Dairy Farmer July 2021 by AgriHQ

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CONTENTS NEWS JULY 2021 | $8.95

16 Milk Monitor Demand for dairy still strong for now

GlobalHQ is a farming family owned business that donates 1% of all advertising revenue in Farmers Weekly and Dairy Farmer to farmer health and wellbeing initiatives. Thank you for your prompt payment.

17 Border exceptions Government greenlights more migrant workers

ON FARM STORY 8 A good combination Team at the heart of a Waikato farm 20 Recipe for success Bay of Plenty farmers’ new farm for the new season

FARMING CHAMPIONS 7 Guest column – Chris Lewis 28 Dairy champion – Kane Brisco 32 Women in agribusiness – Amy Gillies

FEATURE 57 Calving

REGULAR FEATURES 36 Research 48 Farmstrong

20 Editor SONITA CHANDAR 06 374 5544 / 027 446 6221 sonita.chandar@globalhq.co.nz

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GERALD PIDDOCK 027 486 8346 gerald.piddock@globalhq.co.nz SAMANTHA TENNENT sommer.limited@gmail.com

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COVER STORY Waikato farm run by a multi-talented team

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GUEST COLUMN

Think long-term By Chris Lewis

The Federated Farmers immigration spokesperson and national board member takes a look at retention and fun as two ingredients to a solution for farmers battling staff shortages.

’ve been talking to a lot of Feds members lately about why we need migrants on our farms. It’s no different to the conversations I’ve had with builders, tilers, machinery operators – and the list could go on longer than the length of this article. With continued low unemployment, a lot of industries are struggling for staff. And in our case, with most available workers remaining in the urban centres, all of the primary industries/rural towns are crying out for labour. Farm Source, a leading job website for the dairy industry, currently lists over 1100 vacancies on-farm, far higher than the usual number for this time of year. I have talked a lot in the media lately about why retention of the staff we have is the cheapest option. From all accounts, this has been an area of extensive focus of late, with wages increasing significantly and better hours and conditions put in place. There has been a lot of leadership shown by our farmers on this subject. But this does not solve the labour/skills shortage. There is still a big shortfall, and we don’t control all the levers as the Government does. We can’t control urbanisation, nor the housing shortages that affect immobilisation of labour. Federated Farmers has asked the Government to allow 500 skilled dairy staff into New Zealand for the new milking season. A survey was undertaken in March to gain a better understanding of the staffing issues on dairy farms. The survey had 1150 responses in just one week. Survey results showed that 49% of dairy farmer respondents were currently short-staffed; 46% had vacancies unfilled for more than three months, and nearly a quarter had been unable to fill a gap on their team for more than six months. But I don’t want this opinion piece to just be a moan about all the things we

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can’t control right now. There are some things we farmers can control that may not affect you in the short-term, but long-term it does. With some farmers I talk to, their kids don’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps. That’s fair enough, they’re all individuals with different interests. But the biggest pool of agricultural staff traditionally has been the sons and daughters of our farmers and their staff. If we all can’t encourage the ones closest to us on the benefits of farming – the lifestyle, the housing, the great outdoors and working with animals, the motorbikes and all the rest of it – then how do we convince non-farmers? We need to think long-term. What does succession planning look like and who is going to buy your farm? Planting it in trees is not the solution for a prosperous rural community. So in the next year, I encourage you to take time out and have a think about who’s going to be farming your farm in 20 years and does that vision reflect your values and vision for rural NZ for your family? Make the effort to talk to your family and your advisors about what you could change. These potential adjustments take time. One of the best things we did as an industry was to develop the sharemilking systems – a career pathway to farm ownership, envied by the rest of the world. Let’s still be the world leaders on everything and take satisfaction from looking ahead to the next generations, putting in place the plans that will allow family to carry on your values and vision for your community into the future. My family has been connected to NZ farming since 1863, something we are very proud of. If you can take time out of your busy calendar to promote farming to those closest to you on your farm, and to children at the local schools by way of a

Federated Farmers national board member and immigration spokesperson Chris Lewis says dairy farmers are struggling to get staff.

farm field trip, tree planting day or the like, that would be very rewarding and helpful, because the genuine story told by our passionate members is more powerful than any initiative I’ve seen of late. We also need to be on the lookout for opportunities to make farming enjoyable and fun for our own youngsters. How many times have we heard about farmers’ kids who don’t want anything to do with farming after seeing mum and dad slaving away every hour of the day and worrying about the mortgage? Injecting some fun and family time into our routines can be just as important an investment in the long-term future of our farms and wellbeing as the latest bit of machinery or technology. n

A good combination Staff are the heart of a Waikato farm

The Westmorland Estate team that keeps everything ticking over are from the back, Steven Mathews, Aubrey Fish, Declan Tully, Eugene Dushkevych, and front, Prakash Pokhrel, Federico Lopez, David Cleary, Paola Verrycken and Dries Verrycken. Photos: Stephen Barker

By Gerald Piddock

A Waikato farming couple have adopted a people-first culture in their farming business, rather than focusing on how much milk they can produce.

he measure of a dairy farm’s success isn’t in the litres of milk in the vat or the number of cows in the paddock. It’s about maintaining the wellbeing of the people who work there because when they thrive, everyone succeeds. It’s a philosophy David and Sue Fish have adopted in every facet of their farming business on the three farms they own near Waitoa in Waikato, where they milk 1300 cows on 340ha. The “Westmorland Estate way” – as they call it – is recognition that the 12 fulltime team members they employ are the heart and soul of their farming business. “We could do nothing without them,” Sue says. At the heart of their ideals is the simple notion of respecting and valuing other people. David and Sue quickly realised they needed other people if they were ever going to reach their farming goals. As their business grew over the years, Sue says those people deserved the same level of respect they gave each other. That growth from 2014-2020 saw them purchase farms, improve them, either selling them for a higher value, or keeping and amalgamating them into the existing business. David says they grew because the opportunity presented itself and he enjoyed taking and improving those blocks so they were in a better state when they were sold.

After a while they sought out the services of close friend, Coach Approach’s Matthew Pickering to help them hone their ideas and offer some other perspectives, tools and processes, to help take their team to the next level. Each staff member had a one-on-one session with Pickering to identify their goals and values. The whole team then did an activity to learn more about each other called Tetramap. “The power of that is that it is fundamental to understanding how each individual person likes to be communicated with in any given situation. In our case, how that person

FARM FACTS • Owners: David and Sue Fish, Westmorland Estate Ltd Farms • Location: Waitoa, Waikato • Farm size: 340ha • Herd size: 1300 cows across three farms • Team members: 12 full-time and one part-time

will work in a team environment and which type of person he/she will work best with,” she says. “You may not have the skill, but you have the attitude we are looking for, that is important to us. As we have got good training programmes in place to support our team.” That process begins with background, goals and personality tests, followed by an interview with Sue, David and their business production manager Dries Verrycken. “Personality and attitude rather than experience are key indicators when recruiting new staff. These two traits also allow us to calculate whether a new employee is a good fit for the rest of the team or not,” Dries says. Sue says a new employee may come to the farm with no farming skills at all. “We have had people – especially from overseas – who didn’t know what a cow was when they started working with us and then in a short space of time, they’re operating a cowshed with 300-400 cows on their own,” she says. Dries handles all the training when a new employee starts working. This ranges from health and safety, farm rules, biosecurity, farm procedures, animal welfare, farm hazards and machinery maintenance. Dries says keeping our people safe is a priority.

Continued page 10

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“This covers every aspect of what Westmorland Estate means as a business and why it has been successful, grown and is profitable – it’s because of the people.” Sue Fish

David and Sue Fish own three farming businesses near Waitoa in Waikato, where they milk 1300 cows on 340ha, which they run with a strong team of 12.

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“For us it is very important that every team member is able to do every job on the farm and they get trained for it,’’ he says. They also encourage staff to undertake tertiary courses from providers such as Ag ITO, online universities, workshops and seminars. Currently, Dries and another team member are both in the middle of completing business diplomas. Other team members are busy with diplomas in psychology, ITO level 4, or finished ITO level 5, while some of them are going to start ITO level 3. Four of their team members also attended the recent DairyNZ Farmers Forum in Hamilton. “Each and every member of the team has come with some form of skill and we try to recognise that,” he says. “We have teachers, builders, payroll, masters in economics, agronomist, animal science, engineering in agriculture, computer graphics – powerful skills onboard that can enhance any business.”

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Originally from Belgium, Dries Verrycken came to New Zealand on a working visa in 2011 and Paola Verrycken who comes from South America, arrived in 2010 to study agriculture. The husband and wife team now have three children and work side-by-side at Westmorland Estate.

Sue credits Paola Verrycken, who oversees their HR, health and safety, administration and payroll, for being able to bring people together and finding out those skills among her team and enabling them to be demonstrated in the business. “And that can be as simple as having IT skills, openly encouraging them to use it,” she says. Sue and Paola’s aim is to keep the team motivated, well looked after, ensuring everyone has work-life balance. They also ensure that health and safety regulations, employment law, immigrations law, biosecurity and environment matters are met. Both organised team events, team rewards,

roster time off, workshops, seminars and check for new technologies in the market. To keep up team engagement during last year’s covid-19 lockdown, Paola and Sue held an interstaff photo competition and got the staff to create videos on what gave them happiness. All were posted on the farm’s website, created by Paola and their son Aubrey and on social media. “They were great and we discovered we have a lot of musicians among us,” she says. “It comes back to people and culture. This is all Westmorland Estate and none of this is from the outside. The culture that we have got is a combination of

The multicultural team, coming from Ukraine, Nepal, UK, Philippines, Belgium, Uruguay, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina, regularly get together to discuss farm jobs and goals.

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July 2021

everybody coming together and once you have got that, it’s protected to the nth degree.” They use a variety of sources to find staff, including word of mouth and job websites, schools and Facebook. More recently, people are approaching them looking for work because of Westmorland Estates reputation as a good employer. “That shows that it’s working,” she says. Westmorland Estate has the recognition from Immigration New Zealand as an accredited employer. This recognises good procedures and practices in place. Paola also convinced Sue and David to use social media to further promote their business. Half of their staff are from outside NZ and this helped those staff maintain their connections with people in their home countries. On a day-to-day basis across their three farms – Westmorland, Sandhurst and Somerset – the staff are organised by Dries with a daily roster of three days of work ahead. This ensures everyone knows what to do, everyone is home on time and that performance and efficiency of the farms are met. Westmorland Estate operates on a 6-2 roster to ensure their people get a good rest. Their main goal with daily jobs on the roster is to ensure no staff member works

Continued page 12

Paola Verrycken and Dries Verrycken get out amongst the herd.

more than 45 hours a week, Dries says. Sue is prepared to shorten that roster if staff start getting tired, which she did during last season’s calving. This had no effect on their pay or leave entitlements. Staff are also strongly encouraged to take hour-long breaks over breakfast and lunch and this, along with their work hours, are monitored using an app. “It’s really important that they take that rest time and eat well,” she said. Sue, Paola, Dries and David also sit down once a week and work out what the events will be for the week ahead and to keep up with new legislation, employment law, immigration, health and safety, team wellbeing, workshops, seminar, events, roster time off the month ahead and process any annual leave requests. “Everyone knows well in advance when they’re working and when they are not,” she says. Milk production is not a key indicator of success for the Fish business. The focus on production is something ingrained in the industry they believe must change because of the perceptions it creates around the success or failures of a farm business. While they have individual production

“The power of that is that it is fundamental to understanding how each individual person likes to be communicated with in any given situation. In our case, how that person will work in a team environment and which type of person he/she will work best with.” Sue Fish targets for each farm, David says it is not the Westmoreland Estate way to make these numbers public and undermines what they are trying to achieve around their business culture. Sue adds that the greatest thing Westmorland Estate has done differently is its people and its culture, and everyone working towards a common goal to produce quality milk, by nurturing people, livestock and land. “This covers every aspect of what Westmorland Estate means as a business and why it has been successful, grown and is profitable – it’s because of the people,” she says. Too many farmers are pushing their business to meet production targets at the expense of themselves or their team’s wellbeing. “David and I might set the (production)

targets, but it’s our team that strives for them and the only reason that they strive for them is because they’re engaged,” she says. “We couldn’t have done it all without our team.” All three farms are spring calving; two supply Tatua and the third, Fonterra. The farms all run on a System 4, where feedpads are utilised daily. The herds also spend the majority of their time on pasture. Maize to supply the feedpads is grown on 55ha of support blocks and palm kernel is brought in. While the farms are run as separate units by Dries and his team – Prakash Pokhrel, Ievgenii Dushkevych, David Cleary, Aubrey Fish, Federico Lopez, James Collins, Steven Matthews, Ken Ragasajo, Declan Tully and Barbara Hinton – there is integration between the

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July 2021

Owner David Fish and some of the team catch up before heading out for the day.

three farms when it comes to major jobs such as drying off. “We’re always there to give each other a hand. The team aspect is very important. “Dries says. The team do weekly farm walks to check on pasture covers and upload and update the information in Google Drive. This is used to create a feed wedge and make decisions around pasture management and how much supplement is fed out. On average, the cows are fed around 17-18kg a day of dry matter. “Based on pre-grazing average pasture cover and growth, supplements are then adjusted into it,” he says. The cows are dried off according to their body condition and over winter, around 10% of the cows are sent off-farm to a support block, while the rest remain on their respective farms. Starting spring, the three respective herds are split into two and run as younger and older mobs. Calving starts on July 1 and runs through until September. The heifer calves are kept on the farm and get a first feed of colostrum before being housed in their rearing facility. The calves are fed once a day in the afternoon on a probiotic formula to boost their growth and immunity, as well as being provided hay and meal on an ad lib basis. The calves are then weaned onto chicory and supplements until they are old enough to be sent to their grazier as yearlings. “Feeding them once a day has been a

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success; calves are heavier than before when we used to feed them twice a day. It also frees up the team for other jobs and puts less stress on them,” he says. The work culture David and Sue have created is something they refuse to compromise on.

They treat it as a living entity rather than a document that sits in a plastic folder on the desk. On a whiteboard in their office/ breakroom is a horizontal line drawn

Continued page 14

Farm manager Steven Mathews and Aubrey Fish head back to the cowshed after letting the herd go.

with a marker. Above and below this line are over a dozen words and phrases written which signify good behaviour or poor behaviour, which the whole team decided together. “Using a catchphrase to suggest below-the-line behaviour allows the recipient to reflect on their conduct, without having the conflict,” she says.

“Personality and attitude rather than experience are key indicators when recruiting new staff.” Dries Verrycken Respect, honesty and integrity derives from having this kind of tool in place. It ensures the team’s own cultures and values are known and respected by everyone. This is critical because so many of the team members are not native to NZ. They have a multicultural team, coming from Ukraine, Nepal, the UK, Philippines, Belgium, Uruguay, NZ, Chile and Argentina. “They are all working for Westmorland Estate and they are all working for a common goal, which is our mission to produce quality milk by nurturing people, livestock and land. Yet we come

Farm assistant Declan Tully and David Cleary get out with the pasture meter to monitor feed levels.

from all over the world, with different values and cultures,” she says. Their logo – Together WE Succeed – encapsulated the team aspect ahead of individuals within the business. Dries says when one team member makes a mistake not only are they

Sue Fish and Paola Verrycken, who oversee their HR, health and safety, administration and payroll, aim to keep the team motivated, well looked after and ensure they all have a good work-life balance.

spoken to, but they also look to see if there was anything they could have done as a team to prevent that mistake from happening in the first place. This team accountability was great, he says. “There’s no blame game here and if something like that happens, we have all failed and it’s really powerful,” Sue adds. The approach has been welcomed by their team. Longserving team member David Cleary says those who do not stay long usually leave because they don’t fit into the company culture. David says this team-first policy was the reason it had such little turnover among the ones who stayed. “Personally, I think it’s because the team comes first. The better we are, then the better we operate and the better we are as a team. They have always been like that, but now it’s just systematic and everyone’s bought into the idea,” David says. Declan Tully welcomed the inclusiveness between the business and their team. “They listen to you. There’s no divide between the people at the top and the people down below,” Declan says. “When you have problems, the business supports you and your family, and that makes you very grateful. I will do my best for Westmorland Estate,” Prakash Pokhrel adds.

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The team also has in-house awards, including an employee of the month, which all teams vote for. The prize for that award is an off-farm activity during work hours. “It’s a peer review from within the team and little things like that make a huge difference,” Dries says. Sue and David also credit local businesses as having a major influence on their success and are a part of their annual in-house team awards. These include Farm Pride, Values, Best Calves, Empty Rates and Somatic cell count. The awards are contested between the three farms and further drive their performance. The SCC on all three farms, for example, is now below 100,000, with the lowest for last season on reading was 31,000. The Fish’s do not understand why systems like theirs are not more widely adapted in the dairy industry, particularly in the current climate where so many are experiencing staffing shortages. While there is always a level of turnover as people progress through the industry to more senior positions, more farm

Farm manager Federico Lopez and business production manager Dries Verrycken chat about which paddock the herd is going in.

owners need to ask themselves why the turnover rate was so high. Sue says changing this trend can only start with the farm owners.

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“It starts from the top and changing their mindset to understand that people are the heart of your business,” she says. n

MILK MONITOR

NZ pastures lead the way By Gerald Piddock

Each month the milk monitor delves into the dairy industry and gives us the low-down on the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.

he GDT milk price has been fumbling along over the past month, falling five times in a row up to its mid-June auction. But nothing has changed too much in terms of the market fundamentals and prices are still pretty resilient, despite the 1.3% fall on June 15. For now, demand out of China remains strong, a point Fonterra chief operating officer Fraser Whineray made when he spoke to farmers at the Smaller Milk and Supply Herds group conference. The global economy was continuing its rebound from covid-19. In China, its government recommended children, elderly and pregnant women increase their daily dairy consumption from 300-500g as a way of increasing their daily health. “That’s only 200g, but there’s lots of people,” Whineray says. Yoghurts and probiotic products were a key component of that, with a six-fold increase of probiotic sales in China last year. “That might have been only 3.5 tonnes, but when those things sell for $3 million a tonne, it does make a difference,” he says. The pandemic still presented both risks and opportunities for the industry and while the new season was just beginning, demand remained strong for milk powders. He then made a point that industry critics either wilfully ignore or are ignorant that New Zealand’s WMP’s flavour profile gave it a unique point of difference because of the country’s pasture-based farming system. This profile, backed with farm environment plans used to explain the industry’s environmental footprint, was helping it achieve a $300/t premium over European-made powders. Not bad for a much-criticised ‘commodity’ supposedly without any value-add. That demand from China looks set

to continue at least in the immediate future. RaboResearch senior analyst Emma Higgins says the country was continuing to drive global trade. Its healthy appetite for dairy imports acted as the primary pillar of price support in the year-todate. “Import demand in China has been boosted by the ongoing recovery of its food service and retail channels – with demand in these channels now nearly back to pre-pandemic levels – and this thirst for dairy imports has helped keep farm gate milk prices on a higher trajectory journey for many farmers around the world,” Higgins says. Compounding this is modest-at-best milk supply levels coming out of the Northern Hemisphere, constrained in part by a spike in some feed prices. Those prices were expected to remain firm into next year, she says. “As a result, we anticipate milk supply growth for the ‘Big 7’ dairy exporters (the US, the EU, New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina) to expand by just 1.3% in the second half of 2021.” The bank was still expecting to see lower Chinese import demand in the second half of the year, despite lifting its forecast in early June to $8/kg MS. Its milk production growth continued to push ahead, which posed a risk of outpacing consumption growth, adding further pressure on inventory levels. “This, in turn, could change China’s buying pattern and have negative implications for dairy commodity prices,” she says. Other banks are a shade more optimistic. ASB’s team of economists in its commodities weekly said the recent GDT falls are no reason to panic. WMP prices are still running about 40% ahead of last year and other products are enjoying similar premiums. “While prices have edged down across

Fonterra chief operating officer Fraser Whineray says it is able to get a $300 a tonne premium for its milk powder over European sourced powder because of New Zealand’s environmental credentials and the product’s flavour profile.

all contracts, the curve remains flat rather than downward sloping. While we expect prices to edge down further from their highs, a sharp correction continues to look like an unlikely prospect,” it says. To that end, it retained its $8.20/kg MS forecast and expected global demand to outstrip global supply over the remainder of the year. “Aggressive Chinese purchases have yet to let up and, if they do, we expect the return of other buyers should prevent prices from moving too low,” it says. Back in NZ, the new season is off to a positive start for many on the back of double-digit production for April, up 11.6% compared to the same month last year and pushing out total last season’s production 2.5-3% ahead of the 20192020 year. The exception to this is Canterbury, as farms look to rebuild and recover from the severe flooding that hit many properties. The damage destroyed the winter feed crops on many of these farms, with the MPI appealing to other farmers who can donate feed or assist these farmers with grazing. n

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July 2021

NEWS

Relief for farmers By Anne Boswell

hort-staffed dairy farmers can breathe a sigh of relief with the announcement the Government has approved border class exceptions for an additional 200 dairy workers. The exceptions will allow up to 150 dairy farm workers in management roles and up to 50 workers in dairy assistant roles on-farm, along with their partners and dependent children. Almost 50% of farmers surveyed by DairyNZ reported having vacancies on farm, with covid-19 border closures resulting in the crippling shortage of workers in the dairy industry. “It is clear from conversations with the dairy sector that they are facing workforce pressures,” Minister for Agriculture Damien O’Connor says. “These border exceptions will go a long way toward relieving those pressures.” DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle says the border exception is a step in the right direction. “This is positive news for farmers who will be encouraged that the Government has heard our concerns and responded,” Mackle says. “We will be ensuring farmers understand the details of the class exception to be able to make an informed decision.” However, while the exception process will offer some farmers some respite for the coming season, the industry is still facing long-term labour challenges. Despite the continuing efforts of DairyNZ and Federated Farmers to attract New Zealanders into dairy farming careers, including the relaunch of GoDairy, the need for overseas workers in some parts of the country remains. O’Connor says with the new dairy season under way, migrant dairy farm workers will supplement the domestic workforce and provide critical support. “The Government and food and fibre sectors have been working hard to mitigate worker shortages by training and upskilling New Zealanders, but we know it takes time,” O’Connor says. “Dairy managers have specialist skills developed over many years, which we can’t replicate overnight.”

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Minister for Agriculture Damien O’Connor says the Government is allowing 200 dairy workers into the country to help ease the pressure on farmers.

Federated Farmers spokesperson Chris Lewis says now the job of working through the details with DairyNZ, Immigration NZ and the Ministry for Primary Industries will begin, to see how the 200 spaces can be fairly allocated across the country.

“This is positive news for farmers who will be encouraged that the Government has heard our concerns and responded.” Dr Tim Mackle

In addition to dairy workers, the border exceptions also include 50 veterinarians, their partners and dependent children. “Despite the previous border class

exception for vets, our domestic vet skill shortage remains acute, including hardto-recruit roles in isolated rural practices,” O’Connor says. “This new class exception will allow veterinarians to enter NZ if they have between 3-5 years’ experience and meet the remuneration threshold of $85,000 per year.” O’Connor says dairy farm workers and vets play a key role in animal welfare, food safety and safeguarding NZ’s international reputation as a producer of safe and sustainable food. “In making this decision, we’ve balanced the need to keep New Zealanders safe and ensure appropriate MIQ capacity, with seasonal and strategic skills shortages, and seasonal variations for overseas New Zealanders travelling home,” he says. “These new border exceptions will help drive NZ’s economic recovery from covid-19.” n

NEWS

$331k skills boost By Samantha Tennent

inancial risk management skills are vital to prevent business failure while navigating uncertainty and the unknown. Farmers cannot control the weather, commodity prices, shifts in consumers’ shopping habits or the changing regulatory landscape, but a new initiative has been designed to build business resilience. The Agri-Women’s Development Trust (AWDT) has been allocated $331,000 from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to research, design and deliver the financial risk management training course. The pilot starts this month, with the programme being delivered in six locations. “The aim of the course is to empower farmers and growers to understand the different types of risks facing their business, and give them the skills to develop plans to manage the financial and personal implications of those risks,” AWDT’s general manager Lisa Sims says. Up to 130 people are expected to take part in the Resilient Farming Business course during its pilot with sheep, beef, dairy, arable and horticulture businesses in Hawke’s Bay, Manawatū, Canterbury, Otago and Southland. The financial support from MPI allows farmers to attend the programme for free. “The primary sector is the backbone of our economy and it’s vital we ensure farmers and growers are equipped to withstand challenges facing the sector,” MPI’s director of Rural Communities and Farming Support Nick Story says. “This course will give them the skills, tools and confidence to help make their agribusinesses more financially resilient. Farmers and growers can’t control the weather, commodity prices or shifts in consumers’ shopping habits, but they can plan and prepare for change.” The pilot programme consists of two face-to-face full-day modules, one month apart. It also includes self-directed premodule and intermodule work, to help participants get the most out of the programme. It is aimed at farming and growing business owners and managers with

The Agri-Women’s Development Trust has been given a financial boost to deliver a course aimed at giving farmers the skills to be more financially resilient.

“The primary sector is the backbone of our economy and it’s vital we ensure farmers and growers are equipped to withstand challenges facing the sector.” Nick Story

financial responsibility for a business or business unit, with an existing budget and the ability to create and monitor a budget. Attendees must also have the ability to read financial accounts, including a balance sheet and profit and loss statement. Funding for the programme is part of a $1.15 million commitment in the 202021 financial year to reduce the risk of primary producers getting into financial strife. MPI has earmarked $500,000 a year for three years to help enhance financial literacy and risk management skills, and a further $100,000 has also been allocated to the Farm Business Advice

Support Fund to provide farmers with independent advice to help tackle farm debt. “This fund is managed by the Rural Support Trust national council and has already been accessed by more than 40 businesses. It’s believed the support has prevented farmers from defaulting on loans and requiring the services of the Farm Debt Mediation Scheme,” Story says. The Farm Debt Mediation Scheme was launched in July 2020 and has an annual budget of $550,000 to help farmers and growers work through debt issues with their lenders. “There have been 42 requests for mediation services through the scheme. Importantly, it has encouraged lenders to engage in conversations with at-risk clients earlier, avoiding the need for mediation,” he says. Farmers and growers can request mediation at any time and hardship funding is available through MPI. n

Details of the pilot locations and information can be found at awdt.org. nz/programmes/our-resilient-farmingbusiness/

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

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ON FARM

Recipe for success Farming with a work-life balance.

Nick Overdevest and Kelly Hughes have started the new season on a new farm, milking 410 cows on the 144ha family farm at Galatea. Photos: Anne Boswell

By Anne Boswell

Although the shift to a new farm has been busy, a Bay of Plenty couple still have time for a banter, despite the hive of activity going on around them.

rganised chaos reigns at Nick Overdevest and Kelly Hughes’ home at Galatea. The couple are slowly finding their feet on the 144ha farm, only having moved there on June 1. As they sit at the kitchen table to recount their farming journey so far, life is going on around them – electricians hooking up internet connections, the postie delivering packages and Nick’s dad dropping by quickly in his preparation for a health and safety meeting that afternoon. Although it has only been a short time, they already love the new farm – owned by Nick’s parents – and chat excitedly about the improved infrastructure, the dramatic landscape, having their first staff member and allowing the kids to “spread their wings” in the multitude of kid-friendly spaces. The couple are 50:50 sharemilkers on the 144ha farm, milking 410 cows at Galatea, Bay of Plenty. They have moved quickly through their farming careers thanks to great determination and a tonne of hard work, but the couple has really hit their straps since putting together their first sharemilking herd four years ago. Cattle genetics is something they are becoming increasingly interested in as they experience a rapidly improving herd, thanks to both mating decisions and carefully selected semen. They have managed to increase herd numbers by almost 100% and improve the herd’s BW from 80 in the beginning to 137 today. Nick says choosing a crossbred herd meant the cows had “the best of both worlds, both in terms of litres and fat”. “They are more efficient cows in general, it puts up the average BW,” Nick says. Although he says while it was entirely his and Kelly’s preference to farm crossbred cows, his parents also farmed them, with Nick growing up on dairy farms around the Bay of Plenty. After he left school, he became an engineer and worked for six years in the profession before returning to dairy

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farming at the farm on which they are currently living. It was during this time that he met Kelly. Kelly took a different path to her dairy farming career, but one with no less passion. She grew up on a lifestyle block in Edgecumbe before a visit to a friend’s house as a teenager led to a surprise discovery. “My friend’s mum was relief milking on the farm next door, and she asked us if we’d like to put some cups on the cows,” Kelly says. “I thought ‘this is so cool… I’d like to do more of this’.” After dipping her toe into dairy farming a little more by milking occasionally on her aunt and uncle’s Otakiri farm, she attended a three-day introductory course at Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre. Wanting more on-farm experience

FARM FACTS • Farm owners: Peter Overdevest and Tania Akehurst (Tulip Rose Farms) • Sharemilkers: Nick Overdevest and Kelly Hughes • Location: Galatea, Bay of Plenty • Farm size: 144ha • Cows: 410 crossbred cows • Production target: 2021:22 season: 160,000kg MS

Continued page 22

Nick Overdevest has come full circle, returning to the farm on which he had his first dairy position as an adult. Nick heads out to do some tractor work.

Through good mating decisions and carefully selected semen, the 410-cow crossbreed herd now has a breeding worth of 137, up from 80.

before committing to study, Kelly did work experience for lower order sharemilkers Scott and Charlotte Jones for 18 months. She then completed 18 months at Taratahi, continuing to work for the Jones’ during school holidays. “They became like family to me,” she says. After finishing at Taratahi, she spent one year working in retail before deciding that farming was where she wanted to be. She and Nick started dairy farming together shortly after meeting, moving to Tokoroa for one year as Nick took a 2IC position and Kelly a herd manager role. During this time they built equity, living off Kelly’s wages and saving all of Nick’s, and with the sale of Nick’s home, they had enough saved to buy their first herd. But first they moved to the first of two management positions they held in Galatea. They were only 10 months into the first job when Kelly fell pregnant with their daughter Elise, now four.

After their second management role in Galatea, they moved to their first sharemilking job, sharemilking 230 cows on 74ha effective overlooking Lake Aniwhenua.

“The calves were from a high BW herd, so having a good starting point definitely contributed to how fast we were able to improve the herd.” Nick Overdevest

During that time their second daughter Torie, 2, was born. Four years later, they moved to their current role, sharemilking 410 crossbred cows through a 50-bail rotary shed. “We were really looking to improve our work-life balance, as well as grow our business,” he says.

“It is becoming increasingly hard to find good relief milkers, which is hard when you’re on your own.” Kelly says it was also a good opportunity to stay in the valley, where sharemilking jobs are rare. They enjoy living in the community and the local school Elise will attend in August is so close it can be seen from the back of the farm. This season, the pair have 2IC Rachel Carr to help with the increased herd size. “We hired her because she lives across the road,” Nick jokes. “But we knew she was also reliable, capable and a good person, with a great respect and love for animals, which is so important to us.” Nick says with their focus on achieving a better work-life balance for not only them, but their staff as well, the couple is planning to have two weekends off a month and offer the same to Rachel. “If we go away, we will employ a relief milker to help Rachel as the dayto-day running of the farm is quite straightforward,” he says.

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After mating, the rotary dairy shed means milking could become a oneperson job. It is partly automated, with automatic teat sprayers and cup removers. They plan to erect a small building next to the cowshed that will enable them to bring the kids to milking and place them in a safe and secure environment. Kelly enjoys milking and is eager to get back into the shed; at their last job she had to leave milking to Nick as there was nowhere safe for their children to sit or play while they milked. The pair are feeling their way through the first season on the farm, with many running decisions up in the air while they determine what will work on the farm and what won’t. However, the foundation of the way they like to farm has not changed and they are aiming to beat the farm production record of 150,000kg MS. Their target is 160,000kg MS. Their herd is fed a significant amount of supplementary feed to keep condition on cows and milking well. Around 550kg of palm kernel is fed to each cow annually, both through in-shed feeders and on the paddock throughout the summer months. The in-shed feeders will be valuable tools when they teach their herringbone-trained cows to adapt to a rotary dairy. Around 480kg each of maize silage and grass silage is also fed per cow. Most of the supplementary feed is bought in, with only a bit of grass silage made onfarm. They also grow lucerne on-farm to get them through the summer dry, as the area is prone to hot, dry summers. The lucerne is cut, wilted and fed to cows in the paddock. They are also growing

Continued page 24

Nick and Kelly will be transitioning their herringbone-trained cows to their new rotary dairy, with the help of in-shed feeders this season.

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chicory for the first time this year, as part of their weed-control strategy. Calving begins on July 4, which is early for the region but was a strategy that worked at their previous sharemilking job, as the cows went off-farm. In the future they would like to compact their calving period because at 12 weeks it is a little longer than they would like; they may start by pushing the PSC date back to reflect the region’s average. This season, the couple hope to rear about 100 heifer replacements – about 25% of the herd – to see the best possible genetics coming through. Kelly is the calf rearer and this season will have double the number of calves than in previous seasons. She is delighted that the new farm has a first-rate calf shed, with large doors at each end to keep the weather out. The foundation of the herd was established a year before they first went sharemilking and they received 10 calves from their employer as a bonus. Then it was time to purchase their first animals. “When putting together our first

herd we were looking for good figured animals for the right price,” he says. “We had a budget to stick to, so we chose to buy the best heifers we could, as opposed to cows, because they were the animals that were going to be in our herd for the longest.”

“A rural upbringing teaches them common sense and practical skills. Onfarm they are learning something different every day and seeing life and death in all its reality.” Nick Overdevest

All cows in the first herd were Bay of Plenty-bred. Nick and Kelly bought 120 cows from the sharemilker that was leaving the farm they were going sharemilking on, and the rest of the

calves they needed from a former employer. “The calves were from a high BW herd, so having a good starting point definitely contributed to how fast we were able to improve the herd,” he says. They then made deliberate mating decisions to improve the herd as they moved into their first sharemilking job. They will AI the heifers for two weeks, picking the best cows in the herd to receive CIDRs if required, and mating the bottom 15% BW of the herd to Hereford bulls. Any extra calves they had they sold the bottom out of. When they added to the herd before moving to their current sharemilking job, they bought “bits and pieces” again. They had also been leasing out 20 cows prior to the move. “It was a bit of a hard year to buy animals at the right price and right figure,” he says. “We bought 39 budget cows from my parents’ herd in order to keep the average price per cow down and they knew the rotary shed as well, which was helpful. “After that we bought 31 better-quality

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Nick Overdevest grew up on the family farm and trained as an engineer before returning to dairy farming.

cows from Pongakawa and a line of 24 heifers from the Waikato.” At mating time, six weeks of AI will be followed by four weeks of tailing by a jersey bull, with two weeks short gestation dairy AI to finish off. The bottom 15% of the herd is bred to short gestation Hereford bulls. “This year, we are using sexed semen on our best cows, so we can keep the replacements from our higherperforming cows,” he says. They are also going to continue to AB their heifers, which are currently away at grazing. Heifers in their first week are inseminated while they are on their natural cycle, and heifers in their second week are inseminated after a prostaglandin injection, a synchronisation method that triggers cows to come into heat. They would like to reduce their bobby calves, but having a crossbred herd makes it a little more challenging. “The beef calves from a crossbred herd are not always what bull buyers want,” he says. “You can either get a good beef calf, or a motley beef calf with a narrow frame – it’s a bit of a lottery. “We are still thinking about how we

DAIRY FARMER

Continued page 26

July 2021

Kelly is the calf rearer and this season will have double the number of calves than in previous seasons. She hopes to rear 100 replacements. Kelly preparing the calf pens.

can best achieve this goal. We did have some luck last year with some Speckle Park calves, but you can’t guarantee that they will throw the markings.” With the Reporoa Saleyards not too far away, the couple often join up with Nicks’ parents and take a load of calves over for sale. In the spirit of balancing a strong work ethic with time to enjoy their children, the couple have thought carefully about where they want the business to go and what they want from life, prompted by their entry into the Dairy Industry Awards last year, which saw them place third in the Bay of Plenty Sharemilker of the Year competition.

“It also forced us to sit down and examine what we thought we were good at, what we were actually good at, and what we could improve on.” Kelly Hughes “It was a huge amount of work, but a great experience,” she says. “It also forced us to sit down and examine what we thought we were good at, what we were actually good at and what we could improve on. “We still do our DairyBase analysis every year; benchmarking ourselves against other farms that have similar cow numbers and cost structures is a great way to immediately see where we stand.” With a greater focus on work-life balance, the family hope to have more

The rotary dairy has the potential to be a one-man milking operation once mating is finished. Nick carries out maintenance on the cups ahead of the new season.

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Nick and Kelly’s crossbred herd has been genetically improving since it was put together four years ago.

time to do the things they love off-farm – as well as enjoy the farming journey along the way. “My Mum said the other day ‘what’s the point of working your guts out all your life, then passing away at 55, not having enjoyed all you’ve worked for?’” she says. “She was absolutely right. You have to draw the line somewhere and by working smarter not harder, you can enjoy yourself along the way.” Away from the farm, Nick is a keen hunter, plays squash and is on the committee of the Galatea Memorial Club. Kelly says although she has little time for hobbies while the children are young, she would like to introduce them to various pest control methods to encourage a conservationist spirit in them. She also sells eggs as a small side

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July 2021

business. Although she had up to 60 free range chickens at the last farm, moved from paddock to paddock in a mobile unit, she reduced numbers when they moved and the flock now lives in a permanent enclosure. Their business goals are significant. While they would consider leasing a farm if the opportunity arose, ideally they would like to stay sharemilking and buy a grazing block nearby while building a little more equity to buy a farm, milking 400 cows. They both agree that they have a strong drive to achieve that which combined with their strong work ethic and financially sensible nature, is a recipe for success. “We don’t have the latest and greatest vehicles and equipment but they are reliable and get us from A to B without breaking down,” he says.

His engineering background and onfarm workshop means nothing stays out of action for long. And while the farm now comes a close second to family, the couple acknowledges the incredible privilege of raising their daughters on-farm. “They are so switched on,” he says. “A rural upbringing teaches them common sense and practical skills. On-farm they are learning something different every day and seeing life and death in all its reality. “Their daycare teacher told us they saw them playing “feed the piggies” and they were modelling our behaviour of treating animals with care and respect, which was so awesome. “I grew up seeing my Dad’s strong work ethic, which helped him get to where he is today, and we want that for our kids as well.” n

DAIRY CHAMPION After Taranaki farmer Kane Brisco stopped playing rugby, he wasn’t as fit as he had been and found the spring calving tough, so began a farm fitness bootcamp aimed at increasing health and wellbeing. Photos: Ross Nolly

On-farm bootcamp By Ross Nolly

Set against the backdrop of Mount Taranaki, farmers are put through their paces to build up their fitness, strength and stamina ahead of the busy season.

eeping fit both physically and mentally takes hard work, so a Taranaki farmer is keeping himself fit and healthy while helping others, by running bootcamps on the farm. And now, they are taking that programme nationwide. Kane Brisco and his wife Nicole are 50:50 sharemilkers at Meremere near Hawera, milking 210 cows on 70ha. They started the Farm Fit programme 18 months ago but never envisioned it would gather momentum beyond their farm gate. The impetus for starting the bootcamps came after Kane retired from rugby and boxing. It was the first spring he’d ever gone into without having a core fitness level to call upon. He was 10kg heavier and that spring was a horrible experience for him. He decided that he would never go into spring that unfit again. The fact that dairy farmers have their biggest break before the busy calving season begins, got Kane thinking about running a training bootcamp to

help farmers get fit for calving. He began holding bootcamps on Wednesday and Friday evenings in January 2019. The programme runs through to calving, with the first two months mostly focusing on developing all-round baseline strength. As the participants develop they progress to more difficult exercises. Farm Fit has taken on a life of its own over the past 12 months, and social media has been pivotal to opening up doors and creating connections with others doing similar things, or who want to back the programme. “We always planned to develop and grow the programme. We have a desire to help as many people as possible and I guess it’s spread a bit like a fire, and opportunities have presented themselves from that,” Kane says. A new initiative is being funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to help improve the wellbeing of young people in rural communities. NZ Young Farmers has been allocated $40,000 to organise events in seven

regional areas, featuring guest speakers, activities and skill-building sessions. One of the wellbeing events is a six-week bootcamp. The first camp was overseen by Kane at Longburn in Manawatū in June.

“Farmers generally encounter similar types of situations and we can all empathise with them. I think it’s pretty rare for guys to have that. It’s really powerful for them to be communicating with other farmers.” “The Palmerston North bootcamp will be the only one held this year. We’re seeing it as a trial and I’ll attend as many as possible. We also have a personal trainer helping out. Tangaroa Walker

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of Farm 4 Life is coming up to speak at them (the bootcamps),” he says. Kane is a firm believer that good physical health and fitness builds the same attributes for mental health. The bootcamp’s community aspect has surprised Kane. They have become a place where participants can get out of their bubble and visit a neutral place where they get to feel good about themselves and have fun. “The guys in particular have opened up about their struggles. It’s quite powerful for them to have a yarn. Most are like me. They work on the farm and don’t often go out. Yesterday, a couple of the guys spent about half an hour simply yarning,” he says. “Farmers generally encounter similar types of situations and we can all empathise with them. I think it’s pretty rare for guys to have that. It’s really powerful for them to be communicating with other farmers.” His social media posts are designed to get farmers involved and to pass on ideas and inspiration. His posts are closely aligned with mental health awareness and teach attitudes and techniques that

The Farm Fit programme has received a funding boost from the Ministry for Primary Industries, to help improve the wellbeing of young people in rural communities. NZ Young Farmers will work with Kane to deliver these.

have helped him get through tough times. When he began uploading social media posts and videos his aim was for them to be slick and polished. But he soon realised that the reason they had become successful was due to their “what you see is what you get”

straight from the hip nature. “I try to make the posts as raw, real, and straight to the point as possible, it makes them relatable to the average person. I’ve got a pretty straight-up way of saying things. It’s a real approach. I

Continued page 30

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Training isn’t overly complicated and is an easy and fun way to get fit while being social with other farmers.

Boot camps are held twice a week and runs through to calving, with the first two months mostly focused on developing all-round baseline strength.

can say what I want because I’m not governed by anyone,” he says. “I’m relatable because I’m a farmer and have been through most things that farmers go through. We’re just a normal farming family and it’s important to put that across so people know they’re not alone. Especially if they’re going through tough times.” He has always felt a moral dilemma about using social media. He wants to spread his message, create awareness and build a positive movement that helps people, but he doesn’t want people glued to their phones. “It can be challenging to navigate through that. Social media is just a vehicle; it all comes down to how you use it. It’s relatively cheap or free to use, and a way for people to stay connected and create a community,” he says. “The short Facebook Stories show the

real-life side of my farm life. It’s mostly off-the-cuff stuff that models what I believe in. I may put up a few workouts or show that I’m busy on the farm. It demonstrates reality, which helps build trust.” He has developed an online spring training programme consisting of downloadable PDF instructions and a private group where he uploads training videos that demonstrate the exercises. “Many online training programmes seem to consist of getting people jumping around in their lounge. That’s not training, it’s exercise,” he says. “We aim to progress people’s strength so they’re more capable and robust than when they started. They’re basic movements that aim to make people stronger whether they’re picking up a hay bale or a child off the floor.” Physical fitness and mental fitness

go hand in hand and he believes that to have good mental fitness, you must have good physical fitness. He says you can’t feed your body with rubbish and expect to think clearly. It’s not a one or the other situation, it’s intertwined. As you become fitter, you also experience better sleep and because you’re sleeping better you tend not to think as negatively. All of those factors combine into a huge burst of positivity and wellbeing. “Fitness definitely helps. It’s a huge benefit if you can get to the end of the day without feeling absolutely spent and are still able to think clearly and deal with stress,” he says. “It’s hard to get people to see that until they’ve experienced it. You make better on-farm decisions when you’re thinking clearer and aren’t continually worn out. “Fatigue is a killer. The season when I stopped playing sport was a period where I was the most unfit as I’d ever been. When springtime arrived I quickly became fatigued and my decisionmaking was poor. That one small catalyst of fatigue quickly snowballs into all facets of the farm, particularly when you’re under stress due to the pressure of calving.” Many bootcamp participants have commented how different it is to feel fitter at the beginning of spring and how their decision-making has improved. That fitness level has enabled them to get through spring without hitting rock bottom. They also want to train better and have begun taking a closer look at their diet and sleep patterns. This holistic view of fitness quickly becomes part of their lifestyle, Kane says. “It’s hugely pleasing for me to see that. It all boils down to the fact that they’re seeing their health as one of their priorities and bump it up the list from last to somewhere near the top,” he says. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of the project that some participants are prepared to make a 72-kilometre round trip to participate. “They’re a great example of people putting their health as a priority. It’s a big time commitment to travel that distance. But I’ve always thought that time is only a barrier if you want it to be,” he says. The farm gym is a vastly different environment to an indoor gym. The bootcamps have a very supportive atmosphere. No one cares what stage you are at on your fitness journey. There’s no judgement, just a positive team who are all striving for the same goal.

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“Farm Fit aims to get people to become proactive about their health. We’ve got to start building the fence at the top of our own cliff.”

“People come here to be uplifted and energised. There’s something very natural about exercising outside in the fresh air, especially during summer. It’s probably pretty unique for someone who works in an office to be able to get out in the fresh air on the farm. I also feel that it’s helping to bridge the rural/urban gap,” he says. Running the successful Farm Fit programme, as well as being a hands-on farmer, must seem at times like having a tiger by the tail, but Kane and Nicole strive to make it work. “It’s not something that you can have a set routine with. It’s a massive sacrifice and we’re continually adjusting and balancing Farm Fit with the farm business. I couldn’t do it without Nicole’s support. “We’ve had steady growth, but now everything’s happening at once and if you don’t take the opportunities you may as well just stop,” he says. Kane feels that Farm Fit’s growth over the past 12 months is mostly due to word of mouth. People now know that Farm Fit is not a fly-by-night phenomenon. “Farm Fit aims to get people to become proactive about their health. We’ve got to start building the fence at the top of our own cliff. It’s not difficult to visit your doctor once or twice a year for a check-up, especially when you reach your 30s or 40s,” he says. “I’ve seen it in the males in my family. Some of them caught things early and some didn’t. It comes down to personal responsibility. As farmers we’ve got to get over the image that never going to the doctor is a way of showing your toughness.” The couple recently took delivery of the first batch of Farm Fit merchandise, which will be used to help fund growth, whether it’s at the physical bootcamp or by spreading Farm Fit online. It’s something he has dreamed of for a long time, and he decided that it was time to stop thinking about it and just do it. “We’re just giving it a crack really, like we’ve done with everything. I’m so excited to see people be and feel a part

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All of the participants found spring calving physically easier after getting fit at bootcamp. They had more energy, less injuries and increased mobility.

of it and promote that message. We want to self-fund Farm Fit and drive some of the growth,” he says. “We don’t charge much for the camps, so we hope the merchandise will allow us to invest more into Farm Fit. We can maybe get some extra equipment or work with a school for free. But honestly, we’re more excited to see people wearing the gear and be a part of that message.” Before he had a social media presence, he’d see the negative press about farming and talk to other farmers who were feeling down. He began feeling that there was no one out there who “had farmers’ backs”. “The biggest unintended consequence of being on social media was discovering that there are a bunch of really good human beings out there wanting to do good things, whether it’s in farming or other areas of society. They’re trying to help others and be positive contributors,” he says. “It’s estimated that humans have around 80,000 thoughts per day and 80% of them are negative. So it’s a case of trying to concentrate on the 20% positive thoughts and then they will grow.” Kane always thought that knowledge was the biggest barrier to being healthy, but he now feels that mindset is the key component. “You create barriers inside your head with your thinking. It’s an unexpected channel I’ve gone down with Farm Fit, particularly on social media where I try to hammer home the tools that improve your mindset,” he says. “If you get your mindset right everything else falls into place. You develop ways to get through things and

The Farm Fit programme uses equipment usually found on farms, including containers and tractor tyres.

have tools to fall back on. Focusing your attention on the good stuff is much more beneficial than on the negative.” Brisco says it is difficult to answer where the programme is headed because he’s always been open to opportunities and it is always an unknown quantity as to where they will lead. “About 95% of what has occurred has just been by taking opportunities and seeing where they go,” he says. “I think there’s a space where we can be online and add value to a lot of rural people’s physical and mental fitness. We can provide them with an online relatable tool, because both aspects are intertwined.” n

WOMEN IN AGRIBUSINESS

Opportunity to improve By Samantha Tennent

A Waikato farmer keen to diversify the farm business has finally found the perfect fit and taken on a new venture.

Waikato sharemilker Amy Gillies and her husband recently bought Putaruru Hire as a way to diversify their farm business. Since taking over she has modernised the business.

rom a small dairy farm to a kiwifruit orchard, to a bach and other housing investments, Waikato farmers Amy Gillies and her husband Steve explored them all while working out a reliable way to grow their equity. But it was an advertisement on Trade Me for local business Putaruru Hire that caught their attention. The potential return on investment, along with the potential opportunities and the skillsets and knowledge gaps between them, helped the couple decide it was the right choice for them. “The ultimate goal is to buy a farm, so we were looking for a way to grow our equity,” Amy says. “We wanted to diversify from the farming business to have some protection from the payout fluctuations and find a way to continue utilise our complementary knowledge and skills.” Steve is a mechanic by trade and is great at building and fixing equipment and Amy brings financial and business knowledge from her studies and experience across the agribusiness sector. “I’m always keen to diversify risk and learn about commercial business,” she says. “This business was well-established, had a consistent income and it was in a great location. “And we were buying mostly assets which could be sold if the business doesn’t work, so we knew how much we stood to lose and decided it was worth the risk.” Amy oversees the business, with the existing manager Clint running the day-to-day. She is keen to expand the business to create more turnover and build the team. They have been adding new equipment and are excited about

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July 2021

Amy Gillies studied AgriScience at Massey University and worked in several roles before going farming full-time.

opportunities to grow the business further with more gear, a marketing strategy and some further diversification. “Growing the business will support the community as we are meeting our customers’ needs and keeping it local,” she says. They bought the business from the founder who set it up 30 years ago. “It already had established roots in the community and we both have really good networks across the region, so it was a great opportunity for us,” she says. Since taking over she has made a few changes, modernising the business and bringing it into the digital world. “The previous owner was still doing everything on paper. We have created a website, set up social media, implemented a rental management software system and stopped using carbon copy,” she says. The software system will provide information around demand, which will support decisions for buying and selling equipment. She has also started using tools through the Hire Industry Association of New Zealand to benchmark to monitor performance and identify opportunities to improve.

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They do not know the full potential of the business but the benchmarking data will provide targets and ensure they are fulfilling the needs of their community. The business goal is to be profitable, which will eventually increase their equity and give them the financial freedom to invest in further opportunities as they arise.

“It really is about who you know, what connections you have and keeping an ear to the ground for opportunities.” “It really is early days for the hire shop so it’s a bit of work-in-progress, but it’s going to be a great challenge,” she says. The Gillies are in their third season sharemilking 500 crossbreed cows on the same farm in Putaruru they contract milked for two seasons while they built enough equity to buy the herd. “We were fortunate to get the position. The owners gave us the chance to

contract milk first while we grew our equity,” she says. “It really is about who you know, what connections you have and keeping an ear to the ground for opportunities.” They switched the herd from spring calving to a 50% split calving system, with calving periods starting early March and mid-July. “We can grow grass in June and split calving works well on this farm,” she says. “We still have good downtime when we get down to one herd in January and June, but even in the busy times we always try to have everyone home by 5:30 – there needs to be a good balance.” She is responsible for the administration, breeding decisions and calf rearing. They only do six weeks of mating over each mating period, three weeks of artificial breeding and they have been utilising the Forward Pack from LIC for the past few years. “I wanted to get some of the new genetics but still use the old reliable,” she says. “We are focused on breeding worth and maintaining the value of the herd, as

Continued page 34

Amy Gillies juggles her time working on the farm, being a wife and mother and running the hire business.

The 500-strong crossbreed herd is split calving, with calving periods starting early March and mid-July.

we will sell it back to the farm owners or the next sharemilker when we move on.” This autumn she has used sexed semen, as well as some Wagyu. “I’m pretty excited about it; having the Wagyu contract means we already know what income we will get from those calves,” she says. “It’ll help cover the extra costs of the sexed semen and we should be able to almost eliminate our bobby calves, which is a great win.” She holds a lot of value in data, using the herd records to make breeding and culling decisions. “Steve will choose animals based on how they look and their behaviour and I’ll choose on the numbers behind them – between us, we sort out what’s happening with the cows,” she says. The shed is a 32-bail rotary and is set up so only one person needs to be in the shed. Neither Amy nor Steve spend much time in the shed. They enjoy how they have set the farm up to allow them to have time for their other ventures. “We haven’t made too many other changes with the farm, we just try to

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Steve and Amy Gillies were the 2018 Waikato Share Farmers of the Year and placed third at the national finals.

“Growing the business will support the community as we are meeting our customers’ needs and keeping it local.”

do everything better,” she says. In 2018 they won the Waikato region Share Farmer of the Year category and came third in the national final. She has spent time as the Share Farmer team leader, as the Waikato regional manager and has held a

sponsorship manager role. But having babies and buying a hire shop has shifted her focus and time availability. They were both heavily involved in Young Farmers, and recently Amy has completed the Fonterra Governance Development programme. She wanted to grow her skills, recognising it would complement the skills she has gathered across her career. She studied AgriScience at Massey University and spent a couple of years working for Ballance in Northland after she graduated. She took half a year off to travel, then settled into a consulting officer role with DairyNZ in South Waikato in 2011.

“I learnt a lot about farm management from my study and my time with DairyNZ. And after three years with them, I moved onto a role with ANZ, expanding my finance and business knowledge,” she says. She stayed with ANZ till she went on maternity leave in 2019 to have their first child Arran. She returned for a short stint before finishing completely to have their second child Isla in May this year. Having the governance training under her belt is a way to keep involved in the sector. Their eventual goal is to own their own farm but in the meantime, they will be ready for any opportunities. “I feel like we have hit the jackpot, we love the farm and farm owners, and the area we live in,” she says. “All of our friends seem to be having babies at the moment, we have a great community around us.” The biggest advice she can give others is to build a network. “You don’t have to know everything, but as long as you build your network and get to know a lot of people, you will find opportunities and the right opportunities. And you’ll know people to ask for good advice too,” she says. “Word of mouth is a valuable tool. Put yourself out there, get involved in organisations like Dairy Industry Awards, Young Farmers, Dairy Women’s Network – there are so many things to get involved with and just meet people.” She says she and Steve do not sit still for long and she envisions once the hire shop is performing at the level they want, they will start looking at other ways to expand and grow. “We don’t have any specific short-term goals at the moment, but we want to improve the profitability of the hire shop, while adjusting to juggling two kids and both businesses,” she said. n

RESEARCH

Rise in lepto By Samantha Tennent

A new study shows a strain of leptospirosis is on the rise, but in many of those cases people have not come into contact with livestock.

Massey University PhD graduate says we cannot afford to become complacent around zoonotic diseases as new research shows that while the net cases of leptospirosis appear fairly stable, the strains causing the disease have been changing. Reports of the main strains in domestic animals in New Zealand, hardjo-bovis and pomona, have been decreasing, which is likely due to the vaccinations, but the incidence of the strain ballum has been increasing and the risk factors are not well understood. Dr Marie Moinet recently completed her PhD investigating the potential role of abundant wild mammals and the risk they pose for leptospirosis in cattle and humans. She now has a role with AgResearch, where she is involved in further work on zoonotic diseases. “Multiple strains cause leptospirosis, and while vaccinations in livestock work great for hardjo-bovis and pomona, it doesn’t cover all of the strains circulating,” Moinet says. “There has been an increase in the serovar ballum among humans, which is associated with rodents and hedgehogs, but their role had not been thoroughly investigated in New Zealand for more than 30 years.” The risk factors for leptospirosis due to the strains hardjo-bovis and pomona are related to direct contact with livestock and their urine, either on-farm or in slaughterhouses. But it is another story for ballum, where a high proportion of cases occurs in people who have no contact with livestock. And even though farmers account for half of the notified cases of ballum, meat workers seem relatively unaffected by this strain. There is also a higher proportion of women contracting ballum, where they are not as represented for other strains. Historically, NZ focused on livestock when it came to leptospirosis research

and control efforts, overlooking rodents, whereas the rest of the world focused on rodents but overlooked livestock. “Rodents are considered a risk in other countries but NZ has focused on the connection with livestock for good reason in the past, but it is changing,” she says. “The rest of the world is looking at livestock more as an increasing source of infection, and the huge increase in livestock numbers globally likely plays a role.” Moinet estimated both the prevalence of wild animals infected with ballum and the seroprevalence, which is the proportion of the population with antibodies to the strain. She found that mice were the main hosts and that rats and hedgehogs were only secondary hosts. During part of her study, Moinet performed some capture-markrecapture work with mice to estimate the density of infected mice in farming environments. Typically, mice have mostly been studied in forest habitats in NZ for conservation purposes. But their presence in pasture densities can be very important too. “I found that mice that were infected have a broader range and I suspect they become infected as they are more likely to get contaminated in their travels,” she says. “But we haven’t got enough information to determine how they are mostly getting infected, from the environment or by contact with other mice or other species, for example.” Activities around water could be another risk factor, where infected mice could urinate in and around the water, which could indirectly contaminate someone when they have contact with the water. Moinet also sampled cattle and found they were more exposed to ballum than in the past, and although they were

Marie Moinet with an anaesthetised possum after blood sampling.

much less likely to be shedders than mice, the risk was still there. Ballum does not seem to cause problems in adult cattle, but there is a lack of data for calves. The risk is mostly that they become a link in the chain of transmission. Moinet moved to NZ to do her PhD at Massey University from France where she was a scientific and technical project manager. She has a Master of Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health and a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. Her veterinary thesis looked at leptospirosis in endangered European mink and other small carnivores in South-Western France. “I find lepto really interesting. Historically it has been neglected and underfunded, and the current pandemic won’t help,” she says. “But it is a neat example of a problem that can be tackled with a ‘One Health’ approach, where there isn’t one focus – animals, humans and their environments are explored altogether.” Several recommendations came out of her PhD, with a big one being to remind farmers that leptospirosis can be transmitted through a contaminated environment and not only by contact with livestock. “Continuing to vaccinate against the livestock strains is still really important, but we must keep in mind those vaccines are not protecting against

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GEA’s Milking

PHILOSOPHY

ballum. Even though the risk of livestock shedding ballum is low, it does still occur,” she says. “Limiting contact with a contaminated environment is important, especially grazing livestock in flooded pastures. And in those areas, interventions should be aimed at increasing water drainage efficiency to limit leptospira survival in the environment.” She recommends control operations should cover the entire home range of the rodents in an area as her research uncovered the traps around supplementary feed did not have more mice than other areas, so cannot assume they will be mostly around feed sources. “But we do know mice like long grass, so trimming grass that livestock cannot access can help reduce their available shelter and limit densities of mice,” she says. “It’s also important to try to prevent rodents and hedgehogs from accessing livestock water, although fencing isn’t realistic, deterrents could be useful in key areas, such as artificial lights around farm buildings, animal feed and drinking troughs.” The research showed densities of mice decreased in winter and were

lower in early spring but the prevalence of ballum was at its highest at the same time, up to a staggering 96%. “Controlling rodents in winter is a good tactic to reduce the risks, once we begin to notice mice it’s already too late to control them efficiently,” she says. She also uncovered hedgehogs were also carrying pomona and given they can have big ranges, they could transmit pomona between herds. The study recommendations also mentioned developing what ecologists call a “landscape of fear” by having domestic cats and dogs around as a mitigation strategy to deter rodents. “And we need to raise awareness for people involved in predator control operations and occupations that are traditionally considered not at risk, although this group is very diverse and needs further work to refine the risk factors; it’s not just farmers who are at high risk of contracting ballum,” she says. Awareness among general practitioners should also be increased, they need to understand the risks of leptospirosis among people who are not in contact with livestock. Misdiagnosis and under-reporting are likely more prevalent in occupations not usually considered at risk. “We can’t get complacent with leptospirosis; there are some risk factors that shouldn’t be overlooked and having awareness and including wild hosts in control strategies will help limit the prevalence of ballum into the future,” she says. n

E LY

G E N T LY

EpiLab technician Neville Haack and volunteer vet student Emma Chen are aseptically sampling organs of rodents and other wild mammals captured on-farm for Leptospira culture.

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RESEARCH

Farming in a warming climate By Hugh Stringleman

Research is under way on the Northland Agricultural Research Farm to see if alternative pasture species will fare better than some traditional species as the climate changes.

lternative pastures to ryegrass are to be evaluated for four years under commercial dairy farming conditions at the Northland Agricultural Research Farm, near Dargaville. The warming of temperatures in the north and lower greenhouse gas emissions as directed by the Government will be key aspects of the trial. “Northland dairy farmers need a management guide for alternative pastures like cocksfoot and tall fescue, which are going to be more resilient than our ryegrass and kikuyu reinvasions,” prominent Northland farmer Murray Jagger says. He spoke at the annual Northland Dairy Development Trust and NARF field day, where the Future Dairy Farm Systems project was launched. Jagger is the former inaugural chairperson of the Kikuyu Action Group, which ran field trials and published the management tool box for the subtropical C4 species. Over four generations of farmers on his 230ha effective Whangarei Heads dairy farm, ryegrass has struggled to persist even with endophyte and is subject to reinvasion by kikuyu in as little as two years. “Summer droughts are not a new phenomenon, but our wet and warm winters seem to have more extreme events,” he says. “But we have adapted with naturally resistant species like cocksfoot, which will persist for five to seven years. “They compete for open space and reduce competitor invasion. “Along with tall fescue, they have the root structures and mass to mitigate seasonality changes. “Many Northland farmers tried them

in the past, had bad experiences and won’t go back. “I say, try them again, because there are new, better varieties, but they do need new management.” Jagger says the NARF four-year project was crucial to writing that new management handbook. The new trial is funded by the Ministry of Primary Industries through the Sustainable Food and Fibre Fund and by dairy farmers through DairyNZ. NARF’s 85ha effective, with 250 wellperforming cows in total, has been split into three 28ha independent farmlets. Current Farm (Red) has existing ryegrass/kikuyu pastures with imported PKE to fill feed deficits and will operate at three cows/ha and up to 190kg/ha applied nitrogen. This has shown to be a profitable resilient system in previous work. Alternative Pastures Farm (Blue) will have at least 75% of fescue, cocksfoot, legumes and herbs, with imported PKE to fill deficits. The stocking rate will also be 3/ha, with use of up to 190kg/ha N. Low Emissions Farm (Green) will have existing ryegrass/kikuyu pastures and a system that targets 25% reduction in methane emissions and 50% reduction in nitrous oxide emissions compared to the current farm, with a stocking rate of 2.1/ ha, no nitrogen application and little or no imported feed. Trial measures will capture pasture and milk production (three separate milk vats) milk composition, profit and labour input and management difficulty. To set up the alternative pastures farm, 9ha of new pastures were sown in May 2020 with fescue, or fescue and cocksfoot, with white clover, red clover and Persian clover. Another 11ha was sown in March this year, with fescue and/or cocksfoot, with

Whangarei Heads dairy farmer Murray Jagger has used alternative pasture species for many years for better productivity and more persistence.

white clover, red clover and chicory (at 1kg/ha). Pasture growth comparisons since the beginning of last spring showed higher growth for fescue/cocksfoot than ryegrass/kikuyu paddocks in spring and early summer and the reversal during late summer and autumn. In total, the fescue/cocksfoot pastures have produced 1281kg/ha DM more than the resident Italian rye/kikuyu pastures over nine months between end-August and end-April. Fescue/cocksfoot also grew high pasture quality through most of summer and autumn. Computer modelling was used to establish stocking rates and management strategies and to predict production, financial and environmental outputs. The systems were also tested under three different climatic conditions: an average season, a wet winter and a dry summer. If no nitrogen is applied to the low emissions farm and stocking rate reduced by 26%, then methane emissions should come down 24% and nitrous oxide emissions down by 47% and nitrogen leaching down 54%. AgFirst consultant Chris Boom says the trial would aim to establish what it would cost, in terms of lost milk production offset by lower inputs including labour, to achieve the 2050 greenhouse gas targets. n

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

RESEARCH

By Hugh Stringleman

A NARF study comparing three farm systems sought to find the one best suited to northern dairying.

mported feed supplements can improve dairy farm production and profit if managed well and used when there is a true feed deficit and a good milk price. It is a key conclusion from the threeyear, three-farmlet trial that finished in May on the Northland Agricultural Research Farm (NARF). AgFirst farm consultants Chris Boom and Kim Robinson summarised the results at the annual Northland Dairy Development Trust field day on the NARF property, near Dargaville. Three 28ha farmlets with comparable cows were run independently through three seasons of climate variability and all the production and financial figures compared and analysed. The pasture-only farm was stocked at 2.7 cows/ha and given no imported feed. The palm kernel-only farm carried 3.1 cows/ha that had PKE fed within FEI (Fat evaluation index) limits when grazing residuals indicated pasture supply was limiting. The third farm, called PKE-plus, was at the same stocking rate and cows

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July 2021

got more feed supplements like dried distillers grains (DDG) and baled silage when milk FEI levels indicated no more PKE could be fed without incurring penalties.

“Do you want to produce the most milk or the most profit? Or are your drivers reduced working hours and lower environmental footprint?” Over the three years, the PKE-only cows got an average 836kg/cow DM supplements annually and the PKE-plus cows got 1253kg, both compared to the pasture-only cows. The milk response for both the supplemented herds was 113g and 104g

Continued page 43

GEA’s Milking

PHILOSOPHY E LY ET

Survival of the fittest

G E N T LY

Dairying in a variable climate, a three-year study into drought and supplementary feeding was recently completed on the Northland Agricultural Research Farm.

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RESEARCH

One of the research farms that is being used to provide evidence for the environmental credentials the New Zealand sheep milking industry has in export markets.

The edge effect By Tony Benny

Sheep milking is a growing industry in New Zealand and a new study shows it might be better for the environment.

heep milking is potentially more environmentally-friendly than dairy cow farming, according to a study by AgResearch scientists that shows nitrogen leaching per hectare can be reduced by up to 50%. Senior scientist Diana Selbie says the research aimed to provide evidence for the environmental credentials the NZ sheep milk industry has in export markets. “Based on the funding that we had, we prioritised looking at nitrogen because dairy sheep could be an alternative land-use option in, say, nitrogen-stressed catchments,” Selbie says. “So we started with trying to get some baseline measurements: what does nitrogen leaching actually look like beneath grazing dairy sheep?”

The work started with a review of existing scientific literature about nitrogen in sheep milking farm systems but there proved to be not much of that, so the research shifted to on-farm measurements on Pamu-owned Spring Sheep Milk Co’s property near Taupō and another site in South Otago. “The crux of our work was around nitrogen loss to water and we found on a per-hectare basis that the loss can be reduced by between 10% and 50% (compared with dairy cows), so the potential loss reduction is quite high,” she says. Much of that reduction can be attributed to what scientists call the “edge effect”, which means nitrogen in urine is spread across the paddock through plants being able to access

more nitrogen around the edges of smaller urine patches. Selbie says the large range is due to a combination of soil and climate factors, as well as how much nitrogen goes through the farm. More research needs to be done to get firmer data. But she says it is clear that, like dairy cow farming, one of the greatest influences on potential nitrogen losses is the level of inputs, such as nitrogen fertiliser and feed. “The amount of feed the animals are eating on a per-hectare basis, the dry matter intake, is a key driver for both nitrogen loss to water and greenhouse gases,” she says. “The more they’re eating per hectare, the more likely you are to lose nitrogen and emit greenhouse gases.”

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July 2021

“The amount of feed the animals are eating on a per-hectare basis, the dry matter intake, is a key driver for both nitrogen loss to water and greenhouse gases.” Diana Selbie

AgResearch senior scientist says their main finding was nitrogen loss to water on a perhectare basis can be reduced by between 10% and 50%.

The study included a range of farming systems from extensive to intensive. The more intensive dairy sheep operations can produce a similar level of environmental emissions to dairy cow farms. As the expanding sheep milking industry focuses on productivity and genetics, Selbie cautions the associated

likely increase in environmental emissions of their operations. “There’s a broad suggestion here: learn from what the dairy cow industry has been through and pick up on interventions they are already using to lower their environmental footprint,” she says. Selbie says there’s more work to be

done to get the full picture, but that will depend on funding for future research. “There’s certainly a lot of interest from individual farmers and also collectives, both in the North Island and South Island,” she says. The sheep milking industry is growing in NZ, with the 18 commercial operations set to be boosted by another 13 starting in the coming season. “It’s actually quite an inspiring and interesting industry to be part of because it’s small and the biggest players are very open and sharing their experiences, so that means communication and learning is quite efficient,” she says. n

Have you done your daily checks? Paddocks Animals Weather

Let’s make a difference this winter dairynz.co.nz/wintering

RESEARCH

Quality over quantity By Tony Benny

New Zealand dairy farming is known for its pasture-based systems, so it is important farmers focus on quality over quantity.

ocusing on the quality of pasture as much as on quantity will pay dividends for dairy farmers, both in production and environmental outcomes, according to a PhD research project by Federico Duranovich on Massey University’s Dairy 1 farm. Duranovich, from Argentina, completed both his Masters degree in AgriCommerce and his PhD in Agriculture and Horticulture at Massey. During two production seasons on Dairy 1, he used a proximal hyper spectral sensor tool to take daily readings of nutritive value of pasture and compare that with the individual production of each cow in the herd. “I then determined to what extent that quality was driving performance; basically milk production and composition,” Duranovich says. “I found that 11% to 15% of the variation of milk production at the farm was related particularly to the interaction between energy and protein in the pasture.” He says there are environmental implications too, because when there’s an imbalance between the energy and protein content of the diet of cows, there’s more nitrogen being lost in urine, which increases the risk of nitrogen leaching. “I was also able to determine that daily requirements for energy of individual cows varied greatly and that this variation represented, on average, a deviation of about a fifth above or below the energy supplied by the diet,” he says. “That is very important because if you are able to monitor the quality of pasture you can aim at obtaining the most optimal response from your feed by allocating each cow what they actually need.” When he started the research project, Duranovich first calibrated and validated the hyper spectral sensor, a sophisticated optical tool. He says while a normal camera senses the visible spectrum – the reds, greens and blues – to create a

Massey University PhD student Frederico Duranovich has been researching the nutritive value of pasture compared to the individual production of each cow in the herd.

photo, the hyper spectral sensor goes well beyond this. “It can even measure to the level of chemical bonds, so you can much more precisely find nutrients. I measured the energy, the protein and the fibre of pasture and found that there was enough variation in the availability of these nutrients within and between paddocks, and that was the first step to start thinking that rapid pasture

quality measurement would have useful practical implications for farmers,” he says. He found that basing management decisions on the quality of the pasture is worthwhile, but accepts that with the specialised equipment he uses not widely or affordably available at present, not many farmers will be able easily take advantage of his research – for now. “The tool is a bit sophisticated

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July 2021

but when we see how technology is improving over time, I guess that this will be available in the future, in your phone for example,” he says. And when that happens, Duranovich says the way farmers assess their feed reserves may well change.

“That is very important because if you are able to monitor the quality of pasture you can aim at obtaining the most optimal response from your feed by allocating each cow what they actually need.” “Farmers now go to some paddocks and get a representative sample of what the average quality of the grass would be for the farm, but with this technology

Continued from page 39 MS/kg DM respectively, higher than the DairyBase average of 80g MS/kg DM. Milk production on the pastureonly farm was most affected by weather, especially the drought in the second year when only 816kg/ha MS eventuated. The drought also impacted production on the PKE-only farm, down 100kg MS from the previous season to 1129kg, but had only a minor effect on the PKE-plus farm at 1279kg. Profit was highest on the PKE-only farm, except during the drought year. The sequence for that farm was $3301/ ha from $6.35/kg MS, $2119 at $7.14/kg and $3743 at $7.55/kg. In only one season, 2019-20, was the PKE-plus farm operating profit higher, at $2336/ha. The results also allowed Boom and Robinson to delve into the marginal cost of extra milk, which was found to be higher on the PKE-plus farm. DairyNZ research scientist Jane Kay took the analysis further, saying that the PKE-only farm was a System 3 with 17% supplements and the PKE-plus farm was System 4 with 25% supplements. On average, the pasture-only cows did 341kg/year MS, the PKE-only

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July 2021

you can go to a field and just point at the pasture and it will tell you, say ‘10 megajoules or 12, or 23% protein’, so you narrow it down from the farm level to a paddock level so you can make decisions on allocation much more refined,” he says. He says the dairy system in NZ mostly focuses on the quantity of grass. “Farmers measure and control the quantity of the grass and think the quality will look after itself, but what we are seeing is that there is also a lot of variation in the quality of the grass, so the idea is to try to determine if that daily variation has any influence on performance and improve productivity of the farm system by adding that on top of the quantity,” he says. He hopes that in future, the technology can be added to existing tools like the C-Dax pasture meter, so that farmers can base their grazing management decisions not only on how much feed they have and but also on its quality. n

cows 389kg and the PKE-plus cows 425kg. Analysis of the marginal milk cost showed the milk price would need to be $8.60 or greater for the PKE-plus farm to be more profitable than PKEonly. This is due to the higher cost of the DDG and soya hull supplements, and a lower milk response at higher feeding levels. Conversely, if the milk price dropped below $5.90 then the pasture-only farm would be the most profitable. Comparing operating profits showed the pasture-only farm was the least profitable two years out of three; the PKE-only farm was most profitable two years out of three; and the PKEplus farm has one year most profitable and one year least profitable. Both farms where supplements were fed required considerably more tractor hours and labour hours than the pasture-only farm. Kay then summarised the results under the heading “which farm system for me?” Her advice was that personal and family drivers and priorities would indicate the farm system suitability. “Do you want to produce the most milk or the most profit? Or are your drivers reduced working hours and lower environmental footprint,” she said. n

RESEARCH

Photo showing the bodyweight effects of one of the newly discovered variants, comparing an affected (left) and unaffected (right) animal of the same age.

Behind the genes By Samantha Tennent

Scientists have found a number of genes in cattle, which is affecting their health and production.

new study has identified a number of genetic variants that impact the health and wellbeing of New Zealand dairy cows. It is estimated the variants cost the national dairy herd up to $10 million in lost production each year. “These are very exciting discoveries,” lead author of the study, PhD student Edwardo Reynolds says. “It’s proof that we can identify new genetic disorders proactively and demonstrates a viable means of further enhancing the health and productivity of NZ dairy animals.” Reynolds is studying at Massey University’s AL Rae Centre of Genetics and Breeding at Ruakura. He and the team are working in conjunction with Livestock Improvement Corporation

(LIC) and the study is supported by government funding as part of the MBIE Endeavour Next Gen GS programme. Traditionally, genetic disorders are uncovered when farmers alert their veterinarians or breeding companies of suspicions. But this study has utilised the increasing genomic sequence data to proactively investigate differences in production traits. “We were surprised at the number and scale of effects,” research leader at LIC and Massey professor in animal genetics Matt Littlejohn says. “The research demonstrates the value of academia and industry working together and the benefits that can be developed for farmers when pure and applied sciences are used to tackle realworld problems.”

The team found six recessive variants with effects ranging from mild, including a slight loss of body condition with limited other impacts, to major, where bodyweight was reduced by approximately 25% and there was increased early-life mortality. Beyond the bodyweight effects that led to the discoveries, there were many other impacts including lower milk production, lower milksolids, smaller stature, smaller chest circumference and other anatomical changes. Awareness of the variants means genetic testing can help manage the frequency. “These discoveries reinforce the importance of continued investment in gene discovery and genetic analysis technology to help farmers breed healthier, more efficient dairy herds,” LIC

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

“The research demonstrates the value of academia and industry working together and the benefits that can be developed for farmers when pure and applied sciences are used to tackle realworld problems.” Matt Littlejohn

chief scientist Richard Spelman says. “By supporting farmers to identify and minimise the number of animals that are susceptible to particular ‘negative’ genes, we can breed cows that are more resilient, speed up the rate of genetic gain and help ensure the sustainability of NZ’s pastoral industries for years to come.” From spring this year, all farmers using LIC’s GeneMark DNA parentage testing service will have their calves screened for

the six genetic variants and be notified if any of them are affected, allowing farmers to make an informed decision whether to retain them. Although affected animals are rare, around 0.5% of calves born will be affected by one of these variants, Spelman highlights the value this knowledge will deliver to farmers. “We’re excited to transform our investment in research and development into a simple convenient service for our farmer shareholders, one that could save millions in lost production,” Spelman says. “Knowing what calves have these genetic variations will help ensure farmers rear only the healthiest, highestperforming animals.” The research has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Genetics which publishes the highestquality research in genetics globally, in animal and human research alike. A significant achievement for Reynolds as an early career scientist. “These results create new opportunities to improve the health and welfare of animals, where genetic

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PhD student Edwardo Reynolds and his team have discovered genes in cattle which allows scientists to identify disorders.

screening and a broader awareness of syndromes will allow breeding and management strategies to minimise genetic disease,” Reynolds says.

ANIMAL HEALTH

Measure to improve Samantha Tennent General manager WelFarm Ltd

f we don’t measure particular elements of a farming business, we can’t manage them. Imagine if milk processors didn’t measure the milk they collected, and simply estimated and paid what they felt it was worth. It wouldn’t be fair and wouldn’t show a true reflection of the efforts to produce that milk. It’s the same with managing our herds’ health and welfare. If we don’t measure, assess and analyse data, how do we know we are achieving the best possible outcomes? How do we know we are producing to the herd’s potential and how can we determine if we are improving in key areas? Data is invaluable in making decisions, the more data we have, the better we are placed to manage our farms and our herds. We can have confidence in the decisions we make and be ready for opportunities. Measurement data helps farmers better manage their operations – the more information they have, the more they can make decisions that are tailored to their farm and herd’s specific needs. There are a number of trends emerging from the data in WelFarm, a dairy herd programme that looks at herd health and welfare. If we look back from the 2013-14 season to now, we see steady growth in the number of herds and cows enrolled in the programme and this connects with the increase in the number of clinics offering the programme. “People are understanding the value of data and a lot of the sector is seeking information,” VetSouth managing director and WelFarm founder Mark Bryan says. “Data is a valuable tool for both farmers and veterinarians to make management decisions on-farm.” Perhaps a sign of the times with climate change and other environmental

Early-aged pregnancy testing provides valuable information about when animals conceived and predicted calving dates.

pressures building, farmer behaviour around stock levels has also been shifting. We can see across the seasons the number of heifer calves being weaned has lessened and replacement rates have decreased. In the same sense, cows culled have also decreased. There are a number of factors that could be influencing these trends. It could be conscious efforts to reduce stock numbers, or limit herd size growth. It could be a shift from rearing abundant replacements, to rearing more beef animals as market demand changes. Or it could also be from an improvement in other health and reproductive factors, where efforts to breed robust cows with longevity in the herd could be shining through. “With the looming changes to the live animal export market, we may see further shifts in these trends too,” he says. On the other side from the cows remaining in herds, comparing last season to the season before we can see decreases in bulk milk somatic cell counts. There have been good reductions in the season high as well as the rolling mean, coupled with changes to antibiotic use – this is good news for the sector. “Mastitis has always been a battle for veterinarians and farmers, and we

are always trying to raise awareness to combat it with the right testing and treatment techniques. “It’s reassuring to see somatic cell counts coming down,” he says. And an exciting trend for all parts of the sector is the number of herds formally body condition scoring. “It’s something we feel has been talked about for years, how important having that body condition score data is for a herd and the decisions they can make from it, so it’s really promising to see the increase in the number of herds seeking that data,” he says. “There will be great outcomes for farmers, for advisors and for cows with this increased focus.” Having good data allows us to establish baselines, identify efficiencies that lead to higher productivity and profitability, lower input costs and optimise product use. We can use data to determine our goals to keep moving forward. With more vet clinics and farmers joining the WelFarm programme and farmers seeing value in gathering data about their herd, it will continue to strengthen decision making on-farm and increase opportunities to improve efficiencies and productivity. n

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

FARMSTRONG

Farmstrong ambassador Sam Whitelock says instead of trying to do everything in a day, prioritise those jobs that can be achieved to help reduce stress levels.

Dealing with uncertainty Whether it’s the weather, border restrictions or changing regulations, dealing with uncertainty is a constant for many farmers and growers. Here are Farmstrong ambassador Sam Whitelock’s tips for getting through tough times.

the weather, the ref or pressure on the scoreboard. When I’m under pressure, I try to keep it simple and just concentrate on the things I’m good at and can control.”

Keep it simple “I think the best players I’ve seen at handling pressure are the ones who can just focus on doing the basics really well game after game, irrespective of

Prioritise “Work on a farm is never done, so it’s important to prioritise. Work out what you can and can’t do in a day and be okay with that. “Ask yourself ‘what are the top two or three tasks I need to do?’ and park everything else. Once you’re feeling back

am Whitelock comes from a farming background and will head back into farming once he hangs up his boots. As a professional athlete he’s also had plenty of experience at handling pressure and setbacks. Here are a few of his insights.

in charge, your stress levels will go down.” Keep talking “Pressure is pressure whether you’re a grower, a farmer or a rugby player. I know from my own experience that talking through these challenges with mates and family helps enormously. “If you see someone struggling, start that conversation, ask them how they’re going and make time for a proper catch-up, whether it’s over a coffee or at the pub. You don’t have to have all the answers, just listening can be a huge

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

“Time away from your main job energises you for when you are back at work.” Sam Whitelock

help to someone who is feeling under the pump.”

gets tough: staying connected with mates; keeping active; taking note of and enjoying the simple things in life; learning new things to keep fresh; and giving back to friends and community. “Farming, like professional rugby, is a job with a lot of challenges. That’s why it’s important to look after yourself by investing in your wellbeing. “I’ve found the Five Ways have a positive, cumulative effect over time. They make you more resilient and give

you something to draw on when you are under pressure. Different things work for different people, so find out what works for you and lock it in.” n

Farmstrong is a rural wellbeing programme that aims to help farmers and farming families live well to farm well. To find out what works for you and “lock it in”, check out our farmer-to-farmer videos, stories and tips on www.farmstrong.co.nz

Tap into local knowledge “One of the best things I’ve learned is to listen to people who have been through similar experiences before. There’ll be a lot of knowledge in your community, people who’ve been through droughts or floods or other adverse events before and got through okay. Make sure you tap into their wisdom and advice.” Retain perspective “Rugby is a big part of my life but I also have other things going on in my life. The expectation is always there that we will win every game, but that’s not the reality. So while losing a rugby game still hurts, I can tell myself ‘I’m still a father, a husband, a son with a great family’. The reality is I also have other things going on in my life, so it doesn’t define who I am as a person.” Give yourself a breather “No one can just go hammer-down the whole time. We all need time to reset physically and mentally, even if it’s just for a short while at smoko or lunch. One of the things I’m doing now is planning a 10-minute slot each day and saying ‘this is my time’. I know taking breaks when you’re busy sounds odd, but I’ve learnt it makes you a lot more efficient and productive in the long run. You’re not tired and overthinking things.” Plan breaks “If you’re only thinking about one thing, such as the weather, all day, every day, of course it will start to get on top of you. “So, it’s important to go and do something else from time to time. I play rugby because I love it, but I also go hunting with mates to relax, unwind and forget about rugby. Time away from your main job energises you for when you are back at work. “ Lock in the Five Ways to Wellbeing “These simple habits help keep things in perspective when the going

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

Sam Whitelock recommends taking a 10 minute break often, even during the busy times.

INNOVATIONS

Peace of mind By Samantha Tennent

Statistics from FMG show around 30% of milk claims are due to antibiotics contaminating milk.

ontamination is a headache for any farmer, no matter what stage it gets discovered, but Nathan and Lois Smith have developed a clever solution to reduce the chances of contamination happening. “It was during the once-a-day conference in Nelson earlier this year, FMG was talking about how often they deal with contaminated milk claims and I thought there has to be an easy way to reduce the risk,” Nathan says. “I came home and connected with our local electrician, and we designed a device that easily shows you from the milking area which direction the vat tap is, and whether the milk is going into the vat or not. “It had to be safe for cows, I didn’t want any risks of stray voltage, and I knew it had to be easy to install.” Keeping it simple, they have called the device Vat Guard and built a plug-and-play system that farmers can install themselves. It has colour coded lights that you can see in the milking area to show which way the tap is pointed. “It’s another form of visual communication and protects farmers from grading. There’s no questioning which way to tap is, or having to go check to be sure,” he says. The first prototype was built in their shed at home in Turakina, near Whanganui. They installed it in their herringbone and built another for his brother Kane Brisco, who has been promoting the device on his Facebook page Farm Fit NZ. “We’ve had farmers contact us through Facebook or over the phone, and one guy ordered one straight after he had a mishap. One of the team went to change the tap over but got waylaid and forgot what he was doing. “They caught it in time but the stress could have easily been avoided,” he says.

Lois and Nathan Smith developed Vat Guard, a simple device that reduces the risk of contamination from antibiotics.

“It’s a great tool for sheds that have more than one person milking, making sure it’s clear what is happening with the vat tap.” They are managing to turn orders around within a week or so, with their electrician building his components in the evenings after work and Nathan and Lois putting the rest of the system

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“We’ve had farmers contact us through Facebook or over the phone, and one guy ordered one straight after he had a mishap.” Nathan Smith together, still from their shed at home. It takes about six hours to build one device. They have also been trying to give back to their community where they can, including buying 33 pairs of children’s pyjamas for families in Whanganui recently from some of the sale proceeds. “It’s not a big money-making scheme for us, we really just want to help farmers out,” he says. They relate because they have had plenty of mishaps themselves, double-checking to make sure the tap has been changed over. They are sharemilking 500 Friesian cows in Turakina, where they have been for 10 years. They were variable order sharemilking till they bought the herd five years ago and run a no bobby calf system. They transitioned to once-a-day three years ago and are impressed how the Friesian cows handled it. “There weren’t any udders blowing out or anything; the ones who didn’t cope were easy to spot, they just got fat and dried themselves off,” he says. “We run 450 beef animals. It can be pretty intensive running both farms, but once-a-day has really been a game-changer. And we are really proud that we eliminated bobby calves from our system.” The Smiths have three children still at home and their oldest is farming in Taranaki. “The youngest one is into farming, but not cows he reckons,” Nathan says with a laugh. With the farm and family under control, and now that they have their vat tap worries taken care of, they are keen to help as many farmers as they can with their Vat Guard system. “It provides that peace of mind that the right milk is going to the right place, without any confusion and fewer stuff-ups,” he says. n

Vat Guard has colour coded lights installed in the milking area to show which way the tap is pointed.

3 YR

100%

REPLAC

EMENT

Vat Guard is a plug-and-play system that farmers can install themselves to show which way the milk is flowing.

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

INNOVATIONS

Top award for farmers’ saviour By Samantha Tennent

Clever Kiwis have come up with brilliant solutions to simple problems faced by the agricultural industry for this year’s Fieldays Innovations Awards.

armers have always faced water supply issues, not least from cows who have always been too rough with trough ballcocks, snapping arms left, right and centre as they nudge them around while drinking. And as Ric Awburn watched cows at an empty trough break an arm one evening, he thought it needed some give to withstand the rough treatment, so

he put his thinking cap on and went to work. Two years later, Springarm Products Limited developed a durable and reliable ballcock arm that is durable, reliable and easy to install. It was named the winner of the Prototype award at the 2021 Fieldays Innovations Awards. “We call it the farmer’s little saviour,” Springarm Products Ltd

The team from Springarm Products Ltd with their award-winning trough ballcock they call the farmer’s little saviour. The innovation won the Prototype award at Fieldays.

Cropsy Technologies won the Early Stage award and the Young Innovator’s award for their scalable AI-enabled hardware. Cropsy Technologies co-founder and chief operating officer Leila Deljkovic shows the technology to Fieldays visitors.

director Marianne Awburn says. “We’ve talked to so many farmers who were relieved there’s a solution to their problem that they’ve been facing for so long.” They were gobsmacked when the award was announced at the awards evening at Fieldays on June 17. More than 65 entries had been received from across New Zealand. “Innovation has been at the core of Fieldays since its inception more than 50 years ago and this year is no exception,” Fieldays Innovations event manager Gail Hendricks says. “The calibre of entries for our 2021 event has taken things to the next level and showcased the primary industry’s latest and greatest technology and developments.” The awards had a new format for 2021, after covid-19 saw the 2020 event hosted online. “Categories were organised to follow the innovation lifecycle and provide the support, mentoring and exposure innovators needed to bring their revolutionary products to market or grow market share,” Hendricks says. There were strong hi-tech entries throughout the competition, but Springarm impressed the judges with their simple and elegant solution to a well-defined common problem. The judges appreciated the thought put into the design of the product and the clear and immediate commercial opportunity it presented. Two other awards were taken home by Cropsy Technologies, the Early Stage award and the Young Innovator’s award. The team of young engineers are innovating in the crop analytics space with their scalable AI-enabled hardware. They presented a system with an impressive combination of smart mechanical, electronic and software AI, which delivers passive data collection during existing grower activities. “Growers can’t monitor every vine in their vineyard, and they don’t have the

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

The team from Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd (IGS) won the Growth and Scale award for its modular and scalable vertical farming system.

resources to,” Cropsy Technologies cofounder and chief operating officer Leila Deljkovic says. “Being engineers we thought, how can we help?” They have created a camera with machine learning that looks out for disease, counts bunches of vines, detects missing or dying vines and anything that is wrong with the plants. It attaches to the front of a tractor.

Their innovation will help growers minimise crop loss, estimate yield to improve supply chains and replant with precision. They are currently trialing with large enterprise wineries, including Pernod Ricard Winemakers, and are looking for pilot partners for commercial deployment next season. The Growth and Scale award was won by Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd (IGS) for its modular and scalable vertical

farming system. It can generate yields of 225% compared with glasshouse production, with the potential to reduce energy usage by up to 50%, reduce chemical use, enable more efficient land-use and reduce labour costs by up to 80% versus other indoor growing environments. Hendricks is confident in the future of the primary industry with innovative thinkers across NZ. “As we grapple with changing conditions globally and find ways to produce more with less, innovation is not only a top priority for businesses, it is a necessity,” she says. “The ingenuity and cutting-edge ideas put forward at this year’s event demonstrate that the primary industry is well-positioned to solve some of the biggest challenges we’re facing.” Fieldays were extremely proud to see another year of such a high standard of entries across all categories and are confident that these winners will positively shape and impact the primary industries landscape, as so many previous Fieldays Innovation Award winners have. n

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July 2021

INDUSTRY GOOD

Winter calving tips Planning to calve in the right conditions is essential and there are a few key things to consider to ensure good outcomes.

Ashley Greenwood Animal care extension specialist

inter is well and truly upon us and I know this is a challenging time on the farming calendar. These colder months means that managing both our cows and the calves they are carrying requires extra care and attention. As we head towards calving, it is important to think about what we can do to avoid our cows calving on mud or crop. Newborn calves are particularly vulnerable to cold and are more affected than their dams. Planning to calve in the right conditions is essential and there are a few key things to consider to ensure good outcomes all round. Getting cows off winter crop Once cows are close to calving, drafting them off crop and back onto pasture is important for a few reasons: • Mineral imbalances in some crops can cause an increase in metabolic diseases, like milk fever. • A cleaner calving environment reduces

the risk of infection for both cow and calf. • The calf needs to get the required ‘liquid gold’ colostrum from mum – this is more likely on solid ground and not having to choose to shelter over feed, due to any wet paddock conditions. It’s worth using all the information you have available to observe cows close to calving. Daily observation of animal signs such as ‘springing up’ and swollen vulvas, alongside their expected calving dates, will ensure cows are removed from crop promptly and are able to calve in the right conditions. The calving environment Calving in a paddock with shelter gives calves a good start in life, providing more comfort and warmth to benefit their health. If calves are too cold, they are less likely to stand up to drink that precious colostrum from their mother. Providing a safe and sheltered environment for cows to calve on will give them the best start to their lactation, improve general health and reduce the risk of future mastitis. Farmer case study Southland farmers Suzanne and Maurice Hanning tap into their knowledge of their farm for their wintering approach. The Hannings’ farm

with DairyNZ currently has 650 cows on its 230ha and nearby support block. They have their calving set up planned, with their animals at the heart of their farm decisions. Suzanne explains that calving on crop is something they take steps to avoid. “To avoid calving on crop, when we dry off we put our cows into calving mobs based on scanning information and AB dates. These mobs have around 120 or 130 cows per group,” Suzanne says. “We check our cows at least twice a day, every day, to see if any of the animals are showing calving signs. Often the person moving the back fence checks all the cows, casting their eye down their row to see who could be close. Then we are able to decide if any cow needs to be moved.” The work on the Hannings’ farm is an example of what is being done on-farm throughout the region. Now is an important time for us all to be considering what changes can be made on-farm, so we can make a difference this winter. n

More information available at dairynz.co.nz/wintering

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

BACK UP.

GOOD CALL. At FMG, we know that more than 10% of our milk claims are as a result of power loss. It’s this kind of specialised rural knowledge that allows us to pass on valuable advice to farmers to help manage risks. Like making sure you always have a back-up generator on a dairy farm. At the end of the day, if we can help you avoid loss, it reduces stress, lost production and downtime. So why not get in touch with FMG to see how we can help you make some good calls on your farm. Call us on 0800 366 466, or go to fmg.co.nz

We’re here for the good of the country. FMG0915DFFP_B

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

CALVING

Busting the scours myth By Katherine DeWitt

There’s a common belief that feeding a high volume of milk to calves causes scours. DairyNZ solutions and development specialist discusses if it’s true.

high volume of milk feeding is considered at least 20% of a calf’s bodyweight in milk, or eight to 12 litres per day. But does this cause diarrhoea (scours) in calves? Recent studies tell us the answer is no. Scouring for evidence Feeding calves a greater volume of liquid feed does create more faeces overall, but offering consistently high volumes of milk should not result in scours. Scours episodes are commonly caused by viruses, bacteria and protozoa, and the volume of milk fed should have little effect on their spread. Calves are more likely to be exposed to these bugs through: • poor hygiene (especially associated with milk feeding equipment) • housing conditions (especially bedding conditions) • insufficient colostrum intake, leading to a poorly developed immune system.

“The main motivator for me is labour saving, but more than that, I know my calves are getting a good start and that they’re happy and not hungry.” High volumes and overall health Several studies have shown that not only does feeding higher volumes of milk not cause scours, but it actually promotes a better immune system in calves. High milk intake also leads to an increase in calves’ pre-weaning growth rates, which is linked to better lactation performance and earlier age

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

Southland farm owner Amy Johnston had an issue with scours, so changed to ad-lib feeding and found it most effective.

at first breeding. Other benefits include reduced cross-sucking behaviour and less vocalisations. Farmer experience Southland farm owner Amy Johnston decided to try ad-lib milk feeding 10 years ago after having trouble with scours. She trialled one pen of calves, then quickly switched to rearing her 250 replacement calves this way. Amy fills the drums with milk once or twice a day, depending on the temperature outside. She estimates that each calf drinks at least eight litres of milk daily. “Sometimes we’ll get the odd scours if it gets cold, but I definitely notice less scours than our previous system,” Johnston says. The biggest surprise was actually that the pen is silent. I didn’t realise that they only holler when they’re hungry or stressed. “Watching the behaviour and playfulness in the pen, you can see that they’re happier and just as friendly.

The main motivator for me is labour saving, but more than that, I know my calves are getting a good start and that they’re happy and not hungry,” she says. Here’s how For best results, feed calves at least twice a day or ad-lib, because they can’t drink high volumes in one feeding. This also satisfies their natural need to suckle and drink milk in multiple meals. n

Myth: Feeding calves high milk volumes causes scours Busted: Scours is more likely to be caused by bugs and/or poor hygiene and housing conditions. Feeding high milk volumes can actually improve calves’ future health.

Find out more about rearing calves at dairynz.co.nz/calves

CALVING

The three Qs By Gerald Piddock

Ensuring calves are fed gold colostrum as soon as possible after birth means they will have the best chance at survival and building immunity.

ewborn calves risk compromising their immune system if they are unable to be fed colostrum quickly, in sufficient quantities and of a high enough quality. If this occurs, the calf will have a compromised immune system and be more vulnerable to diseases and other challenges. When the calf failed to absorb those antibodies in time, it was called failure of passive transfer (FPT) and the calf would have a weakened immune system, VetEnt’s Emma Cuttance told farmers at a Smaller Milk and Supplier Herds field

day near Matamata recently. There are three ways FPT can happen: if the calf does not get the colostrum quickly enough; if it does not get the right quantity of colostrum; and if it does not get good quality colostrum. “We call them the three Qs,” Cuttance says. Pregnant cows cannot transfer antibodies to their calves through the placenta while pregnant like most mammals. Instead, when calves are born, the animals have nothing. “Anything they get in order to be able to fight disease comes from colostrum,” she says.

Newborn calves only have about 24 hours to be able to absorb the antibody molecules present in colostrum before they are unable to, because the pores in the animal’s stomach close. At the same time, the quality of the cow’s colostrum is also decreasing in antibodies. “It’s really time dependent,” she says. A 2015 VetEnt study of 105 dairy farms showed FPT was occurring from 5-84% among the calves on those farms. The study found that breed made little difference, but calves born to older cows were more likely to have FPT.

VetEnt’s Emma Cuttance says calves need colostrum in the first 24 hours of their lives or risk having their immune system compromised.

DAIRY FARMER

July 2021

Cuttance says they were not sure why this was the case. Weak, sick and small calves and calves that had to be tube-fed were more likely to have FPT, and the farm’s location also influenced its likelihood of FPT. “If calves are born in Southland or Otago, they are far more likely to have FPT,” she says, which is simply due to the cold weather. The final influence was the time the calf spent on its mother. When calves are left on the dam for 24 hours instead of being brought in and tube-fed, they are less likely to get FPT. However, she says that did not necessarily mean calves should only be left with their mothers because of the variability of quality in colostrum. This quality is measured in antibody concentration and the colostrum’s bacterial contamination. Gold colostrum, which is the cow’s first milking post-calving, is the only type of milk suitable for a newborn calf. “Later milkings simply do not have enough antibodies for newborn calves,” she says. In another study, VetEnt and fellow

vet company Anexa analysed samples of colostrum using a brix refractometer to measure antibody and bacteria levels. The refractometer measures the colostrum’s solids, a large proportion of which consist of antibodies.

“Anything they get in order to be able to fight disease comes from colostrum.” Emma Cuttance

Ideally, the brix levels of that colostrum should be at least 22% and the levels from the samples ranged from 6-27%, averaged 16.5%, and less than 10% of the samples were suitable for newborn calves. It reinforced why calves left on their mothers did better than those taken away and fed colostrum using a feeder. The number of antibodies in those feeders was very low in comparison, she says.

A more recent two-year study involving researchers observed four Waikato and four Canterbury farms during calving, to better understand the feeding behaviour of newborn calves while the calves are still in the paddock. It found that 63% of the calves fed in the paddock, but the calves who fed off their mothers on the farms ranged from 40-90%. “Calves that did feed in the paddock were two and a half times less likely to have FPT. “To put it another way, calves that didn’t feed in the paddock were way more likely to have FPT,” she says. But this did not necessarily mean farmers could not fix the issue in the calf shed if they fed the calves high-quality colostrum in time to prevent FPT. “Whether they feed or not, you can make a difference at the other end. It all depends on the colostrum they are given and that is what this study essentially shows,” she says. It was hugely dependent on the farm and the systems it has in place whether farmers should leave the calves on the dam or not. n

CALVING

Key to healthy calves By Gerald Piddock

While rearing calves for the market can be a profitable business, it can take a lot of time and effort to ensure they are as healthy as possible.

hen it comes to rearing healthy calves, nothing is more important than making sure it gets quality colostrum as soon as possible after being born. The antibodies and nutrients it provides for the calf ensures it gets the best start to its life, Waikato farmer and calf rearer Rob Klaus told farmers at a Small Milk and Supplier Herds field day on his farm. “I see time and time again when calves get dropped off here, they are good for a couple of days and then they turn to crap,” Rob says.

“I can’t drum it in enough that colostrum is the most important thing when it comes to calf rearing. If they don’t get colostrum, you might as well shoot them.” The Klaus’ rear around 800 Friesian bull calves a year on their 94ha farm near Matamata. They also operate a dairy farm, which serves as the base for their contracting business Klaus Ag Contracting. The calves are reared in a four-year-old 1050 square metre shed purpose-built for rearing for $120,000. That shed is one of his most valuable tools. Building the shed was a huge

project and he was determined that it would be done properly. “For one person doing 500 calves it’s a lot of work and it has to be easy,” he says. Rob oversees the rearing operation while wife Sharon runs the dairy farm, running 190 cows on a split calving system, with 140 cows calved in the autumn and the remaining 50 in the spring. The farm’s replacement heifers are in the rearing facility. The winter milking system complemented their rearing operation and prevented a logjam of calves that they otherwise would have had in a

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July 2021

Rob and Sharon Klaus run a dairy farm, rear Friesian bull calves and run a contracting business on their 94ha farm near Matamata.

The Klaus’ rear around 800 Friesian bull calves on their farm near Matamata.

spring calving operation. They also winter milk because they found it easier to grow good pasture covers in the winter than it is in summer when it gets very dry. “We’re averaging 400kg MS a cow,” he says. The shed holds about 340-350 calves, with around 14 calves for each pen. In previous years, he used a 15-teat calf feeder, but this season he is switching to a new drop-in feeding system to try and stop cross contamination if some of the calves are sick. The bulk of the calves, around 560-600, are reared in the spring and around 160 reared in autumn. He also rears a small number of whiteface calves. The Friesian calves are purchased at four days old by stock agents and reared over 9-12 weeks to 100kg. They are then sold to Hawke’s Bay farmers who he has

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long-standing relationships with, who then finish the cattle. For the first four to five days of the calves’ arrival, they are fed twice a day before switching to a once-a-day feeding system. That system sees the calves fed 2l/day of milk from milk powder. The calves also have access to water and meals on an ad lib basis. The calves gain around 0.7kg a day and once the calves reach 60-65kg, Rob puts the calves outside on four paddocks close to the shed equipped with shelters and ad lib meals and water. Their milk intake is also increased to 2.5l/day/calf. Here, the calves grow around 1kg/day. He also drenches them in their third week of being on the paddock. Once the calves hit 100kg, he drenches them again. Sick calves are an unfortunate reality of calf rearing and Rob walks through the shed around six times a day to check on their health. If any calves look sick, they are pulled out immediately and are isolated in his ‘sick pen’ to prevent it spreading to healthy calves. If calves do get scours, he takes them off their milk for around 35 hours and feeds the animals electrolytes three times a day. The calves are then eased back onto their milk diet. “If you try to go too soon on milk, you’re back to square one,” he says. Once the calf starts to look well, it goes to a recovery pen before returning to its previous pen once it is healthy again.

“I can’t drum it in enough that colostrum is the most important thing when it comes to calf rearing. If they don’t get colostrum, you might as well shoot them.” Rob Klaus

He had a major salmonella outbreak in the rearing shed during his second year of rearing, resulting in 6% mortality. “Every pen in the shed had a calf with the shits and it was bad,” he says. After that, every calf entering the shed gets a salmonella and 5-in-1 vaccinations on arrival. This season, he is getting all of his spring calves in July so the calves can reach their target weights by October 20 and November 20. He fully cleans the shed out once a year in early June. It is water blasted and fresh woodchips are used to bed the pens. Rob says they are making money out of the rearing, but it was not easy. He aimed for a $200/calf margin, but had to contend with finishers not wanting to pay too much for a 100kg calf and farmers wanting good money for their four-day-old calves. n

CALVING

Recovering lost hours A Waikato farmer is finding himself with extra hours in the day during the busy calving period, thanks to solar-powered GPS collars fitted to his herd.

Te Uku farmer Jay Crowhurst installed the Halter smart cow collars on their herd to make their farm a one-man operation.

By Richard Rennie

sk any dairy farmer about springtime calving and they will inevitably mention their day needs another couple of hours in it to get all the jobs done and deal with the usual seasonal hiccups that come along. Te Uku farmer Jay Crowhurst knows this well, but this year believes he may be able to recover those lost few hours in every day over calving, and is looking forward to finding out how he can best use them. Last October, Jay and his wife Rowena installed Halter smart cow collars on their 200-head herd, with the aim to try and achieve the challenging task of making the farm essentially a one-man operation, while also giving him more time to spend with his young family. The solar-powered, GPS-enabled collars developed in the Waikato enable a herd to be managed via a smartphone. Herd movements can be scheduled and paddocks defined virtually for cows directed to designated fence-free grazing areas. It seemed appropriate that October 15 last year marked not only the day Jay installed the collars on the herd, but also the birth of their third child.

Family life was about to get a lot busier with three children under six. “Our hope was that Halter would make life easier and give us more time and that has certainly proven to be the case so far. Spring will hopefully also become a far easier affair,” he says.

“Our hope was that Halter would make life easier and give us more time, and that has certainly proven to be the case so far.” Training the herd to respond to the collars’ audio cues proved easier than anticipated, as it builds on animals’ learnt response to repeated sounds, whether from a collar or from a fence reel being wound up for a new break. “After four weeks I found myself holding a month-old baby and was not stressing about when the cows were being shifted and how the farm was going – even not having to sit behind them every day to get them to the dairy was a big change,” he says.

Jay is now very familiar with the benefits Halter has delivered through the later part of lactation. That includes scheduling his last mob of milkers in autumn to get themselves to the dairy in the morning, ready to go when he arrives. Heading into springtime, Jay is starting to see what a vital role the Halter technology can play in ensuring the herd are fed optimally through winter, while also giving him time to tend to the many other jobs requiring time over winter. “When it comes to managing my winter rotation, I am finding I can really dial in the allocation amounts very efficiently for each mob, with the area reflecting the dry matter I want fed per cow and the residual I want left postgrazing,” he says. The phone-based Halter app also gives him a daily update on round speed and alerts him if he is getting around the farm too fast or has some spare days up his sleeve. Allocating mobs into virtual paddocks is an uncanny exercise at first, but one helping him ensure he is targeting each mobs’ specific feed needs. “I am able to enter in maintenance feed levels for the better conditioned

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The 200-cow herd fitted with the Halter collars are managed via a smartphone. girls, while upping the allowance for those cows needing some condition gain – the break size shifts accordingly and is far more efficient than trying to do a onesize-fits-all approach,” he says. Doing away with physical fence definitions of paddocks has removed the temptation to make a mob fit into a paddock that may, in reality, be slightly too small or too large for their requirements. Jay enjoys having the flexibility to schedule a mob to graze a small remaining portion of a break for a couple of hours, before allocating them their next feed block. “I feel like I am going slower in my rotation than usual, yet the herd is being fed better than ever,” he says. “We are also doing a better job protecting the soil. If it’s going to be

wet overnight, I can shift the mob in the evening to give them a couple of hours’ grazing just to settle them and avoid pugging.” In mid-June this year he was enjoying an average cover of 2400kg dry matter, one of the best averages the farm has had. Come calving time, he intends to schedule his dry mob to shift themselves every morning, while the milkers will be scheduled to come to the dairy. “That means I can go down and check the springers. Halter will enable me to draft out only the calved cows. It will also alert me to what cows are going to calve and I can pull them out early if they are likely to be a problem,” he says. Having young stock also on the farm means Jay is unlikely to remove all the fences, but can see some of the

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farm’s 87 one-hectare paddocks being consolidated into larger milking blocks where Halter is used to define the ‘paddocks’. He is also seeing the environmental benefits of being able to graze more sensitively around wetter areas, pulling the mobs back from those areas over wetter periods, and pushing them closer when drier. The weather has been kind over winter this year, which helps ease feed stresses as calving approaches. But Jay is also excited about seeing how Halter can make a busy, stressful time of year less so. While the farm may be a System 1 operation, Halter is a hi-tech addition, enabling him to retain that simplicity, while also enjoying the business of farming and the pleasure of family. n

Dairy Farmer July 2021

Articles inside

Innovations

Industry good – DairyNZ

Border exceptions

Guest column – Chris Lewis

A good combination

Milk Monitor

Women in agribusiness – Amy Gillies

Farmstrong