Cutting Back On Quantity, Not Quality

WORDS // RICK BAYNE

THE Wallace family still love their Jerseys but they’ve got less around after making a lifestyle decision to reduce the herd. The quantity may be down after a clearing sale last October but the quality has never dipped and visitors to Wallacedale Jerseys at Poowong North during the AGM got to appreciate the excellence of the herd. A third-generation farmer continuing a 74-year family tradition, Luke Wallace said he and wife Mel had decided to improve their work-life balance. The herd was established in 1947 by Luke’s late grandparents Vic and Val, who moved on to the current farm in 1957, and continued by Luke’s parents Cliff and Marieka. Wallacedale Jerseys was milking about 220 off 76 hectares, but has scaled back to about 160.

A reduction sale last October saw 65 lots sold as part of their plans to phase the herd to A2A2.

It’s not unusual for Wallacedale to sell their in-demand cows to other farmers, but this sale went deeper than before.

“We’re trying for a bit of work-life balance,” Luke said.

“We lost about half of our leased land, about 20 hectares, so we have less area available for young stock and dry cattle.

“We have worked hard to pay down a bit of debt, hopefully 150-160 cows allow us to keep chipping away at repayments and keep up production.

“We’ve got three kids and they’re coming up 17, 14 and 12; if we don’t spend a bit of time with them now, we never will.”

Luke purchased a successful herd and has continued to develop it into one of Australia’s leading herds, bringing in high-quality outside cows to add diversity but sticking with the best-known cow family, Melanie.

“Mum and Dad bought in the cow family 25-30 years ago that really set us up, the Melanie family,” Luke said.

“We did a lot of embryo transplant work and built up the numbers. They have been very successful so we built on them but I’ve added cow families over the past 10-15 years looking for diversity.”

The Melanie family has had great on-farm challenge success, became the highest production family and has provided bulls for A.I.

Of the new families, of particular note is the Belle cow family that was started with a beef animal in-calf to an imported embryo. “She started a really strong family here that goes back to Duncan Belle, one of the most famous Jersey cows in the world,” Luke said.

Luke aims to breed a balanced, profitable cow with longevity and above average type and production.

For the past decade the herd has sat about 560 kg/Ms per cow average. “We’ve had fairly high stocking rates up until this season so that’s pretty good for the stocking rate,” Luke said.

“We haven’t had a full season to see the impact of the reduction last October on production, but I’m certainly finding it a lot easier to grow grass when you have to feed less mouths, plus we had a great summer and amazing autumn.”

Luke grew up with Jerseys but did share farm on a Holstein farm in his early 20s. “I got a good taste of the differences but I prefer the ease of management with the smaller cows,” he said.

“I’m a smaller framed person and handling larger animals and even picking up the calves was a challenge. If you have to help a Holstein calve, it’s a lot more taxing on the body.”

The good nature of the Jerseys also appeals. “They’re a different animal with different nature and personality. Jerseys are more inquisitive – they want to come home, we don’t have to chase them.”

Luke remains connected to consumers as a supplier of Gippsland Jersey, often sharing videos of his cows and farm to help promote the product.

He continues to enjoy farming, particularly his passion for genetics and for sharing cattle to other breeders.

“Selling cattle has been a big part of our income stream,” he said. “The longer you’re in it, the better your whole herd is and the less replacements you need, which gives you more excess stock to sell.”

Instead of hitting the export market, Luke has enjoyed helping fellow Australian farmers to boost their herds.

Luke said the decision to go fully A22 had been in the pipeline for a while. “With a view to the potential demand for A22 milk increasing, we decided to get on the front foot and be prepared for the possibility sooner rather than later. If and when the time comes that Gippsland Jersey has demand for an A22 product, we will be ready to go with supply.”

It was also an easy way to select which animals to sell when reducing herd numbers in October.

He’s also using more sexed semen this year after dabbling in it in the past. “I think the technology has improved so much and conception rates are so much better and there are more bulls available now to select from,” he said.

“Early on, some of the sexed bulls weren’t bulls I wanted to use.”

For the past 20 years, the milking herd has been purely A.I.

“Any replacement sired by an A.I. bull is worth up to double a naturally-bred animal,” Luke said. “That might not be so much now because the bulls people use are genomically tested so we don’t see as big a difference in the progeny, but A.I. makes the pedigree more solid and more reliable and more marketable.”