Eye On The Prize

JOHN Sykes admits he has terrorised a few A.I. reps over the years, but he’s a man who knows what he wants. The Sykes family’s Minstonette stud at Ringarooma in Tasmania received a 50-year award during the recent AGM, and John says there’s plenty more to come. Most recently he has been looking for outcrosses, but it always comes back to the type of cow that John likes and works well on their farm. “I use a lot of different bulls and basically I torment the crap out of an A.I reps because I want to breed for different things,” he said. “We want a commercial cow that can go down the paddock and eat the grass that’s irrigated which is the cheapest tucker, come back and eat some grain and be milked and walk back down the paddock. “I want to have a bit of grunt about her; I don’t want a frail cow. We like to have a 425-kilogram cow doing 450 milk solids on five kilograms a day of grain with four cows to the hectare on the milking area.” Minstonette cows have lived up to those expectations in the harsh Tasmanian climate, winning multiple awards over the years and also performing well where it really counts – in the dairy. The family operation includes John and Katrina along with their children Jason and Jane while youngest son Mark works off farm. They normally milk about 600, with 550 stud Jerseys and about 50 stud Ayrshires, introduced about 10 years ago as a birthday present for Katrina. John’s interest in cows stretches back to his childhood. “I was bought up showing calves because my parents Jack and Pam had a stud, Minstone,” he said. Not even an early disaster where the first heifer he intended to show suddenly died three days before the event could quell his enthusiasm. Around 1970 John bought a couple of heifers at Viv Percy’s “Glen Inglis” dispersal sale and really got into showing and developing his own stud. “When I started showing there were 150 Jersey calves at the Scottsdale show – now there aren’t any. “The local show was three-parts Jerseys, now it’s us and a couple of schools. It’s just the way it has gone.” The change reflects the shifting Tasmanian farming landscape, particularly the introduction of corporate-owned farms opting for larger herds and a preference for crossbreds. “There are only a few of us registering and doing the whole thing,” John said.

“We want a commercial cow that can go down the paddock and eat the grass that’s irrigated which is the cheapest tucker, come back and eat some grain and be milked and walk back down the paddock.”

John went share farming in 1976 at age 20, and either shared and leased for five years before marrying Katrina in 1981 and buying a farm and seriously developing his stud. They moved to their present farm at Ringarooma in 2001. Tasmania is known for being wet, and the Sykes farm lives up to that reputation. They have a 186-hectare home farm and similar-sized run-off block, plus Jane has bought a tree block next door and is working on adding that to the overall property. “It’s a very wet farm,” John said. “A few years ago, they built an irrigation dam on some of our land and measured the rainfall. One at the dam site on our property got 1250mm for the year, the other one at the other farm 10km away by road at Ledgewood got 750mm. “We’ve got hills and mountains around us and we can get rain that other people don’t get.” One of the farm’s claims to fame is a 200-acre centre pivot that works off gravity. “We’re at the top end of the valley and the pipes go up above us to the stream coming around the top of the mountain,” John said. “It’s very good in summer because it’s cost efficient and the pivot is right at the dairy. The only nuisance is in winter when we have plenty of leaking taps and water troughs.” They are big on irrigation. As well as the centre pivot, they have about 120 acres of solid set irrigation normally used twice a day. For the first few minutes it puts on the dairy effluent and then it follows up with water for 20 minutes. “It’s efficient because we’re getting the water from upstream and gravitating it down to the effluent dam and then we’re gravitating it from the effluent dam to the pumps to put it on,” John said. Although there are some Ayrshires in the herd, John describes them as “more of a hobby”. “We’re passionate Jersey people. Jane doesn’t have her own stud but she owns about 30 in the herd and she’s the future of this stud,” he said. Their biggest cow family is Vickie,

Monvale Star Dulcie 3

which started when John bought two sisters from Ross and Louise Dalenburg when they dispersed. The Sykes family now estimate they have milked more than 300 from the Vickie family. One notable cow was Minstonette Blackies Vickie 60 who was Reserve Champion and Best Udder at International Dairy Week in 2011 and returned in 2013 to win her age class. She was a really good cow, but John reckons he had one that was better but just didn’t make it to IDW. The calf from Barry Monson, Monvale Star Dulcie 3, had always beaten Vickie in Tasmania but she had a touch of mastitis in the front quarter and John wasn’t prepared to send her across to Victoria. Dulcie won Champion Cow at the State Dairy Fair in Tasmania three times and was twice named Supreme Champion, and resides now in a grave at the family dairy. In 2004 the Sykes family was joint winner of the State Dairy Business of the Year. John is impressed with the rise and continued improvement of Jerseys. “They are completely different cows. Today we’ve got a very workable Jersey cow.” One of the biggest influences on the herd in modern times was Van Ahlem. “I wasn’t an early user but I ended up having 180 in the milking herd by Van Ahlem,” John said. “That tells you what I thought of him.” They moved on to Valentino, David, Oliver P, Irwin, Matt but John is now looking for bulls without Valentino blood, such as Bedford, Izuka and Degree Trigger. “I wanted to use something to get away from Valentino because we’d used so much of him,” he said. They calve in spring, from about August 10 till October 30 and usually raise more than 300 calves. “We rear every female and previously reared a lot of bulls and sold them, though our market there has dwindled due to sexed semen and the beef price.” Jane has been dabbling with Jersey beef and they will follow that market and they are also keen to dip further into sexed semen. The years haven’t dimmed the family’s passion. “We show, we classify, we go to Dairy Week every year and Jane is on the Board; you’ve got to have some reason to get up in the morning,” John said. “We’ve met a lot of good people in the breed and I just bought another heifer at the sale during the conference. We’re as keen as ever and I still believe they are the most economical cow.”