Dairy News Gippsland June 2021

JUNE, 2021 ISSUE 128

GIPPSLAND REGION

TEN-YEAR VISION

Tough decisions and a focus on the future are delivering positive results at Newmerella. Page 6.

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

2 // GIPPSLAND REGION

Chair’s message

On-farm safety is everyone’s duty AFTER DOING a good job injuring my shoulder

in a fall a few weeks ago, it painfully reminded me that any injury on a dairy farm is a nuisance and very disruptive!

Autumn is always a busy time of the year as we prepare for the winter and the following spring.

It is during these busy times that shortcuts are often taken, lifting the risk of possible injury to a member of the family or team.

We need to make sure that as we work through these busy times, we continue to stay safe.

Accidents and injuries are costly and all too often can be avoided with the right training, procedures, equipment and above all else — thought.

How often have we heard an injured person say, “if only I had stopped and thought about it”?

All farms are not the same and even though there are similarities, every farm worker, owner or employee needs to take the responsibility to identify, assess and put in place the best safety outcome for everyone who works on and visits their farm.

Dairies are almost always wet areas which are renowned for slips that in turn generate many injuries.

An injury to arms or legs will not only restrict the capacity for the person to work but will increase the workload on the other dairy workers.

A recent leg injury to a friend is a great example of the dangers in a dairy.

After returning into the herringbone pit, my friend slipped on the concrete step landing heavily and broke their ankle. Months of painful

recuperation later, they are only now starting to get back to normal.

Thankfully, seasonal conditions continue to be favourable across Gippsland and the early indications are that next season’s opening price will be slightly above last year’s.

I believe now is a great time to identify and invest in not only infrastructure improvements to lift productivity but also an opportunity to prioritise our farm safety plans and invest in improvements that eliminate farm hazards.

Finally, as I prepare for an operation to repair a ruptured rotator cuff tendon, I urge everyone working on dairy farms across Gippsland to take care.

X Grant Williams GippsDairy chair

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

GIPPSLAND REGION // 3

Dairy farm is powering ahead JEANETTE SEVERS

TOBY AND Nick Leppin are focused on dairy

farming as simply as possible.

That means using the tools and skills available to them. The father and son are competent welders and Nick trained in boilermaking before returning to work full-time on the farm.

It means a lot of the work is done by themselves, and they employ a relief milker for three shifts a week.

They milk a 400-cow self-replacing Aussie Red herd, in a 50-bay rotary dairy they installed in 2003.

The recent installation of solar panels on the dairy is the latest innovation that enables them to make dairy farming as efficient as possible.

According to Dairy Australia, hot water, milk cooling and milk harvesting accounts for 80 per cent of energy use on a dairy farm.

Work undertaken by consultants RMCG for Dairy Australia demonstrated that in Gippsland, total energy costs per 100 cows ranges from $3800 to $8400, and averages $6100.

Hot water costs per 100 cows ranges from $660 to $2500, averaging $1580. Milk cooling costs per 100 cows ranges from $1080 to $2550, averaging $1510. Milk harvesting costs per 100 cows ranges from $690 to $1720, averaging $1200.

This breakdown has also been completed for other dairy regions, and is available on the Dairy Australia website.

In rotary and herringbone sheds in Gippsland, milk cooling is the highest energy use, followed by heating water and milk harvesting.

By switching to renewables and stored batteries, most farmers in Gippsland have typically saved $0 to $2000 per year in energy costs, with a few saving $2000 to $9000 annually.

Victorian, NSW and South Australian governments have energy grants available to assist dairy farmers change to renewable options.

There is information on Agriculture Victoria’s website about the free Tier One and Two on-farm energy assessments and on-farm energy grants — part of the government’s $30 million Agriculture Energy Investment Plan.

The energy assessment on the Leppin farm was completed last year and the solar panels and battery installed only a few weeks ago.

“We installed 96 panels on the roof of the dairy shed — the result of an energy assessment by a third party,” Nick said.

The panels were funded 50:50.

“It was laborious to do the paperwork to apply for the grant,” Nick said.

“I had to provide three quotes and two years of financial information. Then I followed up with them three times over six months, before I received confirmation we would get the funding.”

The solar power now runs the dairy and heats the hot water for washing.

“Heat recovery on the chiller feeds the hot water service with 43°C hot water; that alone reduces a lot of our energy use,” Nick said.

“When the power is not being used during the day, we get about $0.10/kW back into the grid.”

Solar power also keeps the two milk vats cool.

Toby and Nick have two milk vats, and it’s a strategy that has helped them at times. Particularly because of their steep terrain, if weather prevents or holds up the truck from collecting milk, then extra milk can be pumped into the second vat.

Nick said it also means they can keep milking, if the truck arrives to collect during milking.

“And if you have a cow who’s on antibiotics and you mistakenly collect her milk, you don’t have to stop milking; you just switch over to the other vat,” he said.

Having two vats is also an excellent way to identify problems with cooling the milk.

“If one vat is failing, for example, the thermometer is high on one vat, you know there’s something wrong with that vat,” Nick said.

“If the thermometer on both vats is high, you know there’s something wrong with the milk plant.”

One of the challenges they manage is the steep hilly terrain of their farm at Bena.

As much as possible, systems are automated, or constructed for application to be as simple as possible.

Auto-gates are used throughout the property, a simple set-up with a release timer connected to a double-handed bungee.

“I set it with morning and afternoon times over several days, using my phone,” Nick said.

“No-one has to go to the paddock to let the cows out. It saves us time and keeps machinery use on the laneways and paddocks to a minimum.”

The auto-gates are used on paddocks, laneways and the feedpad.

At strategic times of the year, when drying off cows and in winter, they use a concrete feedpad with a hayfeeder to feed the herd.

Using the hayfeeder on the feedpad is the most effective way of ensuring all fodder is eaten by the herd during winter and wet periods. It also means traffic is reduced in laneways and paddocks at a time when the farm is wet.

The concrete pad was installed in 2005, next to the dairy.

Recently, Toby and Nick purchased a second hayfeeder, to replace the original. The hayfeeder enables at least 110 cows to be fed from each side of the feedpad.

The cows’ heat detection collars simplify insemination procedure. Two base stations at the dairy use wireless connection to identify cows potentially ready to join.

“Using two base stations to scan the cows means the system is not overloaded with data,” Nick said.

The cows identified with a heat spike at milking are auto-drafted into a set of yards on the dairy pad.

Nick or Toby can then double-check the temperature pattern of each cow against years of data, decide if she is likely on-heat and administer AI.

Toby and Nick Leppin installed 96 solar panels on the roof of their dairy, after an energy assessment, to reduce their business costs.

Nick Leppin farms alongside his father, Toby, milking a 400-cow self-replacing Aussie Red herd, in a 50-bay rotary dairy, at Bena.

The self-replacing Aussie Red herd.

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

4 // GIPPSLAND REGION

Study tour visits Tasmania IN MARCH, 11 participants from Gippsland

and South Australia headed off to Tasmania to participate in the Don Campbell Memorial Tour.

Due to the COVID-19 lockdown last year, the Don Campbell Memorial Tour was unable to take place, however last year’s successful applicants were given the opportunity to participate this year along with some new faces.

The five-day study tour of the northern ­Tasmanian dairy industry took place from March 15 to 19, and gave participants the opportunity to explore different farming systems across six dairy businesses.

The chosen farms were all very different from one another, but all shared a common philosophy of staff retention and the importance of pasture management for optimum production and consumption.

Farms on the tour included a fully robotic dairy, a biodynamic fertilising operation, a Focus Farm and a Tasmanian Dairy Farmer of the Year award recipient.

The group also visited the Tasmanian ­Institute of Agriculture and a farm holding a top-six position in the state for BMCC over the past five years.

“Each of these visits was of great value, as the farmers openly discussed their businesses, their successes and learnings from experiences over the lifetime of their careers,” Young Dairy ­Network co‑ordinator and regional extension officer at GippsDairy Katherine Byrne said.

Dairy Ambassador Jonathan Brown at Rosemount Ag, Tasmania’s Focus Farm, and Share Farmer of the Year 2021 recipient with Don Campbell Memorial Tour participants.

Participants also attended the Tasmanian Dairy Conference and Awards Dinner, the annual Tasmanian Young Dairy Network ­Networking Dinner and toured Tasmanian Focus Farm ­Rosemount Ag, meeting dairy industry ­ambassador Jonathan Brown.

Ms Byrne said it was an experience to be remembered.

If you would like to know more about the Don Campbell Memorial Tour, contact ­GippsDairy on 5624 3900 or info@gippsdairy. com.au

BUDGET CASH FOR FOOD HUB The La Trobe Valley has benefited from a Victorian budget handout of $10 million to develop a food manufacturing hub at Morwell.

The hub will add new value-add manufacturers on to the existing Bega Cheese fresh yoghurt processing facility.

At 89 hectares, the vacant flat site will be able to accommodate up to 44 prime industrial lots, with the potential to support 1700 ongoing manufacturing jobs.

Victorian Regional Development Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said the funding would be a catalyst for wider economic and jobs growth.

La Trobe City Mayor Sharon Gibson confirmed two businesses had already approached council with interest in establishing manufacturing premises in the food processing precinct.

According to La Trobe City Council documents, the food product manufacturing sector already contributes $168.695 million to the economy, and employs 356 people in La Trobe City.

Gippsland is a significant fresh food production territory, and improved manufacturing facilities at Morwell will value-add to the region’s $7 billion food and fibre sector.

This year, Bega Cheese acquired the fresh yoghurt processing facility at Morwell with its acquisition of Lion Dairy and Drinks, which included the licence to

manufacture Yoplait yoghurts and dairy desserts for distribution in Australia and South-East Asia.

The total share acquisition announcement identified Lion was Australia’s largest national cold chain distribution network, with a national manufacturing footprint of 13 sites.

The Morwell site is Australia’s largest yoghurt manufacturing facility, employing 160 staff and producing 91,000 tonnes of product annually.

The La Trobe Valley received the funding for a shovel-ready project that has been several years in the making, and is one of a number of projects funded to enable transition from closure of coal energy industries in the region.

Vegetation buffer zones were planted, the land (previously agriculture) was rezoned from farming to an industrial and commerce zone, and a development plan for 44 proposed new industrial lots was endorsed by council in late 2011.

The site has access to transport routes and energy, waste and water infrastructure.

The $10 million funding from the Victorian Government will enable vital construction upgrades such as the connection of power, water and sewage to the site, and infrastructure to support the movement of heavy vehicles and manufacturing equipment.

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

6 // GIPPSLAND REGION

Ten-year plan delivers results JEANETTE SEVERS

CHRIS AND Helen Nixon created a 10-year

A seaweed and sea kelp mix helped drive pasture growth last year.

Using cover crops in 2019 and 2020 helped improve pasture growth, opening up the soil.

Using cover crops in 2019 and 2020 helped improve pasture growth, opening up the soil.

vision to change their farming management and they are halfway through that process.

It enabled them to make a profit during three years of drought.

Now, with a good season behind them, they are also seeing positive results in their herd.

They have made some dramatic changes to how they manage pastures, too, on their dairy farm at Bete Bolong and outblock at Newmerella, in East Gippsland.

Chris is hoping their new approach to pasture management will help them recover quickly from flood rainfall in May. The dairy platform is 280 ha, with river flats and hill country.

After 150 mm in the first two weeks of May, the herd can only access 36 ha of the flat country. Chris is using the feedpad to feed out silage every day and dried off the cows a week early, by the end of May. Five years ago, after discussion with an agribusiness consultant, Chris and Helen changed their farming lens.

“One of the big changes we made because of the drought, we have tightened calving — four weeks AI and four weeks with bulls,” Chris said.

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“We started changing five years ago and this is the first year we’ve pulled it right back.

“We still get 20 per cent empty in the herd; but the year four heifers had an empty rate of 17 per cent, and the in-calf rate in year five ­heifers was 90 per cent.

“We’re seeing similarities in cow families; we hang on to the fertile cow families and sell the cows that are costing us money.”

Milking 460 currently, 510 cattle (cows and heifers) will calve over eight weeks from late July.

They will then have time to come back into production, before joining begins on October 16.

“So the cows have finished calving four weeks before joining, and they’re in better condition for joining,” Chris said.

During the drought Chris and Helen used the opportunity to keep every heifer, which was business as usual, but sell every cow that didn’t perform to their standard.

“We realised we were carrying too many passengers in the herd,” Chris said.

“We had to make hard decisions, but it meant we stopped breeding from the wrong cows. We started relying on the heifers coming through.

“The drought made us sharpen up our management. We saw we were still making a handy profit, even though we were milking less cows.”

Milking less cows also meant they stopped relying on bought-in feed.

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

GIPPSLAND REGION // 7

“Fodder was $350/tonne landed in Orbost,” Chris said.

“To justify buying fodder, we asked ourselves, is this cow worth $350 more in the next two months?

“In dumping 100 cows because we couldn’t milk them, we did make a small profit.”

As well as herd health and reproductive status, Chris and Helen made changes to pasture management.

It began with cover crops, sown as part of a Landcare project in May 2019.

Four paddocks of sandy soil and 61 ha of matted bent grass were sprayed with Roundup.

Two paddocks were cultivated after a singlerun triple-disc cultivation and seed was directdrilled. The other two paddocks were oversown direct-drilled.

A cover crop was sown in May 2019 — 8 kg/ ha peas and lentils, 2 kg/ha kale, 25 kg/ha barley, 25 kg/ha oats and 0.5 kg/ha turnips, clover and rye-grass. A post-emergent DAP was applied at 60 kg/ha.

“We fattened 140 head on that crop in 2019 and, again in 2020,” Chris said.

“We’re trying to build diversity of species and improve root growth. We’re also trying to reduce the opportunity for bent grass.

“Our main principle is providing a mix of pastures and crops to encourage animals to graze for optimum nutrition; and manage grazing to encourage regrowth.”

A summer planting program incorporated plantain, chicory and lucerne; followed by a second winter cover crop mix.

“Some of the country we’ve put back into permanent pasture, and some of the country will be sown in early winter to a pea and oat mix,” Chris said.

In the following summer (2020–2021), a mixed crop of buckwheat, sorghum, millet, ­sunflower, tillage radish, purple top turnip, mung beans, arrowleaf clover, crimson clover, and shaftal clover was direct-drilled on the river flats of the dairy platform.

The herd grazed it four times over summer, in a 17-day rotation. The country was then sown to permanent pasture.

“The idea of each variety is that each plant or grass helps unlock the hidden potential of the soil and helps build fertility,” Chris said.

In May 2020 was the first application of seaweed and fish kelp, among other biological agents. It resulted in winter pasture growth rates of 30 to 40 kg DM/day on the dairy platform.

“We were able to cut mountains of silage and hay. We’ve applied it three times in the past year,” Chris said.

“We were halfway through the third application when most of the river flats went under water in May. “We’ll have to see how that country responds when the flood goes down.”

Dairy production this season is still strong, with the herd producing 16 to 17 litres/cow only a couple of weeks away from drying off.

“The cows haven’t struggled because there’s been plenty of grass. The cows are in really good nick and I’m really happy with them,” Chris said.

About 88ha of river flat are still available for the herd to graze. The remainder was ­underwater in May, affected by flood.

Some of the variety of cover crop planted.

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DAIRY NEWS AUSTRALIA JUNE 2021

8 // GIPPSLAND REGION

Taking a fresh look at life FROM HEARING a child’s reflection on

hope that emerged from the East Gippsland fires to observing his employer’s determination to keep employees safe from COVID-19, Jon Webb has taken a different perspective on life.

Jon, who works for Burra Foods in Korumburra, says a Gardiner Dairy Foundationfunded place in the Gippsland Community Leadership Program has changed his outlook.

The program wound up earlier this year but Jon’s leadership group is continuing to engage with the community and will distribute $14,000 it raised to a worthy cause in East Gippsland.

For Jon, the program was revolutionary.

“It was a life-changing exercise for me,” he said.

“I walked away with good friendships, confidence in myself and inspiration to get out and do things.

“It’s one of those programs that if you bring honesty, you can get whatever you want out of it.”

During the program, Jon was involved in an art competition for East Gippsland children and young adults that was designed to give them hope after the fires.

From about 90 entries, 12 were selected for a calendar that sold nearly 1000 copies and raised $14,000.

“We were mostly based in South and Central Gippsland but running the competition in East Gippsland,” Jon said.

“When COVID started it was quite a challenge, but we wanted to engage with young people in the community and help them through the healing process.

“We were amazed at how resilient children have been through this period. One entrant wrote how she was sad when the blue wrens d ­ isappeared after the fires but they came back and she was happy again.

“We can all take a leaf out of their book.”

The course participants are now reaching out to previous alumni to determine how best to distribute the funds to support the community.

Jon also took his new-found expertise and confidence into the workplace.

A production manager supervising a team of more than 50 people, Jon said Burra Foods was determined to protect staff and its perishable resource during the pandemic.

“I’ve been managing people for a long time, but the leadership course helped me to understand that everyone processes information in a different way and COVID has affected people in different ways,” he said.

“Stress has different effects on people and the course gave me strategies in how to hold a conversation and to support people in the way they need supporting.”

ADDITIVE SUPPORTS TRANSITION COWS A new strategy for improving transition cow management is a synthetic zeolite known as X-Zelit with a high affinity to calcium.

The simplified mode of action acts as a sponge in the rumen attaching to calcium in the diet and creating a shortage of calcium only while passing through the digestive tract.

This triggers the cow to mobilise calcium from her skeleton.

In other words, the cow’s natural defence mechanism for preventing hypocalcaemia is activated and the cow maintains its optimal blood calcium levels pre and post-calving.

This concept of binding dietary calcium deviates entirely from the Dietary Cation Anion Difference (DCAD) system.

Under a DCAD management strategy your pre-calving cows maybe on a different diet to your milkers due to limiting quality high potassium feed.

Therefore once she calves under the DCAD system the diet potentially needs to changes and her rumen has to adapt again.

X-Zelit is fed at 500 g cow/day for only 14 days and can be added on top of current rations used in the dairy or put into a specific lead feed ration.

Keeping it simple maybe one of the better options. This is achieved by using your current fodder fed to the milkers, use the dairy ration in shed and always have access to adlib hay.

Some extra magnesium may need to be

The graph shows how blood calcium levels are maintained well above the critical level of 2.1 mmol/litre when using X-Zelit.

added depending on the level in your pellet/ grain ration.

Daniel and Cindy Knee farm in South Gippsland, milking more than 400 cows and have been using X-Zelit for three seasons.

“Before I used X-Zelit, I would’ve gone through over 100 packs of 4-in-1,” Daniel said.

“My first season on X-Zelit I used six packs.

“Also the pre-calving cows are able to consume pasture or silage, therefore keeping the diet consistent before calving.

“My calves appear to be healthier and I have kept more cows due to less issues at calving.”

For more information, visit: www.x-zelit.com.au or contact Quadrant Solutions.

Women in Dairy is an initiative designed to bring women in the dairy industry together and to create opportunities for networking, learning and inspiration.

Become part of the program Contact Robyn McLean on

robyn.mclean@gippsdairy.com.au www.gippsdairy.com.au