8 minute read
Calf Club winners
from Dairy Farmer November 2022
by AgriHQ
Calf Club’s best year yet
The annual tradition of calf club dates back to 1911 when a Boys and Agricultural Group in Otago held the first recorded event. It remained a firm favourite on the agricultural calendar – until Mycoplasma bovis emerged in 2018, threatening to ruin the tradition. But a group of Waikato farmers banded together to create Calf Club NZ, a digital competition where children from all over New Zealand could submit entries online. Judging was done on farm. Even though Calf Clubs were reinstated in 2020, Calf Club NZ has endured and this year it received record levels of interest.
Anote from Calf Club NZ
marketing manager Josh Herbes
Calf Club NZ 2022 took place during the third-term school holidays in October, and we received many submissions. A big congratulations to everyone who competed.
We ran things a little differently this year, changing the submission process to allow kids submitting entries online to take photos and write their pieces on the day of submission. Because of the change in dates, we saw an influx of contestants from Southland; it’s great to see so many kids taking part.
This has been our best year yet, with 272 entries for the on-farm competition, and 173 online submissions.
Thankfully, to judge all those submissions, we had 41 registrations for volunteer judges, and some even brought along assistants so they could learn the process.
These judges were needed, with the country separated into 22 different regions, including two video sections for kids not reachable by judges on farm.
We have more prizes and sponsors than any year before, and it’s all possible thanks to the young Kiwi kids and judges who get involved every year.
A big shout-out to all our volunteer judges who gave up their time to help our children take part. Thank you for helping and we hope you enjoyed taking part. A special thanks to Sophie Cookson and Michelle Burgess, who spent hours liaising with volunteer judges, organising regions and working tirelessly to make everything run smoothly. – Josh
A note from the Editor
Thank you to all the children and their calves who took part in the Calf Club NZ 2022 competition, you have done a great job, and congratulations to our regional and national winners. Thanks to the wonderful organisers of Calf Club NZ, sponsors and volunteers judges and everyone else who pitched in. You have once again stepped up to help keep this grassroots annual tradition alive and given children the experience and opportunity to compete on a regional and national level. Without your support, Calf Club NZ would not be possible.
The team at Dairy Farmer are proud to be a part of this initiative and we hope to see you all again next year. – Sonita
Eva Muir won the South Waikato Primary sections for rearing and beef conformation.
MORE:
All results including national winners for Calf Club NZ 2022 are available on the Calf Club website. Check out next month’s issue for National winners and the winner of the Social category.
Congratulations
to all the participants in this year’s Calf Club
DeLaval are proud supporters of Calf Club
Primary Results
Safe pair of hands
By Hugh Stringleman
If a trusted and skilled farm manager is beyond rubies, his employers – and their cows – have a real gem in Chris Boxall.
All dairy farmers know how hard it is to find and retain trusted farm managers who work unsupervised and are fully invested in animal welfare, productivity, infrastructure and the environment.
Northland dry farm manager Chris Boxall is such an employee, and his friend and employer, Tom Pow, wanted to push him into the spotlight.
Pow has battled illness for the past two years and he and wife Kathy have relied more heavily on family members and three farm managers and their employees, all in the Mana district south of Whangārei.
Boxall answered the phone one Friday morning recently to be asked if he was on the farm.
“No, but I can be in 10 minutes.”
A short drive from his home up SH1 to the machinery barn and workshop, and Pow introduced this rural journalist and suggested Boxall tell his story.
“This industry has many excellent farm managers who come from all sorts of backgrounds and find their happy places and due rewards,” Pow says.
“Quite frankly, we couldn’t do without Chris and his fellow staff members.”
The Boxall-run dry farm of 100ha is stocked with six service bulls and 400 dairy grazers, mixed Friesian-Jersey, from 100kg weaners through to 450kg pregnant heifers.
They are all calm and contented, well fed, healthy, regularly weighed, vet checked and delivered to the milking platforms in top condition ready to calve.
“Chris takes such good care of all cattle on this farm – they are so quiet when they come into the milking herds for the first time.”
Now aged 67, Boxall got into dairying in his mid-20s after training as a mechanic.
He became a herd manager and then sharemilker for 22 years at Ruawai on one of the Pow properties.
Chris and Sue Boxall sold their cattle and bought a new house at One Tree Point near the Pows’ Ruakākā home farm.
When the Pows bought a lovely flat to gentle rolling farm seven years ago midway between their two dairy farms, all lined up along SH 1, Boxall was asked to move over from Ruawai.
The infrastructure on the dry farm is quite out of the ordinary — disused herringbone dairy, wooden gates, tree-lined fences, races and waterways, covered yards and weigh scales, American-style barns with individual cattle stalls and, since 2019, a 240-cow Herd Home.
The presence of a Herd Home will not be surprising to those who know that Tom Pow invented the barn management system and has sold more than 450 installations here and overseas.
In persistent rain Boxall brings in the heaviest of his grazing cattle to get them off the paddocks, minimise damage to soil structure and feed them silage in the Herd Home.
During the summer the dried effluent
Chris Boxall, who has been a dairy farmer for 40 years, is employed as dry farm manager for Tom and Kathy Pow, Herd Homes principals, in Northland.
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in the bunkers underneath the concrete grate flooring of the Herd Home is scooped out with a front-end loader and spread on paddocks before sowing down maize.
Supplementary feeding in the winter months consists of more than 100t of dry matter in maize silage pits and 400 large square bales of hay cut off the farm.
Shifting cattle between paddocks and to and from the Herd Home takes much of Chris Boxall’s time.
No dogs or sticks are used and all cattle movements along the races and through gates are slow and easy.
He also works farm machinery, mainly quad bikes and tractors, and fills in with an endless maintenance list of fences, gates, drains and tree lines, mainly poplars.
Paddock preparation for cropping and the subsequent regrassing is done with Pow machinery while contractors do the sowing and harvesting of 6ha of maize annually.
“I find a great variety of jobs to do on the farm and prefer to work on my own,” Boxall says.
Livestock, feed and materials are moved between the Pow properties in trucks, tractors and trailers along the state highway, always decked with flags and hi-vis gear and keeping to the verges where possible.
“Chris is always reliable and multiskilled for fixing things and building things and he treats this farm like it is his own,” Pow says.
He works some hours of all seven days a week, but also has time for fishing in Whangārei harbour.
“I had my time as a cow and land owner and I am much happier working as a farm manager,” Boxall says. “Long may it continue,” Pow adds. n
Farm owner Tom Pow, right, says dry farm manager Chris Boxall is completely reliable and has excellent stockmanship. Chris and Tom in the Herd Home.
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Malcolm found the perfect match
Malcolm Bear was clued up when it came to the purchase of his new 12,800L slurry tanker. He’d done all his research online and knew what he wanted. All that was left was the toss up between a 10,000L or 12,800L.
Located in Cambridge, the dairy farm has a fair bit of undulating ground and is situated across two sides of the road. Malcolm was looking for a slurry tanker so he could spread further than the current system would allow. ‘With rising costs of fertilisers, we’ve really got to make the most of the effluent.’ Malcolm had just invested in a new 130hp tractor which was the perfect match for a 12,800L slurry tanker over undulating ground. ‘It made sense to go with the bigger size [slurry tanker]. The tractor could handle it, and we can cart more.’ Luckily for Malcolm Nevada had a 12,800L slurry tanker available in the yard. It was meant to be, so with that the deal was done! The new slurry tanker and tractor are a match made in heaven and Malcolm is more than happy with his investments… ‘The tractor pulls it easily. It’s a very smooth ride with the suspension. I’m impressed with the simplicity and speed.’
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