to 2IC or farm manager to contract milker and on to sharemilker without having to leave.”

In some cases that progression can happen all on the same farm.

“People get to put down roots and stay in a community which is great for families – people with kids at school.

“But it’s also good for us because over that time they build their skills and know the farm well and that’s good for farm performance too.”

DHL’s contract milking agreement sees contract milkers pay the usual farm dairy running costs such as electricity, chemical and rubberware along with supplying motorbikes and feedout gear including the tractor and paying for fuel. They also pay 20% of bought-in supplement cost, 20% of mixed-age cow wintering, 20% of irrigation electricity and up until next season

Well-structured contracts allow people to progress through the business and put down roots. Anne Lee reports.

‘We base our expectations of those costs on a lot of data so we have a high degree of confidence that what we pay them will cover it.’

20% of urea and spreading costs. Blair says the contract rate is set so it covers those costs but it’s not just a matter of giving with one hand and taking with the other.

“It’s aimed at driving behaviours and efficiency.

“We base our expectations of those costs on a lot of data so we have a high degree of confidence that what we pay them will cover it.

“If they can come in under that then that’s a win for them.

“For instance, the budget includes allowance for 60kg drymatter (DM)/cow of bought-in supplement but in a lot of cases the farms will use 0-20kg DM/ cow so they benefit because the cost for 60kg has been paid to them in their contract rate.”

It’s a similar situation for wintering costs.

If they manage that well – given they still have to meet cow condition targets – then what’s not used can be utilised by another farm.

“We do a lot of business with ourselves now in terms of being self-contained, so all young stock is reared on our farms and wintering is done on our support blocks along with supplement.

“We’re in control of those costs and our farm system means we’re less exposed to feed costs and even fuel costs.

“Tractors on our farms can end up sitting in the shed for several months on end.

“Where we haven’t had control and we’ve seen variability – like urea – we’ve decided to take it out of the contract, so next season we’ll pay 100% of that cost.”

Blair says they’d made that decision before the steep price rise towards the end of last year but when that hit, it confirmed it was the right thing to do.

“You can have all the shared costs you want in these types of contracts as long as you can be pretty accurate.

“You’ll always get some unders and overs but the last thing you want is to set a contract and have the actuals come in way higher than the budget.

“It is concerning us at the moment that we’re in an environment where some costs are going up rapidly.”

Blair says the business uses its scale and buying power to go out to the market and lock in as many costs as it can for the coming season.

But costs such as labour have gone up quickly.

The company offered contracts to contract milkers towards the end of last year for the 2022/23 season and had reviewed and analysed all of its costs line by line by then.

“On average we’ve put the overall contract rate for next season up by 9c/kg MS and a good portion of that will be wage inflation.”

Labour is included in standard contract milking agreements so its inclusion in their agreements isn’t aimed at driving efficiency.

“I think contract milkers do that themselves anyway and unfortunately this year, because of the labour shortage, right across the country we’ve seen people often operating on half to a full time equivalent down.

“They might have saved money on labour for a time but I think everyone would agree that’s not good for mental health, family life or the performance of the farm.

“Then, when they’ve been able to find someone, they’ve had to lift the wage bracket.”

DHL is refreshing its five-year development plan and one of the key focuses has been options for increasing efficiency onfarm in terms of labour.

“We’re looking at a range of options – upgrading irrigation away from labour-intensive systems, putting in cup removers and automation – we’re revisiting all that.”

Blair says the company is also investing more in upskilling contract milkers and sharemilkers in managing and developing their people.

“We’re doing more in that area to help them –helping them with things like annual reviews and training plans – making sure the people below the

Above: If progression through the business is able to happen on the same farm, people get to put down roots and stay in a community which is great for families, and particularly for people with kids at school.

operator level can see the pathways forward and have the skills to take them.

“With the labour shortage across the country there’s a lot of opportunity right now for keen, capable people to advance quickly.”

They’ve also been investing in their operators to help improve their financial literacy and build their understanding of how to grow and manage their own business.

“We help them understand a range of financial aspects of running a business and show them what’s possible with our stock policy – where they are contracted to rear a set number of replacements each year but after that any calves born are theirs.

Extra heifer calves can be reared and leased back to DHL, allowing them to build their own herd.

Blair says initially, when they recruit a contract milker or sharemilker they want to know they are in a financial position to fulfil the role. They ask for a statement of position – current assets and liabilities and sometimes a statement from their

bank. “We pay our contract milkers right from the first month so they are getting cashflow straight away but we still need to know they’re in a financial position to meet their business commitments from the outset.”

Blair says their calculations to set their contract rate work on covering the costs plus a management wage and an amount to cover the risk.

“So there’s a reward for the risk they’re taking and on a bigger farm that risk is going to be bigger so the reward is set to match that.

“If people aren’t rewarding their contract milkers for the risk they’re taking on then they’re taking a contract milker on for the wrong reasons.

“If the farm owner won’t share some of the earnings with their contract milker then it’s not going to end well.

“We need capable young people coming up through the industry so it’s important contracts are set up well so they see the opportunities and will put the effort in to grow.”

Reboot your soil, Reboot your life

Tony Hanham admits that he was the last person anyone would expect, least of all his partner Chantel, to convert to a regenerative system on their dairy farm in Rerewhakaaitu. But after years of exhausting more traditional farming methods, he knew something had to change.

Moving from a DairyNZ System 4-5 to a system 1-2 four years ago was just the beginning, but Tony and Chantel were determined to make as many changes as were needed to improve their soil and animal health.

“None of the ‘traditional’ methods were working for us. The harder we tried, the worse things got, and we weren’t seeing the changes we wanted. So, we took matters, and all the research, into our own hands.”

They became addicted to researching

where they needed to start with the process of converting to a more regenerative system. After seeing their neighbour making changes to his fertiliser usage, Tony hand dug holes on his own farm and then jumped the fence and did the same next door.

The amount of life on his neighbour’s biological farm was unbelievable, he says, particularly as the pumice soil should’ve been unforgiving on both sides of the fence. It was enough to convince Tony, and after a low payout from Fonterra, he decided to cut back on fertiliser usage.

First, he removed phosphate to save money, however, it didn’t take him long to realise that most of his fertiliser bill was from his N usage. With little previous knowledge on soil, Tony cut out the middleman and learned how to read and understand his own soil tests.

Working with his neighbour, Jason,

he began assessing his soil with a spade in each paddock. As a result of this, they drastically reduced their N usage from 350 units of N in 2016/17 by converting to foliar application in 2017 and reducing to 27 units last year.

“The result was amplified when adding a carbon source with the urea. From there we developed a formula called ‘Revive’ to activate nutrients by using bio-stimulants like fish and seaweed to boost microbial life. The results made it a no-brainer for us.”

After more research Tony and Jason realised a diverse multi-species seed mix along with nature’s synergy would help replenish and reboot soil health. They approached Canterbury-based seed company Pastoral Improvements Ltd with their research and ideas, and between them developed the Reboot Seed Mix, a long rotation grazing mix made up of

A

change to their grazing ideologies has been the gift that keeps on giving after years of uncertainty for Bay of Plenty farmers Tony and Chantel Hanham, Alex Lond writes. Photos by Alan Gibson.

over 30 species. Reboot is a high-yielding, high-performing mix providing strong soil and animal remedial benefits without compromising profit, Tony says. It consists of five plant groups; cereals, brassicas, legumes, grasses and chenopods, all providing a symbiosis of life from edible flowers and seeds to an abundance of predatory insects, negating the need for pesticides and herbicides.

Trialling the Reboot seed mix on his own farm, Tony realised that he was now able to shift his feed wedge into farm deficits on his summer dry property, without harvesting and associated costs. When grazing Reboot, he left adequate residual to protect soil moisture, and provided the perfect environment to have the next rotational grazing of six to eight tonnes within 30-60 days. The added bonus was that as the season developed into cooler months, the perennial species were already there so there was no need to redrill grasses. While reiterating that soil health is the most important thing, Tony explained how diversity is also key; together, they produced an impressive result that his farm had not seen before.

“We have disillusioned ourselves by the instant gratification we receive by applying soluble nutrients, especially urea. Nitrogen is freely abundant in the atmosphere; we just need to learn the process of the soil biome and receive it for free.”

Last year, Tony sowed 25 hectares out of his 130ha farm with Reboot; he expects the mix to produce 18-22t/ha annually. He says a big contributor to the success of a multispecies mix is consistent monitoring of carbon, and he gets biological and total nutrient testing done to tell him how much the soil is producing before any inputs. While he never expected such a high yield from the crop so early in the experiment, Tony says that you could see how a diversity of plants were

working together to increase the yield. He successfully shifted his excess growth from October/November to early the following year, when growth rates normally plummet during the drier months.

“It’s the opposite to the Darwinism ideology whereas each species ultimately aids each other rather than the belief that everything is in competition.”

Tony and Chantel have seen a huge increase in soil nitrogen, fungal activity, and bacterial activity since cutting down the use of fertiliser and relying on Reboot and Revive to regenerate their soil. But it’s not just the soil that has benefited from the changes they have made over the past four years, Tony explains. The cows are thriving off the change, with an obvious increase in animal health as well as production; milk urea notably reduced, with protein/fat and litres up.

“There’s no other feeling quite like it, when you can see the change every day because you’re on farm and you’re watching it happen. I look out at my cows and see them sitting down contentedly, they get variety in their diet and eat nutrient-dense forage as opposed to

urea-driven grass.” So, how can people who haven’t tried a multispecies system like Reboot slip it into their own system without too much risk?

Tony advises doing a trial paddock, start small and increase the number of hectares you sow as you start to see results. A mentor is very important for confidence and management at the start, so talk to people who have already succeeded with the process.

“Soil testing is also essential but doing it yourself is easier than you think. Using your results, you can monitor your carbon more accurately and the nutrient density in your soil will rise as carbon rises,” he says.

While Tony does annual soil tests, he says that now they just back up what he can already visually see.

“You need at least 12 species but preferably more to get the process going. It might appear scary at first, but you just have to be brave and prepared for change, because it is coming whether we like it or not. Nature is smarter than all of us, it has already provided the solution, and now we must work with it.”

‘If farming is to prevail going forward, we must literally return to our roots.’

Left: Tony and Chantel Hanham in one of their multi-species-sown paddocks.

Top Left: Tony and Chantel check their pastures and soil. Bottom left: A handful of the Reboot seed mix. Right: Chantal with a soil and crop sample.

Damage control: Be prepared

Adverse weather events are on the rise in New Zealand and the disruption fallout they cause to farmers is increasing with pressures on supply chains.

FMG is advising farmers to be extra vigilant around what they can prevent or control and to have a contingency plan for when Mother Nature shows her strength.

Last year was a record payout year for NZ Insurance Council, paying out $304.9 million above the previous record in 2020 of $274m.

For rural insurance specialist FMG, the most significant events in 2021 included the Canterbury floods in which FMG paid out $6.38m, Marlborough/West Coast floods, $6.42m and Canterbury wind storm, $8.5m.The Malbrough/West Coast floods impacted dairy farmers heavily, comprising over 40% of claims. The claims from the windstorm were from almost 40% dairy farms. These adverse weather events are happening more often, says Stephen Cantwell, FMG Head of Client Strategy & Advice Services.

“We are definitely seeing more of these events. It seems there is no region in NZ that’s exempt from Mother Nature.”

The insurance industry as a whole will

see the results of climate change first as these events continue to occur, he says.

“For us it shows the importance we will be playing in the future to make sure the NZ agricultural industry continues to be resilient. To make sure we keep preparing for those events is even more important because we expect these to continue.”

The silver lining of more events occurring is companies like FMG get more streamlined at dealing with them.

“Our people are living in these communities so we can get on the ground quickly and we are well equipped to handle these situations.”

More events puts more pressure on farmers to show resilience and does put more pressure on costs, he says.

Being a mutual insurance company, they have no shareholders to pay, so profit goes back into the company to prepare for the next event and into the 700 sponsorship events FMG supports.

“We are profit-making, not profitmaximising. If we can keep claims down then we can stabilise premiums.

“A big part of why we are here is to make sure insurance is affordable and accessible. We do everything we can to keep it that way.”

FMG is working with farmers to mitigate their risk and concentrate on what they can protect and prevent to control their premiums.

“We can’t control big weather events, but we can control certain events from happening.”

Prevention and protection is more important than it ever has been, for example preventing a tractor fire by carrying out checks, he says.

“Focus on what you can control. You can’t control the weather but you can make sure of the things you can prevent, really focusing on those because of the disruption.”

Make sure you are getting machinery and equipment serviced on time, take an extra couple of hours to go through orientation with new staff to point out

You can’t control the weather but you can make sure of the things you can prevent when nature goes awry, By Sheryl Haitana.

FMG’s Stephen Cantwell - the disruption from more adverse weather events and supply chain issues is taking a toll.

Adverse weather events increasing insurance payouts

hazards, keep a close eye on the chiller during summer months when it is more likely to break down because it’s running under greater pressure, be extra vigilant around rural crime.

Farmers also need to be extra vigilant because it is taking longer for things to get replaced and fixed because of pressure on supplies. FMG is relying on its close relationships with industry groups and local suppliers to help with solutions, replacement and repairs, Stephen says.

“The benefit of FMG is the big network and relationships we have to get things fixed as soon as possible. We can work with the supply chain to move parts around the country.”

Insurance is split into three areas; physical, operational and people. Physical is what people see and think to insure, the house, farm dairy, fences, tractor, etc. Operational is the intangible risks people may not think of. For example if a storm washes out a culvert is on an access track to the farm dairy so cows can’t be milked, which can impact income.

“People don’t always consider the disruption it causes,” Stephen says.

“If your tractor breaks down, and you are using it every day, it can take weeks for a part to get into the country.”

People are the other essential area to consider for insurance. If a farmer or farm employee suffers injury, illness or death, it can have a major impact on the running of a farm. The biggest thing farmers can do outside of insurance is to have a good contingency plan for if or when things go wrong, Stephen says.

“It happens more often than you think.”

FMG advisers work with farmers to ensure they are prepared with insurance cover, as well as contingency plans for when the unexpected happens.

*Source ICNZ

EFFICIENCY POWERS IRRIGATION PLANS

The Woodhouse family are investing in their irrigation, and improving water use efficiency to maintain productivity in the face of ever-tightening nutrient regulations.

Ben and Gina Woodhouse farm Timata, a 175-hectare, 650-cow property near Carew in MidCanterbury together with Ben’s parents Hamish and Boo.

About 46ha of the farm was previously leased to neighbouring Kintore Farm while the remainder was bought and converted to dairying in 2012.

Hamish and Boo had been among the original shareholders in the Kintore conversion and when they sold out of the equity partnership, they retained their 46ha with the original homestead.

It’s now home to Ben and Gina and their three children Harry, 7, Jack, 5 and Olivia, 2.

While Hamish and Boo are now living in nearby Arundel, they’re still active in the farm business and Hamish can be found most days either working on the dairy farm or at the nearby 155ha, dryland support block leased 18-months ago.

Ben recalls the early years of borderdyke irrigation on the home farm with remnants of the original canvas gates still to be found.

While a centrepivot had been installed on the 46ha when the land was leased to Kintore, irrigation on the neighbouring land they bought in 2012 was 90% borderdyke and 10% dryland.

It was all hands to the pump during the conversion of Timata with both couples hands-on in the work to get the farm ready to take the first intake of cows and be ready for milking when the 50-bail rotary dairy was completed just before Christmas of the 2012-13 season.

Ben is a Lincoln University graduate with a Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce and Gina is a qualified primary school teacher.

A Mid-Canterbury dairy operation is upgrading water supply systems to better match reduced nitrogen applications to plant needs. Anne Lee reports.

Photos by Holly Lee.

Originally from Christchurch she became a dab hand at tractor driving to help get the conversion finished in time.

Ben had travelled extensively after completing his degree and had then been working as a shepherd at Inverary Station in the Canterbury foothills.

“Dad and I wanted to farm together and to do that with sheep and beef we would have needed a much bigger place and that didn’t stack upso dairying it was,” Ben says.

Once that decision was made, he took on a dairying job nearby to start learning the ropes and then spent the calving of the 2012-13 season working on another nearby dairy farm.

A centrepivot was installed to water 82ha of the borderdyke area with 21ha watered by a big gun irrigator and the remaining 8ha covered by K-line. The K-line area is scattered around the farm – mostly in the corners where the pivots don’t reach. The irrigation setup has worked reasonably well over the years but pressure in the form of nutrient restrictions coupled with the labour demands of the system mean they are in the process of replacing the five runs covered by the big gun with two wiper pivots.

The plan is to replace the K-Line with fixed grid sprinklers – likely later this year.

“The environmental aspect is always on your mind because the gun puts on a lot of water in a short time – about 50mm at a time - so it’s harder to manage nutrient loss.

“It’s on a nine-day return and in times when you have rain forecast but you’re not sure it will

eventuate you’re struggling with knowing if you irrigate and the rain comes that’s going to be too much water in the soil profile.

“But if the rain doesn’t come and you haven’t watered then you’re going to be dry before you can get back round again.”

The K-line is on a five-day return so the situation can be similar, he says.

“A big factor in the decision to upgrade is to try and get as much efficiency out of the irrigation as we can so we’re maximising our pasture production.”

The 190kg/ha nitrogen rule already in place and regulations for the Hinds Plains zone that require nitrate leaching reductions of 15% by 2025, 25% by 2030 and 36% by 2035 are likely to have an impact on pasture production and productivity.

“By upgrading the irrigation we’ll be able to put smaller amounts of water on more frequently so we’ll leach less of the nitrogen we do put on.”

FARM FACTS

Timata

Area: 175ha, 157 effective

Total milking platform

area: 183ha - 157ha Timata plus 26ha lease

Farm dairy: 50-bail rotary with cup removers, in-shed feeding, Alltech drafting system

Cows: 650 crossbreed

Production. 480kg MS/cow

Supplement: 650kg DM/ cow – barley and palm kernel

Irrigation: Two centre pivots, adding two more to replace big gun, K-line

Runoff: 190ha leased

Left: Irrigation upgrades are building resilience for the Ben and Gina Woodhouse’s farming business – pictured here with their sons, Jack, left and Harry, right and their mate Henry Thatcher. Above: The big gun has had its day – Henry Thatcher and Harry Woodhouse. Right: New pivots, delayed by Covid-related supply issues, will soon replace the big gun irrigator.

That’s good for the environment and good for productivity.

“There’s plenty of research out there showing it’s much easier to put on what the plant needs when it needs it.”

“We’re not trying to increase production or cow numbers – we’re just trying to be more efficient with the same area and the same amount of water.

“What we’re aiming for is that even with nutrient limits we’ll still grow the same amount of grass so by putting the water on more efficiently we’ll counteract the drop in nitrogen input.”

The two new pivots are currently being installed – Ben had hoped to have them up and running by October but supply issues have delayed that. It’s put more pressure on Ben this season because, thinking they’d be installed by the start of the irrigation season, he hadn’t trained his two staff to shift the gun.

“That labour requirement is another reason for the change – none of the runs are the same so setting them up isn’t straightforward.

“It’s not overly complicated but it’s just another thing you have to train people to do and this year we had a new team.”

There’s a reasonably high level of repairs and maintenance (R&M) required on the gun, a tractor is needed to shift it, there are just more things that can go wrong and it’s time consuming.

The cost benefit of replacing the gun with the pivots stacks up easily but the proposition for the replacing the K-line with fixed grid sprinklers is harder to justify.

“We’ll probably go ahead with it anyway for the same reason as the pivots – especially the labour aspect – it takes about an hour and a half each day for someone.

“We have a Rav4 set up with an attachment on the front so we can move them but the K-lines are in all four corners of the farm so someone has to drive right around each day shifting lines.

“It’s heavy on R&M too so the reasons to do it are the same as the pivots but the difference is the fixed grid is expensive to put in.”

The fixed grid system has sprinklers set atop posts set out in a grid pattern so that water from each sprinkler is evenly applied across the whole area.

Each sprinkler within the grid can be turned on and off separately and they’re set up so a certain number are on at any one time to maintain good pressure and control rates of application.

The farm’s water is supplied by MHV Water with irrigation water arriving on the farm via an open race. The main race is diverted into the farm and a turbine has been fitted at a step-down point in the race. As the water drops down, it turns a turbine which

mechanically operates the in-line water pump. It sends water out to the farm at up to 60psi which is enough pressure for all of the pivots to function well. It will also be ample pressure to operate the fixed grid.

Ben says upgrades to the MHV Water scheme have also allowed them to manage water better and make the most of the allocation they get.

A 45,000 cubic metre storage pond was built when Timata was converted but MHV Water has put in automated storage pond level sensors allowing Ben and scheme operators to see the pond level online.

That makes managing storage capacity and water ordering simpler and more data-driven.

Soil moisture probes were installed under each of the two pivots three years ago and more are to be installed under each of the new pivots and at points under the fixed grid when it is put in.

Good grazing management is the other part of the pasture productivity equation and a real focus on the farm. They use a tow-behind pasture meter and ride the farm weekly to record the level of drymatter available in each paddock.

The data is run through Agrinet pasture software to give a feed wedge.

Mario Vasquez is Ben’s assistant farm manager and is responsible for pasture management and milking on a day-to-day basis.

“He’s really capable and has it covered but we catch up most days and having the information online each week means I can see what’s happening at a glance.”

Ben says the aim is to maximise quality and hitting residuals is key to that.

They will mow behind cows when needed to achieve that, he says.

They’ve invested in Allflex collars for the cows and drafting system in the farm dairy and Ben’s pleased with the information the technology gives him as well as the benefits it’s given to managing the herd.

It’s a similar story to managing the water – more information gives them more power to make better decisions.

Take a look: https://youtu.be/ bivsGOWbM9Q

Above: More efficient irrigation has benefits for the environment and farming returns.

PIPING AND STORAGE GIVES CERTAINTY

By Anne Lee.

Investing in water storage and technology to monitor and manage water is helping MidCanterbury irrigation co-operative, MHV Water provide more water for its farmers when they need it most without increasing its impact on river flows.

MHV Water, a merger of the Mayfield Hinds and Valetta Irrigation Schemes, is a farmer-owned cooperative company and shareholder of the Rangitata Diversion Race (RDR).

They were first developed as a public works scheme with the original canals and races built in the 1940s.

MHV Water, Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation, Ashburton District Council and Trust Power are all shareholders in the RDR, with the canal providing stock water and irrigation to more than 100,000 hectares of farmland and generating energy equivalent to powering about 13,000 households a year.

Over recent years Mid-Canterbury farmers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure through the irrigation schemes, including investments in water storage, automation and piping.

MHV, the largest of the schemes within MidCanterbury delivers water and provides environmental support to more than 58,000ha of highly productive land through a network of approximately 100km of piped infrastructure and 320km of open races.

MHV chief executive Melanie Brooks says the efficiencies gained from piping the Ruapuna and Valetta lines include reduced leakage, reduced evaporation, and automated delivery at pressure to the farm gate.

“The farmers on our piped network have reduced energy costs onfarm as they can utilise the gravitygenerated pressure in the pipelines to drive their spray irrigation.”

However, she is quick to point out that open race delivery doesn’t equate to inefficient delivery of water and that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all model for the best

infrastructure investments for each community.

“In our Mayfield Hinds open race network we first focused on building storage.

“We take water from the Rangitata River in line with the Water Conservation Order, that means when the river is at low levels we take less water.

“This creates uncertainty for farmers and the nature of a majority of our soils here in the Hekeao Hinds is that we’re probably only two weeks away from drought during the height of the summer.

“Farmers would always take their full allocation of water whether they needed it or not because they weren’t sure if the river would run low next time they needed water”.

To remedy that uncertainty MHV built 6.3 million cubic metres of water storage at Carew and they found farmers were taking less water because they knew the water would be available if they needed it.

That’s brought positive environmental outcomes with reduced leaching of nutrient.

“It’s a really big psychological shift – to understand the water is there when they need it.

“They have more confidence.”

When it came to considering piping the Mayfield Hinds open race, onfarm investments that had already been made by farmers, including ponds and pumping infrastructure, made further investment in piping less attractive because much of that infrastructure would have become obsolete.

As a result MHV Water instead looked to how it could gain many of the efficiencies of piping without the corresponding costs (it was estimated to cost $140m to pipe the Mayfield Hinds Open Races).

Over the last four years MHV Water have invested about $4.5m in upgrading the irrigation race capacity, installing automated farmer offtakes, pond sensors on the onfarm ponds and the SCADA network to

Above: MHV built 6.3 million cubic metres of water storage at Carew.

better manage the delivery. Melanie says the data now available provides farmers with transparency on their take, and pond levels to inform their water ordering and provides MHV visibility on water travelling within the race system.

“We can look at upstream and downstream levels throughout the open race network – so we can see our losses and it gives us an opportunity to line certain parts of the race.

“Our farmers know what they are getting delivered with certainty and we can manage losses through the tails of the race with far more accuracy.

“As a co-operative it’s important we act fairly and equitably and the technology we’ve put in gives us the ability to deliver on those values,” she says.

By combining the upgrades to water delivery infrastructure and water storage MHV have been able to offer their Mayfield Hinds network farmers 20% additional water delivery without any increase in take from the rivers.

“With the investments that have been made we deliver continuous flow through automated measured turnouts, everyone has visibility of orders and delivered water and we have enabled our farmers to maintain soil moisture on days with high evapotranspiration rates, where in the past they would have been going backwards.”

The RDR has consented plans in place to build the large scale 53m cubic metre Klondyke ponds and as a shareholder MHV has engagement in this process.

MHV is also investigating building additional storage facilities.

“We see storage as strategically important infrastructure for our community and we will be looking to invest over the next five to 10 years and to that end we’re looking at a number of options.

“We’ve seen the benefits of storage with building Carew.

“Resilience and certainty mean farmers have more

confidence in their investment decisions – that could be trying new crops or diversifying more broadly, environmental mitigations or infrastructure upgrades for efficiency.”

MHV is more broadly investigating revenue streams which utilise the existing infrastructure including hydro and solar generation. MHV also manages the environmental compliance for its farmers.

“Our programme has grown exponentially over the last few years with the tidal wave of legislative change.

“For the last six years MHV has been doing kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) Farm Environmental Plan meetings to review risks on farms and identify the corresponding actions to address them.

“These meetings are held annually and the plans are subsequently audited by an independent specialist with the results reported through to Environment Canterbury. “

MHV uses the findings from the audit to identify areas where it needs to focus its training and education for its farmers. The training is evolving as farmers’ knowledge grows and research develops.

Farmers pay an environmental charge of $8.50/ha/ year on top of their annual scheme water delivery charge to fund the programme.

“There’s a lot of noise out there for farmers and we aim to distil the noise into practical and relevant information that will support them to drive improved environmental outcomes.”

Melanie says the natural fall along the irrigation scheme’s race network creates the opportunity to install turbines that could generate electricity and the large pond surface lends itself to solar panels being installed with the additional benefits of reducing wave action on the ponds and cutting evaporation.

“At MHV we’ve been delivering water for over 80 years and as we look to the next 80 years we intend to continue to deliver sustainable solutions for our community.”

Effluent Experts in System Design

Management

Mel Brooks.

A PRECIOUS RESOURCE

Thanks to technology, farmers and horticulturalists are aware when a leak or failure occurs in their water reticulation systems, says Neal Borrie senior environmental engineer with Aqualinc Research Ltd.

That wasn’t the case last century when tracking down leaks, broken pipes and faulty ballcocks could take hours or days, but even in the 1970s, Neal says those working the land were well aware of the importance of water conservation.

Aqualinc general manager Jim Herbison agrees.

“Farmers have always known that water is a precious resource and increasingly they are using technology to monitor and conserve its use. A fault in a farm’s mainline which has big flows and pressures quickly becomes very apparent.”

With offices in Christchurch, Ashburton and Hastings, Aqualinc Research is an independent provider of research-based consulting services for water and land management. Among its aims is to provide services and the implementation of innovative practices to enhance “the treasured qualities of our environment and the long-term socio-economic benefits derived from them”.

Jim says what sets Aqualinc apart from others in the field is that it backs its technology with expert support and advice so farmers and growers can use the equipment effectively and understand and apply the data it provides.

While the improved availability of technology, including soil moisture meters and water flow meters has increased uptake by farmers, so has the introduction of local and national government regulations around water use. Public opinion and awareness of the importance of water conservation and water quality is also influencing farmers’ water management practices.

Jim says regulations regarding the recording of water takes which came into force in 2012 have prompted

the need for accurate and easy-to-use telemetry. “The regulations require anyone who takes more than five litres a second of water to install flow meters.”

Neal says irrigation is vital, especially in Canterbury. “During a dry season, farmers can come close to the limit of their water consents which means they have to be smarter about how they manage what they have.

“In the shoulders of the season when there is less transpiration and a chance of rain, there are more options to hold off irrigation, but it’s a balancing act making soil moisture measurement a valuable tool.

“Sometimes hard decisions are needed, which may include setting aside some sacrificial paddocks which might be due for renovation next season and focusing on the higher-producing paddocks, this is especially relevant with irrigation systems with long return times.”

Over-irrigating which can cause leaching of nutrients, is also to be avoided and close monitoring of soil moisture helps reduce that risk. The problem New Zealand faces is not a lack of water, but rather a lack of its availability when it is most needed, which is generally in summer, Jim says. More water storage is required, and this is high on Irrigation New Zealand’s agenda. The schemes in place are paid for by those who own shares in them, and that shareholding comes at a cost. Jim says scheme owners are well aware of the cost and value of water and are obliged to adhere to the standards set out in their consents to take water.

“Farmers understand and value water. It is vital to their livelihood. They also want to take care of the land to pass it on to their families. Their children swim in the rivers and streams and they don’t want them contaminated,” says Jim who is annoyed that there is an urban perception that farmers are damaging the land and not caring for the environment. “That is simply not the case.”

Neal Borrie senior environmental engineer with Aqualinc Research.

New Zealand does not face a lack of water, but rather a lack of its availability when it is most needed. By Elaine Fisher

Aqualinc Research general manager Jim Herbison.

A LIFE FORCE OF BENEFIT TO ALL

Investment is needed in capturing water when it falls, storing it for when it doesn’t, and conserving and using best irrigation practices when we need it most, Irrigation NZ

CEO Vanessa Winning writes.

One of the highlights for the irrigation sector, and for farmers and growers’ futures, that came out last year was the development and publishing of the Water Availability and Security paper. It was led by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and worked on by several people within the productive sector, along with water storage being one of the key areas of focus for the Government’s Fit for a Better World roadmap.

This paper highlighted the need to be ready for the changing climate we are already facing in New Zealand, as well as the need for water as a key resource to decarbonising our existing food and fibre sector. It highlighted areas of most extreme weather fluctuations and most particularly dry spots that we need to work on quickly, as well as emphasising the water conservation elements we could undergo now.

NZ has been underinvesting in new water capture and storage for decades for both productive use, community use and potential hydroelectricity generation. We know that it is getting drier in some parts of the country year on year, and we are experiencing more extreme weather volatility in other parts too.

The best way to mitigate weather is to plan for it – and for our food and fibre sector that means more investment in capturing water when it falls, storing it for when it doesn’t, and conserving and using best irrigation practices when we need it most.

Unfortunately, this has been hit by two major snags – one is that we generally get good rainfall a lot of the time, so we become complacent and don’t save for that non-rainy day; and two there has been a demonisation of irrigation

with links to environmental damage or an excess of stocking rate for animal agriculture. Both of which are untrue. Every plant needs water at the right time in its growing cycle to be the most productive plant it can be – be that grass, avocados, hops, grapes, kiwifruit, or apples. Most animal agriculture in New Zealand does not completely rely on irrigation, though this may change with the weather changes. Every fruit and vegetable or arable crop needs it to survive. Rain doesn’t always fall and even less so, fall at the perfect time in the growing cycle that it once did – a very good example is where the Bay of Plenty kiwifruit growers are now needing to irrigate more than in the past when the weather gods were a bit kinder.

People mistake effluent spreading – the most efficient use of naturally occurring fertiliser you can get, as irrigation, and while we use the same methods, capture, storage, and efficient use of effluent in a dairy system is not the same as capturing and storing water – though they both play an important part in an efficient dairy farm. More and more farmers, and in particular dairy farmers will need to rely less on water from rivers and need to invest more in creating onfarm capture or investing in larger off-farm irrigation schemes as a collective. If we want more mixed production farms, where we use land in multiple ways across a farm’s landscape, we are going to need to invest even more.

The Waikato is a prime example – it is dry, hot, and parched right now, and this is becoming the new norm for late summer – on average we are getting less rain at this time of the year, and that has a big impact on our dairy herd and production.

We are seeing more restrictions on the takes from the Waikato River and other rivers connected to it as the flow needs to remain to keep the ecology thriving for both the sake of the river as well as our ability to use that water in the future. This means farmers and growers collectively working together to capture and store water when we need it least, i.e., when it’s bucketing down and we can’t use it, so we can use it when we do need it and the rivers are parched.

An excellent example of how important that can be was the two flood events in Canterbury last year where if we hadn’t had dams to fill when we had torrential rain, the impact on the town communities would have been far greater with the water having no other place to go. The Waikato, as our farmers move to planting crops, and vines, recreating wetlands and putting in a few avocados, will require more water not less, and if we want to give farmers more options to go away from monoculture farming systems, we will need to have the one resource available to them that gives options - water.

This leads me to my most important point – water storage, capture and use is not a productive-sector-only issue –the MPI report outlines the importance to our sectors, but it is a whole-ofcommunity solution, and one where we need to continue to work with urban needs and iwi interests and get the best solution for all of us – instead of a biased pushback on much-needed investment. We are already working in catchments to improve our impact across the country and across sectors, we need to take the same approach to water storage and capture – it’s a lifeforce we all benefit from.

Photos: NIWA.

FARM-SPECIFIC FORECASTING

The research programme Irrigation Insight concluded late last year used several pilot farms in Canterbury and resulted in the development of a range of online, realtime tools.

Their development is based on NIWA’s advanced weather forecasting system and onfarm rainfall and soil moisture monitoring to understand the soil and drainage. For farmers, it means they can use those tools to manage irrigation better on individual farms. The programme, funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), included the pilot farmers, NIWA, DairyNZ, Fonterra, AgResearch and Irrigation New Zealand. At the heart of the programme are onfarm weather stations which provide farm-specific information for the farmers. The NIWA-operated weather stations provide information to a regional weather forecasting system. Every six hours, NIWA generates high-resolution (every 1.5km) weather forecasts that are corrected for terrain and local weather observations to provide the

best estimates of rainfall, temperature and wind at the individual farm scale.

NIWA principal scientist and Irrigation Insight programme leader, Dr M S Srinivasan, says the programme aims to help farmers understand the economic impacts of their irrigation management choices. To do that, the pilot project has captured a range of economic information such as changes in electricity usage, changes in pasture growth due to changes in irrigation, the cost of water and the potential loss of nutrients below the root zone via drainage.

The programme focused on developing tools that could collect and interpret data for farmers to make irrigation decisions. The tools take into account rainfall, irrigation, solar radiation, relative humidity, wind speed, soil moisture and temperature from the surface down to 8cm below, pasture production, river flow and water use, combined with knowledge of climatic, soil, specific onfarm irrigation practices, irrigation infrastructure, irrigation supply-demand dynamics and the high-resolution weather

Canterbury farmers who were part of a five-year research programme are now using water more efficiently, at less cost, for a better environmental outcome. Anne Hardie reports.

forecasting. That data is telemetered every hour and is available for farmers 24/7 in real-time. In short, a lot of information at farmers’ fingertips and importantly, easy to understand and use.

Researchers worked closely with farmers, regulators and industry in co-developing the resulting three tools - IrriMate, IrriSET and SoilMate.

IrriMate is an operational tool that works out how much irrigation is needed on a given day. It incorporates soil properties, current soil moisture, future rainfall, evapotranspiration and costs of irrigation to help farmers choose when and how they irrigate.

It is designed for efficient on-farm irrigation and it does that through what it calls the Insight plot. That visualises measured and forecast soil moisture movement, weather forecasts and potential pasture growth. It shows soil water conditions within and below

the root zone, the effect of drainage and daily pasture growth linked to the available soil water within the root zone.

Dr Srinivasan says the Insight plot enables farmers to understand complex information immediately, using realtime and localised data. IrriMate also includes long-term records that capture a farmer’s irrigation behaviour over time which can be used to demonstrate best irrigation management practices to regulators.

IrriSet is an irrigation strategy evaluation tool that helps farmers work out the best irrigation approach on their farm. Farmers can link soil type, water supply and irrigation infrastructure to match best irrigation scheduling methods now and into the future under changing climate. It also gives them the data to take to their banker, regulatory body or industry to show the effectiveness of their irrigation practices and where it fits environmentally, socially and economically both now and into the future.

The third tool is a mobile soil moisture sensor, SoilMate, that measures the variability within an individual farm. It combines soil water measurements and NIWA’s high-

resolution weather forecast to provide a site-specific six-day soil moisture forecast. Farmers can use it around the farm to fill the data gaps to give them more confidence in their decision making.

NIWA’s principal scientist, Graham Elley, says most farmers want to be proactive about how they work with the environment, deal with public perception and regulatory bodies, as well as concerns about the impact on their livelihoods. So the researchers were conscious that farmers needed to get real benefits from the programme.

The challenge now is turning it into a commercial service that helps farmers and he says that may be via a subscriber service to NIWA, though it is also in discussions with other technology providers.

He says there is an acceptance the programme makes a difference and the challenge now is making sure its benefits are realised so it is not left on the shelves. He suggests the outcome of the programme will depend largely on demand from both farmers and regulatory bodies.

For now, the programme is working with farmers through irrigation schemes which he says all have their own environmental challenges.

Left: Irrigating with more knowledge and tools. Above: Irrigation Insight farmers during the research, Bruce Baggott and Claire McKay.

A CATCHMENT VIEW OF IRRIGATION

Julie Bradshaw owns one of the pilot farms in the programme and milks 400 cows on 120 hectares at Ohoka. She uses two hard hoses, a rotorainer and sprinklers to irrigate water from the Cust Main Drain. Moisture monitoring sites have covered a range of soils on five farms that are part of a water user group irrigating from the Cust Main Drain and she says the programme has given them a catchment view of irrigation.

“If we don’t work as a group we can’t irrigate, so it has been a great tool to assist us,” she says.

Weather forecasts from the Irrigation Insight programme are more localised and have better accuracy than previous forecasting, which has enabled the group to irrigate more effectively.

Her farm has weather stations, soil moisture monitoring and GPS on the irrigators to get irrigation right. Plus, it is proof she can show regulators she is irrigating efficiently and sustainably. She is now trialling solar ear tags on the cows so she has proof of where and when the cows have grazed.

“We’re in a world now where you have to prove what you are doing. You have to be able to stand up and say ‘I’m doing the best I can’.

“The great thing with this is it can view

a lot of farms and see what their moisture monitoring sites are like and that is better than just viewing a couple on my farm. It gives you a broad-spectrum view. Plus, it’s science-based and not commercial-based. And I believe science is what will keep us in farming.”

At Culverden, Ben Abernethy says the tools gave him confidence about his irrigation decisions. He milks 580 cows on 170ha and uses pivots and fixed-grid irrigation. The tools gave him the ability to view what the soil would look like three days ahead without irrigation, taking into account factors such as transpiration and weather. It took the guesswork out of irrigation decisions.

“If you have the tools in front of you and know how to use them, it gives you more confidence in making decisions. Being able to apply water when the soil needs it and keep nutrients in the root zone. In this day and age you can’t afford to be just guessing.”

At the beginning of the project he was on a different farm that used hard-hose guns and rotorainers which had a round length of 12 to 14 days. It meant he had to put on quite a bit of water to keep the paddocks going until the irrigators came back around again. The programme’s tools gave him the confidence to skip wetter paddocks and catch them the next time around, because he knew more about the

soil conditions and had the forecasting information to make that decision.

Bruce Baggott and Claire McKay own another of the pilot farms in the programme. They milk 850 cows at the peak of the season on 220ha at Cust and operate seven pivot irrigators, including three full circles. NIWA set up four monitoring sites around the farm to take into account the mix of heavy and light soils and also compare the difference between soils under a pivot and dryland areas. The basic goal was to work out how to apply water without wasting water while still maximising grass growth.

They are part of the Waimakariri Irrigation scheme where they have to give two days’ warning before irrigating and likewise two days’ warning before ceasing irrigation. If they don’t, someone downstream can miss out on water or be flooded. So every morning during the irrigation season Bruce goes on to the NIWA site to check the soil moisture on different areas of the farm. He says the information helps them make more informed decisions so they can irrigate “just in time” rather than “just in case”. That means they are irrigating more efficiently, at less cost, for better environmental outcomes. Instead of running the pivots in the ‘just in case’ scenario, they run them because the data tells them when to irrigate and how much to irrigate. He uses the mobile phone app to check soil moisture data as well as sitting down at the computer to analyse the graphs and data that provides information that he says is easy to understand.

“NIWA has such a big team behind them so you’re accessing all that knowledge and intellectual capacity.”

Dr Srinivasan says farmers are bombarded by salespeople trying to sell products and thinks the industry has a role to play in guiding farmers to sciencebased tools that can make a real difference to how they farm. The Government and regulators also have a role to talk to farmers about what tools they should be using to improve the environmental, social and economic aspects of their business.

The next step is working out how they take this science further and provide farmers with the information to support their daily management and strategic planning of water use over the next 20 years in a changing climate.

Irrigation Insight programme leader Dr M S Srinivasan talks with Canterbury farmer Julie Bradshaw beside one of the weather stations.

CHANGE FROM THE DAYS OF GOLD

Otago dairy farmers are urged to be heard in their regional council’s Land and Water Regional Plan Economics Programme.

Started late last year, the programme has been split into four “workstreams” to gather information and one of them is accessing “catchment stories” from across the region.

Otago Regional Council manager of strategy Anne Duncan says farmers do not have to be part of a formal catchment group to become involved.

“Groups of farmers from a local area are fine too. We want as many farmer voices to be involved to make sure what we’re doing is relevant to everyone,” Anne says.

“We know there is already good work underway, and we want to better understand what actions are working, and what are not, in their area.”

The new Land and Water Regional Plan is set to be drafted by the middle of next year, with notification in December 2023. Its aim is to improve the region’s use of freshwater resources and will quickly impact on how farmers use water, both for water takes and to receive contaminants, like excess nitrogen. One hundred-yearold, mostly unlimited water takes which harken back to the region’s gold-mining past, are being replaced by six-year interim consents. ORC has described the interim consents in Plan Change 7 as “a quick fix”, allowing it time to formulate the new plan. But the new plan will also cover contaminants, such as nitrogen and sediment, and how they reach waterways, which involves all farmers and also urban uses.

“It’s not just about using fresh water. It’s also what that use does to the health of our lakes, rivers and aquifers.

“The new plan will affect all farmers. There has to be change to meet the new national direction,” Anne says.

“The economic work programme has been designed to improve our understanding of what this change may mean for local communities.

“Longer-term, it will build a stronger foundation within council to understand the economic uses of water and land, which is going to be essential with a rapidly changing climate.”

A regional economic profile will be produced for fresh water that explores the use of water by industry and the value added to it by that use, in income and employment.

The programme will consider differences between communities. For example, the economy, living standards and access to services in Balclutha are different to those in Queenstown, she says.

Also, water takes from rivers and groundwater differ in importance across the region from the dryer areas of Central Otago to areas which receive regular rainfall such as South Otago.

A third workstream will make use of information from Otago farms involved in the four-year Ministry for Primary Industries Farm Monitoring and Benchmarking Programme which began in 2020. MPI is collecting anonymised data on production, finances and the environment from more than 2000 dairy, sheep and beef, deer, arable and horticulture farms, nationally, to provide a snapshot of their performance.

“We’re looking for farm-specific financial and environmental performance indicators from a range of farms within each industry so we get a reasonably representative sample for the region,” Anne says.

“We’re under tight time frames though to get this work done, so it’s about doing the best we can over the next year.”

The final workstream for the economic project is Te Ōhanga ki Kāi Tahu with Aukaha and Te Ao Marama considering their economy, both historical and present day, and highlighting kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga of mana whenua in catchments ki uta ki tai (from the mountains to the sea).

Information gathered by the project will contribute to understanding what viable options for future water and land use are, and allow us to better consider how these interact, she says.

Farmer groups can become part of the catchment story workstream by contacting ORC via email on strategy@orc.govt.nz.

Listening to farmers is part of Otago’s changing water use plans as they evolve from systems set up in goldmining days.

By Karen Trebilcock.

PUSHING THE SCIENCE OF FORECASTING

By Anne Hardie

Anew forecasting tool being developed by NIWA is designed to forecast drought and dry conditions so farmers and growers can be better prepared.

NIWA meteorologist Ben Noll says scientists will use a weather model released in the United States in 2020 and refine it for New Zealand’s complex terrain. It will involve some “data science and deep learning” to understand the NZ context.

Initially it will be developed to forecast 35 days ahead and then it will be extended to three and then six months as researchers try to push predictions further out.

“We are trying to determine if a drought is likely,” he says. “Whether or not drought has a higher probability in the next two seasons.”

The new forecast tool will sit alongside the New Zealand Drought Index which was developed and launched in 2017. It measures the status of drought across the country and measures the duration and intensity of recent dryness. In other words, it is an observation of drought once it has happened.

NIWA also provides seasonal climate outlooks each month that look three months ahead, but they are not drought specific. The new tool will try and foresee the potential for dryness and drought and therefore limit the risk of being caught out by drought. Until now, NZ meteorology has been using a climate model with a 100km resolution which describes the distance between nodes on a grid.

That will move progressively toward a resolution

of 5km which will in effect give them more detail for locations within NZ’s terrain.

Noll says NZ has many regions where mountains closely border farmland – such as Tasman – where current forecasting struggles to predict weather. Increasing the resolution will increase the ability to forecast within a region.

Past models looked at weather patterns such as El Nino and La Nina to predict seasons, whereas this model will take that information plus more data and techniques to better predict what lies ahead. Noll says there is huge potential to improve the accuracy of the modelling and then push it out to the masses through the web.

“The goal is to push the science as far as we can with current meteorology.”

The new forecasting tool will be available on the NIWA website at the end of 2023 and will supplement other tools used by farmers. Noll says it will give a bit more clarity for farmers and growers when they are planning. Earlier dry or drought warnings can help determine stocking levels, water storage and feed management options.

“There is going to be another summer like the one in 2019-20 and there will be more events with increasing frequency. So to have all our ducks in a row now will set New Zealand up as a nation to cope with those events.”

Development of the new tool will cost $200,000 and is being jointly funded through the Ministry of Primary Industries and NIWA.

Meteorologist Ben Noll.

Automatic calf feeding with

Solar vision

is becoming a stipulation for more local body resource consents. In countries like Japan, with limited land, they now go hand-in-hand with 120 different crops grown under the panels.

sealing the remains of the nuclear power plant which suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 1986.

Coming late to the party with energy generated from solar farming could give New Zealand the opportunity to avoid some issues that have cropped up overseas, and integrate the structures more smoothly into our commercial rural landscapes.

The increase in solar farms around the globe is leading to a new type of farming – agrivoltaics –running livestock, usually sheep, under the photovoltaic panels as well as cropping.

Incorporating farming operations under the panels is being seen more often and

There is much to appreciate as the photovoltaic panels silently harvest energy from the sun and pump it into national grids, as the world moves toward a zero carbon future. But they have also come in for criticism from some farmers and environmentalists. Some large utility solar farms overseas have been described as ecological wastelands, with spraying or mowing to keep weeds down and little biodiversity going on under them. Placing them on undeveloped land has seen the shading damaging native ecosystems.

The preferred option is to put the solar farms on ‘brownfields’ – previously developed land that is underused like old mining areas or has issues with toxic residue from industry.

Possibly the most famous is a 1MW plant developed by Solar Chernobyl, just 100 metres from the giant metal dome

Radiation contamination means land in the area can’t be used for agriculture, and there are plans to expand the operation to 100MW.

But good quality agricultural land falling out of production has been one of the biggest bugbears of local rural communities as arrays have been built in the countryside.

The best places to site solar are often the best places for farming. Flat land close to urban areas which can hook into transmission networks.

Incorporating farming under the panels could be a win-win.

Solar panels operate better in cooler conditions – one of the most efficient is a floating array that sits on an alpine lake in the Swiss mountain village of Bourg-SaintPierre, which is 1810m above sea level.

Having crops and pasture under the panels raises moisture levels and cools the panels. Studies several years ago by

Following a boom overseas, the power of the sun is about to be captured by Kiwi farmers. By Delwyn Dickey.

the universities of Arizona and Maryland found evaporation from the crops below, kept the panels 9C cooler and increased their energy generation by 2%.

Meanwhile, the soil under the panels retains about 300% more water with crops, depending on the species, up to three times more productive with the shade, and water consumption reduced by nearly 160%.

Sheep also appreciate the shade and are able to graze areas it would be hard for mowers to reach.

This coexistence has seen the rise of solar grazers - sheep farmers whose whole operation consists of running flocks under the panels often on multiple solar farms. In the United States they have their own association. But the big power companies aren’t the only ones interested in solar arrays.

While about 35% of generated power globally comes from big solar farms, owned and operated by commercial power companies, the rest are smaller community and private use installations.

While 12 of the large utility scale systems

in Australia use grazing under panels, says Karin Stark director of Farm Renewables Consulting, many more farmers are using solar to help keep their own costs down, running sheep under their own arrays.

“It’s all sheep grazing, Merinos in particular seem to go well with solar,” she says.

“There haven’t been many cropping systems under solar panel trials in Australia yet, but AgVic (Agriculture Victoria) is doing a pear orchard trial which should be interesting.”

Australia’s largest solar/diesel irrigation pump was installed on Karin’s New South Wales farm, in 2018. Along with running a Renewables in Ag conference each year Karin is also part of a consortium led by the Queensland Farmers Federation, investigating how microgrids can benefit agriculture as part of a federally funded project.

Panels must be higher for cattle

Running cattle under solar is still largely at a research stage. The panels have to be

higher off the ground and more robust. Not just because cattle are much bigger animals and like to rub on structures, but also higher panels are exposed to higher winds.

Designing systems specifically with agrivoltaics in mind – both livestock and cropping – is behind solar energy startup Wynergy, at Tamworth, NSW.

This sees rows widened from 5-6m to 10-12m to allow for ease of movement and machinery, with panels raised from 1.2-1.5m up to 2.2m, founder Ben Wynn advises.

System components come from United States company Nextracker, and Soltec in Spain.

Ben has designed a system locally that sees cattle running under panels used to power irrigation.

Irrigation is one of the areas Canterburybased start-up Solagri Energy will also be looking at in the future, managing director Peter Saunders says.

The company is looking at a production system specifically aimed at reducing

The phase one build of Kowhai Park, next to Christchurch airport.

power costs, and continuity of electricity supply, to dairy farm milking sheds.

They’ve just finished an 18-month pilot on Canterbury dairy farmer Richard Stalker’s dairy shed to prove the concept.

While cattle, goats and horses couldn’t be run under the panels, one of Richard’s farm workers ran ewes under the array periodically, he says.

Planting alyssum (gardeners may recognise these white flowered plants) or other low-growing plants that will attract bees, but also reflect light up under the panels, is one thing they have in mind.

“We are using bifacial panels which will absorb light from underneath and generate a little more electricity from that,” he says.

They are dealing straight with the manufacturers for their arrays including buying their panels from Jinko Solar in China.

“The technology is advanced, but the model is pretty simple,” says Peter. “Farmers provide us with a small parcel of land, about a quarter of a hectare, where we build the solar array.

In return, they receive solar electricity generated on their own farm at a fixed price for 20 years. There is zero capital cost to the farmer, any unused power will supply the local grid.”

“Solar arrays in our rural networks will improve onfarm economics and network resilience. It will help farmers prepare for the electric vehicle future and contribute to NZ’s zero-carbon goals,” Peter says.

Ten Canterbury dairy farmers have already signed up with installation of the first array planned to go in the ground in April, he says.

Ultimately Peter expects to have a community of farmers in each of the main

dairy areas of the country. A recently approved grant from Callaghan Innovation will also help them develop a battery energy management system which they hope to have up and running within 18 months. This will see battery power kick in seamlessly if the power goes off - no more cups falling off cows or unfinished milkings.

Future projects include working with irrigation.

Like Karin’s set-up in NSW, high electricity demands of irrigation systems relying on pumping in Canterbury, mostly south of the Rakaia River is an area Peter sees a real need for solar.

“They’ve got a real problem,” he says. “The networks struggle during the summer months to provide enough electricity for some of the bigger pumps. It’s costing farmers a lot more to run those pumps because of that.”

The first solar park was installed in California in 1982 with an output of 1 megawatt (MW) – enough to power about 160 homes. There are now more than 9000 around the world producing over 4MW with the biggest single park producing over 1170MW, although clusters of parks around access points into energy networks can produce much more than that.

Panels aren’t forever Land used for solar farms isn’t lost forever, rather land leases generally last between 20 to 30 years. At the end of that time the infrastructure can be removed or new panels put in place.

The panels are still operating at 85% capacity after 20-25 years. While they will still have 10 or so years of life left in them, from a commercial perspective they have

reached the end of their productive life.

Todd Corporation – think natural gas - is behind the Kapuni Solar Power Plant opening last year in South Taranaki. Built by Sunergise the 5800 photovoltaic (PV) panels can produce enough electricity to power 500 homes. They have several other plants planned. Sheep are run under their arrays.

Far North Solar Farms has built the $30 million Pukenui power station on 12 hectares on the Aupōuri Peninsula. The 32,000 panels generate 16MW — enough to power about 3000 homes, and run sheep under the panels.

The company plans on building further arrays that will have a combined output of 1000MW (1 gigawatt), in the next five to eight years.

Meridian Energy plans to build a solar farm connected to a grid-connected battery energy storage system (BESS) at least 100MW in capacity on 105 hectares next to the Marsden Point refinery, south of Whangarei. This should provide enough electricity for 15,000 households.

They also have several other solar parks planned. Running livestock is also a possibility here but not settled yet. While they don’t have a policy on use of livestock on current and future solar arrays an agrivoltaic approach will be considered.

Australian company Solar Bay is investing $100m in a 150MW array next to Christchurch Airport.

Initially covering 220ha, this first phase of Kowhai Park will provide enough power for 30,000 homes.

There is room for it to eventually expand the array along with other initiatives, like green hydrogen, including green data centres and vertical farming within the

In Japan 120 different crops are raised under solar.

Farm renewables consultant Karin Stark, seen here with daughter Noa Elder, owns the biggest solar/diesel irrigation system in Australia.

400ha site. While still in its early stages and partners are being sought, agrivoltaics could well be part of the mix.

In northern Waikato, Waikato Solar Farms, owned by UK-based Island Green Power is going through the resource consent stage to build a $100m solar farm over 380ha leasing agricultural land from farmers in Waiterimu. This would see enough energy supplied to power up to

40,000 households. It’s uncertain if running livestock is being considered.

Lodestone Energy is looking at solar farms in five locations from Kaitaia and Dargaville, Waiotahe Valley, east of Whakatane, Whitianga, and Edgecumbe where that site will also supply power to local residents and industry including the Fonterra dairy plant.

In total they will cover 500 ha and

produce enough energy to power 50,000 homes. Taking good quality farm land out of production is always going to be unpopular and dual land use will likely be an easier sell for rural people.

Ultimately how successful agrivoltaics will be in NZ may well come down to how willing energy companies are to adopt dual land use and local councils insisting on it during the consenting process.

Canterbury-based Solagri Energy plans on installing no-upfront cost solar arrays to power milking sheds.

Running sheep under solar panels is the most common form of agrivoltaics.

Project Parore –Jobs come with funding

Katikati-based Project Parore is now able to put people, as well as ideas to work for the benefit of its ecological restoration projects, including those on dairy farms, in the catchments of the Northern Tauranga Harbour, thanks to new funding.

The $5 million over five years includes a recent $1,748,000 grant from the Ministry for the Environment’s Jobs for Nature fund, which together with funds from other providers means Project Parore can now employ four fulltime staff.

“We will employ a project manager, a team leader and two restoration crew members. Until now we have relied solely on wonderful teams of volunteers and landowners to do much of our work,” says Lawrie Donald of Project Parore.

Financial support has also come from Bay of Plenty Regional Council, Bay Trust, TECT, Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Katikati Taiao and the Department of Conservation.

“We are extremely grateful for the funding we have received, which makes it possible to implement our environmental programmes,” Lawrie,

who has been instrumental in preparing the organisation’s successful funding applications, says.

Project Parore’s mission stretches across eight adjoining catchments: Aongatete, Waitekohe, Te Mania, Te Rereatukahia, Uretara, Tahawai, Tuapiro and Waiau, all of which flow from the Kaimai range into the northern tidal zone of the Tauranga Harbour.

David Peters, the newly elected chair of Project Parore’s governance board says health and safety requirements, often restricts the work of community volunteers to planting trees.

“We are incredibly grateful to our volunteers and landowners and absolutely want them to remain involved. Once we employ staff trained to operate powered equipment and use chemicals, working five days a week on all terrain, we can more quickly make a difference at scale and help our vision come to life.”

That vision includes not only enhancing water quality and biodiversity but also creating wildlife corridors from the hills to the harbour by controlling pests, protecting native vegetation and carrying out restoration of coastal areas.

Entomologist Peter Maddison, patron

and scientific adviser to Project Parore, says work to stop soil and nutrients from entering waterways in the first place, swales to slow water movements and the planting of a succession of plants to stop sediment getting into the harbour is vital work.

“We will be growing native plants especially for these restoration projects at our nursery. We will not compete with commercial nurseries but grow the more unusual, endangered and hard-topropagate species.”

One of the first projects the new staff will be involved in is pest and weed control and the formation of walking tracks in the Waitekohekohe Reserve (previously Lund Road Reserve) which is a mix of native bush and pine forest between Lund Road and Thompsons Track and includes the Waitekohe Stream.

Lawrie says the team will also be available to assist landowners carry out restoration projects on private land.

Peter says another pleasing development is working closely with local hapū.

“We want to meld their goals and ideas with ours so together we can bring the native fish parore back to the Tauranga Harbour by improving land management practices and protecting waterways from further degradation.”

Improving the quality of water entering the harbour, ultimately leading to the restoration of the parore’s habitat will be one measure of the project’s eventual success.

Words by: Elaine Fisher

Project Parore trustees Lawrie Donald, David Peters and Karen Smillie survey a wetland restoration project in the Uretara catchment.

ONLY ONE SIDE OF THE STORY

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Press releases are designed to grab attention. Usually they have some truth in them, but often that truth is presented in such a way that it assumes greater significance than warranted, and sometimes important factors are omitted. With this in mind, Greenpeace Aotearoa’s pre-Christmas release is worth examining.

“Netherlands announces €25bn plan to cut livestock numbers: NZ can do the same”.

The headline was in bold to attract attention and many of the words in the press release were similarly designed to create impact: ‘crisis’, for instance. “The climate and biodiversity crisis require us to cut cow numbers in Aotearoa…”

New Zealand’s contribution to global greenhouse gases is less than 0.2%. Agriculture is half that, and dairy cows are responsible for half of agriculture’s contribution. It is difficult to see how a

cut in the national herd will effect global change and avert a crisis.

The biodiversity crisis is also a global problem. NZ’s loss of biodiversity occurred long before dairy farms occupied 1.7 million hectares (less than 7%). Further, at the beginning of last year, Sir David Attenborough commended NZ for its work in biodiversity. Government-funded work has been possible from taxes and rates, both of which involve payments from farmers. In addition, much of the restitution has been on agricultural land – the wetlands and QEII Trust native areas that put conservation to the fore for perpetuity.

The Greenpeace article continued with ‘other countries’ plans - such as this week’s Netherlands’ announcement to buy out intensive farming - are leading with demonstrations of what is possible, while NZ falls further and further behind.”

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Calls for New Zealand farmers to follow the example proposed for the Netherlands fail to acknowledge reality, Jacqueline Rowarth writes.

And countries ‘other’ than the Netherlands? Which countries? Belgium and Germany have been identified as being in breach of European Union directives but have not yet made any decisions, and even the Netherlands is still debating what to do, despite the headlines.

News that Brazil plans to increase its national herd by 24 million cattle by 2030 makes any attempts by other countries to reduce their numbers an economic sacrifice for no global gain. Certainly many countries in the developed and developing world subsidise their farmers and growers to ensure domestic food supply, and subsidise them to export surpluses, but that isn’t the same as subsidising them to reduce stock numbers.

The Netherlands plan is in response to ongoing breaches of the EU’s Habitat Directive. Since 2019, the Netherlands has been breaking the EU law that promises healthy nitrogen concentration for at least half of protected nature areas. The problem is that ammonia, coming from intensive animal management systems (feedlots) results in nitrogen in rainfall. The Netherlands has the highest density of livestock in the EU with 3.8 million cattle, 102 million chickens, and 12 million pigs in total.

The 13-year plan to reduce animal numbers is voluntary, at least at this stage, and includes compensating livestock farmers to relocate or leave the industry. Others will be helped to transition to less-intensive forms of animal farming, with smaller herds on a larger area of land. As the current dairy herd stocking rate is approximately twice that of NZ, it could be that the Netherlands starts to look more like here, except during winter when stock

will be moved inside because of weather and concerns about soil and pasture damage.

Whether this will reduce the nitrogen balance, which has already halved since the 1990s, is a moot point. The OECD reports that the Netherlands balance (loss) is almost three times that of NZ (187kg/ha in comparison with 63kg/ ha).

But omitted from the Greenpeace press release was the fact that the top exports from the Netherlands are fossil fuelsrefined petroleum, crude petroleum and petroleum gas. Fossil fuels are 23% of value whereas food stuffs are only about 11%.

Greenpeace has been urging NZ into what it describes as ‘a cleaner, regenerative food system’ for some time. Now the NGO is challenging political leaders to step up and “show the kind of leadership New Zealanders deserve”. The wording is designed to appeal to political leaders looking for a point of difference. It also suggests to New Zealanders that they might be being robbed of what they ought to have. Greenpeace’s final injunction is that it is “time to end the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and invest in the regenerative agricultural revolution that is 100% possible”.

The NGO is right; it is 100% possible to farm without synthetic nitrogen. But the implications are considerable. Synthetic nitrogen fertiliser has been estimated to provide food for 50% of the global population.

Researchers in the United Kingdom examined what would happen if England and Wales became organic, prohibiting all synthetic chemicals, as activists have urged. They concluded cereal yields would fall to 60% of what was being achieved

with conventional agriculture, forage peas, beans and potato supplies would stay similar (but more area would be involved to compensate for decreased yields) and vegetable supplies would also be similar.

Organic dairy would produce about 70% of what was being achieved under conventional systems, eggs would fall to approximately 73%, pig and poultry meat to 30%, and beef and sheep would probably increase as land became unsuitable for other uses. To meet the need, food would have to be bought from elsewhere.

Swedish research concluded similarly. A change to organic production systems would reduce yields by 40%, but in some cases such as potatoes, to 0% due to fungal attack. Of further interest is that the authors could find no evidence to support the contention that organic yields would pick up after the initial decrease.

This means that “100% possible” would not feed the population, let alone the projected growth.

Context is important. NZ farmers can do what has been suggested by Greenpeace but there would be consequences. Although it is not unusual to hear only one side of a story when passionate people are involved, one side is not a good basis for progress. All press releases should be examined for their grains of truth and only those grains should be swallowed.

• First published in Country-Wide February 2022.

• Dr Jacqueline Rowarth, Adjunct Professor Lincoln University, is a farmer-elected director of DairyNZ and Ravensdown. The analysis and conclusions above are her own. jsrowarth@gmail.com

Making the most of a doer-upper

Renewing fences and improving cow flow is paying off on the Blands’

Greg and Amanda Bland have made a concerted effort to reduce their incidence of mastitis and somatic cell count numbers during the three years they have been farming their Tariki dairy property.

The Blands have owned the farm for the past three seasons and have undertaken major improvements over that time. They went from a larger farming business and staffing issues to owning their own

smaller, but rundown farm, so they could take control and work the farm all by themselves.

“As we have started to tidy things up on the farm, our cell count has been coming down, and we are curious to see how low we can get it and maintain it.”

The biggest change to make for the cell count was removing four sets of cups and shortening up the pit, Greg says.

The cows just did not flow well in the

shed as it was with 26 sets of cups, with not enough room leading into the herringbone shed.

Now with the 22 sets of cups and more room, cow flow has improved, milking time has decreased by 45 minutes which has reduced overmilking and the somatic cell count (SCC) has dropped from 90,000 cells/ml to about 30,000 cells/ml.

“It gets as low as 16,000 cells/ml.”

Under the 150,000 cells/ml mark the

Taranaki farm. By Jackie Harrigan. Photos by Ross Nolly.

Greg and Amanda Bland with their herd.

Blands earn the Fonterra Co-operative Difference premium for milk quality excellence but they aim to keep it much lower than that.

But Waikato expert mastitis veterinarian Steve Cranefield, who spoke at the December 2021 SMASH field day on the Blands’ farm, says there is always a balancing act with cell count.

“Below 100,000cells/ml is great, but low cell count can also mean a low immune system, and you can still get clinical mastitis.”

Improving the cow flow made milking a much more pleasant activity, Greg says, and adding an automatic teat spraying station helped with speeding up the milking and ensured the cows’ teats were properly treated every milking, which also aided in reducing mastitis.

Admitting he is a great advocate of TradeMe, he says he picked up the Wettit sprayer unit for $4000 ($13,000 for a new one) and a quick trip to the

Farm performance summary

Manawatu where it was removed from a decommissioned shed.

“We use about three times as much spray, but it’s good to know each cow is being properly sprayed.”

In the past, the Blands have used the SAMM plan (Smart Approach to Minimising Mastitis), and then they went to a short-acting dry cow and teat sealing over the whole herd, but last year it worked out cheaper to do a longer-acting dry cow treatment over the whole herd and the cell count plummeted.

Teat sealing on the heifers means mastitis in the heifers was very low.

Cranefield says teat-sealing the heifers works really well, and in the cow herd, teat sealing should be used, but he has worries about the amount of whole herd dry cow therapy used as antibiotic resistance is growing. (see side story)

“Teat sealant is a great physical barrier, and it has anti-microbial properties. Sometimes you have a look up the

teat at calving and you can’t see itsometimes the sealant is absorbed up into the udder or the calves suck it out.”

Colostrum cow protocols

The Blands milk their colostrum cows twice each day, and they are out of the herd for eight milkings.

“We try to teat spray them before milking, but that often goes out the door as we get busier in the season. But we make sure we do spray them after milking.”

On the discussion between OAD and TAD for colostrum cows, Greg says OAD reduces stress on the cows and is easy for management but there is a trade-off with SCC increasing with OAD and that means milking has to be done very well with particular care taken with pre- and postmilking teat spraying.

Greg tests each colostrum cow with his Draminski conductivity meter before she goes into the herd. The conductivity

Greg Bland filled in the pit and removed four sets of cups to improve cow flow and reduce overmilking and milking times are down, along with SCC rates.

CHECKING OUT YOUR TEAT ENDS

Farmers should be taking time to assess the condition of their cows’ teats once every month, says expert mastitis veterinarian Steve Cranefield.

He told Taranaki farmers at a SMASH field day in December that examining 50 cows each month for teat skin condition and teat end damage is a good way of picking up any early indications of problems.

The target is for over 95% of the teats to be supple and over 90% free of teat end damage, or farmers should look to rectify the possible causes or seek expert advice, as these problems are precursors to mastitis.

Healthy teat skin has a fatty acid layer that slows bacterial growth reducing the mastitis risk, Cranefield explained.

If teat skin is dry the fatty acid layer is lost and bacteria will multiply in the cracked skin.

“It is critical to achieve good teat condition in your herd all year long - it requires the addition of sufficient emollient and full coverage of all teat surfaces at every milking all season.”

Along with cracking, teat ends can be damaged from the physical action of the miking machine allowing

bacteria to grow and enter the milk canal. Monthly teat monitoring will identify the teat ends as normal, rough or very rough/cracked and then action taken to undo the damage and minimise further cracking in the rest of the herd.

Poor pulsation, high vacuum or overmilking can cause teat end damage, Cranefield says.

Working with milking machine experts, or expert mastitis vets, to investigate the former is important, while the MaxT programme (maximum milking time) will help limit over-milking.

More than 500 New Zealand dairy farmers are using the programme, which sees each cow being milked for a predetermined fixed time or to a set milk flow rate threshold, whichever comes first.

At this point about 80% of cows would have completed milking and the clusters are removed from the remaining 20%, deferring their residual milk to the next milking.

Research shows the implementation of MaxT can increase the number of cows milked per hour, shortening milking times, with no loss of milk yield and no increase in mastitis or somatic cell count.

Teats with damage, like these rough ones, are susceptible to mastitis.

meter measures changes in the electrical resistance of milk, as development of subclinical mastitis (asymptomatic stage) is accompanied by an increase in salt levels in milk, which shows up as a change in the resistance.

“It’s a reasonable indicator but I always go back to the RMT (paddle test) where the detergent coagulates if there are white blood cells present and the sample goes thick - as confirmation of an infection.”

The other advantage of teat spraying before and after the colostrum cows are milked TAD is that it’s a good chance to clean the teats up, when they are often dried and cracked after winter.

Water quality is important for mixing up the spray, Greg says, and he likes to add emollient, saying glycerine is best for their operation.

When the bulk tank SCC for the herd hits over 50,000 Greg says he knows there is something wrong.

“Usually it’s one cow that has had a massive spike. “

Once he has identified the affected cow she is put on to OAD and has five treatments for the infection.

If she is a repeat offender and gets mastitis two or three times he culls her from the herd or sells her to a mate to rear calves on.

Development ongoing

Development of the farm is ongoing for the Blands, with fences that were “had it “ and lots of small paddocks and short races.

“We are slowly pulling all the fences out and refencing,” Greg says. The races are also in poor order and will be the focus of investment in the next few years.

“We know they need work, but in the meantime, we let the cows do their own thing and pick their track for walking - the important thing is to not push them.”

Top: The Bland’s Tariki farm has been a doer-upper project for the past three years - improving production, renewing fences, improving the dairy. Farm races are next on the list. Above: The Bland cows on the summer turnip crop.

Staph aureus - is it the big bugbear?

You have Staphylococcus aureus in your herd? So do 85-90% of herds so don’t panic, says expert mastitis vet Steve Cranefield.

Although the bacteria can cause the severe form of black mastitis, where the udder goes black and starts to rot, and these cows need to leave the farm as quickly as possible, generally Staph aureus only shows up in 0.5% of cows at dry-off.

“Most people have the bacteria in their nostrils and the bug is present on most farms,” he says.

“It tends to spread from cow to cow through infected milk, via the liners at milking, where the bacteria become lodged on the surface of the teat skin. But if teats are in good condition and teat spraying is thorough, the rate of spread is very low and the bug is easy to control.”

Staphylococcus aureus needs to be managed, not removed, Cranfield says.

“In herds where teat spray is applied routinely after milking, about 10,000 quarters are milked before a new quarter is infected.”

If cows have Staph aureus, Steve says long-acting dry-cow antibiotics should fully cure about 65-70% of cases.

“Most cows deserve the opportunity to cure during a dry period.”

Cows should not be culled based on a single Staph aureus culture result, he added, but culling was appropriate in the following cases:

• If SCC>300-500,000 at three of more herd tests over the season or

• If SCC>300-500,000 in the previous lactation, treated with dry cow antimicrobial therapy (DCAT or ‘drycow) at the end of that lactation but strong RMT positive or iSCC>300500,000 in the herd test in the current lactation

• Or if two or more cases of mastitis over the season.

Minimise the risk of Staph aureus in your herd:

• Test spray every teat after every milking

– Healthy teat skin indicates good technique and sufficient emollient

• Avoid damage to teat ends

–

Poor pulsation, high vacuum or overmilking can cause teat damage

• Use hygienic practices at milking time

– Wear gloves at milking time and clean them after stripping mastitis cases

– Milking infected cows last will reduce the spread of bugs

• Treat responsibly with antibiotics

– Treat clinical cases when detected

– Treat subclinical cases at dry-off with long-acting dry-cow antibiotics

Steve says there are two key elements to controlling mastitis: Eliminate existing infections

Infected cows are the source of infection for other cows during lactation.

a. Cull long term infected cowsFarmers need to make more use of historic records to identify and cull chronically infected cows. Too often clinical mastitis records are incomplete and/or poor use is made of historic herd test information so it is only the recent high SCC cows that are culled. Also mandatory culls (a high empty rate) often take precedence over culling for mastitis.

b. Drying off strategies - Farmers should all aim to achieve consistently low SCC throughout the season to reduce the need for antibiotic dry cow therapy at dryoff. Cows with a ISCC (individual SCC) of <150,000 cells/ml and heifers with a ISCC of <120,000 cells/ml can be regarded as uninfected and new infection can be prevented

with teat sealants although strict hygiene is critical when these are administered.

Prevent new infections

a. Identify and treat mastitis cows early - Routine stripping of the herd (eg a quarter at every milking) will identify infected cows quicker to minimise the spread of infection. Cow-side testing with Mastatest diagnostic system allows farmers to treat with pain relief, identify the bacteria causing the mastitis and only treat if needed with the best antibioticsaving money and improving cure rates. More than 20% of infections self-cure, Steve says.

b. Ensure good teat condition all year around. Bacteria from milking an infected cow will contaminate the cluster for the next five cows that are milked with that cluster. Teat spray trials show 50% reduction in infection rate if spray mixed and applied correctly.

c. Adopt efficient milking routines to minimise teat end damage.

Steve Cranefield.

A second-hand auto teat spray system is helping the Bland’s drive down rates of mastitis.

Three months to destroy a dairy cow

Adairy cow can be destroyed in three months with worn or incorrect liners and poor hygiene, according to New Zealand specialists.

While – at best – Kiwi farmers change their liners once a season, there is definitive science that supports the unilateral global recommendation to change them every 2500 milkings.

Loosely calculated, it means on a 1000cow dairy (with a 54-bail rotary) a liner change is (conservatively) recommended every 67 days (or at least four times) every 305-day lactation.

Multiple studies prove if dairy farmers use old liners on fresh cows, the damage to teat-ends starts immediately, and – for two-year-olds – it can be catastrophic. It also throttles peak production with an estimated (on average) 10-20% negative impact on total production – often resulting in premature culling because of mastitis or other health challenges coming in off the back of it.

The liner is the interface between the milking machine and the cow. Farmers can’t see them, but as they age, they accumulate milk and chemical residues, which are embedded in the liner-contact surfaces.

These calcium and phosphorus-based deposits cause a roughened milk-stone surface – like rubbing sandpaper on the teat.

Studies have proven that the friction happens 40-60 millimetres from the bottom of the mouthpiece – where the teat-ends touch the liner. It transforms the

Before Mitchell Johnston installed triangular moulded shells and liners they constantly needed two people in their dairy. Now, he describes milking as “a walk in the park” for one person. His average Somatic Cell Count is 90,000 on a 1000-cow herd projected to average 730kg milksolids per cow.

initial safe, low-friction virgin liner surface into a health threat for every cow. Because the liner barrel is under tension its entire life, it is typically more than 3% longer after 2500 milkings. Those dimensional changes are a result of the constant creep and relaxation of the material and the structure.

In high-production herds, the first clue that there is a problem with the liners will be a somatic cell count (SCC) spike. Falling production follows immediately. Acids that are approved for use in a dairy and that damage liners include Sulphuric Acid, Glycolic Acid and Peracetic Acid (Hydrogen Peroxide).

Ageing milking system liners can be a catastrophic health threat to otherwise healthy cows. By Dianna Malcolm.

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Out of sight, out of mind

Senior vet and co-owner of Vet South (based in Winton) Sunita McGrath BVSC confirms much of her work correcting SCCs and teat-end damage comes down to the liners.

“All the stuff we say about changing liners seems scientific,” Sunita says. “Farmers don’t see the inside of the liners day-to-day, so they don’t see the change in how the rubber moves, and the loss of elasticity.

“If they did actually see how the liner acts on the teat ends once they have passed their use-by date, they would understand the benefits of regular liner changes. As it stands, I’d imagine very few farmers are changing their liners religiously.”

Sunita assesses a lot of Southland cows, and she says teat-end damage remains a significant challenge to achieving good milk quality on a lot of farms.

“I’ve done quite a few visits lately where the farmers think they have a few cows with teat-end damage. When they say that, I know it’s going to be bad or potentially horrendous, because while they notice dry or cracked teats, they struggle to assess teatend health.”

She says to avoid mastitis, there are a

number of factors involved, but changing liners within the recommended time frames is definitely high on the list.

“Mastitis is multi-factorial, but if farmers want to tick all the boxes, get that SCC down and improve teat-end health, then regularly changing their liners is definitely something I’d recommend. If you don’t have good teat health, you will have mastitis,” she says.

“Bacteria on old liners is significant, but I think the teat-end damage from ineffective liners is probably the bigger concern. Often farmers don’t link the two.”

Problem solved

Southland farmers Mitchell and Kate Johnston milk 1000 cows through a 54-bail rotary all year around.

Mitchell was struggling with several issues in his dairy last season – including stray voltage. With cows projected to average more than 730kg milksolids this season, the detail is vital. Mitchell brought in dairy technician specialist, Lars de Kruijf (Milk R Us) to get to the bottom of the problem.

“When we came into this farm the dairy was already built, and the report on it from the company was 50 pages of nothing,” Mitchell says.

“The hardest thing with farming is

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Lars de Kruijf (Milk R Us) says that aging liners are the single biggest cause of chronic mastitis in herds.

‘This season we had heifers walking on for their second or third milking and they were just dripping milk on the platform, and we’d never had that before.’

sifting through the truth from the rest. Lars has been the real deal. He changed things we didn’t even know could be changed. He’s done lots of small things that have made a huge difference for us.”

One of Lars recommendations was to switch to the lighter and revolutionary Milkrite Impuls triangular moulded shells and liners. Mitchell wasn’t new to the gentle three-point milking science because some of his colleagues had already made the switch.

The design includes a revolutionary (and patented) air vent in the mouthpiece (at the teat entry point) of each shell. Importantly, that means the vent introduces air above the milk-flow, stopping splash-back (logically lowering the chance of cross-contamination between cows and keeping teats dry).

Its more even three-point milking system also makes milking and cup removal gentle, eliminates cup-slip, speeds milking, and improves teat health.

“Half a dozen guys in our discussion group already had them and another friend had them too. Originally, I thought instead of one air vent, I’d have four to

worry about. But they have been amazing,” Mitchell said.

They have been in a year now, and Mitchell says his SCC this year is travelling at 90,000 (down from an average of 140,000). The only cow he was treating was for footrot.

“Before we installed the new cups we’d always run two people in the shed all year because we had cows that didn’t milk out properly. Now, we don’t worry about that at all, and the cows are a lot more settled.”

The biggest upside had been breaking in their two-year-olds.

“Out of 200 heifers there might have been two that kicked a bit. This season we had heifers walking on for their second or third milking and they were just dripping milk on the platform, and we’d never had that before.

“Before we changed, we legitimately had all six people on the farm in the shed when we were milking the heifers. But once we got on top of the voltage and a few other things thanks to Lars, this spring was a walk in the park.

“The bowls are bigger but the entire cluster is way lighter. Our milker [Bex Copley] is raving about them now because she can milk 1000 cows and she isn’t worn out.”

Mitchell says they probably used to change their liners closer to the 5000-milking mark. Now Lars lets him know when it’s time, and they are consciously operating within the 2500-milking recommendations.

“They are easy to change, to be honest. One guy did our whole shed in two hours. With the old ones we’d battle, and have to cut the old ones out. That was a bit of a grind.”

Man on a mission

Lars says finding solutions for farmers is what drives him. A former farmer himself, the Dutch-born technician resonated with the science within Milkrite.

Knowing that aging liners are the single biggest cause of chronic mastitis in herds, he remains a man on a mission.

“Farmers see a 25% improvement in their teat-end damage within the first four weeks with the triangular liners. One of my farmers had 66% mastitis cases in his herd when we put the new liners in. He’s now down to below 10%.

“Honestly, liners are such an important subject.

“It’s hard to believe so few New Zealand dairy farmers are aware of it.”

Veterinarian Sunita McGrath says when her clients tell her they have a few cows with teatend damage, she knows it’s probably much worse than they think.

This example (using red dye) shows the difference between having the air vent in its traditional position (left) and in the mouthpiece (right). Milk splashback has been significantly reduced with the Milkrite technology.

Calf supplement delivers 5:1 ROI

Words by: Tony Leggett

New Zealand dairy farmers with autumn-calving herds can tap into a natural calf supplement that is delivering impressive improvements in weight gain and calf health for herd owners across the Tasman.

Innovative biological company Terragen is offering Mylo - a live microbial, liquid feed supplement for calves and cows - in New Zealand from this month (February).

Mylo has a recommended dose rate of 10ml/day and is backed by numerous independent, peer-reviewed and published trials showing calves receiving the product were 8.4% (5.8kg) heavier on average at weaning than non-supplemented calves. That’s equal to a 5:1 return on investment without considering the value created from the heavier weaning weight over the lifetime of the animal.

Terragen NZ general manager Paul Grave says the volume of science supporting Mylo’s potential to improve calf health and weight gain makes it a compelling addition to a calf’s diet. He’s been recruiting staff since late 2021 to support the roll out in NZ planned for both Mylo and a soil conditioner product called Great Land Plus, backed by an equal depth of research data. Great Land Plus has been used in NZ for the past couple of years by a few early adopters and Grave hopes the benefits of biological soil conditioners will become more mainstream as environmental pressure mounts. He aims to get key influencers such as veterinarians, dairy consultants and large scale calf rearing operation owners to take a closer look at Mylo this autumn. It is used widely across the Tasman, boosting growth rates in more than 80,000 calves and improving milk production in 65,000 cows in Australia last year. Mylo contains live bacteria that produce substances which improve the digestibility of the food the calf consumes. The bacteria in Mylo improve fatty acid production – providing energy for the animal – and also form a biofilm barrier in the rumen that reduces the impact of

pathogenic bacteria also present. It creates a more efficient rumen which improves weight gain.

“The numbers really do stack up well. Calves in several trials reached target weights an average of 10 days earlier than un-supplemented calves,” he says.

He expects there might be some hesitancy to adopting a probiotic product like Mylo but is confident the science is robust and proves the efficiency gains are achievable in NZ farm conditions.

We’ve spent time talking to veterinarians and consultants who have been open to the product because there is so much science behind the claims we’re making.”

“We believe the timing is good for New Zealand calf rearers to take a look at Mylo because there is a desire from farmers to do more with less, which is exactly what this supplement will deliver.”

Terragen has built its research over the past decade, employing a total of 11 scientists to develop and test Mylo and the soil conditioning product Great Land Plus.

“There are thousands of strains of probiotic available, but they don’t all deliver the same benefit. Our team of scientists has genome sequenced the strains we are using, and then determined which strains work, and more importantly, how they work together to create a bigger impact.”

“The key to unlocking the performance of probiotics is knowing how the

individual strains work together. It’s a bit like putting together a rugby team that works together, rather than a team of all locks or flankers.”

Other trials have been completed by staff at the University of Queensland Veterinary School, Melbourne University and Murdoch University. A trial at the Ellinbank Dairy Research Station in eastern Victoria’s dairy farming region has just ended and data analysis is underway. Another 18-month long study of 145 cows is being undertaken in a working dairy farm in Victoria. The results are expected to be released soon.

“It’s too early to say what the latest Ellinbank trial will tell us, but the important thing here for New Zealand dairy farmers is it is operating a pasturebased system, very similar to what happens here.”

The 18-month trial is also recording many other aspects of cow performance, including somatic cell count, lameness, antibiotic use and methane emissions in all 145 head. Grave is hoping to get the science peer reviewed by NZ scientists, and then consider funding more trial work here to expand it for NZ farm systems.

The plan is to offer Mylo to farmers through both rural retail and veterinary channels.

An upgraded website goes live midFebruary and will offer farmers the chance to review the science for themselves.

A trial at the Allanbank Dairy Research Station in eastern Victoria’s dairy farming region has just ended and data analysis is underway.

Train your team to tell you when they are sick

STOCK VET VOICE

in order to move the herd. If you stand by the gate and call the cows, they will come –the lead cows will rouse the herd and lead them out, they know the routine. If they don’t, they will quickly pick up the routine when given the opportunity to do so.

More importantly though - if you are not in the paddock rounding the cows up from the back of the bike, but rather, standing at the gate watching the herd walk past, you have created the most valuable opportunity of the day to notice the cows which need attending to.

And if this comes as a surprise to you, how else is your behaviour (and that of your staff) affecting what your team of cows can tell you?

Taking the pressure off the herd at shifting allows sick cows to show themselves to you – it is then up to you to notice them

So what do you need to look out for when you are looking for a cow that is just starting to get sick in a herd?

First, cows like order – they have a milking order, and they have an order for shifting – if you notice their order, you will notice out-of-place cows. A sick cow is not often able to maintain her place in the herd.

Words by: Lisa Whitfield

Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to work as a relief milker on a local farm. This experience has opened my eyes to the practical reality of dairy farming – there is always more work to do!

One aspect I have never appreciated so acutely, prior to working as a farmer, is just how much time is added to your day when there is a sick cow which needs attending to. The attitude of “I’ll see how she is tomorrow” is a very common approach to sick cows – I can understand why it has developed, however, if you want to get the best out of your herd, the ‘wait and see’ approach needs to change.

Lisa Whitfield

how early they are treated. Picking these cows out and examining them early will often mean the cow not only survives, but recovers faster and with less impact on her health and production than if they are left to ‘see how they are tomorrow’. If you can head these diseases off before a cow becomes very sick, it will save you time and money.

What I have seen demonstrated time and time again on the farm, is that the most likely time to identify a sick cow early on is when a herd is being shifted. Whether it is on the way to milking, or just moving to a new paddock, or even to a new break –did you know that your actions at these critical timepoints impact your ability to find sick cows?

Second, the cow may be slow or sluggish – she may lag behind – this type of sick cow needs attending to as soon as possible.

Third, if you are following the herd to the shed, don’t hassle them to move faster - give them space and the sick cows will stand out.

And lastly her eyes, rather than being bright and alert, might be described as ‘off’. They may be sunken, and some would describe the cow as looking internally – her focus is not on what is going on around her, but on what is making her feel unwell. She may look ‘tired’ and her ears may droop.

There are a number of serious diseases, such as pneumonia or toxic mastitis, where outcome for the cow is determined by

When you or your staff are shifting the herd – how do you get the herd out of the paddock?

It should come as no surprise to you that you do not have to go into the paddock

It is absolutely essential to draft these cows as soon as possible for examinationdoing so may save her life. She may not be skinny, have a dull or rough coat or be off her milk yet, but if you pick up the early signs which indicate she might be sick –and act on them – more often than not you will be correct.

• Lisa Whitfield, is a Manawatu production animal veterinarian.

Farmers who trust Time Capsules year after year have their own reasons:

Timing is everything

Rapid protection in the face of a challenge

Peace of mind

The Time Capsule provides consistent daily protection against FE

Easy to administer

One capsule provides 4 weeks protection in cattle and 6 weeks protection in sheep

Nothing left behind

The Time Capsule leaves zero residue in the animal (dissolves completely), plus packaging is recyclable

No visible signs of FE in your stock?

Your greater concern should be the liver damage that may be occurring and resulting sub-clinical effects on your animals.

Sub-clinical FE in sheep

Reduced Growth Rates

Lower lambing percentage

Reduced lifetime production

Reduced longevity + earlier culling

Sub-clinical FE in cattle

Reduced Growth Rates

Reduction in milk production

Reduced lifetime performance

Reduced longevity & mating performance

Choose The Time Capsule - used, proven and trusted by NZ farmers for over 25 years.

For every golden capsule found, we’ll also donate $1,000 to Rural Support Trust*!

*One golden capsule to be found in each size range. See https://www.nzagritrade.co.nz/The-Time-Capsule for full Terms and Conditions.

HONOURS IN THE DAIRY

Working on a dairy farm is not what Paige Harris thought she would be doing after university but now it’s exactly where she wants to be.

Milking 550 cows on 310 hectares near Balfour in northern Southland, the 24-yearold says she is still only “scratching the surface” of dairying.

“All my friends and family were saying ‘what are you doing milking cows with a first-class honours degree’ but if I really want to connect with farmers, I need to understand the role and the only way to do that is by milking.

“You need a lot of tools in the toolbox to really achieve at dairying.”

The Invercargill daughter of an agricultural engineering dad and a motelier mum, Paige always loved animals and had hoped to apply for the veterinarian course at Massey University after studying sciences and agriculture at high school.

“But Palmerston North is a long way from home and I had no support people there. I’d rarely been to the North Island and if I didn’t make it into the course, which back then was highly competitive, what would I have done?”

Instead she fell in love with the Lincoln University campus and, with the university’s Future Leaders Scholarship for the three years of a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree, the decision was made.

“I’d also picked up a netball sports scholarship there but I couldn’t do both so I did Future Leaders which meant I could still do the netball programme at Lincoln.”

She did a fourth year, honours, with a DairyNZ scholarship.

“I didn’t intend to go for the DairyNZ scholarship. I had just really enjoyed working on dairy farms at Otautau in the summer holidays as part of the degree.”

(Her work experience on a sheep farm gave her a black eye over Christmas after her first attempt at crutching lambs.)

“Everyone said Susan Stokes, who looks after the scholarship, was the person to talk to if you wanted to go dairying.

“I hunted her out and she proved to be the queen of advice and connecting you with people. I still keep in touch with her.”

Susan introduced Paige to DairyNZ senior scientist Dawn Dalley and she worked with Dawn at the Southern Dairy Hub. Her

Former townie Paige Harris is enjoying dairy farm life.

Photos and story by Karen Trebilcock.

Paige is happiest with the cows.

university honours paper was on feeding R1 heifers on either fodder beet or kale at the hub.

“Dawn really opened my eyes to the science of dairying and the mentorship Susan gave me was fantastic.”

And although she didn’t intend to go “hectare hunting” at Lincoln, her partner is former fellow student Nick Blom.

“He invited me down to the family farm at Balfour and then he said we had to go look at the other farm and there ended up being three here. I didn’t know.”

Nick’s parents are Art and Helen Blom who also own a mussel farm in the Marlborough Sounds.

Their three dairy farms are all within 10 minutes’ drive of each other and between them milk about 1500 cows on 700ha plus lease land. Nick manages one of the dairy farms with Paige farm assistant on another.

She had intended to specialise in off-farm work within the industry after milking for several years but now the two of them are looking at the next step together.

“We’re flat-out saving money. We’ve got some big dreams.”

She’s identified they need to know more about financial literacy and people management and has found a diploma course at SIT (Southern Institute of Technology) covering both for this year.

“There are still a lot of things I can’t do onfarm like plough a paddock. Operating machinery isn’t me. I love milking cows and love rearing calves. The cows all have such quirky personalities.

“Which is one of the reasons why Nick and I are a good team because he does the things I’m not good at.

“The best date-nights are us hanging out with the cows in the paddock.”

Also on her to-do list is getting more young people excited about farming.

“I want to try to turn the narrative around and help educate people about what happens on dairy farms.

“I’m a dairy farmer with an urban background so I understand both sides and there are so many opportunities for young people in farming.

“I can’t think of a more honourable job than producing food for the world.”

And it is calf rearing that she excels in. A winter holiday last year took Nick and Paige to several large-scale calf feeding operations in the North Island where they looked at

different feeding regimes. At calving they adopted the one they liked – once-a-day feeding which also gave Paige more time to get back to milking cows.

“When the calves are in their groups of 20, when they’re about 10 to 14 days old, we slowly transitioned them to once-a-day using lots of electrolytes and a probiotic.

“We got them drinking seven litres each a day at one go with no issues. We weaned two weeks earlier than usual, weren’t taking any milk out of the vat, it was all stored colostrum, and we think they were the best calves the farm has raised.”

Helping the young couple is the northern Southland community which is a mix of dairy, sheep and beef, cropping as well as deer farms.

“You can drive up almost any driveway here and ask for advice and everyone was so happy that Nick had come home to the family farm.

“He still gets mistaken for his dad sometimes. He’s still driving Art’s old ute.”

As well as going to Dairy Women’s Network events, Paige is also a member of the Balfour Young Farmers Club which has been re-established after former members aged out.

“We had a first meeting to see if there were enough people interested and 50 people came. And then the next month 50 people came again so we had to get a committee sorted.

“In the spring you don’t see the ones on dairy farms and then in the summer you don’t see the ones on sheep farms with weaning and crutching but it works.”

Nick is chair of the club and Paige, after being on too-many-to-mention club committees at Lincoln, is happy to support him.

“I kind of ended up being camp mum at Lincoln. Coming from a motel background I know how to make a bed and can get any stain out of any piece of fabric!”

She said her childhood also helped her with getting work done when it needed to be done.

“Working in a motel is a bit like dairy farming. You don’t have holidays just because it’s Christmas or it’s summer. We learnt the value of a dollar early on.”

She said her family now, after their initial concerns, were supportive.

“Grandma brings out baking at calving and Mum and Dad will come to see the animals. Dad will bring the welder out to fix something.”

Her younger sister has also followed her to Lincoln where she is doing the Bachelor of Agribusiness and Food Marketing degree.

Paige still plays netball, but for former arch-rivals from her Southland Girls High school days – Gore’s Ex-High.

“I used to remember them being so tough but they’re a great team. It’s really good competitive netball and Nick can usually drive me there, which is great if I’m tired, because he plays ice hockey and the rink is right next to the courts in Gore.

“Playing netball really energises me and it’s nice to go somewhere and not talk about cows, even though the girls will give me a hard time if I’ve missed washing off some cow shit on my ear!”

‘I can’t think of a more honourable job than producing food for the world.’

Francesca Bennett and Riley Collinge both grew up in urban settings, but they see their futures firmly on the farm. A future that involves owning their own dairy farm with high-performing cows and feeding them plantain.

Fran arrived in New Zealand fresh from Warwickshire, England, at just 17 years old, keen to work and learn more about dairy farming from a family friend contact in Southland.

Riley grew up in Porirua and a three-week billet on a farm in the King Country immersed in dairy farming when he was a young boy sealed the deal for him. The Gateway programme through Wellington College on Kerry Walker’s Te Horo farm fostered his dream until a teacher suggested a Taster week at Telford, and sent him off with overalls and gumboots for a couple of weeks of Southern dairy life.

Two years later with a Telford Certificate in Ag and Diploma of Ag under his belt he was offered a job on the farm he did his diploma case study on, so he stayed in Southland and got busy dairy farming.

Not so busy that he didn’t have time to meet a young English girl who had fallen in love with dairy farming. Faced with a choice between

FUTURE’S ON THE FARM

using her return ticket to go back to England to return to ag college and staying in NZ to pursue a new life, she took the advice of a helpful Southern-man truck driver she was delivering dry stock with, who urged her to just “Go for itwhat have you got to lose?”

Fast forward five years and the now 28-yearold Collinge and 25-year-old Bennett have five years of Southland farm assistant and farm management roles under their belts (including a manager’s role on a 400-cow first year conversion at the age of 19) and have relocated to the Tararua region to be closer to Riley’s Wellington family. Add another three years (including one season contract milking) and the couple are variable order sharemilkers for Mark and Tanya Diamond on their 121-hectare Oringi farm.

The 110ha effective property has now been sold for a drystock block, but the long three-year settlement gives Riley and Fran time to enact the first part of their cunning plan.

They have already invested in a rental property in Levin and have been buying 40-50 cows each year from the Diamonds with first right of buying cows to go into the 240-cow herd.

“It’s great to see your own cows in the herd and in the next three years we plan to buy

A young couple hailing from opposite sides of the world are focused on a future in dairying. By Jackie Harrigan.

‘We want to have a small, high quality herd with a very low environmental footprint that we can run in a resilient and sustainable system.’‘

another 150 R2 cows, so we have 250 really good cows to take on to a 50/50 sharemilking job somewhere,” Riley says.

“We want to have a small, high quality herd with a very low environmental footprint that we can run in a resilient and sustainable system,” Fran says.

“Ultimately we want to be profitable and enjoy farming,” Riley adds.

The couple are focused on their future plans, and have been working and saving hard to give themselves opportunities.

They plan to be in a position to buy a 250cow farm after seven years of sharemilking.

“This is a job where you work really hard - so you need to be clear on your purpose,” Fran says.

The Gaisford farm peak miks 240 cows at a stocking rate of 2.2 cows/ha, producing about 107,000kg milksolids (MS), using imports of palm kernel, while silage and hay are made on the farm to feed out on the shoulders of the season and in the winter.

“The low stocking rate puts the pressure on to focus on high utilisation of pasture,” Riley says.

Turnips are grown on 8ha for summer

feed as part of the regrassing programme and usually yield 10t DM/ha. The Diamonds apply about 70kg N/ha each year and the herd is fully wintered on the platform. The Diamonds’ aim to operate a low cost, high profit-margin operation.

FOCUS ON COW PERFORMANCE

Riley and Fran are passionate about their cows, saying they are aiming for a good crossbred and efficient working cow - of around 450kg LWT that will produce her weight in milksolids each season. Last season they managed to produce 445kg MS/cow, so 98% of their body weight.

“We like the smaller-stature cows, and need one that has a good mating so we can retain the high genetic merit cows.”

Fran says Riley is a great stockman and has an uncanny ability to pick cycling cows.

The couple have managed to drive the not-in-calf rate down to 6%, 8% and 9% over the past three years and have minimal deaths, which means they can apply culling pressure to build up the genetic merit of the cows. At March 2021, BW was 128/55 and PW 53/66.

plantain levels in a pasture sward.

“We only breed replacements from the top cows,” explains Riley, “if I don’t like them they will get a terminal sire Hereford.”

“We get rid of any empties and anything that is giving us a headache.”

Fran says she gets attached to the cows and doesn’t really like to cull any, but they have to be tough.

“There are no three-titters kept, and we herd test four times a year so we can refer to the test and get rid of cows that have high cell counts or are consistently underperforming - there are no free lunches in our herd.”

The somatic cell count has been down around 60,000 cells/ml this season with only eight cases of mastitis.

“We culture every cow that gets clinical mastitis through the vets so we know within 24 hours what the bug is and how best to treat it.

“The herd test results are also used to decide which cows to treat with dry cow therapy, and we only had to treat 34 last winter, “ Riley says.

“The little things add up to be the big things.”

Left Riley and Fran in the plantain paddock discussing grazing strategies Right: Plantain prophet: Fran has just started working as extension lead with DairyNZ for the Tararua Plantain project.

PLANTAIN PROPHET

Fran has upskilled herself through the Primary ITO production management courses and says she has always been an avid field day attendee where she likes to ask lots of questions.

“I am pretty obsessed with farming and I get a bit excited,” she says.

One thing that gets them really excited are the opportunities they see in dairy farming, with no prejudice as to where you have come from - “there are still opportunities to progress for high calibre environmentally friendly farmers - you can go pretty far if you put your mind to it,” she says.

Fair to say the other thing Fran gets really excited about are possibilities of farming with plantain. When plantain was first planted on the Diamonds’ farm early in the life of the Tararua Plantain project, it was found to have a crucial part to play in the summer dry period, when the plantain was the only green forage in a sea of brown, Fran says.

Along with the turnips, the plantain is not a silver bullet but it is a summer lifeline.

First planted in a mix, with 4kg plantain seed in with 18kg hybrid Shogun seed, Fran and Riley have worked to build the plantain to 10-20% of the sward, regrassing 5% of the farm each year into the mixed sward.

The mix has lasted well over three years, as the two species have a similar growth rate and lifecycle, and while the plantain hides in the spring, it comes into its own in the summer, growing strong up to the optimal temperature of 25C.

While the first pure sward they planted has now been gradually invaded by weeds due to declining density over time, the couple are discussing what practice to best rejuvenate the plantain in the sward.

Possibilities are undersowing it with plantain in the autumn or oversowing with fertiliser in the spring, when the pasture is open and the light gets in to ensure good establishment.

The couple have also planted some pure sward plantain paddocks with white clover, finding them very useful for the cows to graze in before the afternoon milking as they recover from a long walk from the furthest 2-3km-away day paddocks at the end of the farm.

‘We use it strategically for animal welfare - the batt latch drops the tape and the cows

walk in to the closer plantain crop where they have a wee break and top up on the low drymatter feed, a drink and a restbefore the afternoon milking,” Fran says.

The Diamonds’ farm does not need the low N leaching feed in order to get a consent from the Horizons Regional Council, as they were already under the N thresholds, but each 10% of plantain they can establish in the pastures gives them a reduction of 2-3kg N leached, Fran says, which gives them head room under their consent.

“If you can get 30% of your sward into plantain, you can drop 10kg N leaching directly observed in Overseer, and for us on a low stocking rate grass-based system where we don’t want to drop cow numbers, and N application and imported feed is already low and it’s not viable to build expensive infrastructure, the plantain is the mitigation that is the most achievable and suitable. It

also comes with added summer growth and drought risk mitigation.”

Fran recently took up an opportunity to work for DairyNZ as Lead Extension on the Tararua Plantain Project and a half time role as Extension Partner in the Horowhenua.

The former will see her working one on one with farmers in the Tararua, guiding them through the advantages and logistics of introducing and maintaining plantain in their sward or as a pure sward.

She is excited about the opportunity and the challenge, saying farmers need confidence to make changes and to be successful and she is looking forward to helping them through the process.

“We are really lucky to have this opportunity to make a difference to our N leaching and to make our systems more resilient so I think we really need to focus on the solution and not the problem.”

Top: Fran and Riley’s herd at Oringi. Above: Riley and Fran discussion plantain strategies with Mark Diamond and Katrina Knowles from DairyNZ.

The struggle is normal

Personal tragedy and experiences of the Christchurch earthquakes helped build resilience for psychologist Lucy Hone. By Jackie Harrigan.

People can be trained to think and act more resiliently, says Lucy Hone, codirector of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience and adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury.

“It’s not easy - but it is possible,” she says.

Lucy is a Christchurch psychologist who started studying the science of resilience psychology after the global financial crisis in 2009 and studied for a Masters degree at the University of Pennsylvania. When the Canterbury earthquakes hit she put her PhD studies on hold to work with community organisations on building resilience locally.

In 2014 she tragically lost her 12-year-old daughter Abby in a road accident that also claimed the life of her friend and the friend’s mother. That personal tragedy has cemented her resilience practice and she recently gave a talk on ‘Soft skills for tough times’ as part of a Federated Farmers webinar series on wellbeing and resilience.

Resilience is actually quite common, Hone says, and humans have an incredible capacity to get through really hard events, by using pretty ordinary processes.

“Masten calls it ‘ordinary magic’,” she says.

That means that it’s highly influenced by our thoughts and actions and that we need to be self-aware of what works for us so we can use the deliberate actions and thinking that serve us well - for ourselves and for those who are dependent on us and we are role models for.

“The good news is that people can learn and be trained to be more resilient.”

Researchers interviewed Vietnam War veterans who had been held in prison during the war but who had made it home without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or mental illness

afterwards. Interviewing them, they found the resilient men had many things in common.

Critical characteristics of resilience:

• Realistic optimism

• Helping others helped them to cope with extreme stress

• Having a moral compass

• Faith/spirituality

• A sense of humour

• Having role models

• Having strong supportive relationships

• Facing forward and leaving their comfort zone

• Having a mission.

“Resilience is like a stew - a whole lot of ingredients thrown in together - so you don’t need all of them but the more you have in your life the more resilient you are likely to be.”

Stuff happens to us in life and we can’t control that - “I have certainly learnt that in my life”.

Whether it’s the mosque shootings, earthquakes, losing a child or events being cancelled, unwanted and unexpected change is often forced on us, she says, and while we cannot control these things, we can look at our response to them, and work out if that is working for us and for others in our life.

“You do need to be able to react, as things can happen very quickly and we can’t change the initial physical and emotional reaction to something hitting us like grief, but we can change and practice the longer-term response to be more positive for our lives.

“A resilient person doesn’t get stuck in one emotion, you have the first emotional response but then you need to use your strategies to be more resilient.”

Hone outlines three strategies for resilience people should use on a daily basis:

Dr Lucy Hone: ‘If you get that struggling is part of human existence, it prevents you from having a ‘spoilt-brat attack’ when things go wrong.’

Understand that struggle is normaL

“Shit happens,” she says.

As much as we dont want bad things to happen to us, they do, and so by accepting that this is the case stops us thinking “why me, why do I have to be the victim?”

Hone says it is important to role-model that understanding - especially to today’s younger generation who have a strong streak of thinking that everything should be perfect, timely, happen without hard work and be Instagram-worthy.

“You need to role-model failure, mistakes and bad moments and talk about them with your children - let your kids see that it’s a normal part of living for everything to not be perfect.

“If you get that struggling is part of human existence, it prevents you from

having a ‘spoilt-brat attack’ when things go wrong.”

We live in an era of perfectionism - and perfectionism is strongly associated with anxiety and depression and poor mental health, she says, and is very toxic.

“It is especially rife with today’s teenagers,” Hone says.

“But there are huge benefits to being kind to yourself and showing selfcompassion.”

Hone suggests to pause and think - what do I need to do to look after myself?”

1. Accept: this is a tough time and I’m struggling.

2. Understand: suffering is a part of life - I am not alone.

3. Ask and do: What do I need to do to

Choose where to focus your attention

We all have an inbuilt bias to see the wrong, weakness, threat of bad things, Hone says.

“We only see what we focus our attention on, so when our default is to ‘wrong spot’ things - what else might we be missing?”

Don’t get sucked into a vortex of lazer-sharp negativity, she warns.

It’s a fundamental resilience skill to focus on the intersection of the things that matter and the things you can actually change.

Is this helping or harming you?

A key to psychological health is having sensible self-talk - learn to refute your shonky thinking, Hone says.

A resilience training exercise for soldiers taught them to run scenarios - what is the worst case scenario? vs. what is the best case scenario? This draws attention to the middle ground, which is actually far more likely to happen, she says.

Another strategy is to use the catastrophe scale - before catastrophising, think about what is actually likely to happen? Will this really happen to help me or to harm me?

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) both train you to really examine your thought processes so you can work out if they are helping or harming you

in your quest to get through whatever is facing you.

ACT is now gradually replacing CBT, whereby you can teach your brain to get rid of shonky thinking.

Training in both these strategies is available online.

Lucy says she worries that we are becoming less resilient than earlier generations - particularly young people, who she fears are wracked with perfectionism and procrastination.

“Worried about not being able to do something perfectly, they are less likely to actually get in and give things a go.”

The antidote is to let young people fail, and teach them that failure is okay, it’s a part of life, it’s how we learn.

SMART IDEAS

Words by: Seonaid Aitchison

Recent data shows many dairy farmers are finding new ways to reduce staff working hours and achieve better work/life balance.

Last season, more than 75% of dairy workers worked less than 60 hours on average per week in spring, and most worked less than 50 hours a week at other times of the year. This is an improvement from four years ago when most employees were working longer weeks.

With milking typically taking about 17 to 24 hours a week per worker, many farmers have been focusing on milking smarter to reduce hours. They are also coming up with other creative ways to shorten the working week.

THE BENEFITS OF FLEXIBLE MILKING

Farmers report 22% of them are using flexible milking. For Taranaki farmers Daryl and Karyn Johnson, using 3in2 milking meant their team’s working week shortened by six hours each per week. Many farmers are having similar success with a 10in7 milking schedule that maintains traditional morning and afternoon milking times but frees up a few afternoons each week.

One of the main reasons farmers shift to flexible milking is to reduce hours, make rosters more flexible, and improve work/ life balance for their team.

USING A MAXIMUM MILKING TIME (MAXT) TO REDUCE MILKING DURATION

Introducing a maximum milking time can reduce milking times without compromising production or udder health.

Leaving some milk behind in slow-milking cows can increase the flow rate in the next milking, improving milking efficiency.

MaxT has helped Bay of Plenty farmer Gordon McFetridge reduce the amount of time staff spend milking and reduced the time they spend moving around the shed.

Fonterra suppliers recently received Insights reports showing their milking efficiency compared to similar operations, and how much time they could save by reaching 80100% milking efficiency. The average possible saving at peak was eight hours a week.

CREATIVE ROSTERING AND USING CASUAL STAFF

Align Farms in Mid Canterbury get their team to pick shifts, with the first pick rotating between staff. The most popular shifts are morning and mid-day, leaving the afternoons free. Flexible rostering means the team control their work week – they can pick shifts around other commitments and hobbies. It also means Align Farms can take on people looking for work opportunities including part-time positions. They describe these workers as some of the smartest people, and the farm benefits from having a diverse and interesting workplace.

Reducing the hours your people work to 50 hours or less a week reduces stress, fatigue, and the risk of accidents, and helps you attract and keep good employees.

Dairynz.co.nz/milking has more information on improving milking efficiency, MaxT and flexible milking.

• Seonaid Aitchison is DairyNZ Solutions and Development Specialist.

to reduce working hours

Season impacts on 10 in 7 trial

Atough first half of the season is making it difficult to see just what the effects of moving to a 10 milkings in seven days milking regime have been to date on cows and production at the Lincoln University Dairy Farm.

Farm manager Peter Hancox says the dull, grey days through October and November and wet weather then, has had an impact on pasture growth, making it difficult to get away from faster rounds (1820 days) right through to late January.

He’d expected slightly less demand from the 3.5 cows/ha due to the variable milking regime but says if that’s happened it hasn’t shown up in feed availability with silage being fed through much of January.

By late January milk production was down about 7% compared with last season.

LUDF farm consultant Jeremy Savage from Macfarlane Rural Business says based on DairyNZ’s variable milking research the farm had budgeted for a drop in production of 5% by the end of the season.

“Given Canterbury has been running about 3-4% down we think we’re not doing too badly,” he says.

Spring had been good with cow condition at the end of spring up compared to previous years by about 0.3 body condition score (BCS).

But the lack of energy in pasture through

October and early November had seen BCS drop during the mating period to as low as 4.4.

Early scan results showed a six-week incalf rate of 68% which was disappointing given the three-week conception rate had been above 60% and 100% submission rate by day 23 of mating, Peter says.

“We had a lot of cows in calf by three weeks and then we had a lot of long returns,” he says.

“We will be carrying on with variable milking next season so we want to see if there is a cumulative effect on cow condition and if that’s reflected in reproductive performance over time,” Jeremy says. Mastitis and lameness numbers had been lower over spring but in November numbers had risen following a bout of wet weather.

“So again we’re seeing a seasonal impact we think and it’s hard to say if the 10 in 7 lessened that impact,” Jeremy says.

Jeremy says farming is facing a strong inflationary environment with labour costs rising more than 5%, nitrogen more than doubling and winter grazing prices rising again this season after year-on-year increases.

It has had an effect though on people with fewer staff employed and work hours reduced.

Typically, the 560-cow farm ran with four, full-time staff on an eight days on, two days off, eight days on, three days off roster (8,2,8,3).

This season it has had two permanent staff plus casuals through spring and currently three full-time staff, working on a five on, two off roster.

“Variable milking may help make our businesses more resilient to that with savings in labour and, if we can get improved BCS in autumn, we should be able to save on winter grazing costs.

“What we’d hope to see is that BCS improvement reflected in our in-calf rates and a drop in our replacement rates too given a heifer costs $1740 to get to the incalf heifer point.

“What’s good is that we’re seeing 10 in 7 effecting some of those key costs where we’re coming under pressure this year.”

LUDF has its own website – check it out www.ludf.org.nz

A dull, wet spring has clouded the results of a move to a variable milking regime of 10 in 7 at Lincoln University Dairy Farm. Anne Lee reports.

‘We will be carrying on with variable milking next season so we want to see if there is a cumulative effect on cow condition and if that’s reflected in reproductive performance over time.’

Jeremy Savage, left and Peter Hancox – sixweek in-calf rate down.

All that BULL

While some farms are going nobull, using artificial insemination only, there’s a place for those noisy, big eaters who like throw their weight around. Photos and story

by Karen Trebilcock.

It’s the time of year on most farms to say goodbye and good riddance to your bulls if you haven’t already done so.

Those noisy, big eaters who like to throw their weight around are getting loaded on to whatever will take them and are finally gone.

Hopefully they have left behind not too many broken fences, gates, troughs, water pipes and legs – yours and theirs.

WorkSafe doesn’t identify injuries from dairy bulls. Instead it lumps them together with dog bites and other injuries caused by animals on farms. However, every farmer, and every stock truck driver, knows a story.

While all cattle can be dangerous, dairy bulls rank near the top. Usually kept in small numbers, they can become territorial and are not as used to people as milking cows. As well, when one has a go at you, it’s not a 500kg animal that is knocking you down but something closer to twice that.

Some farms are going no-bull, using

artificial insemination only, and it’s working financially as well as getting the cows in calf. An AI technician should get around 70% of every insemination holding, a bull is only at about 60% or worse. AI technicians get checked every season and some companies monitor their non-return rates daily. No one checks how many cows an individual dairy bull gets pregnant.

With the wide variety of semen products available, going no bull also gives you more options.

Short gestation semen is now bringing calving dates forward by as much as two weeks.

Hereford bulls, and most beef breeds, have a longer gestation period than dairy bulls which is why you will often

see a gap at calving from when you stopped AI to when the cows which were naturally mated start.

Bringing calving dates forward using short gestation semen gives more days in milk, tightens up the calving spread and means fewer days dealing with new calves. It also gives late calving cows more time to get in calf the next year and can mean them not having to go a year as empties or be sent to the works.

Using sought-after beef breeds such as Wagyu under contract, Speckle Park and Belgian Blue can also give you some extra income.

But going no bull means you are looking for heats for the entire mating period – not just the four to six weeks of AI.

They will lose condition over mating and if they are too busy eating instead of doing the business, don’t expect them to get your cows in calf.

That’s several months of tail painting and drafting and waiting for the AI tech to arrive. And finding cows on heat is far from logical.

Just because it is on heat doesn’t mean the cow is ready to conceive. Cows which are pregnant can still come up and it takes a good technician to know what a pregnancy feels like and how not to upset it.

A range of products and systems deal with these problems from wearables such as cow collars and ear tags that pick up heats so there is no need for tail painting, automatic drafting gates and heat detecting stick-on pads.

Early scanning is also a good idea. A pregnancy can be detected from about 28 days by manual palpation or ultrasound scanning by your vet.

Finding the phantom pregnancies – cows which have been mated and have not come back on heat but are not pregnant – gives you the option of treating these cows with hormonal interventions to bring them back into heat.

But remember PG shots and CIDRs are a tool, not a cure. Feeding and animal health is all important to get cows in calf and to stay in calf.

A mix of AI and bulls can also work and means you don’t have to invite so many bulls on to your farm.

Teaser bulls (vasectomised bulls) can work well to identify cows on heat but the operation is not cheap. Better is to run a young beef bull with the herd from the start of mating.

With hundreds of cows to ride, he’ll be shooting blanks but he’ll stir things up and keep mating rolling along. Any calves he does manage to sire will be easily picked up as they will have beef markings.

Or, if things start going a bit quiet and there are still lots of cows to come up for AI, stick the bulls in for a night. They’ll remind the girls what they’re meant to be doing and AI will be back on track again.

Extending AI to six weeks or more will mean you also need less bulls when you stop. The recommended bull-to-cow ratio is one bull to 20/30 cows. It means if you

only have 50 cows left which haven’t come up for AI you can get away with two to three bulls and add a fourth one for returns.

If you finished AI with still 100 cows left you will have to double the number.

If you are depending on the bulls getting cows in calf make sure there are at least two bulls per mob, just in case one is having an off day. However, you may be tempted to have just one bull per mob, especially as two bulls can unfortunately spend more time fighting with each other than charming the girls.

Make sure bulls are vet checked before you spend money on them. This will make sure they have enough of the good stuff and will not spread any diseases (especially BVD).

Go and see them before they are delivered. Make sure they are fit, have no issues getting around, and are the right weight for their age. Bulls should be at a body condition score of 4.5 to 5.5 prior to mating.

They will lose condition over mating and if they are too busy eating instead of doing the business, don’t expect them to get your cows in calf.

Walk through them looking for aggressive behaviour. If you can’t walk through them in the paddock how do you expect to handle them in the dairy yard? If they stalk you, leave them there.

Make sure they are delivered to the farm at least 10 days before they are needed so they can settle in and get over any soreness from trucking.

During mating keep an eye on them. If you have multiple herds, move the bulls between them to minimise any problems. Any bulls which go lame or lose too much condition will need to be replaced so make sure you have a few spare if you need them.

Infections, antibiotic treatments and elevated temperatures can affect sperm production for a month or more.

Looking after your bulls will make sure they can look after your girls.

Not one of the girls.

Autumn transition – Why is it so easy?

Words by: Joe McGrath

It’s a commonly held view that calving cows in autumn is much easier than the more common spring (it’s really winter) calving. But why so? Or, more importantly, is it, in fact, easier – or does it just seem that way because the sun is out, the days are longer and it’s not freezing cold?

It’s fair to say there has been no robust statistical analysis performed on this conundrum so I can’t categorically state autumn is easier than spring. However, when I analyse the nutrition/ environmental factors involved it’s true that autumn calving should be much easier for the cow.

There are two main reasons for this. The first is because the cow is coming off the back of summer and should be at the peak of her natural annual vitamin D cycle.

This ensures there are no deficiencies impeding her ability to mobilise calcium at calving. The second main reason is that the grass is usually not nearly conducive to the typical mineral deficiencies that we see in spring.

To elaborate, Vitamin D status is variable during the year, with the peak being in late summer and the trough in late winter early spring (see Figure 1).

This is important for cows that live outdoors. While the late winter level of Vitamin D is not clinically deficient, it does mean the cow has less resilience against other nutrient imbalances at calving time.

Cows that live in TMR barns have their levels of Vitamin D kept at the red line on the graph. That’s because nutritionists understand the key role that Vitamin D plays in calcium, phosphorus and magnesium control.

In autumn we have this Vitamin D “tool” working in our favour. Does that mean we don’t need to monitor what goes in our

transition cows’ diet – no. However, it does mean she has a greater chance of dealing with dietary mistakes.

The second variable is linked to the first. The amount of nutrient imbalance in grass is usually less in autumn than in spring. The primary nutrients of concern are N, P, K, S, Mg and sugar.

Generally, problem pastures or highly imbalanced pastures are due to poor soil nutrient profiles. In this case, when I mean poor I don’t mean under fertilised; I mean over fertilised. In many cases because we’re pushing too hard for the next tonne of drymatter growth without considering who the customer is (the cow!).

Autumn grass tends to have more fibre, hence more calcium and less phosphorus, sulphur and most importantly potassium.

That means the magnesium is more available, therefore less chance of tetany, greater calcium intake and, importantly with more vitamin D in the system, a

greater chance to utilise it and calve happy and healthily.

So are there any negatives to calving in autumn? Autumn often means drought, so less carotenoids and alpha-tocopherols coming through the grass.

These are important for immunity and reproduction. Also nitrates can be an issue in the grass, but, in general these two negatives are less common than the positives, so are outweighed. For a highproducing herd however they should certainly be taken into account.

I think we can safely say from a nutritional perspective, on most farms in most years and under the same management, an autumn calving will generate considerably less milk fever than winter calving.

The question is, are you able to handle all the other challenges associated with autumn calving on your farm?

• Dr Joe McGrath is Sollus Head Nutritionist.

Proven inoculants deliver maize difference

When it comes to maize inoculants not all products are created equal so using a quality Pioneer inoculant this season will ensure you get the best out of your silage. With most of the hard work done in terms of growing and harvesting maize, it makes sense to invest in a highquality inoculant to complete the silagemaking process.

Pioneer inoculants provide large numbers of the most efficient bacteria strains, these outcompete the naturally occurring bacteria and dominate the fermentation reducing losses and maximising silage quality.

It can be difficult to separate good inoculants from those that aren’t as product labels typically list just the basic genus and species information, such as Lactobacillus Plantarum. There is an enormous difference between L.plantarum strains and their

effectiveness to convert plant sugars into acid so it is important to know that the strain you are applying will deliver a desired outcome over and above an untreated control.

The strains in Pioneer inoculants have gone through years of testing and are patented so you know they will deliver a difference. Pioneer have been developing silage inoculants since 1978 and were the first to commercialise an inoculant containing L.buchneri in 2000. It is that bacterial strain that ensures silage stacks remain cooler for longer and reduce the growth of yeasts and moulds.

Using an inoculant is an investment so be sure to ask for information on both fermentation and aerobic stability as well as animal performance data. Don’t just rely on overseas data as our growing environment and ambient temperatures and humidity is

Urea: the only way is up

Every farmer knows that fertiliser is often the biggest capital expense on a farm every year. It is a necessary part of growing more grass and producing more milk. But with the pandemic in full swing (still) and perfect storms of shuttered gas plants, supply chain disruptions etc leading to a shortage of urea prices have skyrocketed with Ballance putting its prices of Nrich Urea up to $1440.00/tonne excl. gst in late January.

The high price of urea, as a staple input on many farms, presents a real problem for farmers’ bottom lines and makes the high payout in milksolids much less attractive. One way dairy farmers can reduce their fert cost is through maximising the efficiency of how they use their urea.

Urea dissolves in water (or effluent) creating an easy-to-apply product, straight to the leaf of the plant that produces more drymatter. With a Tow and Fert machine the major benefit is that you can use the raw solid product from Ballance and others, putting the urea into the tank filled with water, dissolving it in minutes on the way to the paddock and spraying on to the pasture. Doing this is saving Tow and Fert users up to 40% of their urea cost; that’s a significant amount of money at today’s prices.

The other obvious benefit is that the reduction of up to 40% of urea use is allowing farmers to go under the 190 units/ha limitations. Further to that we see on our clients’ farms that there

different from other countries so you need to be sure the inoculant you purchase will work in NZ conditions.

To find the best Pioneer inoculant for your scenario visit the Pioneer website: pioneer.co.nz or speak to your local area manager.

is often an increase in dry matter yield, or at the very least, no loss of dry matter yield. All in all a Tow and Fert machine offers farmers a way to apply nitrogen for less, drop their usage inline with restrictions and still grow the same amount, if not more, grass.

For more information give Michael Smith, Tow and Fert Sales Manager a call on 027 203 9774 or visit www.towandfert.co.nz for more information.

The bacterial strain ensures silage stacks remain cooler for longer and reduce the growth of yeasts and moulds.

BACK-FLUSHING SYSTEM WORTH THE COST

Cold water machine cleaning is successfully employed by Mr Clarence Head on a 180-acre dairy farm in the Putaruru district. Mr Head is a 50-50 sharemilker who believes the backflushing system he uses is well worth the $290 it cost him in additional equipment and labour. Since the system had been working, he has had only one or two grades and in each case the fault has been traced to vat taps.

A 3/4 h.p. centrifugal pump sends water through a 2 in. PVC pipe from an outside reservoir to the receiving can in the milk room. The water is pumped at 70 gallons a minute, which means that each of the 20 sets of cups has about 20 gallons of water pass through during the cleaning. This is many times the minimum requirement.

FULL DAIRY CARGO

The Port Albany has become the first Conference Line ship to load a complete cargo of dairy produce at Tauranga for the United Kingdom. She took about 6600 tons of butter and 300 tons of cheese.

50 years ago in the Dairy Exporter February

As NZ Dairy Exporter counts down to its centenary in 2025, we look back at the issues of earlier decades. 50 Years Ago – February 1972.

This achievement reflects the progress with developments, such as an improved working draft, at the port.

Another recent example of a large shipment of New Zealand dairy produce to the United Kingdom was provided by the Port Caroline. She sailed with 10,116 tons of dairy produce, currently valued at about $NZ10,581,000.

WOMAN’S TOUCH IN THE WORLD OF AB

Mrs Colleen Oden is a feminine person in a field usually regarded as the domain of men - artificial breeding with a Herd Improvement Association.

She and Mrs Shirley Johnston, from the Masterton area, are the only two women among the 80 or so artificial breeding technicians employed by the Wellington - Hawke’s Bay Herd Improvement Association.

Mrs Johnston was a herd tester before becoming a technician.

Mrs Oden is a housewife on a 45-acre farm on the outskirts of Palmerston North. Before her marriage she was a “town girl” who had never lived on a farm. Now, she shares the daily milking of 40 cows with her husband and works as an artificial breeding technician in the season.

A friend who worked in the AB service urged her to try the job.

Hesitantly Mrs Oden applied, passed the approximately one-month training course, and worked in the field. She liked the work so much that she is eager to do a second season this year.

No hint of coolness has come because

she is a woman on a job usually done by a man.

And she says that a woman can still be feminine as an AB technician.

STRING OF WINS TO FAIRWAY STUD

The Fairway Jersey Stud of Mr R. McHardie, Tauwhare, won the All Breeds Championship, the Jersey Cow Championship, the Oaks contest, the Progeny class, and the 1000-gallon class at each of the three main Waikato spring shows - Hamilton, Matamata and Cambridge. This is believed to be a record. Each time the Jersey championship was won by the same cow, Fairway Golden Sunlight. She also was the All Breeds champion at Matamata and Cambridge.

HOT NEWS - TUI’S PAGES FOR THE COUNTRYWOMAN

The path to opportunity is often well disguised. Have you ever found yourself reading the newspaper in which your fish and chips were wrapped?

A sixth former was pondering the question of a job for the next year. With all the time in the world she spread the paper out as she nibbled the fish and chips. The next moment she was phoning home from the school office for permission to apply for a job in the Department of Agriculture. She obtained the position and with her aptitude for science it was one that well suited her, but was out of the range of anything she had thought of till she read it in the fish and chip wrapping.

• Thanks to the Hocken Library, Dunedin.

Cover photo: A peaceful setting for milking time on a Central Taranaki dairy farm, caught by a National Publicity Studio photographer.

A mi can more than pregnancy status.

There's al y for improvement