NZ Dairy Exporter Janaury 2018

Learn, grow, excel WINNER

MILKING INTERVALS: Suiting your herd

JANUARY 2018

$12

$12 incl GST Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

GOOD SCIENCE Tackling tough issues January 2018

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Freeze your power bill at the same time

Since you have to do it You may as well do it right

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delaval.com | 0800 222 228 2

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2018

DeLaval chillers use snap-chilling technology, which unlike other more basic methods, makes it possible for you to actually reduce your power bill. In addition to this, for every litre of milk chilled, a DeLaval chiller can also produce 0.7 litres of hot water. And because they only run during milking you save on electricity costs at both ends of the process.

We don’t just snap-chill your milk. We’re also freezing our interest rates at 0% on any purchase of a DeLaval chiller for the next 24 months. This is a deal that will be hard to beat. Visit your local DeLaval dealer to put the best chiller on the market, onto your farm.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

January 2018

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CONTENTS

ONCE-A-DAY NO1 AT NO1 42

ONLINE 10 Dairy Exporter’s online presence

MILKING PLATFORM 11 Karla Staples: At last, we got the rain 12 The Seerdens’ journey to a region of old-time values 13 Kate Robinson considers a bigger share of the family pie

UPFRONT 14 Pete Morrison: Reviving Westland 17 Sustainability leader Rick Pridmore retires 20 Market view: Strong global supply holds prices back 22 Fonterra: Quarter of milk to be sourced overseas 23 Mycoplasma bovis: Protecting your herd

BUSINESS 24 Zanda winner: It’s all about the people 29 Buffalo farm: The big cheese 32 Flexible ways to buy into Fonterra 34 Maximising dairy’s value sustainably NEW ZEALAND

Learn, grow, excel

NZ Dairy Exporter is published by NZ Farm Life Media PO Box 218, Feilding 4740, Toll free 0800 224 782, www.nzfarmlife.co.nz Dairy Exporter/Young Country editor Jackie Harrigan, ph 06 280 3165, M 027 359 7781 jackie.harrigan@nzfarmlife.co.nz Deputy editor Sheryl Brown, ph 021 239 1633 Lead sub-editor: Andy Maciver, ph 06 280 3166

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THE BIG CHEESE 29

Reporters Hugh Stringleman ph 09 432 8594; Glenys Christian ph 027 434 7803; Sheryl Brown ph 021 239 1633; Cheyenne Nicholson 06 280 3168; Anne Hardie 027 540 3635; Anne Lee 021 413 346; Karen Trebilcock 03 489 8083; Designer: Joanne Hannam Junior designer: Cassandra Cleland Account Managers: Warren McDonald, National Advertising Manager, Ph 06 323 0143 Lloyd Davy, Auckland/Northland, ph 027 474 6091 Janine Gray, Waikato and Bay of Plenty, ph 027 890 0015 Donna Hirst, Lower North Island, ph 06 323 0739

Nigel Ramsden, Livestock, ph 06 323 0761 Shirley Howard, real estate/international, ph 06 323 0760 Debbie Brown, classifieds/employment, ph 06 323 0765 Aleisha Serong, South Island, ph 027 474 6091 Subscriptions: www.nzfarmlife.co.nz subs@nzfarmlife.co.nz ph 0800 2AG SUB (224 782) ISSN 2230-2697 (Print) ISSN 2230-3057 (Online)

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2018

HITTING THE SWEET SPOT

SYSTEMS 36 It’s all about the cows for Jason Macbeth 40 Milking: A question of frequency 42 Once-a-day No 1 at No 1 45 CO Diary: Prepare for a dry summer 46 After a wet spring, coping with the dry

SPECIAL REPORT | GOOD SCIENCE 48 The power of plantain 51 A shift in funding emphasis 53 Cow’s milk scores with iodine 54 Research in a carbon-neutral frame 56 Research with Kiwi relevance

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE COWS 36 Special report

57 Keeping check, from space 58 Mindy produces the answers

SPECIAL REPORT

Good science

60 The science of grasslands

ENVIRONMENT 62 Future-proofing in South Waikato 65 Moving mindset to smart extensification

STOCK 66 Maui Milk: A new course with sheep milk 69 Vet Voice: Katie Mason on coping with the heat 70 How Qatar dairy beats the blockade

YOUNG COUNTRY 72 Student work: Welcome to Tiakitahuna 74 One milking to 2IC in six months

GOOD SCIENCE 47

RESEARCH WRAP 76 The N game

48 The power of plantain 51 A shift in funding emphasis 53 Cow’s milk scores with iodine Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

FARM GEAR

54 Research in a carbon neutral frame 56 Research with Kiwi relevance 60 The reluctant entolmologist 47

78 Top of the Claas at Agritechnica

DAIRY 101 82 Open Days: Welcoming a group to your farm

SOLUTIONS 84 The Condor has landed 85 Governance training empowers business growth

Property

WELCOME TO TIAKITAHUNA 72

87 Property

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

January 2018

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DAIRY DIARY

BROUGHT TO YOU BY FONTERRA FARM SOURCE

NZFARMSOURCE.CO.NZ/STORE | 0800 731 266

JANUARY January 31-February 2 – The New Zealand Dairy Event is held at Manfeild Park in Feilding, featuring competition and the Semex Summer Sensational Sale. visit www.nzdairyevent.com

FEBRUARY February 1 – DairyNZ is running heifer-rearing field days in the lower North Island to showcase good management practices for heifer grazing and provide a forum for farmers to discuss regional issues.

Visit www.dairynz.co.nz

Central Otago. Register, visit www.dwn.co.nz/events-page February 14-16 – The Southern Field Days provide the latest in rural technology, equipment and ideas from around the world during the three-day event which is held at Waimumu, 12km from Gore. visit www.southernfielddays.co.nz

February 5 – Nominations close for the Fonterra Dairy Women of the Year Award and also Dairy Community Leadership Award. Visit www. dwn.co.nz

February 22 – A Lincoln University Dairy Farm focus day is being held between 10.15am and 1pm. For information about the farm which is on Shands Rd near Lincoln, visit www.siddc.org.nz

February 7-9 – The Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre holds its 31st annual workshop at Massey University. The workshops transfer information among industry, science, policy and regulatory sectors.

Registrations close on February 1. Visit www.massey.ac.nz

February 21 – Finalists are announced for the Ahuwhenua Trophy – BNZ Maori Excellence in Farming Award. The 2018 competition is for Maori dairy farmers, with the winner announced at the awards dinner held at the Wigram Airforce Museum in Christchurch on May 25. Vvisit www.ahuwhenuatrophy.maori.nz

February 8 – Dairy Women’s Network and DairyNZ are running ‘Helping your business go places’ in the Wedderburn Tavern in

MARCH March 1-3 – Northland Field Days near Dargaville have the most recent farming innovation and technology and open between 9am and 4.30 each day. Visit www.northlandfielddays.co.nz

March 15-17 – Central Districts Field Days at Manfeild Park in Feilding has the latest agricultural developments as well as entertainment and competition. More? www.cdfielddays.co.nz

March 13-14 – The fifth Future Farms Conference on agritech, agrifood and innovation is being held at the Palmerston North Convention Centre. The aim of the conference is to help farmers translate current developments in agriculture to create competitive advantage on farm and prepare for a new farming future. More? and registration details are at www.confernz.co.nz/events/5th-annualfuture-farms-conference

March 22-23 – Dairy Women’s Network is holding its annual conference at the Energy Events Centre in Rotorua. More? and to register, visit www.dwn.co.nz March 25-27 – South Island Agricultural Field Days at Kirwee in Canterbury are one of the oldest and largest agricultural events in the South Island. Visit www.siafd.co.nz

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BOOK A FEEDSCAN SERVICE FOR YOUR FARM TODAY. Contact Agrifeeds.

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FORWARD-THINKING NUTRITION Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2018

EDITORIAL

Inquisitive researchers

R

emember when your children were small and drove you up the wall with their interminable questions – “why, Mum?” “Why is the sky blue? Where does the poo go when the toilet flushes? Why do the leaves fall off the trees? Why do dogs bark but cats purr?”

The curiosity that sometimes drives parents crazy is a great trait in scientists – they ask the questions that lead to research to solve some of humanity’s most vexing problems.

Remember when people died of a tooth abscess? Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin took care of that one. Archimedes developed the first water pump and made irrigation possible. Louis Pasteur was an early scientist enabling the processing of food and Michael Faraday developed electricity generation, transforming the world. And surgery was pretty miserable before Henry Bigelow found out about the power of chloroform and ether to knock people out.

Thanks God for scientists who kept asking the questions that have led to so many life-transforming improvements for mankind. Mind you they also came up with nuclear bombs and social media – which, let’s face it, are both a blight on humanity!

In our special report we take a look at some of the good science around the industry and where it might take us. There are certainly a multitude of challenges – climate change, pollution, growing world population, water

NZ Dairy Exporter

scarcity and quality issues, obesity and yet food insecurity, disease challenges and biosecurity issues that we will be looking to our scientists to solve.

But, to enable scientists to get stuck in, the correct policy framework and funding models and timelines need to be in place – not the short-sighted and short-term contracts that have constrained good science in the past.

Bob Edlin sets out the national state of science funding and is heartened by the lengthening of contracts under the Strategic Science Investment Fund from five years to seven, to help give scientists more certainty and longevity of funding (p51). He also chats to new Science Minister Megan Woods about her plans for science (p54).

Moving to a milking frequency that really suits the cows has led Jason McBeth and Beth Phillips to use three different milking regimes within their Nelson herd and they say it’s well worth the effort to get the best out of the herd (p36). Our theme around milking frequency looks at once-a-day, twice-aday, 16 hours and weighs up the merits of each.

We also look at the onfarm biosecurity measures you should employ at your place to keep Mycoplasma bovis away (p23) and have a couple of commentators helping out with strategies to survive the dry that an early summer has plunged us into (p45).

Hope your rain is regular and your summer enjoyable,

NEXT ISSUE ALL ABOUT THE UDDER

•

For all you breast men out

there, in February we will be homing in on the udder and tackling issues like mastitis, conformation, mammary development and teat health.

Investigating lotions, stripping and teat health – just like Fashion Quarterly.

•

Drying off decisions and procedures

•

FARM GEAR: Vat monitoring OUR COVER Dr Soledad Navarette’s PhD study investigated bioactives in Tonic plantain at Massey University.

Jackie

@YoungDairyED

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz |

SNEAK PEAK:

January 2018

@DairyExporterNZ

Photo: Sarah Ivey

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Word in your ear MILK PROTECTION

NEW Vat Manager Auto saves milk If there is any tampering with the vat, it also alerts you that the vat is open or there is someone there taking milk.”

APARIMA FARM LTD PARTNERSHIP

It has also saved their milk on a number of occasions.

Mike & Esmerelda Duffin, contract milkers Location: Stock numbers: Farm size: Shed:

Wairio, Southland 550 cows 221 ha 56-bail rotary

Mike and Esmerelda Duffin like to keep up with technology. So when Tru-Test came knocking, informing them they’d been selected, via My Farm, to trial their new Vat Manager Auto, they happily said yes.

“It sounded like a good product. Dairying is going into the future and we see we can't stay behind. We look to be proactive in upgrading our systems to make the most of new technology,” Mike explains.

Esmerelda adds “We also wanted to keep track of how much milk was going into the vat. As well as have the peace of mind that the refrigeration actually does turn on when it needs to turn on, and that’s what the Vat Manager Auto is designed to do.”

“We like that we can monitor this as well.

We don't have to be on farm. So, it's just that double peace of mind,” Mike rounds off.

3498TT01

Since the Vat Manager Auto has been installed they have experienced a number of benefits.

“It alerts you if there is a power failure or it alerts you if the refrigeration has failed to turn on for any reason. It sends you a text. To make sure that we know how much milk is in the vat, it also gives us a percentage of the milk that is in the vat.

That’s a benefit if we want to know before pick-up or if we want to report to Head Office to say that we've got say 10,000 litres in the vat.

When the tanker picks up, it alerts you that the refrigeration is turned off as well.

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Weighing & EID

“We had a power failure and weren't on farm. Following the alert, we were able to find out there’d been an accident, so the power was just cut off, meaning we didn’t need to get a technician out. We've also had an incident where the refrigeration unit failed. The Auto alerted us and we were able to get a technician from Tru-Test out to repair it without any loss of milk.”

Mike and Esmerelda Duffin with their milk saving Vat Manager Auto.

Before, they wouldn't have realised they had an issue until it was likely too late.

“If you’ve got an early warning system and an early detection system, then it’s just a really big benefit.”

“It’s so easy for someone to miss that the milk temperature has gone up for some reason. Now we get an early warning so we can get on top of it really fast and really early” says Esmerelda.

“For example, it monitors the milk inlet that's going into the vat. One milking it alerted that the milk was going into the vat a little hot. It turned out the tap for the plate cooler had accidentally been turned off. We could see we had an issue, trace the source and fix it, before it affected the milk,” Mike recounts.

Esmerelda continues “If we didn’t pick that up we would have had to dump that whole vat. At approximately 15,000 litres per day and around 1,500kgs of milk solids, if you times that by the current milk price, that would be a significant amount of money lost. So in actual fact, I think the system pays for itself really quickly because you are combatting even just one lost pick up.”

Pasture Management

Dairy Automation

Mike and Esmerelda can review milk cooling performance data via MiHub Milk cooling software and recieve phone alerts wherever they are on or off farm.

They have found that it also helps with compliance.

“The Vat Manager Auto sends an alert if the milk’s not cooling fast enough to the regulations and Fonterra’s standards.

We know we’re compliant as we’ve never received a message.”

She concludes, “the more information you have, the better for decision-making on farm. If you’ve got an early warning system and an early detection system, then it’s just a really big benefit.

It saves you money and time at the end of the day.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2018 Milk Cooling & Tanks

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January 2018

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ONLINE MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS: SHERYL BROWN, DEPUTY EDITOR

ONLINE

New Zealand Dairy Exporter’s online presence is an added dimension to your magazine.

Through digital media, we share a selection of stories and photographs from the magazine.

Here we share a selection of just some of what you can enjoy.

Sharing the good news on Facebook.

Introducing...

2017 was a year of change for me. My partner Ian and I traded the Waikato for the sunny Bay of Plenty and bought our own piece of land along the Matata straight, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I can be found most mornings on the beach walking our dog before starting my working day. It’s a beautiful spot and I plan on mastering the art of surfcasting. Stay tuned.

I’ve been writing for the NZ Dairy Exporter for nearly six years as the Waikato/Bay of Plenty journalist and now, as the magazine’s deputy editor, it’s a job I still love.

It’s a privilege to visit this country’s top dairy farmers and share their success stories. I grew up on a dairy farm in the Waikato and am still involved with the family business and have a real grasp on the issues facing today’s farmers.

We are all in this journey together.

Email: sheryl.brown@nzfarmlife.co.nz Mobile: 021 239 1633

Connect with us online: UBCO bike winners

www.nzfarmlife.co.nz Congrats to prize winners Paul Hurst, and James and Laurie Hill who won themselves a brand new UBCO 2X2 electric bike.

Want to be a winner?

Better gift yourself a NZ Dairy Exporter or Country-Wide subscription!

NZ Dairy Exporter

@DairyExporterNZ NZ Dairy Exporter

Sign up to our monthly newsletter www.nzfarmlife.co.nz/e-newsletter

February subscription offer

Gray and Marilyn Baldwin’s wetland project on their Waikato farm feature in our latest video on the NZ Dairy Exporter YouTube channel.

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See page 86 for details

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

MILKING PLATFORM │ COLUMN

At last, we got the rain Carla Staples

Whataroa, South Westland

A

s we sit down to write this Christmas is only a couple of weeks away and the year has seemed to fly by. We have been flat out attending school prize-givings while doing our best to get the grass firing on all cylinders.

After a recent dry spell, we have just received much-needed rain over the past week, 190mm in three days. Who would’ve thought after the long wet spell we would have had 30-plus days without rain and be screaming out for moisture.

With the pastures drying up and looking like we did back in 2014 and once-aday looming rather quickly the heavens opened. Summer seems to have arrived early as the temperatures were soaring into the high 20s, unusually hot for November as we generally don’t see these temperatures until late January or early February.

Early on in the dry spell we were busy preparing ground for winter crops and as the dry went on so did the race to get our silage off before it burnt away to nothing.

Silage came off on December 1 with 20 hectares locked up, only 16ha was cut for pit silage as the other 4ha looked more like hay, and we decided to graze this. We hope to get a second cut in early February.

It was amazing how fast we went from very wet to extremely dry, it was also good to get up in the morning and not have to worry about where or how dry your wet weather gear was for a change, but on the other hand in our area any more than two weeks without rain and our pastures start to struggle.

Even though we live in a part of the country known for its high rainfall, when we don’t get it regularly it dries out very quickly.

The cows remained producing well throughout the start of the dry period, and the in-shed feeding was cut back to 1kg per cow per day from 2kg they get through calving and mating, as they were struggling to get through the grass we were offering them in the paddock. The 1kg only lasted about a week and was then turned up again due to grass evaporating

More than 30 days without rain and we were screaming for moisture. in the heat. The cows started to drop off slowly through the dry period and are now on the upwards trend again as the farm slowly turns green again.

Our goal to keep the girls in great condition throughout the season has been a battle over the dry spell but the extra feed through the shed has definitely saved us this time. Generally, we don’t feed in-shed from mid-December through to March and then we feed palm kernel April and May to build condition going into winter.

We had quite an improvement on the mating side of things this season after such challenging weather conditions for mating last season. It was great to have decent warm weather for most of the mating period this season.

We had improvements in our mating KPIs across the board which was great to see but we still have work to do to hit our targets in these areas.

With Chris heading off to Auckland to the V8 supercars in Pukekohe with our son Caleb in the first week of mating, I was left at the helm of the ship putting up

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

the cows for insemination – a task Chris is normally in charge of.

We won’t know exactly how it went till pregnancy testing but all the numbers so far are indicating a big improvement. I am assuming if the pregnancy results come back ok this will be a regular event.

Chris’s birthday came this week, with his new John Deere tractor turning up on the day. This was pleasing to see as it was ordered back in April. It now has pride of place in the workshop with not much work now required from it as all the work has been done.

Our staff will have Christmas and New Year’s off with some annual leave being used up in between. Typically a busy time for sharemilkers and farm owners, we now wind down for the season with most of the hard work done for the season and mainly milking remaining with, hopefully, some great growing conditions which enables us to cut some more silage.

We hope you all have had a chance to take a break over Christmas and New Year and managed some to catch up with family and friends.

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MILKING PLATFORM │ INVESTMENT

Journey to a region of old-time values Shiralee Seerden Norsewood

Rob and I are 50/50 sharemilkers in our ninth and final season on a 80-hectare all-grass, system 4 farm in Norsewood, milking a Friesian-cross herd of 225.

How we got here is a long story, so here’s my attempt to break it down. Both Rob and I were born, raised and married in the Waikato. Together we went lower order sharemilking and our first child arrived, Ashton.

Bags packed, the Manawatu beckoned with contract milking on an Intelact farm of 600 cows. A second son Jorden arrived. We tried our hand at deer and beef farming for a year, gaining a third son Samuel.

Back to lower-order sharemilking, finally a girl, Suzannah. We invested in rentals; went through a severe drought in 2003 where we milked the whole short season on an 18-hour rotation.

The next year we survived the Manawatu’s 100-year flood on a low payout – we were struggling, and Rob needed a break.

Moving to town we started our own company Rob’n’Co Rural Lifestyle Contractors, employing a semi-retired fencer and shearer to work alongside Rob with any farming requirements for lifestyle block owners.

Rob was now buying calves and selling them as in-calf R2s. Peter our number five arrived; and an opportunity arose to lease a family herd, so we sold our five-year-old business. With machinery and stock acquired through our company we only had to buy 120 cows, after being employed as 50% sharemilkers.

We moved to a farming community rich with old-time values; welcoming neighbours brought plates of food, and everybody waved, no matter how many

times we saw them in a day.

We had two more children Daisy and Bob. Rob ran the farm himself for two years; then employed a fulltime worker, currently it’s our second son.

In our fifth season we also took on a contract milking job next door signing a yearly contract; with plans to move to a larger sharemilking job in one or two years. Extra heifers were raised; another low payout, and the prospect of further years of the same meant we decided to stay put.

For three years we ran both farms; selling our extra in-calf R2s each year.

Last season our R2s’ BW/PW were high, we decided to bring 33% into our herd.

The drop in production was negligible due to our breeding and feeding programme.

With our departure imminent our employers decided to put the farm on the market when we moved on, we agreed on two more seasons. Well aware 50% sharemilking positions were in decline, the decision was made to market ourselves by entering the NZ Dairy Industry Awards.

The networking through the awards and our placegetting has undoubtedly helped when applying for jobs, though we are still looking, we know there is a place for us, somewhere in New Zealand.

In our second year we took out Share Farmer for Hawke’s Bay/Wairarapa and are now on the regional committee.

What we have learnt has been invaluable, so we encouraged our son to enter Dairy Trainee of the Year.

The networking through the awards and our place-getting has undoubtedly helped when applying for jobs, though we are still looking, we know there is a

Seerden Family; Back, from left, Rob, Jorden, Samuel and Shiralee, middle row from left, Ashton, Peter and Suzannah, front Bob and Daisy. place for us, somewhere in New Zealand.

More importantly what’s happening on the farm; we have had a good winter and spring allowing us to take off our first cut of grass silage in late October from our two runoffs of 60ha combined, harvesting 45ha for 100 tonnes/ drymatter with the second cut just taken off 90t/DM, we aim for quality silage not quantity. Eighty round bales of balage were made from the farm and runoff, with most of the runoff now shut up for hay and the rest allocated for our calves.

Rob has not long finished eight weeks of working for LIC in the district as an AI technician. There’s no doubt this time of year is far busier than calving, requiring onfarm team work to make it through.

He completed six and a half weeks of AI on our herd, this being the first year of inseminating for an A2/A2 herd after DNA profiling.

The Hereford bulls will stay in the herd now for six weeks which is longer than usual as we try to ensure increased in-calf numbers for next season.

Generally, our farm is regarded as summer safe but with very little rain in the last month and heat only reserved for mid-summer, we are already feeding 2kg/ DM/per/cow of silage twice daily, and in hindsight we should have started earlier.

Our only ray of hope is the prediction of rain in the coming weeks.

Scratch that, hope has arrived I can hear rain on the roof.

MILKING PLATFORM │ COLUMN

Bigger share of family pie?

Kate Robinson Mangakino

When you invest in a company you expect a return on that investment and the business of farming is no different.

In 2010, my husband Chris and I invested as equity partners in my family’s 900-cow dairying operation in Tihoi, near Taupo. We hold an equity share, alongside my brother and his wife, and my parents.

Just recently, we all had some ‘board room’ discussions with our accountant about our farm business implementing a policy for paying a dividend to its shareholders when we have a profitable season.

When our farm makes a profit and cash flow for the next season looks good, we will make a decision about whether to pay a dividend, repay debt, or invest the funds back into the business – all decisions the directors of any company, big or small, must make.

If the business pays a dividend, we have talked about splitting the profits into a third dividend, a third tax and a third debt repayment. The question is what’s going to keep our bank manager, our accountant and our shareholders happy?

Our dairying business has gone through a lot of development over the past three seasons, including significant work done on our adjacent lease block. However, the overall equity of the business hasn’t experienced significant growth, largely due to a couple of tough payout seasons.

Although we’re not farming for capital gains, those gains are not as good as they were 10-15 years ago. However, our lease block has enabled us to grow our capital in livestock. In our opinion, improving the equity of the business will only be achieved by making further improvements to the property and by paying off debt.

Naturally, any dividend paid would be split between the three parties according to our equity share in the business. The bigger your equity share, the more risk you have taken, and the bigger the dividend to which you are entitled.

Chris and I have talked for some time about whether we should buy more equity in the business. To us, equity is ownership.

We love the property we farm so it’s natural to want more ownership of it.

This would involve buying shares off my parents, who are the major shareholders in the business. An option they are open to. If we did that, we’d need to take out a personal loan with them and put a portion of any dividends received back into servicing the debt.

The decision to buy more equity is not just a matter of doing the numbers. There are emotional and personal factors as well.

Being a family business with three parties involved in some ways limits the autonomy each of us has to make business decisions. Naturally and quite rightly, we must consider everyone else’s interests as well as our own.

If Chris decides to try something different on the dairy platform, especially if it affects the bottom line, he must consult everyone. And when you’re in business with your family, emotions play a big part. Many of you will be in exactly the same boat with your family farms. It is the nature of the beast!

Are Chris and I better off to buy a larger slice of the pie, pay more interest on a bigger mortgage and cross our fingers the value of our equity grows? It does mean we would receive a bigger share of any dividend.

Alternatively, are we better to maintain our current shareholding and spread our risk by investing any dividends received from the farm business into a non-farming venture?

We already have an exit strategy written into our shareholder agreements to ensure everyone’s investment and the business is protected. We all had to make at least a

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

five-year commitment and give existing shareholders first option to buy the shares of anyone exiting the business.

However, if Chris and I buy more equity in the farm, then five years down the track we decide to get out, is it right to expect my parents and my brother to take on more debt to pay us out? Again, emotions are at play.

We don’t have all the answers yet and there are still many discussions to be had.

We’d be keen to hear what other family farming set-ups are doing – what works and what doesn’t.

As we ponder our decisions, we were looking forward to some quality time with our families over the festive season. We hope you managed to enjoy some Christmas cheer and took time to remember why we do what we do. Our best wishes for this New Year.

Our family enjoyed some time away from the farm this week on Lake Taupo with our Kiwi and Brazilian employees.

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UPFRONT │ GOVERNANCE

Pete Morrison.

Reviving the big Coaster Westland Milk suffered with the dairy commodity downturn. The trans-Alpine co-operative’s chairman tells Anne Lee of the path his board is on.

W

estland Milk Products chairman Pete Morrison isn’t interested in a career in farming politics or industry governance beyond his current position.

The way he sees it he’s there to do a job – to make Westland Milk Products competitive to ensure its survival.

He’s in no doubt as to the enormity of that job, not just in the size of the task he’s taken on but in terms of the consequences if it fails.

“This is our riskiest year, this is what we have to win on,” he says.

In 2016 the co-op fell well short of delivering anywhere near a competitive return and had to dig into its reserves even to fund that payout.

Just how poorly Westland had weathered the commodity downturn came as a shock, hitting shareholders hard and knocking confidence in the company’s future.

It saw a flood of cessation notices from shareholders who could go elsewhere, namely those on the Canterbury plains.

The West Coast co-op straddles the Southern Alps with processing assets and suppliers on both sides of the main divide now.

The decisions to expand the business, build new processing facilities and venture down a value-added strategy

14

were well-supported by shareholders following criticisms that it was acting too conservatively in the early years after the decision to remain outside the megacooperative Fonterra.

“I watched that investment strategy and I liked it, but it never delivered,” Pete says.

“So I put my name forward for the board.

“I thought – well I can either walk away or put my name forward and see if I could help make a difference.”

‘I’m here to do a job and that’s to make Westland relevant, make it competitive again.’

Pete had never held any aspirations to take on any industry governance activity or farming politics.

That had been the domain of his father Pat, a formidable, well-respected, farming political leader who had headed the NZ Wool Board and was founding chairman of Central Plains Water.

He died in 2014 and it was later that year that Pete stepped into the governance arena.

“You could argue I’ve done an apprenticeship all my life, watching my father but apart from that I haven’t even been on a PTA. “I’m not politically motivated. The governance experience I’ve had has been in companies I own.

“I’m here to do a job and that’s to make Westland relevant, make it competitive again.

“When I’m done here I’ll go back to farming. I’ve got no ambition to go on and do anything else politically.”

Until he stood for the board Pete’s interests had been in growing his own business enterprises with his wife Liz Nattrass.

Their farming business now includes seven dairy farms – three on the West Coast and four in Canterbury. They also own the notable Canterbury high country, Grasmere Station.

But Pete’s also been involved in numerous businesses outside of farming including forestry and gold mining and owning the local garage.

Not all have been winners, but every one has provided valuable experience, he says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

One of the most successful is eStar Online – an online sales platform with big names like Briscoes and David Jones on the client list.

Pete’s early career pathway hints at his varied interests. He started out at Lincoln College, as it was then, completing a Diploma in Farm Management but then went on to become a commercial pilot.

But he had just taken up his first job as a pilot in Australia when his brother tragically died and he returned home.

“I got an opportunity to go farming on my own account shortly after that but it wasn’t in partnership with my father or as a result of him going guarantor.”

From that point Pete grew the business himself, originally in cropping and sheep.

“I loved cropping but it’s a tough gig.

You can have everything right and then you get a hail storm or wind storm and it’s another 18-months before you can get any income.

“It wasn’t sustainable and we were growing at the time so we looked at dairying.”

That was in the late 1990s and now the only crops he grows are for the cows – about 200 hectares of fodder beet and about 500ha of pasture renewal.

Pete Morrison – Westland Milk Products reaches from west to east.

Next cab off the rank – capital structure While payout returns are key to maintaining supply for Westland Milk Products, a signalled review of capital structure might also sway farmers contemplating leaving the co-op.

Westland’s shares have long had a nominal value of $1.50/share but Westland chairman Pete Morrison says it’s time to look at that.

“Capital structure is the next cab off the rank. We have to look at just what value is there for shareholders and how that’s extracted.”

Just where the share price would be pitched is hard to say but Pete points out that Westland’s debt per share is half that of Fonterra or Synlait and their share prices are north of $6/share.

“I’m not saying that’s where it might go but I am saying we’ll be looking at it.”

Details of how farmers would access share value and whether milk returns would reflect a dividend-style return could all be up for discussion in the review.

It will be a substantially larger project than the governance review, but Pete says the board has clearly signalled it will be tackling the issue in the near term.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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15

Board revamp ‘There is a sense now we have everyone behind us and it does feel like real change, but we have to deliver.’

Pete Morrison – at Westland to do a job.

Cantabrian looks to the Coast In 2001 Pete made his first investment into West Coast farming. His late mother Christine was from the region and Pete had always had a soft spot for it.

The Coast also offered farmland priced to give real returns and an opportunity do what he loved – developing a property to realise its potential.

His first West Coast farm was at Kowhitirangi and he’s been a shareholder in Westland Milk Products since then.

“Farm 222 – probably should never have sold it. We took it from 99,000kg milksolids (MS) to 180,000 in three years,” he recalls.

The gain was on the back of developing the pastures and improving the cows rather than bringing in more feed.

“It gives me great satisfaction when we can develop a farm – make it beautiful.

It’s a bit like art – painting the picture.

“I also love the people on the Coast and the environment over there – I guess it’s always been a bit of a calling.”

His Coast farms are spread out – one at Westport, another at Inangahua and one at Inchbonnie. Inchbonnie is in the Lake Brunner catchment and Pete says the farmers there are rightly proud of the fantastic environmental outcomes they’ve achieved.

“I think it showcases what can be done in a very short time when farmers understand the problem and there’s good science to give you the solutions.”

He’s not averse to change and loves the new technologies in farming.

He likes what technology can do in terms of making farming more efficient and productive but admits they still don’t make full use of the technology in their farm dairies.

“It offers a lot more than we’re getting out of it so that’s actually a project we’re working on.”

He prefers to run a simple, lowcost system and says he doesn’t mind 16

spending money on people or fertiliser.

“I learned that from my grandfather and it’s been a mantra since I first started employing people.”

While his business interests are varied he calls himself a farmer first and foremost and says farming really is what gets him up in the morning.

He’d be forgiven, though, if his job at Westland Milk Products was what kept him up at night.

While he’s pragmatic about the role and isn’t unduly burdened by the weight of responsibility he makes no bones about how serious the situation is for Westland. When he joined the board and was able to see what was going on in the company more closely he became increasingly worried.

It’s why the actions of the past 12 months have been critical.

“For two of the last five years we’ve beaten Fonterra if you take into account the 8% cost of capital and share differential – so we can be competitive.

The trouble is, in the last three to four years we’ve had assets we’ve built that we haven’t been able to sweat.

“If we can do that we’ll have a competitive payout again.

“I really think people, even the Canterbury guys who have put in cessation notices, want to be part of a true New Zealand co-op – but they just can’t if we’re not competitive.”

With the appointment of chief executive Toni Brendish last year the board made it very clear what the expectations were and Pete says she’s delivering on the targets set. (see last month’s Dairy Exporter) But the real test will come as the outcome of this season’s payout becomes more certain.

“We’ve got till February at the latest to be sure we’re going to be competitive or we’re just not going to be relevant,” Pete says.

Along with the new chief executive and big changes in the senior executive team there have also been changes at board level. Pete was elected chairman in March last year, a first for the West Coast co-op to have a chairman from outside the region, and perhaps the clearest signal it was prepared to make big changes to put things right.

Just last month another board director was elected from outside the region.

Former vet and senior executive Andrew MacPherson’s election to the board was confirmed at the co-op’s annual general meeting. He lives in Te Awamutu but is part of a 920-cow West Coast equity partnership.

There were four candidates for the one position on what is now a smaller board.

The governance review approved by shareholders in October was a huge piece of work for Pete, a sub-committee of the board, co-opted shareholders and a specialist governance consultant.

It was completed with the same sense of urgency Toni Brendish worked with in renewing her senior executive team and implementing an efficiency drive.

In little over six months the comprehensive review took place with shareholders taking the same no-nonsense approach and voting 93.7% in favour of the board being cut from 11 to eight directors with the number of farmer-elected directors reduced from eight to five. A pre-selection panel system has been instigated as has a governance training scheme so farmer shareholders have a better understanding of what’s expected of a director and what good governance is about.

Pete says both Tatua and Fonterra were helpful and shared information valuable in setting up the governance training programme.

“You have to have the fortitude to make hard decisions as a director and that’s something some people can find tough.

“At the moment we’re under the gun.

Yes, we are turning the company around, we’re showing the right behaviours from the top, right through the shareholders to the board, the management and our people.

“There is a sense now we have everyone behind us and it does feel like real change but we have to deliver.”

Does he have confidence that can happen?

“I have confidence we have the ability to deliver that but it’s bloody tough.

Getting through this season is crucial – beyond that we have a very exciting future.

“We’re very clear that our top table is our shareholders. We are working for them. But Westland is a big company on the Coast and we have a big responsibility to the Coast too.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

UPFRONT │ SUSTAINABILITY

Help for those who want out Sheryl Brown sheryl.brown@nzfarmlife.co.nz @sherylbrownnz Dairy as a collective may need to support the exit of dairy farmers for the overall good of the industry under new land-use change rules, DairyNZ strategy and investment leader for sustainability Rick Pridmore says.

Pridmore retires from his role at DairyNZ in January after more than a decade as its sustainability guru.

He wants to see farmers looked after in the face of the new regulations that could include land-use change.

Some dairy farmers are going to have to exit the industry and it has to be done mercifully, he says.

The best solution could be for the industry to support those farmers, which would eventually be a good result for the industry as a whole.

During the tough financial downturn, it was encouraging to see Fonterra stand up and offer farmers loans.

The industry has to think in those ways to get through this environmental problem, Pridmore says.

“We have to find a way to exit some farmers from land in a humane way. As a collective I think we need to find solutions.”

Pridmore, a former NIWA chief executive, was first approached by John Luxton and Tim Mackle to come on board with DairyNZ as a sustainability adviser in 2007.

He’s always had a passion to help businesses work with the environment, he says.

At DairyNZ he was initially tasked with environment, animal welfare, public perception and biosecurity.

“At that stage none of these things were big problems, but I knew we couldn’t carry on the way we were.

has moved too slowly, he says.

The biggest reason being that there were no policies in place to control land use change. Dairy farming has been a permitted activity, hence the mass number of conversions and expansions

‘If the whole group is slow to move, the public pressure gets bigger and bigger. That’s what we are experiencing now with water, greenhouse gases and animal welfare.’

“They (John and Tim) had great foresight hiring someone to think about sustainability when dairy was still in a dominant growth phase.

Everyone wanted to buy a dairy farm and make more milk.”

While there are signs domestically and globally of change, the dairy industry

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

of land into dairy without restriction.

Once the signals about environmental impact of dairy started to shine through, it was always going to be difficult to get 11,000-plus privately-owned businesses to change quickly. Even Fonterra has to get everyone on board to make changes, which has proved a challenge, and the

17

‘For the last 15 years we’ve been able to make more milk, now it’s about making more money.’ pressure has been building.

“If the whole group is slow to move, the public pressure gets bigger and bigger. That’s what we are experiencing now with water, greenhouse gases and animal welfare.”

There is incredible pressure from outside channels for the dairy industry to change.

There will be new issues in the future and the industry is going to have to respond faster and farmers and the wider industry will need to work together more than ever, he says.

“We need better systems so we can move quicker. We need to be a collective again, all the dairy companies and all the farmers – the solution is working together. We all have to sing the same song.”

As the industry changes from its pioneering growth stage and moves into a sustainable development phase, farmers will have to grow differently in the future to increase profit.

“You will not be able to grow buoyantly but you will be able to grow cleverly.

“For the last 15 years we’ve been able to make more milk, now it’s about making more money.”

The public needs to understand, however, going forward, that costs

a good future for the industry.

He believes technology will provide solutions for reducing environment footprint of dairy in the next couple of years, including nitrogen leaching and methane emissions.

While dairy farming may be still the lifestyle and career people pursue in the future, farmers should continue to expand their investment portfolios to have more diversity outside dairy, however.

Rick plans on travelling and keeping his hand in at DairyNZ on the odd occasion.

can’t keep being put on farmers without them being paid more for their product.

Public pressure has been made worse because the dairy industry hasn’t told its story well enough, Pridmore says.

The dairy industry has made significant progress on the environmental front, but the facts are not always what people have wanted to hear.

One of his proudest reflections during his time at DairyNZ has been to see the work dairy farmers have made under the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord.

“I’ve been so impressed with what farmers have done.

All their hard work hasn’t’ always been recognised, I admire them because they got on and did it.”

He also believes the industry has made huge strides in building trust with local and central government and set up good relationships After NIWA, Rick Pridmore joined DairyNZ to have more robust as sustainability adviser in 2007 and was discussions in future. a regular presence speaking to groups of With his own equity farmers at field days and seminars. share in a dairy farm at Te Awamutu, Pridmore still sees

Pridmore says the dairy industry has made significant progress on the environmental front, but the facts are not always what people have wanted to hear.

18

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

PASTURE January 2018

The legend lives on: new Tabu+ Italian ryegrass coming soon.

Don’t wait; order seed now

After 17 years, 48 NFVT trials and many thousands of tonnes of seed, we’re calling time on Tabu, New Zealand’s most successful Italian ryegrass. But only because we have something better!

The Tabu legend lives on this season with the launch of Tabu+, our exciting new Italian ryegrass.

This new cultivar features even faster establishment speed than its predecessor and significantly more winter growth.

Tabu+ also has more total DM yield than Tabu which was already one of the highest yielding Italian ryegrass cultivars on the market.

The new cultivar continues an unusually strong family legacy built on well adapted NZ pasture genetics. The same ryegrass genetics gave rise first to Flanker, then Tabu and now Tabu+.

Tabu’s reign as the marketleading Italian has been uncommonly long and successful. It marked a step change performance at the time it was launched.

Behind the scenes we’ve been looking for its replacement for some time. We had to find something that was significantly better and the fact is, Tabu has been hard to beat – until now.

A key driver for Tabu+ was even less downtime between planting and the first grazing, because when it comes to Italian ryegrass, establishment speed is king.

The biggest gain with Tabu+ over other cultivars is in high value cool season growth from sowing to the end of September, making it ideal for winter feed.

Latest results from the National Forage Variety Trials (NFVT) tell the story. Tabu+ sits near the top of the table, second only to Shogun, which is a hybrid ryegrass and thus has stronger growth into summer.

Tabu+ is not in the DairyNZ Forage Value index yet, but it will be when the new lists come out next month.

Uncertified ryegrass (L) vs Tabu + (R)

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

You may not be drilling new pasture seed for a few weeks yet, but the earlier you order it, the better.

If you haven’t already caught up with your merchant and worked out what is needed for autumn renewal, don’t wait to have that conversation.

Ordering seed early doesn’t mean you have to pay for it early; it does mean you are much more likely to avoid any hold ups, and obtain the particular cultivar(s) you want.

That’s because seed supply can get tight at this time of year, and it’s a case of first in, first served.

Ordering later can mean you may have to wait, or take a lesser cultivar than the one you want.

Seed for certain cultivars will only be available ex harvest, and merchants will come under pressure as a result. Confirming your order now will make seed supply logistics easier for everyone.

For further information visit www.agriseeds.co.nz

For further information freephone: 0800 449 955, email: mail@agriseeds.co.nz or visit: www.agriseeds.co.nz

19

UPFRONT │ MARKET VIEW

Strong global supply holds prices back Susan Kilsby AgriHQ

Milk supplies are still growing strongly in most global markets, putting downward pressure on dairy commodity prices.

Most of the milk produced in the large dairying regions in Europe and the United States is consumed as liquid milk.

Butter and cheese are the main dairy commodities produced in these regions.

Returns for liquid milk tend to be higher than most manufactured commodities and prices for butter and cheese were buoyant throughout 2017.

This has resulted in very good prices being paid at the farmgate for milk.

Confidence among farmers in Europe and the US is high and has stimulated additional milk production. This additional milk is starting to weigh on commodity markets. Butter and cheese prices are retreating but are still historically strong. Returns at the farmgate are yet to fall – partially due to these markets being in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter – so milk intakes are seasonally low. Therefore, the milk is still flowing freely with exceptionally large volumes anticipated during the second quarter of 2018 when production hits its seasonal peak.

This growth is more than offsetting the slowing of production occurring in

New Zealand. For instance, the growth in Europe’s milk supply during the six months to September 2017 was equivalent to 23% of NZ’s total production during the same period. Consequently, news that NZ’s milk supply is stagnating is not having much impact on world markets.

Skim milk powder (SMP) prices remain in the doldrums due to the large stocks in the European Commission’s (EC) intervention programme. The EC has sent mixed signals to the market regarding its desire to clear these stocks. It has started selling small volumes of product at prices below the level it was originally bought at.

By late 2017 it had barely made a dent in the stockpiles as it has only accepted the highest prices offered. If the Commission started to accept lower prices stocks could be more quickly reduced. A large sell off would push prices down further in the short-term but it would then clear the slate and enable markets to recover in 2018.

NZ sourced SMP has been attaining a premium over similar product from both Europe and the US. It is not unusual for Oceania-sourced product to fetch a

Milk production -­‐ year on year change 2000

thousand tonnes

1500 1000 500 0

20

US

Sep-­‐17

Jul-­‐17

Aug-­‐17

Jun-­‐17

May-­‐17

Apr-­‐17

Mar-­‐17

Jan-­‐17

EU

Feb-­‐17

Dec-­‐16

Oct-­‐16

Australia

Nov-­‐16

Sep-­‐16

Jul-­‐16 NZ

Aug-­‐16

Jun-­‐16

May-­‐16

Apr-­‐16

Mar-­‐16

Jan-­‐16

-­‐1000

Feb-­‐16

-­‐500

Source: AgriHQ

premium, however, as the market is so low the returns to NZ exporters are still modest. Given the ongoing growth in global milk supplies the only product that stands any chance in recovering is whole milk powder (WMP). NZ is the largest exporter of WMP and therefore any slowing of milk production here will impact the availability of WMP in the global markets. WMP stocks within NZ are adequate to meet immediate demand due to the seasonal build in stocks through the peak milk production months. However, stocks are far from excessive.

Likewise, in-market stocks are also adequate but not huge. China tends to build its stocks early in the calendar year as importers take advantage of the lower tariff rates associated with the NZ:China Free Trade Agreement. An import tariff of just 0.8% will apply to the first 154,745 tonnes of milk powder (WMP and SMP combined) imported into China in 2018, from NZ. Additional stocks imported beyond the quota will attract the standard tariff of 10% so there is a significant incentive for importers to get product into the country when the lower tariff rate applies.

The dry conditions in NZ are yet to show up in the official milk production data due to the delay in this data being released to the market. This means we may see a delayed response in the dairy commodity markets to the dry conditions.

When Fonterra reduced its own milk production forecast in early December to an outlook of nil growth across the full 2017-18 season there was barely any market reaction.

If NZ’s milk production continues to contract, then some firming of WMP prices is almost inevitable. But any upward response in prices will be limited due to dairy commodity markets being generally weighed down by the all the extra milk being produced in other parts of the world.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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Just one easy application provides long lasting protection from nasties around the herd and in the milking shed. And because Ripcord® is MPI approved for use in dairy sheds, there is no milk withholding period.

Ripcord® is the perfect product to use.

Don’t settle for fly-by-night treatments. Insist on Ripcord®.

Visit agro.basf.co.nz for more details or visit your local distributor.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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21

UPFRONT │ FONTERRA

Overseas divisions step up supply Inventory at the beginning of the financial year was the lowest on record.

Hugh Stringleman hugh.stringleman@nzx.com Fonterra began this financial year with a slow start to processing in New Zealand and is now under both volume and margin pressure, chief executive Theo Spierings says.

It sold 3.9 billion litres of liquid milk equivalent (LME) in the first quarter of the 2018 financial year, down 20% on the corresponding period in 2016-17.

Revenue went up 4% to $4 billion and the gross margin fell 5% to 16.7%, divided into 8% for ingredients and 24% for consumer and food service.

Spierings said inventory at the beginning of the financial year was the lowest on record and the NZ milk supply had been slow to build.

Milk intake peaked at 82 million litres a day at the end of October and Fonterra had now revised its season-long estimate to 1525m kg milksolids, which meant no growth following two consecutive seasons of 3% volume falls.

But more of the available milk would be turned into higher-value products – an extra 400m LMEs into both advanced ingredients and consumer and food service products this year compared with last year.

Consumer and food service had continued to do well and it had three financial quarters ahead in which its performance would have to be very strong to deliver the targeted results.

“We are focused on continued tight operational and financial discipline and a keen eye on our customers’ needs to maximise sales opportunities.”

22

Fonterra leadership team members presented growth forecasts and strategy updates to capital market investors and advisers after the first-quarter results were released to the Lukas Paravicini. stock exchange.

Global consumer and food service chief Lukas Paravicini said his divisional target was 10b LMEs annually by 2025, one-third of Fonterra’s milk volume, and generating $15b of revenue.

The division used 5.5b LME in FY2017 and its expectation was for 6b this year.

Fonterra’s greater China president Christina Zhu said demand was forecast to exceed domestic supply, which was effectively flat.

She predicted China’s dairy consumption would be 53b LME in 2025, of which 17.7b or one-third would be imported.

Imports now supplied about 20% of China’s dairy needs and Fonterra had 60% of that trade.

It was already supplying 50% of the cheese used on Chinese pizzas and selling products to more than half of the leading bakery chains.

Zhu said enormous opportunities existed in online retailing of fresh food for Fonterra, which was the only multinational dairy corporation able to create an end-to-end value chain in

consumer and food service.

Integrated supply chains were important to Chinese consumers and offered value to potential digital partners.

China’s e-commerce sales this year were expected to equal the top six countries combined from the rest of the world but as yet fresh and packaged food were only 6% of that trade.

“China is a winner-take-all market requiring players to rapidly scale with sustainable margins,” she said.

Global food service director Grant Watson said his 2025 growth target was 5b LME, worth $5b, at which point food service would be taking 17% of Fonterra’s total milk supply.

Spierings said the co-operative planned to have 30b LME from NZ and global milk pools by 2025, from which it would generate $35b from processed products.

One-quarter of its LME requirements would be non-NZ. The gross margin would be above 20%, driven by more consumer and food service and the earnings would grow by 50% to 100% above the 2015 base level of $1b.

He believed NZ milk could grow sustainably by 1.5% a year so larger contributions from offshore milk pools would be necessary to fulfil demand.

Over the next five years he predicted 16% compounded annual growth for cream products and 14% for mozzarella.

NZ would concentrate on milk powders and food service items, Europe would supply whey powder, the Americas would contribute cheese, whey and nutritionals and China UHT milk.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

UPFRONT │ ONFARM BIOSECURITY

MYCOPLASMA BOVIS: Protecting your herd Protect your farm from disease Separate

As the numbers of outbreaks and regions affected by Mycoplasma bovis grows, so Does it need to come onwhat farmers should awareness about farm? – if not keep it off can do to protect their own herd from the disease.

Good onfarm biosecurity and • Limit visitors accurate tracing of animal movement • No used equipment unless is not an option in today’s world, it’s cleaned and disinfected imperative, Federated Farmers President Katie•Milne says. protective Boots, overalls, clothing clean to protect your “Don’t relymust onbeothers patch, protect it yourself. In the end, we are all with a role to • biosecurity Provide a rubbishofficers bin for dirty play.” gloves, disposable overalls and other rubbish Ministry for Primary Industries says every farmer should have a biosecurity stock trucks away from plan •inKeep place. animal areas – have loading While it is not known how the disease facilities close to the tanker arrivedtrack in New Zealand, it is established that it is passed on through direct contact between animals, and although not all infected cattle get sick, they can still pass the disease on to others.

Clean Things have to be clean before they can be disinfected – disinfectants don’t work through dirt

• Provide a place to wash boots and other equipment, and scrubbing brush for visitors

• Have somewhere to wash hands, provide soap

• Wear gloves to keep hands clean

• Clean farm clothing regularly • Keep the tanker track clean – no-go zone for stock

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR HERD: Buffer zones: Federated Farmers suggests establishing a 1.5-metre buffer along fence lines with neighbouring properties should be standard practice. Where practical that could be a vegetation buffer, delivering biosecurity and biodiversity benefits. MPI suggests boundary fence buffer zones could also be achieved by using electric outrigger fencing or a separate electric fence 2m back from the boundary.

Farm hygiene: Close and repeated contact with an infected animal is still regarded as the most likely way Mycoplasma bovis is spread. Thorough farm hygiene can reduce the risk of the disease entering your farm. Make sure footwear, protective clothing and equipment that has been in contact with animals on other farms is not used on your farm, or is properly cleaned and disinfected before use. If vets and AI technicians visit the property make sure they have thoroughly cleaned their equipment before they arrive and do so before they leave, and provide hot water and disinfectant for their hands and equipment. Consider making a footbath and a scrubbing brush handy for the boots of all visitors coming on to, and leaving, the farm. Same rules for farmers visiting each other.

Stock movements: Make sure your NAIT

records are right up to date, giving special attention to recording stock movements – 100% compliance with traceability requirements [NAIT and Animal Status Declaration (ASD)] is not only vital for biosecurity but increasingly important as NZ sells high-quality products to discerning customers.

Limit cattle movements: Where practical, limit cattle movements, on to your farm.

Mycoplasma bovis can be present in apparently healthy animals and there is no sufficiently reliable, pre-movement test that can be applied to detect latent or hidden infection. Farmers with leased/ loaned terminal bulls may need to think about sending them straight to slaughter.

This may well mean a change in practice, but it’s well worth thinking about and discussing with the bulls’ owner. Secondhand milking equipment and other equipment that has been in contact with animals, especially bodily fluids, presents a higher risk of transmission and should be cleaned and disinfected before use.

Vehicle movements: vehicles coming on and off your farm should be confined to the tanker track or main access track. Use your own vehicles to transport visitors around your farm.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Tanker tracks: Keep tanker tracks as clean zones by not moving stock across the tanker track, or allowing stockthe to “bugs” graze Disinfect to destroy or inactivate the tanker track area. By doing this, any visiting vehicles, including the milk tanker • Provide ready to use will remain disinfectantin a clean state.

Disinfect

• Leave to soak so it works SEPARATE, CLEAN AND • Change disinfectant DISINFECT.

regularly Separate: Limit the movement of people and equipment on to your farm. No used equipment unless its cleaned and disinfected, keep stock trucks away from animal areas. Boots and clothing must be clean.

Clean: Disinfectants don’t work through dirt or dung – they need to be removed first. Provide a place to wash boots and equipment, keep the tanker track clear, Recommended disinfectants: clean farm clothing regularly.

1% Virkon – to 50gdestroy in 5 litres water Disinfect: the bugs. Make ‘ready0.2% Citric acid – 1 teaspoon in 1 litre water to-use’ disinfectant available on your farm, Trigene leave it to soak for up to 10 minutes so it Any other approved it disinfectant used according to works, change regularly.

Citric acid (a label instructions. teaspoon in 1 litre water) and Virkon (50g in 5 litres water) are good for M.bovis.

Other measures: Other biosecurity measures farmers can take are listed on the MPI’s web page: www.mpi.govt.nz/protection-andresponse/responding/alerts/mycoplasmabovis Keep up to date – daily MPI updates: Mbovis2017_liaison@mpi.govt.nz Download and print MPI onfarm security posters to remind your staff:

Identifying the disease • unusual mastitis in cattle that doesn’t respond to treatment • arthritis in cows and calves • late-term abortion • pneumonia in calves.

Not all infected animals get sick, but they can pass on the disease to other animals. Mycoplasma bovis spreads between animals through close contact.

Farmers who see these signs in their stock should contact their veterinarian in the first instance or MPI on 0800 80 99 66.

For support: Federated Farmers: 0800 FARMING Rural Support Trust: 0800 RURAL HELP

23

BUSINESS │ GOVERNANCE Morgan and Hayley Easton with one of their three children, three-yearold daughter Harriett.

It’s all about the people Zanda McDonald Award-winner Morgan Easton tells Anne Lee what he learned on his prize tour of large-scale Australian farming operations.

M

organ Easton’s key learning from his Zanda McDonald Award study tour to Australia late last year is all about people.

The 34-year old Waitaki dairy farmer was the 2017 award winner and in October he and wife Hayley travelled to Australia, visiting a number of mostly intergenerational, family, farming businesses.

The vast scale was well beyond anything normally seen in this country and the farms visited were focused on beef cattle.

Nevertheless, the lessons learned were just as applicable to the Eastons and their New Zealand family dairy business.

“My biggest key learning from it can be summed up simply – it’s the importance of key people in your business,” he says.

Morgan and Hayley are sharemilkers and farm owners just north of Oamaru on the south side of the Waitaki River.

Morgan graduated from Lincoln University with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science, having spent this final year at Cornell University in the United States on an exchange.

After a stint with Dexcel, as it was known before it became DairyNZ, he

24

went on to earn a Fulbright Scholarship, allowing him to complete his master’s degree in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, in 2007.

When he and English-born Hayley, a graduate of Leeds University with degrees in management and geography, returned to NZ they settled back on the Waitaki plains going into business with Morgan’s parents David and Clare.

Since then the growth of the family business as a whole, and for the two parties separately is testament to the power of successful inter-generational enterprises.

They started out as lower-order sharemilkers for David and Clare who had just bought the 400-hectare Twin Terraces dairy farm from Meridian Energy for redevelopment.

David is a second-generation family farmer who initially followed in his father’s footsteps mixed cropping in the area before he and Clare converted their first farm to dairy in the early 90s.

Morgan and Hayley saved hard and worked hard on the development with David and Clare enabling them to gradually buy cows from David and

Clare and lease them back into the herd.

Over time, as cow numbers doubled as a result of the farm’s virtual re-conversion and shift from border-dyke to pivot irrigation, Morgan and Hayley were able to build their own herd so that by 2012 they could step up to 50-50 sharemilking the 1350 cows then being milked on the property.

In 2013 they won the Canterbury-North Otago Sharemilker – Equity Manager of the year award and went on to be national runners up.

Soon after, they bought the neighbouring 160ha farm, Stoneyhurst, in an equity partnership with David and Clare.

Morgan and Hayley are majority owners in the partnership and their sharemilking company sharemilks that property too.

The purchase came just as the low payout years hit which meant they adjusted their development plan.

They carried on upgrading the irrigation as that was the most important factor to growing more high-quality pasture and lifting productivity.

Instead of going straight into pasture

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

across the whole farm, though, they put a high percentage of the area into crop, allowing them to winter young stock and cows while increasing cow numbers in stages.

On Twin Terraces they cut cow numbers to 1300 and put fodder beet on the milking platform to winter a proportion of cows there too.

It allowed them to cull more heavily to tidy up the herd and maintain production at 470-480kg milksolids (MS)/cow while keeping bought-in feed inputs under 500kg drymatter (DM)/cow.

They send their lower-producing and lower-breeding index cows to Stoneyhurst and bull mated them.

It allowed them to keep mating costs down and meant no replacements were kept from those poorer-quality animals.

Because Stoneyhurst neighbours Twin Terraces they run all the cows through the Twin Terraces dairy at the start of calving.

All heifer calves are DNA tested.

Morgan has a tight control on costs, a focus on good pasture management and breeding high BW animals to ensure good conversion efficiency and milk production.

While Morgan says he doesn’t have a political bent he does take a strong interest in the things that effect agriculture beyond the farm gate, particularly on a global scale and enjoys travelling to explore those issues first hand.

“I think that came with my first year in America (at Cornell) – it broadened my horizons and probably unsettled me as well.”

In 2013 he travelled to Washington DC to a Pacific Partnership Forum with a Government trade delegation that included 30 under 30-year olds.

It was part of discussions going on at the time around the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks and centred on trade issues.

They had meetings with senators and executives from companies such as Google with the some of the proceedings taking place in the United Nations building.

“That was very interesting to be part of and to experience,” he says.

He takes a strong interest in his cooperative and has completed a Fonterra governance course.

Morgan maintains regular contact with the friends he made during his time at university in the US keeping him up-to-date with the issues that are affecting one of NZ’s biggest competitors and markets.

“We are proud Fonterra farmers – that’s important to say. We’re very lucky to have the expertise in Fonterra that we have working for us outside the farm gate.

“Wherever you go in the world we’re the envy of overseas farmers for what we have in Fonterra, yet people here can be quick to criticise.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz

‘My biggest key learning from it can be summed up simply – it’s the importance of key people in your business.’

Morgan and Hayley with one of Australia’s largest stud breeders David and Prue Bonfield – flying in the Pilatus PC12 made visiting the widespread Australian farming operations possible.

Morgan Easton with Susan McDonald – the family business takes its beef from paddock to the consumer.

In tracks of a leading Aussie farmer It’s no surprise with Morgan’s wider interests that he took up the opportunity to apply for the Zanda McDonald Award in late 2016.

The prize included a mentoring trip among top farmers in Australia and/ or NZ, a place on one of Rabobank’s business management programmes and a cash prize.

Morgan is the third recipient of the award which started to honour and remember Australian farmer Zanda (Alexander) McDonald who died accidentally, aged just 41, in 2013.

He was a founding member of Platinum Primary Producers (PPP), a group that now includes more than 150 leading farmers and agricultural leaders in Australia and NZ. The award is sponsored by PPP, Allflex, Rabobank and aircraft manufacturer Pilatus, and is announced each year at the PPP conference, to be held in Taupo this year in March.

It’s presented to outstanding young leaders aged under 35 who live and work in the agricultural sector with the aim of supporting them in their career.

The three finalists this year are: Lisa Kendall, 25, from Auckland.

Lisa is the owner-operator of Nurture Farming Ltd. Thomas McDonald, 24. He is the business manager of Spring Sheep Milk Company in Waikato.

26

Morgan with Prue and David Bonfield – taking a look at Charolais and Ultra Black cattle

Janet Reddan, 33, a former agronomist now cattle producer from Roma, Queensland.

The study tour to Australia combined two of Morgan’s big interests – farming and flying.

With one of the main sponsors Pilatus, travel for the study tour was largely in one of the company’s PC12 single-engine turbo-prop planes.

While he didn’t get the chance to put his pilot’s licence to use, Morgan says flying in the PC12 was a fantastic way to cover a lot of ground and get to visit with a number of leading farmers and agricultural business operators.

“We just wouldn’t have been able to

see the people we did if we’d travelled any other way.”

The first stop after leaving Bankstown airport outside of Sydney was to pick up Macquarie Bank’s Paraway Pastoral chief executive Jock Whittle and head to Condobolin and visit Paraway’s Borambil Station.

Paraway Pastoral is the investment bank’s agricultural investment management company.

Morgan says the scale of operations in Australia was apparent from the outset with the station, which focuses on cattle and Merinos, investigating diversifying into cotton.

“It’s trial plot was 300ha.”

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Morgan and Hayley then had oneon-one time with Jock Whittle talking about the focus of Morgan’s study tour – how family businesses continue to grow and thrive inter-generationally.

“We talked a lot about the financial aspects of that.”

One of the messages from that conversation was to make sure land purchases were priced where there’s a good return on capital.

Capital gain is still a driver of many buyers’ decisions when it comes to farmland along with numerous factors that don’t relate to the earning capacity of the land.

“Over the years it’s enabled farmers selling up to get out at good prices – as long as there’s a next generation coming in and playing the same game.

“But if you’re looking at something purely on a return basis and other buyers aren’t you can be miles apart on what you’re prepared to pay for it and you end up missing out – it can limit your opportunities to grow,” Morgan says.

The next day they visited George King’s family operation Coombing Park. It had been in the family for generations and came complete with convict history such as balls and chains still intact in old buildings.

They ran 3000 head of cattle on the property as one mob and had yards that could hold 3500.

Morgan and Hayley then flew to Glen Ines in northern New South Wales where they met David and Prue

Bonfield, owners of Palgrove – one of Australia’s leading and largest stud cattle breeders selling close to 1000 stud animals a year.

The Bonfields’ five properties are spread from northern New South Wales to Queensland – a distance of 1300km from the most southern to northernmost farm.

In NZ terms that would be a distance from Oamaru to the top of the North Island.

The NZ Super Fund recently took a stake in the company in its first offshore investment in rural land.

The family sells Charolais and Ultra Black cattle – a cross between Angus and Brahman, making the animals better able to thrive in the heat.

Morgan says they spent time with the Bonfields’ operations manager and the couple and again the key element of success was the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships whether it was with employees, contractors, buyers or sellers.

They also visited Euan and Kaye Murdoch’s Ultra Black and Brangus stud Nindooinbah near Beaudesert.

Euan had been in the pharmaceutical business before he sold up and bought the farming operation.

His focus had been on genetics and research which along with data was driving developments. The pneumatically operated cattle yards mean no one has to get in with the animals. They do about 72,000 cattle movements a year through their yards.

Morgan says one of the highlights for he and Hayley was to spend time with Zanda McDonald’s family.

Susan, Zanda’s sister, runs a large butchery chain, Super Butcher in Brisbane. The business was developed to give direct connection with consumers and again Morgan says the importance of key people was highlighted.

They spent the evening with Zanda’s brother James, Susan and Zanda’s wife Julie as well as other members of the business.

The family enterprise also exports its own meat.

Another family business with a vertically integrated supply chain is Australia Country Choice (ACC).

Morgan and Hayley visited the company’s feedlot, Brindley Park at Roma where 22,000 head of cattle were being fed.

The business has a meat works at Canon Hill in Brisbane where 260,000 head of cattle are processed each year – 240,000 of which are from ACC’s own properties.

Morgan says he and Hayley gained some fantastic insights into large-scale family run businesses and lessons that will definitely stay with them as they contemplate their own plans.

“We want to grow the business – I know it’s early yet for the kids but we’re already thinking about their future with this too.”

anne.lee@nzfarmlife.co.nz @Cantabannelee

Morgan and Hayley – at Nindooinbah where numbers and data drive outcomes and results.

28

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

BUSINESS │ WATER BUFFALO

The authentic buffalo mozzarella Lucy makes at Wairiri Buffalo is sought after by restaurants.

Christchurch airport and Lucy trained as a cheesemaker.

She then travelled to Italy to learn the very exacting techniques for making authentic mozzarella and other pasta filata cheeses (stretch curd cheeses).

“You have to be very precise with everything throughout the process. It’s a very scientific,” Lucy says.

‘You have to be very precise with everything throughout the process.

It’s very scientific. It’s a combination of biology, physics and chemistry.’

The big cheese Anne Lee anne.lee@nzfarmlife.co.nz @Cantabannelee On a scorching, dry, 36C day in central Canterbury, water buffalo just aren’t a class of stock you expect to see out happily grazing.

Even less likely is the idea that these huge, horned beasts would soon be lining up to be milked.

But at Wairiri Buffalo, south of Darfield that’s exactly what you’ll see.

Lucy Appleton and Christo Keijzer have been milking buffalo turning their naturally A2, high milksolids milk into authentic Italian-style buffalo mozzarella and other specialty cheeses and yoghurt for the past three years.

The soft, whiter-than-white, mozzarella and other specialty cheeses are sought after by restaurants and Lucy’s dedication to learning and perfecting her Italian cheese-making skills is now attracting interest from the most discerning connoisseurs.

It turns out that all water buffalo are not the same and while they are often linked to the wet, humid tropics they’re more likely to be the swamp variety with leathery grey-black hides and wider-set horns.

The riverine, shaggy black-coated variety, that have made Italy home for more than 800 years, are the dairy cousins to the swamp dwellers and produce the high milksolids milk ideal for cheesemaking.

For Lucy and Christo the idea of milking buffalo and making cheese came about 10 years ago when they were looking at what they could do on their 40-hectare lifestyle block in the Wairiri Valley.

It already had a pine block and a 16ha native bush area they have protected.

The large cloven-hoof of the water buffalo suited the sometimes wetter flats and after purchasing a few animals they then worked on breeding, using imported genetics and an AI programme, until they had the Italian-type river buffalo animal they wanted.

Christo continued with his day job as a service engineer for an oil company at

“It’s a combination of biology, physics and chemistry.”

Milk and rennet are combined along with bacteria. Getting temperatures, the pH and the timings right are all critical to taking the curd through to a polymer that has just the right amount of elasticity.

There’s little resemblance between the genuine, white, soft, wet mozzarella Lucy makes and the grated yellow mozzarella found in the supermarket Kiwis might be more familiar with as a pizza topping.

“They’re both polymers in that they have that stretch but other than that they’re quite different products,” she says.

The pasta filata method used for mozzarella is also used to make other specialty Italian cheeses Lucy is now producing.

Stracciatella di bufala is a creamier,

Wairiri Buffalo calves – quack rather than moo.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

29

ABOVE: The curious buffalo are smart and observant.

RIGHT: Wairiri Buffalo – ready for milking.

BELOW: Christo Keijzer and the super friendly youngsters which quack rather than moo.

30

looser version of mozzarella and is made by stretching and then shredding ropes of mozzarella while Scamorza and Caciocavollo are firmer, aged mozzarellas.

It’s taken time to perfect the cheesemaking processes and plenty of patience but Lucy says she now fully understands every step of the process.

New Zealand’s food safety rules mean Lucy also has to pasteurise the milk – something that’s often not done in the traditional Italian cheese-making process.

They sell the cheese under the Wairiri Buffalo brand and while Lucy’s focus is the pasta filata cheeses they also sell a squeaky, creamy Haloumi and creamy, rich unsweetened yoghurt.

They’re sold at local farmers’ markets, some speciality delicatessen stores and direct to restaurants with Lucy and her daughter Chloe making products twice a week.

“We want to be niche and really aim at the high end of the market,” Lucy says.

The huge animals grow to be 600-700kg and have a much livelier personality than a dairy cow.

As they trot quickly over to check out a new comer in the paddock they have their heads tilted back and to the side – giving an almost gangsta, too-cool-forschool look about them.

And while Christo gives an assurance that they’re generally quite safe to be among and they love a good head scratch, he says their sheer size and large sweeping horns mean you need to have your wits about you.

“They’re very friendly and very smart. They’ll notice straight away if there’s something different in the shed when they come in – even the smallest thing,” Christo says.

The buffalo are milked once-a-day (OAD) in the late afternoon or evenings

by Christo.

They produce about five litres of milk a day each on the OAD system and will yield more if milked more frequently.

They have two milking stations and the cows walk into two fully enclosed pens alongside a pit.

Christo and Lucy are considering a milking robot as they’re used on some farms overseas for buffalo quite successfully.

The difficult part is how to manage voluntary milking or if that’s even possible with the herd and farm set up.

The large shed is fitted with sturdy pipework gates and extra rails had to be added to typical cattle height yard areas within the shed because of the buffalos’ ability to seemingly defy gravity and jump over them.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

FOR LEARNING THAT’S

Tailored TO

YOU Lucy makes other pasta filata cheeses as well as yoghurt and Houlumi.

But while they can sail over a normal fence they’re very respectful of a hot wire and will stay well clear of them.

Christo says they have a real hierarchy within the herd so it’s important to stand your ground and not be submissive.

“If you let them push you around you’ll always be the bottom of the pack,” he says.

They graze pasture and do well on lower-quality pastures than their dairy cow counterparts.

The females are called cows, males a re called bulls or steers and young are calves.

Christo and Lucy say the calves are removed from the cows straight after

Chloe Keijzer – stretching and shredding the mozzarella to make stracciatella di bufala.

calving in the same way they’re separated in typical dairy herd.

If they’re left on it’s too difficult to get them to learn to drink from bottles.

Getting first-calving cows used to the milking procedure has to be done with care. The female replacement calves are hand-reared on the farm and get plenty of handling and human contact but those first few times getting the cups on can be fun and games, Christo says.

Rather than a moo the calves let you know they want attention with a quacking sound. They like a good scratch too and even at a young age their strength is apparent.

The animals are naturally healthy and aren’t prone to lameness. They also don’t appear to get mastitis so vet bills are low.

Christo and Lucy have a year-round milking operation with cows also calving year-round. They’re currently milking 10 cows but have about 40 animals in total including young stock.

Christo is using a synchronisation programme as part of AI with the imported Italian semen and uses an AI technician who lives locally to inseminate the cows.

Their gestation length is 310-320 days or 10-11 months.

Christo has been milking now for 600 days straight so a milking robot is a serious investment consideration for them.

There are just a handful of buffalo milking operations in NZ and while it wouldn’t be everyone’s ideal Lucy and Christo are seeing the rewards of their hard work and are producing cheeses and buffalo milk products that give a delicious taste of Italy right here.

And as the business develops they’re getting closer to the point it could sustain them without other income.

Strengthen your Business Educate your Board Develop your Directors Understand your Financials www.businesstorque.co.nz

• To find out where you can try Wairiri Buffalo products go to www.wairiribuffalo.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

31

BUSINESS │ FONTERRA SHARES

Flexible ways to buy into the co-op

Mark Robinson – greater flexibility.

Glenys Christian Fonterra’s three new ways for farmers to share up to become full shareholders have been welcomed by Federated Farmers’ Sharemilkers Sub-section’s chairman, Richard McIntyre.

“Anything that provides flexibility will be regarded well and welcomed,” he said.

He is 50:50 sharemilking 450 cows near Levin, Horowhenua, and said young 32

farmers would always stretch themselves to buy their first farm.

“So more flexibility with sharing up will give them comfort,” he said.

“Every little bit helps.”

Over the last several years when payouts were low young farmers had particularly struggled to buy their first property.

The new options, announced at Fonterra’s annual meeting in November, are directed not only at young farmers under financial pressure, but also at established farmers wanting to buy another farm and contemplating selling their shares to fund the purchase.

Its Southland/Otago regional head, Mark Robinson, said it was always looking at tools to make things easier and their development of the three new options had taken place over the last year.

“We live in a volatile environment,” he said.

“But this gives farmers more flexibility.

The core of our shareholder base is fully shared up but these options assist those who want to join the co-op or buy another farm.”

The first of the tools is the Strike Price Contract (SPC). It will give farmers the flexibility to share up in seasons where the farmgate milk price is higher and so cashflows are boosted.

But when the price is lower, farmers

aren’t required to buy shares and can instead put income into onfarm spending.

Fonterra believes the SPC will also provide greater certainty for banks looking to lend on positive cashflows.

McIntyre said he believed banks would be more confident about lending to farmers based on the fact that with this option they would only need to buy more shares in medium and high-payout years, depending on where the strike price is set.

‘The core of our shareholder base is fully shared up but these options assist those who want to join the co-op or buy another farm.’

Farmers taking part in the scheme will need to buy a minimum of 20% of their offer quantity by the compliance date in their first year. Then they will only need to buy shares when the milk price is above the strike price, which will be set at $5.25 for contracts starting in the 2018/19 season. If the farmgate milk price goes above the strike price, they will be

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

The new options are directed not only at young farmers under financial pressure, but established farmers contemplating selling shares to fund another farm purchase.

required to allocate 50% of the amount above the strike price to buy shares by the next compliance date. They can use the remaining 50% for any purpose they like such as capital spending or to maintain cashflow. If the farmgate milk price falls below the strike price, farmers don’t have to buy any shares.

An SPC will last for a minimum of six

years and if the famer is not fully sharecompliant by that time they will need to buy at least one third of the remaining shares they need in each of the next three years.

Robinson said initial farmer feedback to this scheme had been very positive.

Any shareholder can sign a strike price contract so long as they are increasing

milk production by a minimum of 10,000 kilograms of milksolids (MS) above current production.

The second new option is the Contract Fee for Units scheme which will help both new and existing farmers supplying milk to Fonterra under one of its Share Up Over Time contracts buy shares. Here the co-op will transfer an amount equal to its five cents per kg MS contract fee, after tax, to a trust which will buy units in the Fonterra Shareholders Fund regularly, to match the kg MS supplied by the farmer.

When that farmer needs to share up the trust will give them the units it’s bought to help them meet their share up requirements. This method of transferring the fee into units will also apply to strike price contracts.

The third tool allows farmers to buy shares with their Farm Source reward dollars they build up through shopping at these stores. Robinson said significant amounts of money were held here with reward dollars earned growing from $4.5 million a few years ago to last year totalling $17m. This initiative would not only help existing suppliers fully share up but also make it easier for farms growing their milk supply to maintain share compliance. And it’s hoped it will also attract new farmers to the co-op.

There will be a one to two-week window between the time farmers receive their measurement statement in June and December 1 when they can use a minimum of $500 worth of the Farm Source rewards to buy the shares they require. Fonterra will receive payment from Farm Source and then will issue the new shares to farmers.

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33

BUSINESS │ DAIRY NZ

Maximising dairy’s value sustainably

Jim van der Poel – Proactive leadership needed to address challenges.

Jim van der Poel Chair, DairyNZ

New Zealand’s pasture-based production offers a natural competitive advantage for our dairy products in the world market.

However, as competition increases internationally, the food industry is set for a revolution, not just due to the fundamental shifts in technology, supply chains and consumer behaviours, but also because of the planet’s environmental constraints.

NZ farmers already face higher public scrutiny from their communities. As people are increasingly driven by ethical, social and environmental concerns, farmers are looking for ways to be more cost-efficient, more productive, and more environmentally sustainable.

With this in mind we undertook a new strategic vision for the dairy sector last year, launching Dairy Tomorrow in November.

This strategy reinforces our belief that sustainable dairy farming has a critical role to play in maintaining NZ’s competitive advantage on the world stage. Even though just 5% of milk is needed for our domestic communities, with the rest sold to overseas markets, we are reliant on our communities for the sector’s social licence to operate. That ‘licence’ is our ability to prove dairying is sustainable, a factor critical to its future prosperity.

Our dairy farmers have taken significant steps over the past 15 years towards being

34

more sustainable, but they know they need to do more. Overwhelmingly, throughout the development of the strategy Dairy Tomorrow, farmers told us they want more investment and research to provide them with new options to help them farm sustainably. This is also a priority for the Government.

Our dairy farmers have taken significant steps over the past 15 years towards being more sustainable, but they know they need to do more.

At a climate conference in Germany late last year, Climate Change Minister James Shaw said NZ would be a world leader on climate change, and our Agriculture Minister, Damien O’Connor, and Environment Minister, David Parker, are committed to improving water quality.

Dairy Tomorrow, has set a direction in keeping with these priorities. Midway through this year we aim to announce milestones to help us take a leadership role in improving our environment, in particular focusing on our waterways and helping NZ meet our international climate change commitments. We also want to work with other sectors to develop a

sustainable land use blueprint, and have all farms reporting under certified farm sustainability plans by 2025 – although this is expected to occur far sooner.

Alongside sustainability within Dairy Tomorrow is the commitment to maximise value from NZ milk. Our farmers want this, and so too does the Government – investment in ‘value add’ for the dairy sector is a specific ambition announced by the Prime Minister.

While milk as a commodity will always be an essential part of the NZ dairy value chain, I expect the amount of ‘value add’ processing will increase overtime. DairyNZ will be working with the dairy companies on this challenge and building consumer confidence in the quality of our product.

Through Dairy Tomorrow, we will be well on our way to building the world’s most competitive and resilient dairy farming businesses, focused on investment in innovation and improving farm performance to increase the value of the sector.

This includes optimising cows, grass and farm systems to achieve greater productivity and efficiency gains on farm through innovations such as robotics.

One of the goals in this area is to develop a new sector-led ‘National Science Challenge’ by 2020. This will deliver the next generation of cutting-edge science and technology solutions for future farm systems. We also plan to grow NZ dairy exporters’ access to open dairy markets to equal 30% of global consumption by 2020.

One of the ongoing challenges is how to better support the dairy industry to achieve change more rapidly and at a larger scale. Much of this relies on the rate of adoption of new technologies by individual dairy farmers.

The commitments and goals go to the heart of our communities’ priorities, and Dairy Tomorrow commits us to proactive leadership to address these challenges in order to really improve lives through dairy. This year we are focusing on how to implement the 22 goals within the strategy. When we launched Dairy Tomorrow last year, I described this phase as the ‘heavy lifting’ part of the strategy.

That is not to underestimate the substantial effort of our project team, our industry partners, and our farmers in coming to an agreement on our goals and priorities. But following through with a well-thought-out plan about just how we will achieve these goals requires significant collaboration and boldness from the sector.

To read about all 22 goals within Dairy Tomorrow, visit: www.dairytomorrow.co.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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www.myloadingramp.nz hello@myloadingramp.nz 06 355 0747 Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

35

SYSTEMS │ ONFARM

It’s all about THE COWS Sharemilkers Jason Macbeth and Beth Phillips’ use a range of milking intervals based on the needs of their cows. Anne Hardie reports.

Y

oung dairy guns Jason Macbeth and partner Beth Phillips use three different milking regimes through the season and it’s all centred on their cows so they are producing well the following season and beyond.

This year the young couple stepped up to 50:50 sharemilking on a 128-hectare farm at Motupiko near Nelson where they milk their 420-cow herd twice a day (TAD) through to December, once a day (OAD) for non-cyclers through mating and then the entire herd at the end of the season, as well as three milkings in two days (3in2) through summer.

“All our milking systems centre around the cows,” Jason explains. “We do it for no other reason – once a day for mating and 3in2 for condition over summer.”

The farm is owned by Evan and Adrienne Baigent who added a centre pivot a few years ago to get vital irrigation on the summer-dry farm.

The long, wide valley follows the Motueka River and rain tends to fall on the hills around, leaving the valley floor dry through summer when temperatures can reach the mid 30s. A centre pivot stretching 540 metres and sprinklers on another 70ha has enabled the farm to double production, but water restrictions still kick in during extended dry periods,

36

Jason Macbeth and Beth Phillips combine three different milking regimes to get the best out of their cows.

so they have to farm accordingly.

For Jason and Beth coming from a lower-order sharemilking job in Murchison where irrigation wasn’t really needed through summer, the dry is a new challenge and though irrigation is essential, Jason says it doesn’t make cheap feed. At the end of November, the farm had been without rain for six weeks and then there was the relief of a thunderstorm with the hope of more to come.

‘All our milking systems centre around the cows.

We do it for no other reason – once a day for mating and 3in2 for condition over summer.’

Their other new challenge is the assortment of cows that were bought to make up their herd when they took up the sharemilking contract.

About 200 were young cows they had bred or bought in the past couple of years, but the other 200 were bought on a budget cap of $1250 per cow, which

meant carryover cows from a number of herds and the unknown reproduction and production capability that comes with that.

The end result is a mix of Friesian, Jersey and crossbred cows of mixed quality which started out on a new farm in the wettest spring in decades that then turned to an early dry.

In Murchison, they adopted a 3in2 milking regime over summer because they had no irrigation and wanted to keep condition on the herd through the heat.

It’s a regime that worked well for the herd and production, so they have the same plan for the Motupiko farm.

At calving, the colostrum cows are on OAD for six days to avoid metabolic problems and it also takes the pressure off the cows as they adjust from being a dry cow to producing milk. Beth says they’ve done that for the past three years and are yet to have a metabolic problem.

Milk fever has been a big issue on the Motupiko farm in the past, but this year with the six-days on OAD, it wasn’t a problem.

After those first six days, the cows are on TAD through to mating which begins on October 28. Cows’ heats are monitored as they approach mating and any that haven’t cycled go on to OAD from that date. About 100 cows went into that herd

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

The herd heads back to the paddock in the first rain in weeks.

MOTUPIKO

this year to be run with bulls and as soon as they cycle – and as long as they are in good condition – they go back into the TAD herd.

“Even cows that have just calved before mating will go on OAD to take the pressure off them straight away to help them cycle as quickly as possible,” Jason says.

“We have done this the last four seasons and have had great success in bringing cows forward for calving the following season. The theory of OAD is it takes the milking pressure off so they can recover.

We focus on production until mating time and then we focus on next year.”

Beth says some of those cows put into the OAD herd as non-cyclers can be those with quiet heats that get missed in the TAD herd. The OAD herd will be run separately for the four weeks the main herd is on artificial breeding (AB) and at the end of this year’s mating there were just 20 cows left in the OAD herd. It’s a policy they have used for the past six years and it played its part in lifting production every year when they were in Murchison.

The herd will be milked TAD through to the middle of December when they will switch to 3in2, depending on whether the crops are ready. On TAD, the cows get 5ha of grass a day and after the switch to 3in2 they drop back to 3.75ha-a-day.

Cows are at the centre of milking regime decisions.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

37

The first rain in six weeks for Jason and Beth on the Motupiko farm near Nelson.

So the crop fills the shortfall which automatically puts them on a 30-day round. That, in turn, pushes grass in front of the herd for the summer.

The trigger for switching to 3in2 is the crops, as they fill the gap when one paddock is taken out of the round and ensures good quality feed is going into the cows.

“If we didn’t have a high-quality crop, production would drop with the change to 3in2 milking. If we didn’t have crop we would have to substitute with brought-in feed over summer.”

In Murchison, they didn’t switch to 3in2 until somewhere between January 1 and February, but in the drier Motupiko climate, they are bringing it forward to ensure they put condition on the cows’ backs so they don’t have to catch up through winter.

“We find that by getting on to 3in2 earlier before it dries out, you’re pushing more grass in front of you,” Jason says.

“Otherwise you’re chasing feed,” Beth adds.

This year they have 5ha of chicory planted under the sprinklers and 10ha of turnips under the pivot and reckon they will produce about 15 tonnes drymatter (DM)/ha of turnips and struggle for 10t DM/ha of chicory. They’ve grown chicory before in Murchison and though it’s a valuable crop to have in the system during summer, it wasn’t enough sometimes.

“We always found we needed that bulk feed because you didn’t get the tonnage from chicory,” Beth explains.

“But we liked chicory as well because it gave us no health problems like photosensitivity.”

38

On 3in2, they begin by putting the cups on at 5am and then 7pm on the first day, followed by one milking the next day.

As the cows get used to it, they bring the night milking forward gradually until it is 5pm. It means their staff – they have one fulltime employee and his wife does 20 hours a week as a relief milker – can head home at 2pm on that first day and come back at 6pm when it is a 7pm milking.

Whoever milks at night, gets a sleep in the next morning.

“A lot of people are put off by the night milking, but I really enjoy milking in the evening when its cooler,” Jason says.

It’s also cooler for the cows that are happier to walk to the dairy for milking and Beth says they use less energy than walking during the heat. On 3in2, they have one less trek to the dairy every two days compared with TAD, so that’s less walking which is beneficial for energy and lameness. The human side also benefits as everyone can head to the river in the afternoon if they want as well as getting those sleep-ins.

Their 3in2 stint continues through to the beginning of April, when the herd will go on to OAD through to the end of the season.

Last year, knowing they would be carting their own young cows to a new farm, they stopped the night milking of their first calvers at the beginning of March, when the rest of the herd was still on 3in2.

“Everyone told us they would dry off. They’d performed really well up till then and were our top animals and we

herd tested on 29 April and they were doing 1.44kg (milksolids (MS)/cow/day).

We dried them off 15 May because we had to truck them here and they scored 5.5 (condition) at calving and looked impressive. I think it paid off, so we’re thinking about doing it again with the first-calvers.”

Again, the emphasis is on the next season just as much as getting much production from this season and Jason and Beth says it pays off because those cows get in calf easier the next season, have the condition to perform well and are healthier for it.

Their target this year is 430kg MS/ cow and potentially they see 450kg MS achievable with minimal inputs. Their only bought-in input is 1kg of palm kernel per day per cow throughout the season. This season they have contracted 140t of palm kernel and Jason says the cows benefit from the consistency of feeding it every day.

“That 1kg is enough hold condition on their backs and I’ve found they like consistency. And I think that’s the same with grass – no matter where you set residuals, they like it to be consistent because they’re creatures of habit and like routine.”

Jason and Beth plan to stay at Motupiko for the next few years and, all going well, their next step will be a small farm of their own where they milk OAD throughout the season. The plan is to have a manageable herd they can farm without staff and a lifestyle that suits family. So in the next few years, they will be breeding cows with udders capable of performing well with an OAD milking regime.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

SYSTEMS │ MILKING

“What time do you call this, boss?”

A question of frequency Anne Hardie verbatim@xtra.co.nz Milking frequencies are still evolving as farmers seek the best mix for staff, environment and logistics, with many now using a range of frequencies through a season.

LIC FarmWise consultant in the Top of the South, Brent Boyce, has produced a paper on the subject which looks at combining three milkings in two days (3in2), once-a-day (OAD) and twice-aday (TAD) milkings on dairy farms. He concludes there is still work to be done to understand how milking frequency can be adjusted and how the ever-evolving modern cow can be bred to achieve more milk from fewer milkings.

However, marginal analysis to date shows increased profitability if productivity is maintained and costs

40

When to milk

are reduced. Less-tangible benefits come into play as well such as reduced laminitis, improved condition score and reproductive results, as well as the human cost through fewer milkings.

He says there is a myriad of reasons for altering milking frequency on individual farms and sudden climatic changes can force a spot decision to move to 3in2 or OAD. If it occurs in early lactation before Christmas, the herd can simply return to TAD if conditions improve, while if it is later in the season, remain on the reduced milkings.

OAD in early spring reduces the workload and stress on staff and cows through that early calving period and modelling undertaken by DairyNZ estimates an entire herd milked OAD for two to three weeks from the planned start of calving will only reduce milk production for the season by 1-2%.

Reasons for altering milking frequency: • Potential cost savings • Mitigation of climatic conditions • Improved farm logistics • Reduction in laminitis • Better cow condition • Health and mating benefits • Improved staff conditions • Maintaining or even increasing milksolid production.

That compares with a 7% loss for the whole season if every individual cow was milked OAD for their first three weeks of lactation. The benefits of OAD during this period improves cow energy status and body condition score, but only after five to six weeks from the cow first being milked OAD. When using OAD over the mating period, Boyce says production losses will depend on the length of time on that regime and the level of feeding.

Some farmers place all non-cycling cows on OAD at the start of mating, regardless of whether the cows are in good condition or not and even when feed is ideal, but he points out that some

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

of those cows will be non-cycling due to an infection, laminitis, age, mastitis and social pressures.

He doesn’t recommend 3in2 over the mating period as the cows will continue to produce at high levels and it conflicts with timing for the AI technician. From observations over 17 years, he says the end of the five to six weeks of AI appears to be the earliest time in the lactation to change from TAD to 3in2 to avoid compromising production.

Post AI or Christmas, OAD and 3in2 come into play to avoid hot afternoon milkings, feed challenges, cow condition, declining production, slowing grazing rotation and using summer crops.

The drop in milkings also has staff and family benefits. DairyNZ’s work on OAD post-Christmas shows the cow’s production will drop by about 10% which equates to a 4% loss in production for the whole season when spread over the full lactation.

While cows produce 10% less milksolids, their feed intakes only drop 3%, with the extra energy given to weight gain. So the cow’s condition score is better at dry off than their TAD peers.

From observation, Boyce says farmers can expect the somatic cell count (SCC) to increase between 25,000 and 100,000 above the existing levels when switching to OAD mid-season.

Farmers switching from TAD to 3in2 at Christmas report little or no production loss and DairyNZ backs that as long as the milking interval is no more than 18 hours.

Boyce says a practical guide for choosing when to switch to 3in2 is when most of the cows are not leaking milk in the yard at the start of the morning milking.

He says it is not necessary to alter the allocated areas grazed between the milking times when on 3in2 from Christmas to March.

From March onwards, the morning

‘Farmers switching from TAD to 3in2 at Christmas report little or no production loss and DairyNZ backs that as long as the milking interval is no more than 18 hours.’

Farmers can evolve their own system so it fits with their staffing and farm environment.

milking on day one should be the same time and the evening milking brought forward with the shorter daylight hours.

This ensures the first cows milked can be sighted going to their paddock from the milking.

On day two, the mid-day milking needs to be brought forward if the time between milkings becomes too long from the morning milking. He says good rostering spreads night milkings between staff and gives everyone a sleep-in on day two.

Changing the frequency of milking throughout the season reduces time spent in the dairy for the farmer, staff and cows, which Boyce says adds up to big savings compared with TAD. Extensive lactation data recorded across the Top of the South shows farms are

producing between 350 and 400kg MS/ cow from 304 milkings on farms milked OAD all season, equating to 1.15 to 1.30 MS harvested per milking. Farms milking TAD/OAD are producing 400 to 450 MS/cow, equating to 0.88 to 1.00 MS harvested per milking. While those on OAD/TAD/3in2/OAD have production levels between 440 and 495 MS/cow which equates to 0.93 to 1.02 MS harvested per milking.

Boyce says the latter farms are producing at similar or better levels than they did on TAD and with 100 to 125 fewer milkings per year.

Farmers will continue to evolve their systems, with 3in2, OAD and TAD all playing a role and he says the benefits enhance profitability and business sustainability.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

41

SYSTEMS │ OAD MILKING

Jolanda has been farm manager at Massey No1 Dairy Farm for four years and says she wouldn’t go back to twice-a-day milking.

Once-a-day No 1 at No 1 Jackie Harrigan Jackie.harrigan@nzfarmlife.co.nz A revolution of sorts at Massey University’s No 1 Dairy Farm has seen a switch from the heady days of a high-input, highstocking-rate farm of the mid-2000s when production was king, to a more-relaxed and extensive low-input once-a-day (OAD) system.

Now it’s still all about profit, but tempered within the constraints of environmental sustainability coupled with social licence and lifestyle balance.

Whereas the farm used to have multiple staff, 320 cows and twice-a-day yearround milking, with lots of bought-in supplement and cows producing 400kg milksolids (MS)/cow/year, it now seems a lot less frenetic and like the whole place has exhaled and relaxed.

Enter Jolanda Amoore, farm manager of the past four years, who has overseen and managed the revolution. The transition was steered by the Dairy One project, calling for research on reducing the environmental footprint of the farm, investigating the environmental, production and profitability of OAD milking while providing a better balance for staff and looking into the difference between three breeds of cows under the system.

The farm lies on the banks of the Manawatu River between Palmerston 42

North City and the science research centres operated by Massey University, Fonterra, Agresearch and a handful of others. With a daycare centre over one boundary, a cycleway being developed along the river side and the Massey traffic whizzing by the property, the social licence to farm in that fishbowl is never far from the mind of the farm manager.

The transition started in 2013/14 season with the aim of forming a herd made up of 1/3 Friesian cows, 1/3 Jersey and 1/3 Kiwicross to research the differences between the breeds under the OAD system.

Breeders from Jersey NZ donated 40 of their finest cows and a further 26 heifers were bought in from Taranaki breeders, and 70 Friesian and 129 Kiwicross were retained from the previous herd.

This season the herd number has settled back to 240 cows (two cows/ha) that Jolanda maintains at calving at a BCS of 5 for the older cows and 5.5 for heifers.

The aim is to fully feed them at all times of the season, but the cows inevitably lose some condition after calving, dropping to 4.5 but Jolanda says they never get to 3.5 – but a few occasionally get to BCS 6 in the summer.

“OAD cows don’t tend to drop as much as twice-a-day cows, they are not using as much energy to walk to the shed and they are way more relaxed – there is not that rush to get through the grass before they have to get back to the shed.”

FARM FACTS • Established in 1929 • Converted to OAD full season in 2013 • 120ha (117ha effective area) • 61 paddocks in total • 18 paddocks (35.4ha) can be irrigated With the aim of growing all their own forage when the farm transitioned to OAD, 10 hectares was planted in lucerne for silage on the lighter soils on the river bank and 10ha in chicory to be grazed as a crop with a feeding regime of 1/3 pasture, 1/3 crop and 1/3 fed on the feedpad.

Twelve ha of turnips and rape were grown the first season (2013/14) and then regrassed into a ryegrass, white clover/red clover sward producing 12 tonnes/DM/ha.

The 2013/14 chicory sward is now in grass and a further chicory/plantain/clover

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Life balance While the research programme demands monthly herd testing and data collection and the day after samples are taken for other measurements, the researchers and their technicians handle the bulk of the data collection.

Jolanda is the only permanent employee and 6am cups on means she is washing up by 8am. The 24-aside herringbone shed has no automation but has good cow flow she says.

A relief milker does just that and she gets help from students during calving to help pick up calves.

She lives on the farm with her husband and daughter and enjoys the interest of having research programmes going alongside the everyday routine.

She appreciates the way she can run the farm as if it is her own and most of all she loves the happy and friendly OAD cows.

She is targeting a 300-day lactation and says while the peak can be slightly lower (her cows peaked at 1.9kg MS/day), it lasts longer and most OAD farmers make a similar profit as TAD farmers when accounting for the lower cost structure.

She finds it difficult to understand why everyone doesn’t adopt the OAD system.

“The animal health benefits are great and you can halve the staff requirements -–but maybe farmers can find it hard to change?

“OAD makes happy cows – I wouldn’t go back to TAD milking now.”

mixed sward planted under the spray irrigation which Jolanda says grows really well.

The current season has definitely not been normal, Jolanda says, with a very wet winter, making it difficult to establish crops followed by a prolonged dry spell – which has meant the turnip and rape crops are so poorly grown she envisages they will only provide a couple of weeks grazing rather than the eight weeks they would normally furnish.

“We have had to buy baleage and will use the DDG and tapioca, and then look at drying off in February, depending on when the rain comes.

Research team: Martin Correa Luna, Argentinean PhD student working on the OAD research project (right), with his technician helper Aminiasi Kolibasoga, B Ag Science student from Fiji (left), and Jolanda Amoore, farm manager. The research will validate the aims of the shift from intensive high-input dairy to low-input OAD farm.

“We will pregnancy test in the first week in January so we know who’s empty and get rid of anything we were not planning to milk next season.”

Production under the OAD regime has settled about 92,500 kg MS/year although Jolanda was targeting 95,000 this season.

“We have been gaining around 1000kg MS each season, and the cows producing 360kg MS/cow.”

Jolanda is aiming to improve the feed conversion efficiency of the cows, saying the Jerseys and smaller crossbred cows are close to producing their bodyweight in milk solids but the larger Kiwicross and Friesians are lagging.

“We are gradually breeding them smaller because the current average is around 480kg liveweight (LW) across the herd.”

Fertility and cow health have improved under the OAD regime.

Jolanda uses 10 weeks of AI, with a variety of 12 OAD bulls used, handpicked for different OAD characteristics followed by beef bulls mated to bottom 20% BW cows she doesn’t want to retain heifers from.

FARM FOCUS • Explore sustainability through OAD milking system • Farm in a manner that meets environmental rquirements of Horizons Council • Link with community • Teaching resource for students, research and extension

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

“We can sell more heifers rather than bobby them so we make more money out of them.”

Last season the herd had a 93% three-week submission rate and a 76% six-week in-calf rate and an 11% empty rate over the 10-week mating – which Jolanda says is too high, as it usually hovers at 8% with 80% six week in-calf rate. She takes a lot of care over identifying cycling cows over the mating period, saying OAD cows often cycle more quickly after calving due to the reduced energy requirements from not being milked as often.

“I like to spend 20 minutes in the paddock in the first three-six weeks, to just watch the cows and see if any are in silent heat – they might be hanging out with the others but not being ridden.”

She has also bred her own Friesian teaser bulls to help bring the cows into oestrus.

Udder health, both in terms of cell count and conformation is paramount in an OAD herd and Jolanda also takes a lot of care to pick up any signs of mastitis and makes sure she applies the correct amount of teat spray and that it actually goes on to the front teats – and is not just pointed in their general direction.

Lots of importance is placed on breeding for udder conformation and she makes a list of cows to cull for poor conformation if their ligaments go after calving.

“The first year we had the biggest cull out, and we have to be careful with the heifers as it’s hard on them for the first six weeks. They get quite uncomfortable at the start of the lactation, but once you start breeding from the good udder cows its gets better quite quickly.”

Jolanda found the high volume of milk 43

Jolanda has always been hot on animal health and is a great observer of cows. She likes to sit in the paddock with the cows pre-mating to see who is showing signs of silent heat. “It only takes 20 mins each night and day and you learn a lot about the cows.”

flowing out in the first few minutes of milking forced the cups off the heifers, but she solved the problem by sourcing different liners and eventually found wider ones to handle the flow.

The cows are individually TOP scored (Traits Other than Production) to rate their udders and feed into the index that Massey geneticist Nicholas Lopez-Villalobos is developing.

The somatic cell count halved last year with a count of 103,000 over the whole season, thanks to Jolanda’s vigilance.

“You just have to be really on the ball and make sure you pick it up as soon as something is developing – making sure you use the correct amount of teat spray and 2∗ making sure they are milked out

without overmilking them is really important.”

She takes milk samples and will test to identify Staphylococcus aureus cows to cull them but generally she doesn’t favour just culling high SCC cows.

“It’s better to milk sample and test them to actually identify the bug and find out what is going on, so we haven’t had to cull heavily on SCC.” Teat sealing the heifers helps, she says.

“Only one heifer has had mastitis this year – and it was at mating time so I think she got it from riding others.”

Some cows really suit OAD and a few just don’t do a good job – they tend to put fat on their bums rather 1 1 than milk into the vat, Jolanda says.

Transition seasons from twice-a-day (TAD) milking to once-a-day (OAD) milking at Massey University Dairy Farm N

Research focus:

M. Correa Luna , N. López-Villalobos , D. Donaghy , P. Kemp2

• Argentinean PhD student Martin Correa Luna is 1 Institute of Vet, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand investigating the productive and reproductive Transition seasons results from TAD milking to 2 performance of cows the OAD Institute of under Agriculture andsystem Environment, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand OAD milking at Massey University Dairy Farm No1 ∗ on Masseyemail: No1 Dairy Farm. Since the M.L.CorreaLuna@massey.ac.nz beginning of the 2016-17 season he has taken Season monthly measurements of feed quality, milk 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 quality and cow performance to calculate the efficiency of feed conversion and the efficiency Area of crude protein utilisation on Focus Friesian, Jersey 117.3 117.3 117.3 Farm Total effective area and crossbred cows onsustainability a two-year sampling o Explore through 76.2 94.5 100.0 Rye-grass pasture (ha)* scheme in two contrasting systems; lowOAD milkingdairy system 9.4 9.4 9.4 Lucerne (ha) and high-input (using the previous No1 Dairy o Farm in a manner that meets 9.7 9.7 8.0 Plantain chicory red clover (ha) data). These efficiencies will be used to adapt environmental requirements of 2.4 2.4 Chicory irrigated (ha) the Moorepark Dairy System Model to OAD Horizons Council 4.0 9.0 4.2 Brasssica crops - turnips (ha) systems within New Zealand conditions and o environmental Link with community so calculate impact and farm 8.6 Brasssica crops - rape (ha) profitability diverse scenarios variation 2.1 o for Teaching resourceoffor students, Maize (ha) in stocking rate, N fertilisation rates, and research and extension Milking cows supplementation levels.

256 264 258 Total The Moorepark Dairy Systems Model (MDSM) is a whole-farm model developed by Teagasc 70 70 66 Holstein friesian (Irish agricultural research) with a number 57 65 54 Jersey of sub models including, a greenhouse gas 129 129 138 Crossbreed Farm (GHG) model, a N balance model and a milk o Established in 1929 Milk production processing model. o Converted to OAD full “We are testing the hypothesis that anseason in Total appropriately2013 planned milk production system 974,674 1,003,087 975,239 Milk (kg) in an OAD-low input reduces the area) o 120 ha system (117 ha effective 90,842 92,783 92,299 Milksolids (kg) environmental without o 61impact paddocks in compromising total 51,904 52,505 52,420 Fat (kg) farm profitability, but it may decrease milk o 18 paddocks 38,938 40,278 39,879 Protein (kg) production,” Martin says. (35.4 ha) can be • Martin’s PhD irrigated supervisor, geneticist Nicholas Lopez-Villalobos is working with LIC on an OAD index system using genetic parameters of the cows – entailing DNA sampling of the herd.

• Installing additional piezometers beside Soils the two existing units will enable added o Association of river soils environmental research to measure actual N leached into groundwater river and o the Excessively welland drained, and allow researchers to to better understand the prone summer drought mechanism which happens. o byHigh in itnatural fertility • As part of the environmental focus, FORSI New Zealand have installed an effluent filtration system which screens, filters and treats the effluent with chemicals so the clean drinkable water can be reused for washing Facilities and the solids composted and recycled back o 24 aside herringbone shed to crop paddocks rather than all consigned to equipped with Westfalia the Palmerston North City council sewerage metatrons system.

44

o 3 bay calf shed o Office, storage room, teaching room o Concrete feeding pad, 280 cow

Per cow

Milk (kg) Milksolids (kg) Fat (kg) Protein (kg) SCC Lwt

3,807.3 354.9 202.8 152.1 130 489.6

3,799.6 351.4 198.9 152.6 113 468.8

3,780.0 357.7 203.2 154.6 103 492.4

Stocking rate Milk (kg) Milksolids (kg) Fat (kg) Protein (kg)

2.2 8,309.2 774.4 442.5 331.9

2.3 8,551.5 791.0 447.6 343.4

2.2 8,314.1 786.9 446.9 340.0

4,464.5

4,287.3

4,376.1

79.5

82.0

81.7

Per ha

‡

DMI (kg DM/cow)

FCE (kg MS/t DM)

◊

Milk prod 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0

2.3

S

2.3 2.2 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.0

Calving and mating 20/07/14 24/07/15 24/07/16 Planned start of calving 68 60 65 Calved by week 3 (%) Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017 90 87 87 Calved by week 6 (%) 120 100 98 97 Calved by week 9 (%)

2.

Sea 13-

G

Prepare for a dry summer

SYSTEMS │ CO DIARY

impacting pasture performance.

Here in the Bay of Plenty, pasture growth rates across monitor farms in the region have already dropped around 30%, and its only December. I wonder what to it’ll be like in January when you’re reading this?

I’ve been living in the region for less than six months, so I’m in no position to be the oracle at the top of the hill predicting a dry summer, but that’s what weather experts are forecasting. In fact, they’re warning it’s going to be one of the hottest and driest summers on record. And if December is anything to go by, I think they’re right.

Are you prepared if that’s the case? Now is the time to think about what the best strategies are for your farm if a dry period continues into February and March.

Planning early will always provide more options than having to make decisions with a short lead-in time.

If you don’t have a plan in place already, there are some things you can be doing now that will lessen the impact of a continued dry period.

Nitrogen needs to be applied when there is enough soil moisture for growth, and make sure that the extra pasture grown is fully utilised.

First, prevent or minimise grazed pastures going to seed. This will help set them up for better summer growth – even under drier conditions. Trials show that grazing to a consistently even height (1500-1600kg drymatter (DM)/ha, with very few clumps) will improve summer milk production.

Nitrogen can also have a role to play. The ‘More Summer Milk’ trial in the Waikato showed that in seven out of nine situations, the application of nitrogen fertiliser in early summer was the most profitable way to provide extra summer feed.

The provisos are that nitrogen needs to be applied when there is enough soil moisture for growth, and make sure that the extra pasture grown is fully utilised. Graze to a consistent grazing height (1500-1600kg DM/ha) and do not allow residuals to increase with the extra feed grown.

Any surplus existing pasture can also be used to extend the rotation length. This could be from paddocks that have been dropped out of the grazing round, or pastures where residuals have been higher than targeted.

However, if there is not sufficient surplus pasture, the rotation length should not be extended before the dry period without the use of supplement.

Some wise old heads are telling me that while it’s dry, it’s not so dry that anything radical needs to be done just yet. Well at least as I was writing this in December. It never hurts to have a plan of what you might do should it get to that point where you need to Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Any surplus existing pasture can be used to extend the rotation length.

make more significant changes to your management.

For further information on successful summer management, visit www.dairynz.co.nz/feed/seasonal-management/summermanagement/setting-up-for-summer/.

• Ross Bishop is a senior consulting officer in Eastern Bay of Plenty.

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It doesn’t seem that long ago we were concerned about how to best manage soils and pastures under persistent wet conditions.

Now, we’re facing the opposite situation, with dry conditions already

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SYSTEMS │ WEATHER Feed is in short supply with the long dry period after a wet spring.

After a wet spring, coping with the dry Sheryl Brown

Many dairy farmers are heading into January with considerably less feed reserves on hand for summer, let alone for the 2018/19 season.

A wet winter in many regions caused farmers to dip into supplement reserves and to top it off slow spring grass growth means many farmers have 50-100% less grass silage readily available, AgFirst managing director James Allen says.

With many regions affected by the weather, there would be fewer options to destock or import feed, he says.

‘In just about every case, making an early decision is better than hanging out.

Protecting cow condition for next season is so important.’

Heading into a possible dry summer, farmers needed a three-stage approach.

First, they should have a basic feed budget and know what their feed supply and demand is going to be over summer.

Secondly, they needed to create trigger points they would use to make decisions.

Those trigger points could include pasture cover, supplement reserves, soil moisture levels or per cow production had dropped to a certain level.

Third was acting on those trigger points and doing something about it, he says.

“In just about every case, making an early decision is better than hanging out.

Protecting cow condition for next season is so important, for some of our most proactive farmers it’s a non-negotiable.”

AgFirst consultants work with a lot of farmers to look ahead 18 months and 46

anticipate what feed reserves are required.

“If you’re using up more feed reserves in summer, what’s the impact in autumn, winter and next spring?”

Farmers who had relied on palm kernel to get through this winter and now the summer would have to seriously look at the robustness of their farm system, Allen says.

Fonterra’s demerit system based on a six-day average fat evaluation index takes effect in September.

“The looming issue of less flexibility using palm kernel is weighing heavily on farmers,” Allen says.

The demerit system would impact palm kernel usage and dairy farmers would need to find alternative options such as reducing stocking rates, growing more crops, or buying other types of feed in.

Some farmers are already considering other crops or palm kernel blends.

Leading up to Christmas the pressure had come on farmers who were opening their depleted silage reserves early, Federated Farmers dairy group chairman Chris Lewis says.

Feed supplies had been tight all season.

“It’s hard to give wise words when every situation is different and you’re struggling yourself.

“We are all in the same boat and all have the same struggles. The problem is there are thousands of other farmers with the same problems, making the same decisions every day.”

With new cases of Mycoplasma bovis having been found in the North Island, farmers are also increasingly concerned about transporting stock around the countryside, Lewis says.

Farmers who would normally destock to take pressure off in the dry periods are concerned about where they would send them, he says.

“Where do we destock to? It’s on farmers’ minds, everyone is being a bit more cautious.”

Many farmers had reared extra bull calves to avoid having bobby calves and so had more stock onfarm. As the dry period

extended the beef prices were starting to drop off and the cost of feed was increasing.

“We get hurt both ways as a farmer and it can be frustrating.”

It does help to make a plan, to take stock of the situation and work out what you can and can’t influence, he says.

“That’s what I do. Sometimes it’s not the ideal situation but it makes you feel relieved that you see a direction to go forward.”

Making early decisions Dairy farmers are already making decisions around once-a-day (OAD) milking and early culling, BakerAg reports in Milklines, December.

Feedback from consultants in Taranaki, Manawatu, Wairarapa, Canterbury and Southland had been that surplus supplement had been exhausted by the wet conditions and insufficient supplements had been made in spring, so most dairy farms don’t have the feed reserves to operate in an average summer, let alone a dry one.

Crops were also struggling with soil moisture deficits at the critical establishment phase.

This would impact on yields and feed supplies. For farmers coping with the dry it was important to cull cows early that weren’t producing enough.

Those cows had to be identified so farmers should be herd testing and pregnancy testing early.

OAD milking barely changed the feed demand (2%), but it would take pressure off the cows and the farm team, BakerAg consultant Leo Hendrikse says.

When cows dropped to 1.4 kg MS/ cow/day was about the right time ask the question.

Research suggested the production loss below this point for the shift from twice daily to OAD would give a daily production fall of 14%, and a season production drop of 6%, but cow condition improved by 0.25 BCS in 100 days.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

SPECIAL REPORT

Good science

48 51 53 54

The power of plantain A shift in funding emphasis Cow’s milk scores with iodine Research in a carbon neutral frame

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

56 57 58 60

Research with Kiwi relevance Keeping check from SPACE Mindy produces the answers The reluctant entomologist 47

SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE Dr Soledad Navarrete – from the laboratory to the paddock to test plantain.

The power of plantain Large and small-scale trials are testing the merits of plantain in pasture. Anne Lee reports on work under way at Massey University.

P

lantain and its powers to reduce nitrate leaching have been the focus of studies at both ends of the scale spectrum at Massey University.

From the detailed effects of plant compounds and the microscopic activity in the rumen to full-scale paddock trials measuring what’s in the drainage water after a full season’s grazing by dairy cows, Massey University institute of agriculture and environment head Professor Peter Kemp and his team are looking at what’s behind plantain’s powers.

Late last year Agricom launched Ecotain – the new brand name for plantains that have the right levels of bioactive compounds to cut potential nitrate leaching.

Both Tonic plantain and AgriTonic come under the Ecotain umbrella and

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have proven they have the necessary attributes.

Numerous trials have found cows grazing Tonic plantain have significantly lower urinary nitrogen levels (33% less when grazing 50-50 ryegrass plantain than ryegrass white clover) and lysimeter trials have found reduced nitrate leaching under the urine patch. (Dairy Exporter, November 2017, p38-40).

Kemp says plantains are well known to have three bioactive substances in them – aucubin, acteoside and catalpol.

The comparative amounts of these appear to be important in determining whether the plantain cultivar can help reduce the amount of nitrogen in cow urine.

Kemp says Massey University technician Chris Rawlingson has

become an expert in extracting and analysing the compounds to the extent new cultivars in breeding programmes can now be efficiently screened to check they have the right mix.

Massey University post-doctoral researcher Dr Soledad Navarrete’s PhD study looked closely at the bioactives – their levels in Tonic plantain through two growing seasons and their effects on the production of ammonia in the rumen.

She found that while catalpol levels were almost negligible, aucubin and acteoside increased significantly through the growing season, peaking in May. Although at similar levels in October, by January the levels of acteoside were almost 10 times that of aucubin.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

The timing of the increase is a great fit for plantain’s ability to combat nitrate leaching as the level of bioactive compounds in the plant rise to coincide with the times when the risk of nitrate leaching is greatest.

Urinary nitrogen deposited over late summer and autumn has the greatest potential to be washed through the soil as nitrate because there’s both a higher chance of seasonal autumn and winter rainfall and pasture plants are growing at a slower rate so are taking up less nitrogen.

Navarrete’s second study looked at the effects of increasing amounts of acteoside and aucubin on net ammonia gas production during in vitro rumen fermentation.

Kemp explained that by measuring ammonia production it was possible to gauge how efficient digestion was.

The more ammonia the less efficient and the more likely nitrogen was being excreted in the urine.

Navarrete took rumen fluid from cows and added either chicory, which has no bioactives, or Tonic plantain, taking gas readings for the next 24 hours.

The plantain digestion produced 40% less ammonia gas than the chicory over the 24-hour period.

Navarrete also added the amount

Bioactive compound levels through the season.

Catapol

Aucubin

Acteoside

First growing season Dec-2011

0.03

1.78

b

23.61 b

May-2012

0.02

3.80

a

35.40

0.01

0.44

c

0.55

a

Second growing season Oct-2012

c

Jan-2013

0.09

2.18

b

20.03 b

May-2013

0.04

6.87

a

41.14

of aucubin and acteoside found in the plantain to both the chicory and plantain digestion processes.

Gas production dropped in the chicory and also dropped in the plantain.

Volatile fatty acids are produced by rumen bacteria when they digest and break down carbohydrates in plant material. They’re used as an energy source and for milk and meat production.

Navarretes’ study found acteoside helped with the production of some volatile fatty acids whereas the addition of aucubin didn’t.

However, aucubin has been implicated in the diuretic effects

a

associated with plantain that help dilute urinary nitrogen concentrations.

Kemp says it seems both chemicals are needed in specific amounts and it may be that getting the balance of both right is particularly important.

FARM SYSTEM SCALE STUDY Massey number four dairy’s impressive plumbing infrastructure set up during P21 trials is being put to good use measuring the nitrate levels in drainage under paddocks grazed by cows.

Kemp says three different pasture types are being tested: • Ecotain only.

Peter Kemp – drainage will tell the story of what plantain can do.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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• Ecotain with red and white clover (50% Ecotain 50% clovers).

• Ryegrass – white clover.

Kemp says the Ecotain with red and white clover mix is one some farmers are using already, particularly in areas without irrigation as the Ecotain gives good summer production.

Five replicates of each pasture treatment have been set up with 0.8ha in each grazing plot.

Each has its own isolated drainage system which takes any drainage water to a collection point where the flow is subsampled and each sample collected daily.

The nitrogen loss in the drainage water is measured as are nitrous gas emissions and the nitrogen present in cows’ urine, dung, milk and blood.

Fonterra is also analysing the milk composition from each treatment.

Sixty cows are involved in the study and are grazed on about 1ha of each pasture treatment for five to six days to acclimatise the animals before they go on to the experimental area to graze for two days each month.

“We know what happens at an experimental level now – there have been a lot of trials carried out here and at Lincoln that are giving consistent results – but we want to see what happens in a normal grazing situation over a whole season.

“Sometimes nature can do strange things when you scale experiments

Peter Kemp – shares findings on what plantain’s bioactives can do.

up in the paddock. There can be interactions or effects we didn’t anticipate.”

Two grazings were carried out at the end of last season and drainage water collected and analysed through the winter to ensure the whole system was working as it should.

This season the trial is being run in

Net ammonia production in vitro

Treatments: chicory; chicory+10 mg aucubin/g DM; chicory+20 mg aucubin/g DM; chicory+40 mg acteoside/g DM; plantain (naturally containing 7 mg aucubin/g DM and 36 mg acteoside/g DM); PL+10auc, plantain+extra 10 mg aucubin/g DM; PL+36act, plantain+extra 36 mg acteoside/g DM.

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earnest with animal data being collected along with nitrous gas emissions.

Drainage sampling will happen as drainage occurs which isn’t likely until later in autumn and through the winter.

Alongside the farmlet study nitrous oxide measures and recordings of nitrogen fractions in the soil are being measured in the non-drained area.

PhD student Jimena Rodriguez is carrying out that study using urine from cows grazing plantain.

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas so any reductions in nitrous gas emissions could give plantain another big tick in terms of its environmental benefits.

The farmlet trial is a spinoff of work done in the Greener Pastures project funded by Callaghan Innovation.

Much of the funding for the farmlet trial is coming from Massey University with some input from Fonterra.

Kemp says the next step would be to sow one treatment in an Ecotain, ryegrass, white clover mix which farmers are already adopting.

Other studies have suggested that to get a meaningful reduction in nitrate leaching at least 30% of the pasture should be plantain.

Results from the farmlet study should be available later in the year.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

A shift in funding emphasis

A change in science funding policy looks likely. The new Government has said a shift is required to create a more productive economy. It mean “working smarter, with new technologies, reducing the export of raw commodities and adding more value in New Zealand”. Adding value to dairy was mentioned.

Bob Edlin looks at science funding and the Government’s intentions.

New funding contracts for New Zealand’s seven Crown Research Institutes took effect in July last year.

The seven-year contracts, which together represented a $1.2 billion investment, were the first issued through the Government’s Strategic Science Investment Fund mechanism.

Previously the CRIs had five-year contracts for their core funding.

Collectively the CRIs employ 2399 scientists and technicians and a total of 3378 staff. They include AgResearch, Landcare Research and Plant & Food Research.

CRI funding accounts for about 15% of the Government’s total science investment.

But universities are involved in research of interest to the primary sector, too.

While core funding is now channelled through the SSIF, there is a bewildering array of other sources of funding for scientists engaged in primary-sector research – although competition for the money is fierce.

MINISTRY FOR PRIMARY INDUSTRIES • The Sustainable Farming Fund invests in applied research and projects led by farmers, growers, or foresters which deliver economic, environmental and social benefits to NZ. Applicants can seek up to $200,000 a year for a maximum of three years. The maximum total grant available is $600,000. Projects require a non-government funding contribution of at least 20%. The largest number of projects have been in dairy.

• The Primary Growth Partnership (PGP), a joint venture between government and industry, invests in long-term innovation programmes to increase the market success of primary industries.

Programmes are primarily businessled and market-driven aimed at boosting productivity and value across the primary industry value chain – from producer to consumer.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

MINISTRY FOR BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND EMPLOYMENT • The Endeavour Fund has more than $190m available, with up to $48m a year invested in Smart Ideas and Research Programmes, in line with the strategic direction set out in the Government’s National Statement of Science Investment.

• Grants in 2017 included $12.5m over five years to AgResearch for a project titled “Smarter Lives: New opportunities for dairy products across the lifespan”.

Eleven National Science Challenges are cross-disciplinary, mission-led programmes designed to tackle the country’s biggest science-based challenges.

They require collaboration among researchers from universities and other academic institutions, CRIs. businesses and non-government organisations to achieve their objectives.

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The previous Government allocated funding of $326.4m over 10 years for the challenges which include: 1. High-Value Nutrition (up to $83.8m over 10 years), designed to enable the transformation of NZ’s food and beverage industry to become an exporter of high-value foods with scientifically proven health benefits; 2. NZ’s Biological Heritage (up to $63.7m over 10 years), which aims to reverse the decline of the country’s biological heritage by protecting and managing native biodiversity, improving biosecurity, and enhancing resilience to harmful organisms.

3. Our Land and Water (up to $96.9m over 10 years) which aims to enhance the production and productivity of the country’s primary sector, while maintaining and improving the quality of the country’s land and water for future generations. * The Catalyst Fund supports activities that initiate, develop and foster collaborations, “leveraging international science and innovation for the country’s benefit”. It has four funding streams: influence, leaders, seeding and strategic. The MBIE runs some initiatives through a contestable process. Others are administered by the Health Research Council and the Royal Society of NZ. * Research partnerships are

continuing after a review of the Partnerships Scheme, but with several changes to achieve objectives such as a more diversified portfolio mix of sectors and greater industry or sector investment and participation in research and development. The 2017 Partnerships Scheme Investment Round involved five new sectorled research partnerships receiving funding up to $25.7m over the next seven years. DairyNZ was among the beneficiaries, receiving $8.4m over seven years for a project titled Livestock Genetics and

MANAGEMENT TO REDUCE FARM ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS The Commercial Advisers Scheme is open to Maori collectives, including trusts, incorporations, post-settlement governance entities and similar organisations. Coalitions of collectives may also apply. This funding can be tracked down through the Te Punaha Hiringa: Maori Innovation Fund of $3m a year which invests in initiatives that contribute to the achievement of goals and priorities in the Crown-Maori Economic Growth Partnership and the Business Growth Agenda.

The scheme funds Maori collectives up to $60,000 to work with a commercial advisor for up to 18 months and is open to collectives at various stages of commercial

CALLAGHAN INNOVATION A Crown entity set up to make NZ business more innovative, Callaghan Innovation provides a range of R&D grants. Increased funding in the 2017 Budget lifted total grants money available (for “getting started” grants, student grants and “’project” grants) to $657.2m over four years. Businesses must spend at least $300,000 on research and development to qualify for a grant of up to $5m.

THE AGRICULTURAL AND MARKETING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT TRUST

Climate change research gets special treatment under two schemes: International greenhouse gas research (ERA-GAS) is a multi-national funding programme managed by the European Commission and cofunded by MPI as part of the Global Research Alliance.

It was set up to aid research into monitoring and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from farming and forestry. Funding for the $21.6 million programme is provided mostly by the countries participating in the project.

MPI has contributed $1.25m to assist NZ researchers involved in projects to improve the monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions; finetune and assist with the implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation technologies; and assess existing policy and economic measures.

The New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) is investing $48.5m over 10 years into NZ agricultural greenhouse gas emissions research. It is a partnership between leading NZ research providers who study agricultural greenhouse gases and the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium. Fully funded by the Government through the PGP, its research mainly focuses on ruminant methane, nitrous oxide, soil carbon and integrated farm systems.

52

development. It also supports collectives with assets from a wide range of primary and other sectors.

Grants will cover 75% of the total cost of the commercial advice delivered, with collectives contributing the remaining 25%.

AGMARDT (as it is known) is an independent not-for-profit organisation established by the Government in 1987 with $32m from the wind-up of the British, Christmas Island and NZ Phosphate Commissions.

Since then its funds have grown to around $80m and it has provided $65m of funding to encourage innovative ideas, foster research capability and develop emerging leaders in the agricultural, horticultural and forestry sectors.

Among the beneficiaries, a Farmer Leptospirosis Action Group study aimed at protecting dairy farmers and their stock against leptospirosis is being funded to the tune of $80,000.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

Cow’s milk scores with iodine Bob Edlin bob.edlin@xtra.co.nz

Milk marketers can claim another nutritional advantage over rival products after British researchers found most milk-alternative drinks are an inadequate substitute source of iodine.

University of Surrey researchers examined the iodine content of 47 milk-alternative drinks (including soya, almond, coconut, oat, rice, hazelnut and hemp, but excluding those marketed specifically at infants and children) and compared it with that of cows’ milk.

They found most milk-alternative drinks did not have adequate levels of iodine, with concentration levels around 2% of that found in cows’ milk.

Margaret Rayman, Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the university, said many people were unaware of the need for this vital dietary mineral It was important people who consumed milk-alternative drinks realised they would not be replacing the iodine from cows’ milk, which is the main source of iodine in Britain.

This was particularly important for pregnant women and those planning a pregnancy.

A glass of a milk-alternative drink would provide only around 2 micro centigrams of iodine, a small proportion of the adult recommended iodine intake of 150mcg a day, Rayman said. In pregnancy, that recommendation rises to 200mcg/day.

Dr Sarah Bath, lecturer in Public Health Nutrition at the university and

THE MARSDEN FUND The Government established the Marsden Fund in 1994 to fund excellent fundamental research. It is a contestable fund administered by the Royal Society of NZ on behalf of the Marsden Fund Council and operates under terms of reference issued by the Minister of Science and Innovation. It allocated $84.6m to 113 projects in the 2017 round with grants intended to encourage NZ’s leading researchers to explore new ideas that may not be funded through other funding streams and

registered dietitian, said consumers who wanted to avoid milk and dairy products should ensure they had iodine from other dietary sources.

A Fonterra spokersperson said dairy was an excellent source of nutrition for all life stages. Natural dairy contains “an unrivalled mix of proteins, fats, and other nutrients” and has many benefits for human health.

The health benefits of iodine were well documented, she said.

She referenced the Concise New Zealand Food Composition Tables which show cows’ milk contains 6mcg/100ml or 15mcg/serve of milk, which is 10% of the daily requirement for iodine in adults.

“We also fortify our Anmum Materna with iodine because it is such a crucial nutrient during pregnancy and lactation.”

The New Zealand Nutrition Foundation says the iodine content of food is affected by soil, irrigation, fertilisers and cooking.

NZ soils are low in iodine, resulting in low iodine levels in locally grown foods.

Iodophores (cleaning products used by the dairy industry) were once the main source of iodine for New Zealanders, but since the 1970s changes in industry practices have reduced the amount of iodine in milk. There has also been a decline in the use of iodised salt.

As a result, studies have shown the re-emergence of mild to moderate iodine deficiency across most age groups in NZ.

foster creativity and innovation within the research, science and technology system. The research is not subject to government’s socio-economic priorities.

Among the latest recipients was the University of Canterbury, given $845,000 for a project titled Removing nitrate from contaminated water using methane.

Which microbes are doing the work?

bob.edlin@xtra.co.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

Primary Growth Partnership research such as that between Ravensdown and MPI focusing on hill country fertiliser application would be reviewed and may continue.

Research in a carbon-neutral frame Bob Edlin bob.edlin@xtra.co.nz

The dairy industry will not be exempt from the Labour-New Zealand First Government’s plans aimed at making the economy carbon neutral by 2050.

Dr Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation, made this plain while sharing her views on research and development in the dairy industry. The minister was too busy for a face-to-face interview with Dairy Exporter in time to meet our pre-Christmas deadline, her press secretary said. She did respond to our written questions.

Our first question concerned the career path that had brought her to the science portfolio.

She trained as a historian but gained her science experience as a business manager at Plant and Food Research, “helping to commercialise New Zealand research before entering Parliament”.

Asked about her experience in agriculture and/or horticulture. “I worked as a business manager for agri-sector crown-owned science organisation Crop and Food and then Plant and Food.”

Dairy Exporter then asked how satisfied she was with the dairy sector’s levels of investment in research and development and what she would do to encourage greater investment.

She noted the sector globally faced several challenges. In NZ, consumer preferences, climate change, global

54

competition, a growing population, technological changes and synthetic and other artificial dairy products would “change the landscape” of our biggest exporting primary industry.

“New Zealand has forged a reputation as one of the world’s most-efficient agricultural economies and the drive for innovation needs to continue to be a key feature of the sector.

“The dairy sector must invest in R&D to remain competitive and to see the inevitable changes as opportunities to capitalise on.”

Then came the reminder of a key Government policy objective: “All sectors and industries have a role to play in achieving the Government’s goal of a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 – dairy is no exception.”

But the Government would continue to work with and assist the sector in its transition to more efficient, low-emission practices.

Woods referred to the Partnerships Scheme’s recent award of funding to DairyNZ to develop genetically low-nitrogen-excreting animals and implement farm management strategies to reduce greenhouse gases and environmental impacts.

Asked what collaboration she envisioned for the dairy sector and how she would encourage it, she said: “The dairy sector is connected to many other sectors and research fields.

“As this sector adapts to meet new

challenges over the next 10 years, many different forms of collaborations between the dairy sector and other sectors are possible.”

She referenced Genomics Aotearoa, in which representatives of universities, crown research institutes and companies work together on genomics research in the areas of health, primary industries and environment.

“I could imagine the dairy sector collaborating on subjects like new food products, data science, emission reduction or water quality.”

The environmental imperative again came into her response.

“This Government is committed to achieving the goals of the Paris agreement and we will support the dairy sector to work together with experts on climate change and nitrate emissions to reduce their environmental footprint.”

Labour was committed to reintroduce the research and development tax credit it introduced at the end of its previous term in government and scrapped by the Key Government. When will this happen and how did she expect dairy to benefit?

The Government was committed to raising NZ’s R&D expenditure to 2% of GDP over the next 10 years, she said.

“We will be introducing a tax credit that rewards spending on research and development to support this.

“By harnessing our capacity to innovate we can diversify our economy, create higher-value products and better jobs, and produce points of difference which enable New Zealand businesses to succeed.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Detail on the design and implementation of the R&D tax credit was being worked through,Woods said.

As to the overhaul or scrapping of the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP), this is administered by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the question was one for Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor to answer. He had earlier told Dairy Exporter the PGP – introduced by the previous Government when it scrapped Labour’s tax credits – would be reviewed and may continue, but with a greater focus on soil and water issues.

Woods said sustained increases in Government investment would be important to reaching the Government’s target of lifting the country’s expenditure on R&D to 2% of GDP in 10 years.

“I expect business expenditure on R&D to continue growing strongly in coming years with the support of the planned R&D tax credit.”

It was important to ensure government spending on encouraging R&D was “aligned to the priorities of a smart and innovative low-carbon economy”.

What other funds and/or sources of agricultural science funding would be reviewed? For example, does Woods intend continuing the National Science Challenges?

These 11 challenges are tackling some of the biggest science issues facing NZ, “and are an integral part of New Zealand’s long-term mission-focused science investment,” she replied.

The Our Land and Water challenge was directly focused on enhancing primarysector production while improving land and water quality.

With Labour’s emphasis on science in addressing climate issues, better understanding the biological process of climate change and in shaping water-quality policy, how would this be translated into science policy and in which spheres of science did Woods expect greater emphasis?

“The Prime Minister has declared that climate change is our generation’s nuclear-free moment. It is crucial we adopt new ways of working to meet our goal of a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Science is key as it improves understanding of our climate system and provides the technologies and innovative solutions needed to slow climate change and adapt to its effects,” she said.

“The quality of our fresh water is another issue science will help with.

Clean water is a taonga, a fundamental right for all of us, and vital to our continued prosperity. Science provides the evidence base for freshwater quality standards and management decisions, and can provide practical solutions.”

Scientists were already working in

Science minister Megan Cherie Woods, pictured, was born in Wigram on November 4, 1973, and grew up there.

She attended Catholic Cathedral College and has a PhD in history from the University of Canterbury.

She was a business manager for Crop and Food Research (2005–08) and its successor organisation, Plant and Food Research (2008), based at Lincoln.

As a Labour Party candidate she succeeded former Alliance Party leader Jim Anderton (a former Minister of Agriculture) in the Wigram electorate in the 2011 general election.

Her ministerial portfolios in the new Government are Research, Science and Innovation, Greater Christchurch Regeneration, and Energy and Resources. She also has responsibility for the Earthquake Commission.

these areas through crown research institutes, universities, and the National Science Challenges.

The Government would also continue to look to CRIs for the provision of science that responds to industry and environmental challenges.

A TALE OF TWO FUNDERS The Sustainable Farming Fund is providing $395,620 over three years for a project led by the Facial Eczema Action Group with representation from vets, farmers, researchers and DairyNZ. The project is examining the production and welfare impacts of the disease and ways of encouraging farmers to address the problem before it gets to clinical level by helping them to know how and when to treat their cattle.

The same fund is providing $585,000 over three years for a project examining bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVD, a serious and widespread disease to which around 80% of New Zealand’s dairy and beef herds have been exposed.

Infection can cause reproductive losses, an increase in general disease, reduced growth rates, and lowered milk production. Annual losses for dairy farmers are estimated at more than $100 million.

Led by BVD Free New Zealand, the project aims to identify key transmission pathways, develop a business case for co-ordinated national BVD control and build a national model to track the BVD status of individual animals and herds.

Over at the Marsden Fund, money is dished out for projects that must meet different criteria. The University of Auckland celebrated the success of 31 of its researchers and research groups

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

whose projects won $19.8 million in the 2017 round of the Marsden Fund, which is administered by Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the Government.

Associate Professor Lisa Bailey, in the Faculty of Arts, was granted $625,000 for a project titled “Servants of God, Slaves of the Church: Rhetoric and Realities of Service in Early Medieval Europe”.

Victoria University similarly celebrated the award of more than $9 million of grants.

Dr Mark Masterson, in the School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, was granted $476,000 for a project titled “Revealing Desire between Men in the Byzantine Empire”.

Are we getting the best science from the Marsden Fund?

Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods told Dairy Exporter successful research proposals “represent the very best fundamental researcher–led, novel ideas from New Zealand researchers”.

The humanities were a broad research area that explored ethical issues, human culture and how the past informed the present and future, she said.

“MBIE’s science investments are focused on investing in quality research and impact.

“Investing for impact, however, doesn’t mean that all research has to have immediate outcomes. The research needs to show eventual benefits for individuals, businesses or society, which could be in environmental, social, health, economic or cultural spheres.”

The Marsden Fund Council was confident the proposals selected were of excellent quality and to Marsden Fund standards.

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SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

Research with Kiwi relevance Bob Edlin bob.edlin@xtra.co.nz

Research reports from overseas studies at first blush may whet farmers’ appetites to learn more but soon are found to be irrelevant to farming practices in this country. A recent example was reported under the headline “cooler cows have healthier calves”.

When organic versus conventional farming is at issue, however, a robust discussion can be triggered despite the differences between – let’s say – American and New Zealand dairying.

In the case of cooler cows, the Journal of Dairy Science in the United States reported a study of the effects of heat stress on calves conceived during summer. Data from more than 150 herds of dairy cattle in Florida, where cows experience hot summers and mild winters, were studied.

The researchers found milk production was greater for cows born to a mother that conceived in winter compared with cows born to a mother that conceived in summer, with greater milk fat and protein yield. The odds of survival to a second calving were greater for cows arising from a winter conception compared with a summer conception. As DairyNZ pointed out, the effect of heat stress was acknowledged but it was not a priority in relation to fertility in this country. This was largely because our system until recently involved replacement calves being born to cows that conceived well before any major heat stress events (even with autumn calving). Moreover, our heat stress was mild compared to North America. Hence it was unlikely the research had much relevance to NZ. Another American study was prompted by dairy farms converting to organic milk production as demand surpasses available supply. Feeding strategies accordingly must be adapted to meet USDA National Organic Program requirements.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers set about examining the

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effects of different feeding strategies and associated crop hectares on the greenhouse gas emissions of certified organic dairy farms.

They determined that a holistic approach to farm production was necessary. Organic dairy farms with well-managed grazing practices and adequate levels of concentrate in feed can both increase farm profitability and reduce GHG emission per kilogram of milk.

Matt Lucy, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dairy Science, said consumers often equate more dependence on pasture with environmentally friendly farming, “but this study demonstrated that low milk production per cow is a major factor associated with high GHG emission”. Managing both pasture and supplementation to increase milk production per cow would substantially reduce GHG emissions.

Factors such as dairy cow breed and non-production variables, which may also affect GHG emissions on organic dairy farms, call for further studies to elucidate the effects of grazing management and feeding systems.

Professor Surinder Saggar, Principal Scientist & Portfolio Leader, Mitigating Greenhouse Gases & Carbon Storage, at Landcare Research dismissed the relevance of this to NZ. The reason is the differences between US and NZ in the costs associated with

the production of corn and soybean grain; pastoral production system (temporal variations, grass species, nitrogen content), infrastructure, labour, inputs, management and fuel plus any indirect subsidies.

These would result in different carbon footprints and profits leading to different outcomes.

Phyllis Tichinin, a member of the Organic Dairy and Pastoral Group executive, wasn’t leaving matters there and reminded Dairy Exporter of relevant studies specific to NZ. The Wisconsin study didn’t hold useful generalisations for dairying in this country, she said, because: • Organic cows on NZ grass-based systems generally produce the same amount of milk as conventional cows, as documented by Massey University researchers in the Grow Organic Dairy project.

• The pasture production assumptions in the Wisconsin study don’t appear to be based on certified organic pastures – instead they used production and quality figures from university trial farm pastures that were synthetically fertilised and chemically sprayed, so pasture quality and potentially production are not representative of an organic system.

This approach ignores the main value proposition of organic dairying, which is to deliver a better-quality milk.

The market has shifted, Tichinin said – “quality is becoming more important than volume”.

The way to improve milk qualities (Vitamins A, D, K2 and CLA) which are related to better human health is through diverse pasture species, low synthetic fertiliser inputs and entirely grass-based systems, she contended.

“The quality of the feed that goes into the ruminant – mineral levels, diverse plant metabolites, brix – determines the health of the animal and the profile of beneficial fats and proteins that comes out of the udder.

“Research being done at University of Wisconsin is said to be finding markedly better milk qualities in organic vs conventional milks.”

We await the results and will keep you posted.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

Keeping check, from space Anne Lee anne.lee@nzfarmlife.co.nz @Cantabannelee

For those old enough to remember when man first stepped on to the moon the idea you’d be setting up your week’s grazing plan and allocating cows to paddocks based on a picture from space is something of a sci fi wonder.

But it’s a reality and for a price, farmers – initially in parts of Canterbury but soon to be nationwide – can expect to get an email once a week with an image taken by satellites hurtling around Earth and passing over New Zealand every day.

Along with the inbox image will be a feed wedge, graphically displaying pasture cover in kilograms of drymatter (DM)/ha from highest to lowest with paddocks identified along the bottom axis.

There will also be a list of paddocks, each with its average cover.

Standing for satellite pasture and cover evaluation, the new SPACE service offered by LIC has been able to correlate the images measured by the satellites with drymatter covers by calibrating the images with data from actual drymatter yield information and the clever use of algorithms.

In the past the ability to get useful information has been confounded by cloud cover and the frequency of cloudy days.

But as the number of satellites circling Earth has increased LIC has now been able to source information from satellites passing over the country every day.

Based on weather information LIC expects farmers can expect to have data every 7-10 days even in winter.

South Island Dairy Development Centre executive director Ron Pellow, pictured, says the Lincoln University Dairy Farm LUDF has been part of

trialling the new technology comparing the weekly farm walk data collected using the rising plate meter with reports from the satellite.

“It’s increasingly representing the data as we’ve collected it,” he says.

The satellite image of the farm is useful with a level of detail that shows variability within a paddock.

Just as the platemeter data gives an average cover for a paddock so too does the SPACE report but the image shows just how variable the covers might be within that paddock.

Given LUDF has issues at some times with what the platemeter is telling the farm management team compared with what the cows are telling them, Pellow says the SPACE report also needs to be looked at as a tool.

For LUDF having the weekly information from the SPACE report isn’t likely to mean an end to the farm walks members of the farming public are free to join each week, Pellow says.

“But we may stop plating the whole farm on those walks in the future and use that farm walk as a way to analyse the information form SPACE, validate it and have a discussion about what we’re going to do based on the information.

“It will be less about collecting the data and more about interpreting it and making decisions.”

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Pellow says the consistency of the information would be of benefit to those farms where they struggle to have the same person plating the farm each week or if they struggle for time to walk the whole farm frequently enough.

For those with MINDA Land and Feed the information is also loaded automatically into the programme and for those with other pasture management software the data comes in a way that farmers can easily manually upload it into any programme.

Initially SPACE is being offered to farmers within two 1000 square km areas – one around Dunsandel and one around Hinds but the expectation is it will be rolled out across the country as soon as possible.

Until January 22 the service is being offered free to farmers in the two areas to allow them to trial it.

From January 22 the costs will vary according to the area of the farm with a 100-150 hectare farm able to subscribe to the service for $2250/ year or $187.50 a month. For a 301400ha farm the cost is $3000/year or $250/month.

Video link: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=L-lORpH4unU

Link for price table and map of available areas and picture of satellite: www.lic.co.nz/lic_SPACE.cfm

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SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE

It’s not just about the amount of plantain we are feeding it’s also about when we are grazing it, Pablo Gregorini says.

Mindy produces the answers Anne Lee anne.lee@nzfarmlife.co.nz @Cantabannelee

stocking rates and different pasture mixes – one containing a 50% plantain and 50% ryegrass white clover mix and recording when and how much supplement is fed, daily milk production, milk composition, monthly body condition score, weekly pasture covers, pasture quality information and nitrogen concentration in urine, faeces and milk urea.

Lysimeters are also being used to

measure nitrogen concentrations in drainage water.

There are 80 cows on each of the lower stocking rate (three cows/ha), lower nitrogen (150kg N/ha/year) blocks and 113 cows on the higher stocking rate (five cows/ha), higher nitrogen (300kg N/ha/year) treatment.

Gregorini says the large-scale system trial builds on the component studies already carried out at Lincoln, much of it through the Forages for Reduced Nitrate Leaching study.

This new Lincoln University study is in its first season and the expectation is information will be gathered over at least two years.

Along with the cows on the farmlets it’s incorporating the use of computer model technology.

Gregorini was the lead developer of a complex cow computer model named Mindy (named after Gregorini’s wife) during his time at DairyNZ. He’s used Mindy to help set up the trial design and has more recently used it in a study with Lincoln University professor of dairy production and dean of the university’s agriculture and life sciences department Grant Edwards.

That soon-to-be-published study, has sought to answer some of the questions already arising from the farm systems research after scientists and the farm’s management noticed differences in milksolids levels.

“We asked Mindy, what if we feed you plantain every other day or every five days or even every 10 days?

“Then we asked what if we feed you plantain at those frequencies, but we feed it to you after morning milking or

Only a few months into a large-scale research trial on plantain and its abilities to lower nitrate leaching, Lincoln University scientists are already working on answering the new questions arising from the trial.

Lincoln University professor of livestock production Pablo Gregorini says the farm Farm system trial Lincoln University systems trial at the Ashley Dene Research and Development Station university’s Ashley Farmlet treatments Plantain 150 N Ryegrass 150N Dene Research and Development 3.5 3.5 Stocking rate (cows/ha) Station involving 150 150 N fertiliser 273 cows aims (kgN/ha/year) to not only 50% ryegrass, white clover ryegrass, Sward type measure numerous 50% pure plantain white clover production and Target production environmental ~ 450 ~450 (Kg MS/cow/year) metrics but learn • Pasture and milk • Pasture and milk Measurements how to best manage production production pastures with • Nitrogen balance • Nitrogen balance plantain in them.

- milk urea N - milk urea N It’s comparing two - urinary N - urinary N rates of nitrogen - Faecal N - Faecal N • N Leaching (Scalar) • N Leaching (Scalar) fertiliser, different

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Ryegrass 300N 5 300 ryegrass, white clover ~500 • Pasture and milk production • Nitrogen balance - milk urea N - urinary N - Faecal N • N Leaching (Scalar)

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

after the afternoon milking?

“We took it further and said ok what will happen if we feed you at those times and plantain makes up 25% of your diet or 50% of your diet?”

The complexity of Mindy means that she can answer those questions not only in terms of what it will do to her milk production but how it will affect her urinary nitrogen concentration and other outputs.

“What we’re doing with this kind of modelling is to take the science we’re doing now, using the resources and information we already have, and find the answers to more questions – to squeeze the orange a bit more.

“Long story short is that the modelling shows we can explain a significant amount of the variability in milk production by looking at the timing and frequency of when and how much plantain is fed.

“So it’s not just about the amount of plantain we are feeding it’s also about when we are grazing it,” Gregorini says.

The system trial and the modelling are bringing together what he calls the technology of inputs and the technology of processes in that the studies are investigating the input itself, namely the plantain and its effects, as well as the processes involved in feeding it – the when and how much.

Armed with that sort of information the next step for the scientists is to then test the model with the real thing.

So watch this space to see where the science goes next.

Gregorini says some exciting projects are already lined up for this year.

As far as the farm systems trial results go he says to date they’ve found the plantain was slower in terms of pasture growth rate in the spring so more supplement was fed early and by mid-December cows grazing the 50% plantain, 50% ryegrass white clover block had still used more supplement per cow than the cows grazing at a similar stocking rate on the ryegrass white clover only pasture with the similar (150kg N/ha/year) nitrogen inputs.

But cows on the plantain mix pasture had produced more milk than the other two treatments on a per-cow basis even though the higher stocking rate treatment had been fed more supplement than cows on the plantain mix sward.

It’s still very early days for the trial but while the full season’s information will be important the differences through

Gaining ground: understanding the interactions between soil, plant and animal microbiomes to drive sustainable pastoral productivity Ashley Dene Research and Development Station

Soil Whole farm modelling

Hypothesis: Efficient use of N in a RG-WC production system is controlled by the composition, activity and interactions between soil, plant and animal microbiomes mediating N transactions.

the season are just as important from a practical farm management and environmental perspective.

OUR LAND OUR WATER Lincoln University’s Ashely Dene Research and Development Station is home to a detailed study on the interactions between soil, plant and animal microbiomes as part of the larger, national science challenge project, Our Land Our Water.

Gregorini is Lincoln University’s principal investigator for the project and explains that the detailed Gaining Ground study is more specifically looking at understanding the interactions between soil, plant and animal microbiomes so as to help drive sustainable pastoral productivity.

A team of researchers from Lincoln University, AgResearch, Landcare Research and Otago University are using a small number of cows out of the farm systems trial to look more deeply at what’s going on with the microbiomes at different annual nitrogen fertiliser rates.

Gregorini says the hypothesis is that the use of nitrogen in a ryegrass white clover production system is controlled by the composition, activity and soil, plant and animal microbiomes interaction mediating nitrogen transactions.

Over two periods of 10 days through the season – one in November and one later in the season 10 cows from each group in the farm systems trial were

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Microbiomes

Animal

Plant

split into two smaller groups of five and run on three different areas, each ryegrass white clover but with different rates of nitrogen fertiliser.

Gregorini says cows are grazed on areas with fertiliser application rates of either zero, 150 or 300kg N/ha/year.

Measures taken over those 10 days will look at pasture production, milk production and milk composition with detailed sampling on milk urea nitrogen, urinary nitrogen and faecal nitrogen.

Lysimeter data will also be used to complete the nitrogen balance.

All of that information will flow through to DairyNZ senior scientist Pierre Beukes and his team to carry out whole farm modelling.

From those 10-day samples of information he will be able to develop a whole season, whole farm model that will provide a greater farm system view of what effect the three nitrogen rates have.

Gregorini says soil, plant and rumen DNA and RNA extractions will be taken and rumen samples from all of the animals will be analysed to look at not just what bacteria and other organisms are present but also how many there are, what their activity is and how they may be interacting.

The study will help build the larger picture and understanding of what is happening within farm systems and how common farm practices can be influencing different aspects within the whole animal, plant, soil connection.

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SPECIAL REPORT │ GOOD SCIENCE Commenting on how lucky he was to be employed at a time when he and fellow scientists could work on long-term research he also decried the current fragmented short-term funding model for research.

WINTER MILKING

Grasslands Levy Orator Stephen Goldson: Lack of long-term research timeframes fragments and stifles outcomes.

The reluctant entomologist The New Zealand Grassland Association has delivered grassland research to NZ farmers for the past 75 years. This year the association’s conference was held in Whanganui with a theme “A river runs through it”. Jackie Harrigan went along to pick up some good science.

For broadacre agriculture in the New Zealand grassland ecosystem, pesticides were never going to provide a complete answer, Grasslands conference 2017 Levy Orator Stephen Goldson said.

Early on in his career Goldson was a reluctant grassland entomologist but reflected on his satisfaction of working with “a trio of invasive weevils” over his career and the introduction of biological control agents and plant resistance to help control the Argentine stem weevil, clover root weevil and the lucerne weevil.

The nearly 40-year AgResearch scientist explained the lack of ecological complexity in NZ pastures, how invasive pests find it easy to gain a foothold due to the incomplete transplant of European

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plants and how the grassland ecosystem does not interact with the adjacent native ecosystem.

Tai Chikazhe, of DairyNZ, reported how winter milking can increase profitability, but that it was more suited to regions hit with dry summers on properties that grow more pasture in winter than summer, with free-draining soils and good infrastructure.

With winter milk premiums driven by UHT milk demand in China, Chikazhe suggested farmers who can make a profitable change to winter milking without the winter premium are more sustainable than those who rely on the premium, saying farmers need a good understanding of their pasture growth profile and feed costs along with system change costs to carry out a full sensitivity analysis of changing to winter milk production.

REDUCING N HOTSPOTS Reducing nitrogen concentrations and potential loss around troughs and gateways could be as simple as using non-N application zones around these areas. Nitrogen applied close to gates and troughs runs the risk of not being taken up by plants due to irrigation exclusion, dryness and denuding of pasture, trampling by animals and higher

No need for nitrogen near the trough.

Good infrastructure for feeding and standing off of cows is important for winter milking.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

faecal and urine N application by cows moving through these areas.

Armin Werner, Lincoln Agritech group manager of precision agriculture, recommends a 10-12-metre exclusion zone around troughs, and up to 32m around gateways where nitrate-N levels could be markedly different to paddocks levels, and definitely nonapplication in any areas where pasture is not growing.

Throw some lime on to help keep the black beetles at bay.

POOR RYEGRASS PERSISTENCE Farmers in parts of the upper North Island will be pleased to know they can’t be blamed for the poor persistence of perennial ryegrass in pastures. David Chapman of DairyNZ outlined research showing pastures analysed over six years showed the species was only a three or four-year option due to environment, climate and pest interactions with particular soil types, despite using best-practice ryegrass/endophyte genetics and management.

A 32% reduction in larvae in the lime treatments compared with control treatments is likely to have lessened the impact of black beetle damage on drymatter production in summer and early autumn, ryegrass persistence and weed invasion.

Interestingly the first report of liming helping to control black beetle was

by Oemeed in South Africa in 1889, but more understanding was needed about the interaction between lime and soil-dwelling pests. Gerard and Wilson showed that while liming was not a cure-all for black beetle, the application of agricultural lime at five tonnes /ha and optimising pH 6 can help mitigate beetle damage and promote pasture vigour to withstand the pest with an effect persisting at least into the second year.

REDUCING N FERTILISER ALTERS DAIRY SHED EFFLUENT

Equally Chapman said plant breeders cannot be blamed as new cultivars were not inherently poorer in their ability to physically survive. Alternative species solutions were clearly required and many farmers were already researching and trialing them.

LIME REDUCES BLACK BEETLES A changing climate has encouraged the range and damaging effects of black beetle on pastures in northern and coastal North Island areas and while the widespread use of black beetle-active ryegrass endophytes, in particular AR37, has helped, there was still widespread demand for further tools to help farmers.

Paddock and dairy farm trials in the Waikato by AgResearch’s P J Gerard and D J Wilson showed the application of lime can suppress black beetle numbers and importantly the effect of the liming continued into the second year.

A farmer-funded observational study across seven irrigated Canterbury dairy farms investigated the difference between high-N farms (>100kg N applied/ha/year) and low-N farms (<50kg N applied/ha/year) in terms of total N concentration, N form, mineral nutrient concentration and pH, with anecdotal observations on effluent odour.

The study was to test the hypothesis that reducing N fertiliser would result in a more nutritionally balanced effluent (N:P ratio) , causing microbes to multiply more rapidly, lowering pH, storing N in microbial biomass, reducing ammonia emissions and odour and reducing the risk of N leaching from effluent applied to pasture.

The study showed clear and significant differences in the form of N in effluent on the high and low N farms although the total effluent concentration was comparable between both classes.

Low-fert properties had a higher proportion of N in organic forms (75%) compared with ammoniacal-N than high-fert properties (59%).

Low-fert effluent also had a lower pH, higher P concentration and nearer optimal N:P ratio than effluent from high-fert properties.

Organic N is a slow release form of N that results in lower losses of N to water than ammonia-N, so effluent higher in organic N could cause lower losses than effluent high in ammonia-N. An effluent higher in organic N content can also be expected to increase longterm pasture production.

Reductions in applied-N rates may reduce N-loss from land-applied dairy shed effluent and may increase pasture production on paddocks receiving effluent. Farm staff on the properties included in the study using the low rates of N fertiliser noticed a reduced odour in the milking shed and a reduction in the immediate visible pasture response.

A further controlled study is needed to confirm the effects and to better understand the mechanisms driving the observations.

How bad does your poo stink?

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

For more information and complete papers from the 2017 conference, see www.grassland.org.nz

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ENVIRONMENT │ ONFARM

The million dollar effluent system and feed pad has been built in the middle of the farm 800m from the farm dairy.

Future-proofing in South Waikato The landscape for dairy farming is changing and has launched Gray and Marilyn Baldwin on a journey to make considerable changes to their Waikato operation. They told Sheryl Brown why they’ve made significant investment to be more sustainable and how they plan to pay for it.

I

n the last two years, Gray and Marilyn Baldwin have sold their farm next door, bought the Baldwin family farm at Putaruru, which they had been leasing for six years prior, spent a million dollars on a feed pad, silage bunkers and effluent system, switched to 100% autumn calving, changed dairy companies, and have stopped rearing replacement dairy calves, instead contracting their entire herd to Wagyu beef.

Meanwhile, they’ve initiated a 1.1-hectare wetland research project on their farm and have fenced off and planted sidings in manuka.

It’s been a significant investment for them, particularly coming out of the dairy downturn, but bank managers will back farmers who have a plan, Marilyn says.

The couple put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a sustainable and profitable dairy farming business.

Future proofing from future environmental regulations is probably the biggest reason behind the new infrastructure, Gray says.

“When we have to give our nitrogen reference point as part of Healthy Rivers Plan Change, having the pad we will be able to demonstrate that we’re selfcontained and the cows are not on the paddocks in the middle of winter with a whole lot of supplementary feed and making a mess.

“We will significantly reduce our nitrogen footprint because of the feed pad.”

Gray is worried they are swapping nitrogen pollution for carbon pollution, however.

“We now have a tractor working 8-10 hours a day and we have a larger carbon footprint. I do worry about if/when the focus of society changes from water to carbon and someone comes and says farmers have to account for their carbon.

We’ve traded one for another.

“But we are in the business of making food and people are always going to need food – I’m optimistic about the future.”

A big incentive for the change in their farm system has been chasing the

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Farm facts • Farm: Awarua Dairies • Owners: Gray and Marilyn Baldwin • Location: Putaruru • Area: 713ha (240ha milking platform, 105ha maize block, remainder forest, scrub and riverbank) • Cows: 800 Jerseys/Jersey cross, OAD milking • Farm dairy: 42-aside herringbone, in-shed feeding • New infrastructure: 650-cow feedpad, two 800 tonne feed bunkers, two 80m weeping walls, 14 million cubic metre effluent pond.

• In-dairy supplement: 700t (2kg/ cow/day) • Supplement: 1000t DM maize silage, 150t DM grass silage, 200t DM lucerne silage • 2017/18 production: 275,000kg MS

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Gray and Marilyn initiated this regenerated 1.1ha wetland project on their Waikato dairy farm.

winter milk premium and avoiding summer droughts, he says.

Making the decision to commit to a full autumn calving system flowed on to the decision to build the 650-cow feed pad and new effluent system and switch to supply Miraka.

“You can milk well in the winter when you have a feed pad and you’re set up to do it.

“We had 188 concrete trucks come in – it’s a serious investment so we have to make money and maximise the winter premium.”

‘I do worry about if/ when the focus of society changes from water to carbon and someone comes and says farmers have to account for their carbon. We’ve traded one for another.’

They have a winter contract with Miraka to supply 1000kg milksolids (MS)/day for 60 days.

Miraka has a “slamdunk” marketing strategy, from its unique Maori culture to its geothermal resources and its environmental incentives for suppliers, Gray says.

“Rather than receiving penalties from your dairy company, it’s a positive approach and as farmers we have the potential to earn up to an extra 20c/kg milksolid.

“We earned an extra 7c this season but we will go closer to that next season when we have the rest of the effluent system set up.”

The infrastructure has been built in the

middle of the farm, 800 metres from the farm dairy.

It is all gravity orientated, with effluent from the feed pad running downhill to the weeping walls, then down to the effluent pond.

The green water is pumped via a tractor PTO pump back up to the flood wash system on the feedpad.

The next phase will be to pipe the effluent from the farm dairy down to the weeping wall.

Solids from the weeping walls will be used as organic matter for their 105ha maize block, with the liquid from the pond irrigated on up to 30ha of the milking platform through small pods.

When the cows are dry in summer, they will be able to lock up paddocks and make grass silage, Gray says.

“If we can irrigate 20mm-a-day equivalent for eight weeks I imagine that should make a good silage crop.”

Feeding the cows on concrete means they are not wasting supplement or damaging pasture by feeding out in paddocks. In one season they’ve already seen the benefits saving 300 tonnes DM of maize silage that is still sitting in the bunker.

“I wish we had built a feed pad 10 years

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

ago. Before in the dry summers we were feeding out palm kernel in trailers, the cows were hungry and they made a mess around the trailers. In the winter we were feeding out maize in the paddock and were wasting a lot of feed. It was stressful.

“This year in June I went to see the cows, it was horizontal sleet and cold and the cows were happily chewing their cuds.

With this infrastructure even in the bad weather you haven’t got the stress.”

This season, with all the changes onfarm, they will achieve a record production for the farm, pushing 275,000kg MS. They’ve purchased a JH Stoll mixer wagon and feed a combination of maize, grass and lucerne silage and minerals to the cows. They grow oats and annual ryegrass in between maize crops and might trial Hogan ryegrass this year.

Their son Joel is the farm manager and is working with a nutritionist from All Farm NZ to ensure the right ratio of protein, starch and NDF in the diet.

“In winter we budget on the cows having 4kg grass in the paddock so we need to add protein to the ration on the feedpad.”

Everyone has their own portfolios they are responsible for in the farm business.

Gray looks after land development and manages the forestry and cropping block, Marilyn rears the calves and is in charge of herd records, Joel is the farm manager and responsible for the day-to-day running of the operation, while his wife Joanna does the rosters, PAYE and health and safety.

The Jersey herd has been milking once a day since 2012, which suits the topography of the property, which is 20% flat, 50% rolling and 30% steep, with the longest walk for the cows 3.5km.

They tried to go back to twice-a-day milkings for about two months last year, but lameness became a problem, Marilyn says.

“Our whole farming practice is looking after animals, looking after the river, looking after the land and looking after the people that operate our farm,” she says.

The once-a-day system and autumn

The new 14 million cubic metre effluent pond will irrigate 30ha in summer to grow grass silage.

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calving also appeals to staff.

“The cows are dry in January and February when staff want to have annual leave. All these things shape up to make it a good model.”

Another big driver to going winter milking was to get out of the bobby calf market.

“Sending bobby calves to the works at four days old is getting increasingly difficult, the townies are cutting up rough – and we don’t want exposure to that,” Gray says.

“Any autumn calf is worth more than a spring calf. Last year we took all our autumn four-day-old calves to the Frankton sale, the worst calves got $60 and the best got $250.”

This season they bred 100% of the herd to Wagyu beef with the four-day-old calves contracted at $200.

That $150,000-plus income pays for the future herd replacements they will have to buy. They will buy top empty three, four and five-year-old spring cows, send them to their grazier in Gisborne for 10 months, and put them in calf to beef in June to calve down the following autumn.

Not breeding their own replacements

The NIWA testing sites measure water entering and exiting the wetland.

means they have a more transient herd and more stock records to do, but they are able to buy better genetics.

“There are more farmers around our district with better BWs than we will ever have,” Gray says.

Their empty rate is high at 30%, but to get around that they mate the empty winter cows in spring again, keep milking them over summer and sell them as in-calf spring cows.

“That means you can get a 350-day lactation out of them, we keep milking them in January, February and March

before we dry them off to sell so that raises your total days in milk significantly.”

Once the cows are dried off they’re sent grazing until they’re ready to be sold on June 1.

The couple have a long-term relationship with two graziers in Gisborne where they sent all their young stock in the past, and where they now send their carryovers and dry cows.

All the animals come back in great condition after grazing on hill country and the cows come home and are able to handle their hills, Marilyn says.

A re-established wetland Gray Baldwin’s grandfather dug out a wetland on his Putaruru property and constructed a drain to make another paddock for grazing his sheep, which was standard practice at the time.

Some 60 years later, the late farmer and conservationist Gordon Stephenson was on the Baldwin farm and pointed the paddock out and said it would make a good wetland.

There is now a re-established 1.1-hectare wetland capturing runoff from 85ha of the now-converted dairy farm.

The wetland project is a $150,000 joint venture between DairyNZ, NIWA, Waikato River Authority, Waikato Regional Council, Opus and Hill Laboratories.

Some 15,000 plants were placed in the new wetland in May 2016 after the paddock had been constructed into six basins which slows the water flow before it gets into the Ngutuwera River. NIWA has set up monitoring equipment to measure where the water enters and exits the wetland.

The wetland could potentially improve water quality by removing up to 70% of the nitrate from runoff through bacteria and uptake by plants, DairyNZ environment manager Dr. David Burger says.

The constructed wetland has two NIWA sample sites which continuously measure water flow into the first basin, and water flow out of the last basin before it enters the river. Along with waterflow, NIWA is testing nitrogen, phosphorous, sediment and E.coli levels. NIWA is doing monthly tests as well as testing during rainfall periods to gain knowledge about what is happening to the water nitrate levels and whether any treatment is occurring when water flow is increased.

The constructed wetland has been designed with a sediment trap at the first basin to capture sediment running off the 85ha and there are small bunds between the basins to slow water flow.

It’s a recipe to slow the water enough to allow more contact with the plants and bugs to break down the nitrate levels.

The entire wetland is designed to be low lying with a uniform water level to ensure plant survivability and maximise water contact times.

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While it was still too early for results, the constructed wetland appeared to be working, Burger says.

“I’m very pleased with how it’s working in terms of the hydrology. We’ve had a couple of serious rain events and it’s performed really well.”

The constructed wetland is being tested alongside a natural seepage wetland on the Baldwin property.

NIWA is using experimental chambers in the natural wetland to measure the denitrification rate.

These numbers will be compared to the constructed wetland, to gauge the efficacy of each option, Burger says.

Building a constructed wetland could become a costeffective tool in a farmer’s tool box when meeting incoming environmental regulations, David says.

Before landowners and councils commit to these mitigations for limit-setting, more work is needed, however, to quantify their environmental benefit, provide outcome certainty and promote their use for improving water quality.

Once it’s known how efficient a constructed wetland is for reducing nitrate and other contaminant levels it can become a plausible option for landowners and regional councils.

“We want to create certainty on how efficient a constructed and a natural wetland can be in different landscapes.

“We know wetlands are great for improving water quality but right now there is no guarantee that a reduction in farm nutrient losses achieved through a wetland will be recognised as a contribution towards meeting environmental limits. We need a consensus between scientists and regulatory bodies.”

DairyNZ is embarking on a research study with NIWA in partnership with regional councils to develop constructed wetland and targeted riparian guidelines for a range of pastoral landscapes.

Check out the Balwins’ wetland project video on the NZ Dairy Exporter Youtube channel.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

ENVIRONMENT │ ECOLOGICALLY SPEAKING

The pressures of nutrient constraints across NZ are starting to slow expansion and intensification.

Moving mindset to smart extensification Alison Dewes Good news, the New Zealand dairy herd has reduced by 100,000 cows according to the latest data. It would appear if there was no more new expansion, the national herd may have reduced by 2%.

With nutrient constraints, and palm kernel use being tightened over time, awareness by good farmers that more can be gained from less, is emerging.

In different catchments under pressure like Rotorua Lakes for example, farmers that are getting on with the change have dropped cow numbers progressively, removed winter cropping and many are using less nitrogen fertiliser without any total loss in productivity.

Where Overseer is used as a regulatory tool and N output has to drop, there is a constraint that the farm system changes have to be measurable by Overseer to demonstrate a net benefit.

Things like lower stocking rates, less N fertiliser, less or no winter cropping, standoff areas with good effluent disposal, and changes in stock policy are all things that are readily measurable by Overseer and are observed by regional councils.

It is probable that stocking rates in some catchments will have to drop more like 2030% below historical rates than have been typical for sub-regions for 20 or so years.

This requires us to shift thinking, towards fewer, better-fed, bettergrown cows achieving closer to 90% of bodyweight as milksolids, fed more to full capacity: all year round (including late pregnancy).

In some cases fewer, more capacious cows may not have survived or lasted so well in a higher-stocked system.

This also means moving from a mindset of “no hungry days” to “100% optimally fed days”.

This can still be done with a largely forage-based system. It does, however, require more careful pasture management, especially at peak, and ideally farms with at least 30% of the area mowable, allowing more supplement to be made during peak growth times.

Some farmers in nutrient-constrained catchments have made conscious decisions to retire vulnerable slopes and wetland, and concentrate on the better classes of land.

Many farms in Rotorua catchment, for example, have dropped their N loss by 1525% from what they were doing a decade ago.

The sheep and beef sector is harder hit in all of the catchments where there is grandparented nitrogen discharge allowances.

Clearly the dairy sector is a larger user of N fertiliser per hectare than other pastoral sectors, Dairy NZ figures suggest this is about 120-140kg N/ha/year, and on irrigated properties more like 150-250kg.

(DBOY data).

There is still a lot more room for more eco-efficient use of nitrogen fertiliser, in response to tightening nutrient limits.

Farmers we studied in the upper Waikato (Broadlands) were using only 60-90kg of N/ha/year, yet still were achieving the top quartile of pasture eaten in the locale (1112.5 tonnes drymatter/ha/year). They were using nitrogen fertiliser more strategically,

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

not overgrazing pastures, and increasingly looking to use crops that fix nitrogen (lucerne) rather than require it.

In comparison, the sheep and beef sector is harder hit in all of the catchments where there is grandparented nitrogen discharge allowances.

Sheep and beef systems have a lot less room to move than dairy in their ability to reduce N, but in some cases still have reduced N losses by 10-20%.

Often they are not as heavily stocked, as this sector has learned over decades that fewer better-fed animals are more profitable anyway, and have had a focus on eco-efficiencies, as their margins have been tighter.

Their ability to reduce N losses are fewer, they only use around 10-30 kg N/ ha (whole farm) typically, little room to move with lower stock rates, reducing or eliminating winter cropping, and in some cases have to move from a femaledominated stock policy to a maledominated policy: from heifers, dairy grazing, to a male (steer/bull) dominated system.

The pressures of nutrient constraints across NZ are starting to slow expansion and intensification. A process of “smart extensification” is emerging.

In some regions like Rotorua Lakes, there is a financial incentive for land use change.

This is not present in all catchments, however.

The pressure coming on in all regions to reduce N losses is just the beginning of tightening of a range of limits.

While many farmers have rolled up their sleeves and got on with it in regions that have had rules for a while, others like Waikato and Greater Wellington are just starting to get going.

The issue is not going to go away, farming will adapt, as many good farmers have done already.

Be aware of all your options early, because farm systems take time to adapt and change, especially if you are to get more milk from fewer cows – breeding and 65

STOCK │ ONFARM

A new course with sheep milk

On the western edge of Lake Taupo a genetics programme is underway to breed the most efficient milking sheep in New Zealand. Maui Milk Ltd is milking 2000 ewes with new breeds of lambs on the ground, ready to be mated in April. Sheryl Brown reports.

D

riving into Waikino Station, new breeds of lamb can be seen grazing the pastures of New Zealand for the very first time.

On a hot December afternoon, they’re typical lambs, nibbling away on the newly established plantain crop, but these lambs are special.

Some are half Lacaune, the Frenchoriginated milking sheep, and some are half Awassi – the Middle Eastern sheep that is bred for meat and milk, crossed over Coopworth/East Friesian sheep.

These lambs are the start of a new genetics programme to combine all four breeds to produce a new sheep that will be known as Southern Cross.

Importing new sheep genetics is the biggest game-changer for the NZ sheep milking industry, Maui Milk general manager Peter Gatley says.

“Unless we were able to import new

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genes then the handbrake was going to be on progress forever. We desperately needed new genes.

“We now have new blood from all three breeds that we’re interested in using to create this hybrid Southern Cross breed.

It’s a huge milestone in the history of this industry.”

Peter, together with geneticist Jake Chardon, bought the remaining pure East Friesian genetics in NZ a few years ago after attending the NZ Sheep Milk conference.

The pair saw an emerging opportunity of a sheep milking industry that had potential if they harnessed the right genetics.

They subsequently partnered with Maui Milk to use the pure East Friesian embryos to breed rams and mate them over 4000 Coopworth ewes to give them a Coopworth/East Friesian base sheep.

Maui Milk then imported Lacaune straws of semen from France and leased Awassi rams from Hawke’s Bay-based Saudi Arabian-owned Awassi NZ last year.

To get dairy sheep to perform in the NZ environment, the greater the genetic diversity the better.

The hybrid vigour will also be important when combining these four different breeds, Gatley – who was previously general manager genetics for LIC – says.

“It’s like the Kiwicross in dairy, we don’t know which breed will ultimately contribute the most genetic material.

Performance data will determine that. We will just put them all in a big washing machine and select vigorously on performance, exactly like we did in dairy cattle.”

Lacaune sheep are known for their good udder conformation and high milk yield, while Awassi are a hardy sheep which

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Peter Gatley – importing new sheep milk genetics is a huge milestone for the industry.

Waikino Station on the edge of Lake Taupo.

Maui Milk is milking 2000 East Friesian/Coopworth ewes in the new GEA 64-bale rotary.

Key facts • Owner: Maui Food Group Ltd • Location: Kuratau, Taupo • Area: 770ha • Milking platform: 150ha • Sheep: 2000 East Friesian/ Coopworth ewes

should have better heat tolerance, with East Freisian offering milk volume and Coopworth a solid foundation of genetics adapted to the NZ environment.

“We want a sheep that will survive, that’s relatively easy care, it enables us to cull on performance.”

Mating in April this year will see the first time all four breeds will be in one animal.

It was a risky manoeuvre to access the rights to new genetics and get approval to import them into NZ. The first hurdle was convincing both the French and Saudis to release genetics, which they managed to do by the assurance to give quality performance data back to them, Gatley says.

“They have confidence they will get useful information back on how their sheep perform in this environment.”

While they were awaiting confirmation Gatley and Chardon purchased Waikino

Station on behalf of the investors and started the dairy conversion process.

“It was high risk to commit to buying the farm and starting the conversion before we had secured the genetics.

There was a 50/50 chance the French and Saudis wouldn’t sell us the genetics and a 50/50 chance we wouldn’t be able to import them.”

It was a relief when the semen was finally in the country, Gatley says.

“We tracked the entire flight by flight radar until the plane touched down in Auckland.”

Collecting milk data A big part of the genetics breeding programme being a success will come back to harnessing individual sheep performance data.

Maui Milk worked with GEA to provide a solution tailored to their needs, GEA and Maui travelled to Europe to assess equipment, from that visit they decided on an internal 64-bale rotary platform, and installed in-shed feeding, a covered yard, Reporoa backing gates, and an adjustable height platform in the pit to ensure comfort and ergonomic efficiency for milkers.

GEA installed the plant and equipment including its DairyPlan S21 software which

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

records milk yield, composition, reproduction, feeding and health for every animal on the farm.

GEA also configured into their iCORE milking point management system a milk composition meter to provide protein, fat and lactose data in the sheep milk.

The software and equipment combination is the first installation of its kind worldwide for GEA and was developed to ensure more accurate choices could be made for Maui Milk’s genetic programme.

Two barns, capable of housing 1000 ewes each have been built with GEA feed conveyor belts, which were sourced from Europe.

Onfarm system The Coopworth/East Friesian ewes were synchronised last year and 2500 artificial inseminations performed, which were all laparoscopic surgeries.

That meant a compacted lambing, with 1300 ewes lambed in a three-week period.

Lambs are taken off their mothers between 24 and 48 hours after they’ve had colostrum and hand-reared.

Only 200 ram lambs were kept, with the rest given to lamb-rearers along with AnLamb milk powder.

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Removing the ram lambs meant they could focus on the 1400 replacement lambs, Gatley says.

None of the sheep had been milked beforehand and all had to be trained in the milking parlour. With the last of the infrastructure including the barns still being finished, it was a chaotic time, farm manager Katy Day says.

“Training was a momentous task, but sheep don’t get enough credit. They’re smart animals especially when you put food in front of them.”

Her team of staff includes eight French workers and one from the United Kingdom, who all have skills in sheep milk farming. Their expertise when it came to handling the sheep has been pivotal, she says.

“I’m used to drystock farming, flipping the animals upside down and chasing them – watching the staff with the animals, they would pick up a lamb and walk backwards and the mother would follow them.”

The aim is to get the lambs up to 50kg before they are mated as hoggets in April which will be a challenge, Gatley says.

“The lambs were born out of hoggets, and were born late, so they are a little behind the eight ball.”

The barns could help to continue weight gain after mating by bringing them inside and feeding them extra supplement leading up to lambing. The lambs will be on

Who is Maui Milk?

Maui Milk Ltd is a joint venture partnership between Maui Food Group Ltd, a Shanghai-based company, and Waituhi Kuratau Trust, who started milking sheep in 2007 on Waituhi Kuratau Trust land.

Maui Food Group Ltd funded the new dairy farm conversion at Waikino Station, which will be an external supplier to Maui Milk Ltd. At Waituhi Kuratau Trust sheep graze outside year round on ryegrass/clover, lucerne and plantain and are fed pellets in the milking parlour. Ewes are lambed outside.

The new conversion at Waikino is a hybrid system. The sheep graze outside on ryegrass/clover, lucerne and plantain, but the farm has two indoor barns that can house 2000 ewes, with the capacity to feed supplement on conveyer belts. The sheep are also fed pellets in the milking parlour. Ewes are lambed in the barns and the lambs are hand-reared in a purpose-built indoor/outdoor facility.

This hybrid farm system will provide a contrast with the Waituhi Kuratau Trust farm to compare the pros and cons from each farm system. adlib lucerne and plantain and fed pellets.

Lucerne is central to the farm system as it’s a high-quality feed that lasts throughout the summer and they will also make lucerne baleage to feed in the barns.

The milking ewes are also fed a pellet in the farm dairy, the recipe created by nutritionist Paul Sharp.

It may still be early days for farmers to start pouring concrete and converting to milking sheep, but the potential is now there to breed an efficient milking sheep which could make it a productive and profitable option in the future, Gatley says.

Maui Milk will host a field day at

Waikino Station on January 31.

To register for the field day email office@southerncrossdairysheep.co.nz

Sheep milksolids

Sheep milksolids include fat, protein and lactose. Sheep milk has a higher solids content than goat or cow milk.

As a result, more cheese or milk powder can be produced from sheep milk than goat or cow milk.

Sheep milk has about 18% solids, whereas goat and cow milk has about 12%.

The Maui Milk team.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

STOCK │ VET VOICE Providing adequate shade will help prevent heat stress and reduced feed intake.

Coping with the heat Katie Mason We have had unseasonably warm weather in the last few weeks and this has had implications for grass growth and production.

Heat stress in cows is an increasingly worrying phenomenon, due to changing weather patterns. Heat stress in dairy cows counteracts the tremendous genetic gains we have made in milk production, by limiting feed intakes and subsequently reducing production potential.

It is thought heat-stressed cows stop eating to reduce the heat produced by rumen fermentation, limiting production potential and they also don’t perform as well reproductively.

In hot, dry weather the grass dries out and the fibre content of pasture increases.

This can be problematic as poor-quality grass is less-easily digested and can increase the heat from rumen fermentation, which can exacerbate already hot environmental conditions.

We know heat-stressed cows don’t eat as much and therefore don’t produce as much; but there are other biochemical and physiological factors which play a role in reducing the production, which we are less well understood When cows are too hot they rely on mechanisms of evaporative cooling such as sweating and panting, although they are less-efficient at losing body heat through sweating than humans.

There is a combined measure of temperature and humidity known as the temperature humidity index (THI). Heat stress usually occurs at temperatures over 23C and humidity over 80%. For every unit increase in THI cows produce on

average 10g fewer milksolids per day. In real terms, the thermal neutral zone (the temperatures between which dairy cows can normally regulate their temperature easily) is -5C and 25C at moderate humidity.

Friesian cows seem more susceptible to heat stress than other breeds so any more than 21C and relative humidity of 75% is problematic. For Jersey cows, the temperature is 25.5C at 75% before there is a noticeable drop in milk fat/protein percentages and total milksolids.

Higher-production cows are also more susceptible to heat stress. These animals have a higher basal metabolic rate and are therefore more likely to suffer the effects of heat.

What do heat-stressed cows look like?

• Mild heat stress can result in a simple increase in sweating and breathing rate.

• Animals suffering the effects of heat will often seek shade.

• Cows will often crowd together, particularly around the water trough.

• The cows’ water intake can increase by as much as 30% in hot weather.

• Heat-stressed cows will have noticeably reduced feed intakes (10-30%) and will have reduced milk production (as much as 20%).

• In severe heat stress, cows often extend their heads and protrude their tongues exhibiting signs of drooling or panting.

Reducing the risk of heat stress: • Constant access to cool, clean water is paramount – back-fencing with no access to a trough is NOT acceptable – use portable water troughs if necessary.

High-production cows can drink in excess of 100 litres a day, increasing to

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

120-130l in dry, hot weather. Cows will drink between two and six times a day.

• Consider providing water in high traffic areas like the exit race, as some researchers have observed cows drink most immediately after milking.

• Keep cows out of direct sunlight where possible. Use paddocks with shade trees if possible and provide shelter at the shed if you can. Reduce time spent standing in the yards and reduce time spent walking.

• Providing shelter is important to keep the cows comfortable and shaded. If you have a winter herd shelter to keep cows warm and dry in the winter, these can be useful to provide shade in the summer if suitably ventilated (otherwise it can be 10C warmer inside than out).

• As feed quality is declining, consider supplementary feed if it is necessary and reduce stock numbers if possible.

• Cull surplus and empty cows as early as possible to reduce demands on pasture, especially if your ability to buy in quality feed is limited.

• Consider a later afternoon milking time and try to avoid working in the heat of the day for your sake and the cows’.

• Keep handling stresses to a minimum, especially during the hottest part of the day.

• Sprinklers can be useful in the yard, but these are best used in combination with a fan system to reduce the humidity level and allow evaporation from the cows.

A final word on the heat: remember that some rain following prolonged periods where night time temperatures exceed 12C is prime risk time for facial eczema spores so you may like to consider preventative zinc supplementation earlier this season. Discuss this with your vet.

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STOCK │ QATAR

How dairy beats a blockade Chris McCullough

One farm’s huge ambition to supply all of the dairy produce demanded by Qatar’s 2.6 million people is quickly becoming a reality.

Situated about 55km from Qatar’s capital city Doha, lies Baladna Farm, that produces and distributes its own dairy and meat products by running several livestock enterprises.

Under guidance from farm chief executive John Dore, originally from County Kildare in Ireland, the farm set up its own dairy unit to meet the demands for dairy produce in the Arabian country.

Although experienced in running sheep and goat enterprises, Baladna Farm decided to erect and operate its own cow dairy enterprise in the wake of political blockages imposed on Qatar by its neighbours.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic ties with Qatar as they believed it supported terrorism. On top of this, these countries imposed a boycott on trade.

These blockades meant normal imports of dairy produce, mainly supplied by Saudi

Arabia, could no longer be received so Baladna Farm decided to set up its own unit to meet home demand.

As building work got under way, cows were sourced around the world and flown in by Qatar Airways.

There are now 1800 Holstein cows on the farm but the goal is to run a massive herd of 14,000 to supply most of the country’s dairy demand.

Dore said more cows are on the way from the United States to rapidly grow the herd to the levels required.

“We currently have 1800 cows in the herd yielding 30 litres per cow per day,” he said.

“At Baladna we process, pack and distribute all our own milk which means the farm basically gets paid for volume. Currently we are building a new 500-tonnes-per-day dairy and juice factory to utilise our milk.

“The milk we are producing is 3.6%

butterfat. Milk retails in the shops here in Qatar for 7.5 Qatari Riyal per litre (NZ$3),” he added.

In Qatar three dairy farms produce and process their own milk under their own brands. A number of smaller privately owned dairy herds produce milk for the owner’s consumption.

Baladna plans to develop its dairy herd quickly to fill the void left after Qatar’s neighbours imposed the blockades.

“We aim to have 14,000 cows plus followers,” he said. “We also aim to fatten

Qatari women visit the 100-bale rotary dairy at Baladna Farm.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

bulls at 10 months old for the beef chain as well.

“Holstein cows are currently being sourced in the United States for us. It is our intention to be able to supply the majority of the demand for dairy produce in Qatar as early as next year.”

Baladna Farm has built air-conditioned barns to accommodate the cows and is using a 100-bale rotary parlour that can milk 750 cows an hour.

Building designs and themes have also come from the US with the cows lying in cubicles on rubber crumb mattresses.

Dore and his team supply about 40% of the market in Qatar but hope to increase that to 100% by next April.

Temperatures can hit 48C on the farm as it is situated in a desert. Keeping the cows cool in air-conditioned barns is a challenge, he said.

“The challenge is humidity. It’s the trickiest at dawn and dusk and drops in the middle of the day so that’s when you need to get things done.”

Dore has more than 30 years’ experience working in the Middle East since moving to Saudi Arabia in 1984 after graduating in Agricultural Science from University College Dublin.

Baladna is a subsidiary of Power International Holding, a diversified Qatari company.

Built over 70 hectares, Baladna Farm also has 40,000 Awassi sheep that are able to withstand high temperatures and produce high-quality milk.

The farm also houses 5000 goats and operates an animal feed mill yielding 100 tonnes a day.

Cows walk to the rotary dairy for milking at Baladna Farm.

Welcome to Qatar – A Holstein cow about to step from the crate she has been air-freighted in from the US.

Crates of Holstein cows at Doha airport, Qatar.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

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STUDENT WORK Words by Jackie Harrigan

Welcome to Tiakitahuna Coming from a city of 8 million, James Luo had no experience of farming.

Now the Massey University agricultural science student is working his summer holidays on a Manawatu dairy farm.

Jackie Harrigan reports.

W

A summer job is perfect for learning practical farm skills.

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The bright lights and big city with 8 million people in Nanjing hold no allure for James, he wants to crack on in the dairy industry.

orking as a summer student has been a great way to learn the practical skills involved in dairy farming for the ‘smiley man from Nanjing.’

Shixiong Luo, or James as he has renamed himself for the ease of his Kiwi student mates and Massey lecturers, has been in New Zealand studying for three years now and has “just a couple of papers” left to complete on his Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree.

Young Country first met James at the end of 2014 when he entered the ‘Test Drive your Dream Job’ competition as part of the Land Your Dream Job campaign run by NZX Agri during that year.

James had come to NZ to attend Auckland’s Taylor Institute to learn English language and foundation studies before entering university as an overseas student.

He won a Test Drive prize and spent a day on a Manawatu dairy farm with farm manager Hayley Hoogendyk. He loved the cows, the farm, the bike and Hayley’s friendly guidance and enrolled in an agricultural science degree at Massey. He was also awarded $1000 towards his fees as part of the prize.

Hailing from the southern Chinese city of Nanjing, with a population of 8 million, James’ only exposure to farming was the Japanese farm simulation roleplaying video game, Harvest Moon, that he loved to play. The main anime character was adapted from a comic and was a boy charged with tending his absent father’s farm which had fallen into disrepair.

Fast forward three years of study and James is working for the summer on the 700-cow low-input Tiakitahuna dairy farm of the Tocker family and being entertained and trained by young brothers Russell and Zac. The Tockers employ a summer student every year on their 240-hectare Manawatu dairy farm, 120ha of which is on the flood plain next to the Manawatu River. Having a student is a great way to meet different people and they enjoy the banter and the opportunity to help a young person to enjoy working in the industry, the brothers say.

“Working through the summer on the farm is a lovely environment and its really enjoyable – students get really hooked on the dairy farming over the summer,” Zac says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

The smiley man from Nanjing is having fun hanging out with and learning from the laughing Tockers of Tiakitahuna this summer (Russell, left and Zac, right).

Rare-ish red breed ‘Working through the summer on the farm is a lovely environment and its really enjoyable – students get really hooked on the dairy farming over the summer.’

James is loving the experience and has been milking night and morning through the 40-aside herringbone shed, fencing, feeding calves, shifting the effluent irrigator, learning how to trim cows’ hooves, grubbing thistles and treating mastitis cows with teat treatments. The brothers also run a 190ha beef runoff, finishing 300 beef cross calves so James has been shifting stock.

Last summer and then during the year James worked for the small organic Biofarm operation on the outskirts of Palmerston North. The Tait-Jamieson family run an organic 120-cow herd, milked through a 16-bail rotary and make Biofarm organic yoghurt on their onfarm yoghurt factory.

A huge benefit of work experience for the young Chinese man has been the opportunity to experience different systems and farming methods to enhance and bed-in the theory he has learnt at university.

The Tocker brothers are the fourth generation on the family farm dating back 98 years to the original 60 acres of Tocker land and are now equity partners with their parents.

Zac did a geography degree at Otago before farming and Russell completed the Diploma of Agriculture at Lincoln and both have been active in Young Farmers over the years so know what appeals to young students in terms of work and banter.

James was treated to a “huge leg of lamb” for a celebration dinner with the family when he received his 2017 university results. As an only child, his own family in Nanjing are supporting his study financially – no small task when international students pay six times the amount Kiwis pay for university fees. While his parents are pleased he is studying at university they thought that his choice of agriculture was ‘very odd’.

“But they said it was up to me as long as I try my best,” James says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

The Tocker family starting farming Milking Shorthorn cows in their herd in the 1970s and Russell and Zac recently bought a complete herd of Oakley Stud Shorthorns, bringing the number in the herd up to 120 of the rare breed called Tiakitahuna Milking Shorthorns.

Russell is now a member of the Red Breed Genetics Shorthorn Board for proving young bulls and the brothers enjoy being involved in the Central Districts group of breeders.

James is learning to appreciate “Five years ago there were only the advantages of the Milking 5000 Milking Shorthorn cows left in Shorthorn cows in the herd.

New Zealand, as the breed was slow to take up AI in the 1950s which held them back,” Russell says.

Russell and Zac’s enthusiasm for Milking Shorthorn cows is also rubbing off on James, who says the cows are very friendly and have a good temperament.

“They don’t kick the cups off much, which is good.”

They also have very good udders and teat structure which makes them last longer in the herd, he says.

Russell and Zac also value the cows for their real efficiency in converting pasture to milk on the low-input farm, where no supplements are brought in and the young replacement stock are reared on the milking platform.

“We have less lame cows among the Shorthorns and less mastitis and better fertility,” he says. “The higher protein ratio is sometimes higher than the fat and we are paid more because of the high protein.”

The brothers are using Canadian and United States genetics and aiming for a medium-sized cow. Farming on a floodbank can have challenges with two or three flood episodes each year, when they get an hour warning of the Manawatu River rising to get their cows over the stopbank.

“Then the stocking rate spikes to five cows/ha on the rest of the farm while the water recedes.”

But the operation is run on a low stocking rate to compensate and cows producing an average of 316kg milksolids (MS)/head, mean 900kg MS/ha/year.

After the very wet winter the cow condition was looking good until the early summer heat kicked in and the feed quality started to decline just as the cows were hitting their peak.

“It hasn’t rained since October and the maize and turnips we planted haven’t really grown very well.”

James has been flatting in Palmerston North with some classmates and commutes to the farm each day.

Next year he plans to finish the last two papers for the degree and head into the dairy industry to build a career.

Now he has experienced life in NZ the crowds of Nanjing have lost their allure and he wants to stay here and use his new-found interest in soils and pastures and of course his skills with cows to get a job and get stuck in to the industry.

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Words by Glenys Christian

Zinettie Clark was interested in all things rural from an early age.

One milking to 2IC in six months

Z

inettie Clark firmly believes what you learn through any work experience prepares you for something else. And the 19-year-old, usually known as Zee, urges those keen on a future in agriculture while they’re finishing their schooling to get a part-time job, “even if it’s mowing lawns”.

“Seek out people who will give you experience because that will get you further than other people,” she says.

“As long as you keep thinking about doing something there will always be paths that will allow you to do what you want to. But you have to be willing to get it.”

In her case that quest started when she was growing up in urban south Auckland.

“I loved the outdoors and animals,” she says.

“I hated growing up in the city and I was always begging my parents to move to the country.”

With her father working at Auckland International Airport that wasn’t a very practical option.

But he did take her hunting on a Gisborne farm where goats were a pest and they shot them for target practice as well as going after deer. She’s also recently found out that her great-grandfather had owned a dairy farm at Drury.

She attended Tyndale College in south Auckland which had a small roll and didn’t offer agricultural courses, so Zee studied art, English, geometry, human biology and sciences.

“I didn’t really know that farming existed,” she says.

“I just knew what I wanted to do.”

One of her best friends had a cousin on a dairy farm near Dargaville in Northland, and through this connection she first visited as a 15-year-old. Then she started going up every second weekend to help out on Robert and Kim Bray’s property, milking 180 cows and staying during school holidays.

“I just fell in love with the view,” she says.

“It was quite remote and you looked out over all these hills.”

She picked up the basics of farm work watching what others did on the farm then following them.

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And Robert gave her some sound advice which has stayed with her.

“He said as long as I didn’t over-work myself and my job wasn’t just a job it I would be all right,” she says.

“He told me to keep a balance and not to be afraid to ask for help.”

But she also quickly worked out for herself that if a heavy job needed doing there was usually a smarter way around the situation.

And work/life balance was made easier in the duck shooting season when they would also go after pheasants. This initial dairying experience led to her helping out on Tony and Sue Oud’s farm nearby where the Brays’ oldest son was manager. Here herds of 180 and 240 cows were milked through two dairies.

“My parents thought I was crazy,” she says. “They were supportive but not when I came home smelling of cows’ crap.”

As a result of some research carried out by her mother she connected with Primary ITO’s Karen Whiteman who in turn phoned Patumahoe dairy farmers Brian and Pirkko Gallagher. They milk 380 cows on 125 hectares (115ha effective) in a DairyNZ System 4 to 5 operation with dry cows and young stock grazed on two nearby leased runoffs of 100ha and 30ha. They were happy for Zee to come out to give a hand at afternoon milkings on a Sunday from November 2014.

And by the time autumn calving started for their split-calving herd on April 1 she was working for them part-time, due to her enthusiasm and ambition.

“She didn’t struggle with anything, even moving the irrigator.”

Brian says.

“Then she was 2IC within six months. I honestly haven’t seen anyone pick up things so quickly.”

He admits he was in the habit through dealing with other staff members who don’t live onfarm, of telling them things twice. But with Zee he soon found that was completely unnecessary.

She also made a start with Level 1 Primary ITO courses then moved on to Levels 2 and 3.

“With the theory I could relate to what Brian was showing me,” she says.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Her friends in the city sometimes missed out on catching up with her because of the hours she was working and the travelling she was doing to and from south Auckland.

“But they thought it was different and cool that a female was getting into the agricultural industry,” she says.

She relished the opportunity given to her so much she’s quick to name calving as one of her favourite jobs onfarm.

“I enjoy the challenge,” she says.

“Not every day’s the same so it keeps you on your toes. There’s so much pressure and so many things that can go wrong, but there’s always a way you can cope.”

During that year she made the big decision to go to Massey University.

“I was anti-university until I met Brian,” she says.

“I thought that after high school that was it and I didn’t want to be in debt.”

But working for the rest of 2015 she was able to save $30,000 to pay her university fees.

“It’s really easy to pay off loans if you work hard and save,” she says.

Brian believes that at 17 she was probably too young to go to university.

“I told her that it would take her the first term to get her head around things,” he says.

She thoroughly enjoyed her time at self-catering Ferguson Hall.

“But it was a massive difference between coming home to my dog to girls screaming in the hallways,” she says.

Her plan is to complete her degree early next year (2019) with a minor in agricultural science after really enjoying studying animal biology and animal sciences.

“It gives you different perspectives.”

And last year (2017) she got her head around onfarm decision tools in the primary industry.

“We looked at stock reconciliations and records of sales and learned how farmers do it.”

But her major will be in ecology and conservation.

“I did an ecology paper at Level 2 and got interested in the molecular view of things,” she says.

When she told Brian what she was planning last July he was quick to tell her to follow her passion.

“The best students will get picked no matter what they do,” he says.

“She ticks all the boxes for future employers. But we’ve got a mandate on her and get her booked in early. Our succession plan includes her if she wishes.”

Zee is now thinking she would like to do a Masters, attracted by the idea of being able to choose a subject she really wants to research and publish a paper on it.

“I have certain ideas that haven’t been explored,” she says.

“I am so open-minded about what I can do to combine agriculture and ecology, and I’d like to travel to see how people do things differently.”

In the “very long term” she says her aspiration is farm ownership.

“I’d really like to have my own conservation block where I could increase the number of dying species,” she says.

Brian and Pirrko have provided a lead here too with a QE II covenanted block of more than a hectare of bush on their farm.

“It’s the challenge and accomplishment and doing it that keeps me going,” Zee says.

“But family and friends are important. You’ve got to have people to chill out with because you don’t want to be successful and lonely.”

She still gets away on hunting trips with friends, mainly possum shooting, leaving behind her dog and cat.

Last year (2017) she made the move to flatting in Palmerston North with three male students.

“I’m one of the boys,” she says.

And while she’s back working on the Gallaghers’ farm over the university holiday they’ll be entrusted with the care of the flat’s giant Flemish rabbit, named, you guessed it, Bugs.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Zinettie Clark used to be anti-university until Brian Gallagher put her on the right track.

These paintings on Brian’s farm are the result of input from overseas visitors as well as locals.

Following your passion when it comes to a career is a mantra Zinettie Clark and Brian Gallagher both believe in strongly.

Seven steps to getting started Brian Gallagher and Zinettie Clark have seven tips for youngsters looking towards a future in farming: • • • • • •

•

Finish your education.

Study your passion.

While university teaches you a bit, what you do with your qualification is up to you.

Be prepared to work hard.

Strive to achieve your goals.

Find yourself a mentor to use as a sounding board.

Interactions are 100 percent confidential so there’s trust on both sides.

Follow your dream.

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RESEARCH WRAP │ WASTE REDUCTION New pastures have included plantain in the sowing mix.

The N game This will ensure that whatever the industry, sector or population, the maximum efficiency will be extracted from the resources we choose to employ.

With nitrogen (N)-loss in the mid-40kg/hectare two years ago at Owl Farm, we are working really hard on a strategy of “reduce”. We are on a journey to reduce our N-Loss to waterways and this requires us to use multiple tools to succeed. So far this includes; controlling N fertiliser inputs, plantain in pastures and the biological interactions inside a wetland, and as more possibilities emerge over time, we’ll likely add those to our arsenal as well.

Owl Farm has a self-imposed limit of 150kg/ha of nitrogen fertilisers per year being applied to the farm. This means every application needs to be treated as precious and applied in such a way that we can get the best returns from it.

We’ve invested this year in establishing plantain in our pastures, as industry research has us convinced that this little mega-herb is absolutely a part of the solution. Seven hectares of new springsown pastures have included plantain in the sowing mix, plus we’ve both under-

Louise Cook

Owl Farm, Waikato

W

aste has never been that attractive. Not to have, not to talk about and not to deal with. However, minimisation of waste is more important now than it has ever been and it isn’t a fad.

Unlike technicolour jumpsuits and leg-warmers in the 1980s, the concept of reducing our waste isn’t one that will quickly leave the human population and all of the industries we participate in.

With every passing year, the reality of just how finite our “finite natural resources” are is hitting home. We are all becoming increasingly aware of just how wasteful some practices are and we are warned of a slow decline in quality of the available resources.

The solution is multi-faceted and everyone needs to pitch in, as we all have a part to play. The challenge to all of us, is to each take steps to reduce, re-use and recycle all of the nutrients at our disposal.

sown and broadcast existing swards in half a dozen paddocks to see how effective those techniques might be in establishing plantain more quickly across the whole farm. DairyNZ work at Owl Farm is monitoring plantain establishment and so far there are quite varied results from each method. In the new pasture mix there are now 140,000 plants/ha versus under-sowing into an existing sward where we have 20,000 plants/ha. Broadcasting into existing pastures before grazing, led to 7000 plants/ha and after grazing closer to 13,000 plants/ha. All four methods included plantain at 4kg seed/ha.

Ongoing monitoring work will be carried out, as slow and steady emergence seems to be happening in the established swards and we hope more plants may yet spring up. More importantly, we’re really keen to see how many survive over

N I T R ATE C O N CEN TR ATIO N A T S I T E 16.0 15.0 14 .4 14 .0 12.4 12.0

11.6

11.4

12.4 11.7

11.5

Nitrate concentration mg/L

10.9 10.3

10.0

10.0

10.0

10.4

8.5 8.0

7.6

8.0

6.1 6.0 4 .7 4 .0

3.2 2.7

2.0 0.8 0.0

0.0 Well 1 Well 2 Well 3 Well 4 January

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0.2

0.0

Tile Outflow Well 1 Well 2 Well 3 Well 4 Drain April

Tile Outflow Well 1 Well 2 Well 3 Well 4 Drain August

Tile Outflow Well 1 Well 2 Well 3 Well 4 Drain

Tile Outflow Drain

October

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

R E DU C T ION I N N I T RAT E C O N CENT RAT IO N -­‐ S O U R CE V S O U T FL OW Jan-­‐17 0%

Well 1

Well 2

Well 3

Apr-­‐17 Well 4

Tile drain

Well 1

Well 2

Well 3

Oct-­‐17 Well 4

Tile drain

Well 1

Well 2

Well 3

Well 4

Tile drain

-­‐10% -­‐20%

The sculptured wetland is designed to maximise contact -­‐30% time between water flowing through, and plants in the wetland.

-­‐40% -­‐50%

-­‐53%

-­‐60%

-­‐60%

-­‐70%

-­‐62%

-­‐69%

-­‐80%

-­‐76%

-­‐90% -­‐100%

-­‐55%

-­‐91%

-­‐93% -­‐98%

-­‐97%

-­‐93%

-­‐90%

-­‐93%

-­‐98%

time in a typical grazing system so we may understand what is required to keep plantain as a solid proportion of the diet.

The third tactic and the most interesting piece of the puzzle so far, involves actively intervening to stop nitrogen “flowing out the gate”. Our constructed treatment wetland is meant to act rather like a set of kidneys and filter out nitrogen, phosphate, sediment and pathogens before the water gets to the river. This sculptured wetland is designed to maximise contact time between water flowing through and plants in the wetland.

Samples have been collected from ground water wells on the edge of the wetland area, from a tile drain emptying into the wetland and lastly at the wetland outflow. This helps us get a really clear comparison of the nitrate concentration in ground water and drainage water before as it arrives at the wetland, compared to the nitrate concentration at exit after water has passed through the wetland.

Water source data shows us that generally as the ground conditions got wetter – the N concentration in the ground water increased. This is to be expected,

The sculptured wetland is designed to maximise contact time between water flowing through, and plants in the wetland.

as rainfall events and wet soils would see mobilisation of nitrate from soils away in ground water.

In January, Well 4 was so slow to refill before sampling that no sample was taken.

In August a slip-up occurred meaning no outflow sample was on hand to match with the inflow samples.

In terms of wetland performance, what we’ve seen so far is that the concentration of nitrogen in the outflow water is massively reduced when compared to the concentration in the water sources.

In January 2017, the outflow contained 97% less N/litre than the water that supplied the wetland. In April 2017 the

Monitoring the plantain swards will help understand how to keep plantain as a solid proportion of the diet.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

average was 89% less N in the outflow compared to the water sources and in October the wetland was removing about 60% of the N by the time the water got to the outflow.

The hope, when the wetland was established, was that it would remove 30% of the N from the water flowing through the bays. However, it appears on the information so far it could well surpass this expectation.

Despite these heartening results, there is still a lot we don’t know. Monitoring will continue every two months for at least the next two years and one question in our minds that we would like to answer is: How much land is really feeding the wetland, and where does all the water actually come from?

On-going monitoring with NIWA and Waikato Regional Council will collate all of the data and create a firmer view of how this wetland behaves, and how it compares to the typical wetland areas onfarm where wet areas are planted and retired. The costs associated with creating a wetland like this are not inconsiderable, however if it improves the effectiveness in mopping up surplus N from waterways it is quite likely worth the cost.

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FARM GEAR │ AGRITECHNICA Treading light on the earth: Axion tractor with Terra Trac system.

Top of the Claas Chris McCullough

A

gritechnica 2017 started off a busy show for German manufacturers Claas who unveiled a number of new products at the German show even before the main crowds arrived on the first morning.

One of the more interesting statements

It’s all about the tractors.

from the company was that diesel will power agricultural machines for the next five to 10 years and any alternatives are still too early. Hermann Lohbeck of the Claas executive board, said: “Claas can see no real alternative to diesel to power agriculture engines in the next five to 10 years. Of course we are looking at the alternatives but I think it is too early for them.”

Focusing on a theme – it’s all about the soil – Claas was proud to show off its Terra Trac system fitted to a Jaguar forage harvester and an Axion tractor.

Claas has carried out extensive

research into soil compaction and associated problems and launched the Terra Trac system in a bid to eliminate the problem.

Thirty years ago Claas presented the first series-production combine harvester with full rubber tracks, followed by the Terra Trac concept a few years later.

Benefits include 66% lower soil pressure compared with wheeled machines; 40km/h on-road travel with a transport width that complies with road traffic licensing regulations and a high level of driving comfort through hydropneumatic suspension, Claas says.

However, the next logical step for the company is to equip Axion large tractors and Jaguar forage harvesters with this concept.

By adding the Terra Trac to its Jaguar, Claas is the first forage harvester manufacturer to present a factory-fitted integrated crawler track system for forage harvesters which protects the soil and grass cover with a unique, integrated headland protection feature.

During a turning manoeuvre, the machine is supported on the middle support rollers, thereby raising part of each crawler track. As a result, the contact area and degree of soil pressure change briefly to a level comparable to that obtained with 800-size tyres.

With 635mm-wide tracks, the Jaguar with Terra Trac remains within a transport width of three metres with a top speed of 40km/h.

With 800mm-wide tracks, the machine has an external width of less than 3.5m.

All-electric e6 wheel loader unveiled Finnish loader manufacturer Avant unveiled its new all-electric e6 wheel loader at Agritechnica.

The new e6 is a sister model to the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already-established e5 but is powered by a lithium ion battery

instead of the lead-acid battery in the e5.

Using this battery technology allows the loader to operate in normal working conditions for up to five hours. It takes one hour to charge the

battery to 80% and two hours to fully charge, Avant says.

The e6 is designed for operators who need to use a loader continuously and is priced around â&#x201A;Ź45,000 (NZ$77,200).

New rake from McHale Irish farm machinery manufacturer McHale launched a brand new rake at Agritechnica, the R68-78 model.

Only the second rake produced by the company this twin-rotor centre delivery machine has a working width of 6.8m to 7.8m and a transport width of 2.8m.

On the McHale R68-78 rake the drive line flows through a wide-angle gearbox

to the individual rotors. Each rotor on the McHale centre delivery rake picks the crop only once and places it in a loose aerated swath.

The rotors on the McHale centre delivery rake are suspended centrally and both operate at equal ground pressures across the working width.

The suspension system allows the rotors to follow all ground contours

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

regardless of the terrain.

The tines on each tine arm guarantees the cleanest sweep delivering uncontaminated fodder into the row.

The tine movement can be adjusted allowing the operator to adjust the cam angle which in turn adjusts when the tine releases the crop to cater for different crop conditions.

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Krone mows up a storm Krone says its new EasyCut B950 Collect is the first butterfly mower combination that uses swath merging augers but no conditioners.

Unveiled at Agritechnica, the new mower works at a width of 9.45m and can cut up to 14 hectares an hour, depending on conditions.

It has a transport width of three metres, a total weight of just under three tonnes and needs a 200hp tractor to operate it.

Developed on a wealth of longterm experience gained on the Big M model range, the high-performance

mower conditioner is naturally also available with cross augers.

The sturdy cross augers are 450mm in diameter and arranged right behind the cutter bar and transport the crop gently to the middle of the machine without loss creating a uniform swath.

The augers are driven by a strong angular gearbox. All three mowers in the combination have the well-proven and fully sealed EasyCut cutter bar featuring SafeCut, SmartCut and impact damage protection.

The exemplary ground following system consists of the DuoGrip suspension system which carries the mower in its centre of gravity and guides it with the help of two arms.

In addition to that, all mowers have hydraulic suspension which is set from the cab and offers stepless control for perfect ground hugging.

Another convenient and standard feature on EasyCut B 950 Collect is independent lift-out which raises and lowers each mower individually, a welcome option in wedges.

New Kubota tractor On the Kubota stand at Agritechnica the Japanese manufacturer presented its M7002 range of tractors, the successor to the well-known M7001 models.

The large-scale upland farming tractors, ranging from 130 to 170hp, has greatly improved features and is easier to use, with better customisation options and manoeuvrability.

The main innovation in the range is the six-speed Powershift transmission, under load in 30/15 or 54/27 if equipped with creeper.

Some of its specifications have also been improved, such as the increase in maximum permissible weight to 11,500 kg, offering a greater payload, together with efficient engine performance focused on increased power and lower fuel consumption.

The tyre size range has been increased, with the incorporation of 600/60R28 sizes for the front axle and 710/60R38 for the rear axle, minimising compaction and maximising traction.

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Buffalo silage storage

One of the more interesting developments for silage harvesting unveiled at Agritechnica was the Fliegl Buffalo system.

This machine picks up silage, just like a forage wagon, except that the Buffalo never needs to leave the field. It has a storage hopper on board that offloads into a tractor trailer combination but which can also store the silage when

the trailer is full and off being emptied, therefore keeping on the move.

Fliegl won a silver medal for innovation at Agritechnica for the Buffalo. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quite a simple system as the silage is picked up, chopped by an easypull cutting rotor, stored in the hopper and from there loaded into the trailer.

The company says the benefits lie in the fact the Buffalo never needs to leave

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

the field and can work continuously storing silage on board when the carting trailer is off being emptied.

It also can work alone in tight areas or unfavourable ground conditions, then fills a trailer when the time is right. Consequently, the Fliegl Buffalo is a cost-effective and very efficient alternative to rotor cutter forage wagons and forage harvesters.

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DAIRY 101 │ OPEN DAYS

Checking out the tractor on a visit to a dairy farm are (from left) Maeve (3), Julia (4) and Daphne (7).

Welcoming a group to your farm Karen Trebilcock ak.trebilcock@xtra.co.nz @KT_at_Exporter

S

o your local kindergarten/primary school/high school/service club has rung up wondering if they could come and visit a “real dairy farm” to “see what all the fuss is about”.

You’ve been put on the spot and of course you say yes straight away, even though your partner is furiously shaking their head at you.

Too late to back out, and now with the weight of showcasing dairying in the best possible light for the good of the industry on your shoulders, what do you need to know?

To start with, you’ve done the right thing.

We’ve all heard of the rural/urban divide and how kids think milk comes from supermarkets so anything you can do to make the situation better helps everyone.

Just don’t stuff it up.

There is a lot to think about and planning will go a long way to making sure your guests – young and old – have a memorable experience for all the right reasons.

First, discuss with the person who has organised the visit what their expectations are, the date and time of the visit and if the weather is bad, can an alternative day be arranged?

Advise them of the clothing that should be worn – gumboots if it is wet, sun hats

82

and sunscreen if it is hot – and warn them they might get dirty. Check no one has an allergy to dairy.

Then it’s up to you to decide what you want to show them.

Maybe start with thinking about what you want your visitors to be saying as they leave the farm.

If it’s kids it could be the cows were happy and liked to be patted, ‘the calves licked my fingers and it tickled and milk came out of the cow’s udder and it was warm…’

If it’s adults it could be the waterway on the farm was crystal clear, the technology used onfarm was mind-blowing and the cows seemed really happy.

Health and safety, whether its kids and adults or just adults visiting, needs to be thought of.

Legally, everyone who visits your farm has to be made aware of the risks and hazards they may face while on your property, including what to do in an emergency. It’s easy to explain this to a contractor but to excited four-year-olds it can be a bit harder.

With kids, make sure they’re accompanied by an appropriate number of adults (either teachers or parents). Explain to the adults their responsibilities are to keep the kids safe and keep them together in the group.

Parent-helpers, however, can be the worst for wandering off as they get bored with the stuff for little people and want to go exploring on their own.

Make sure you have the right adult-to-child ratio.

Explain that this is not possible, that a farm is a multiple-hazard site, and everyone needs to keep together.

If they then stare at you blankly it’s because your beautiful grass paddocks to them don’t look that dangerous.

They will have no idea that you have an effluent pond that is metres deep, that cows can kick and that some of the chemicals in your dairy are not just harmful but lethal.

And the fences are electric and they are turned on.

Having as many of your own farm staff

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

available on the day to keep an eye on things and to do headcounts will help.

Make sure they know the areas visitors are allowed and where they are not so if someone sees one of them heading off to the offal pit, they know to stop them.

Also, make sure there is someone either on farm or part of the group who has First Aid training. Make sure they know where to find the First Aid kit and what the farm’s rapid number is if an ambulance has to be called.

Of course, there are the other obvious things to do before your visitors arrive.

Have the dairy as spotless as possible, the area around it tidy with any rubbish removed (including bodies) and your overalls are clean.

Rehearse the visit – walk between the different things you want them to see and time yourself. Make sure what you want to show them is achievable.

Thinking and doing is always better than simply watching, especially for kids, so plan some fun (and safe) activities.

Milk a couple of quiet cows in the dairy into test buckets while everyone watches and get your visitors to guess how much milk each cow will give and then ask them to measure it to see if they were right.

Figure out how much grass needs to be eaten by the cow to produce that milk and show them what that amount of grass actually looks like. Even get them to measure it. And assure them it regrows in 15-25 days so there is always plenty there.

Shifting the cows from one paddock to another, or on to the track for the walk towards the dairy for afternoon milking is something else visitors can do on foot.

And kids – including some big kids – love sitting in tractors.

Just make sure the key is in your pocket, not in the ignition.

Playing with the calves, if they are still around, is always fun even for adults.

Expect people to complain about the smell. We’re used to it, they’re not.

And expect certain questions – “oh, so a cow has to calve before you can milk her?” and “so there are things you can do to make the cows give more milk?” and the classic “but you have Christmas day off, right, and the other stat days?”

Steel yourself, don’t roll your eyes or burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Have your answers ready, be kind, understanding and try to explain why you do what you do onfarm.

For example, if someone says you shouldn’t be using antibiotics tell them that all withholding periods are carefully adhered to, so no residuals go in the milk.

Show them the board in the dairy where treated cows are recorded and explain the other systems in place to make sure cows being treated are not milked into the vat.

And also tell them antibiotics are only used to treat infections, and it would be

cruel to withhold medical treatment to a cow in pain.

But don’t be controversial. If someone gets into you about the state of the Waikato River, don’t counter it with the state of Auckland beaches, or talk about all those cars stuck in traffic on the harbour bridge creating more emissions than your cows ever will. It’s an argument you won’t win so don’t even start.

Legally, everyone who visits your farm has to be made aware of the risks and hazards they may face while on your property, including what to do in an emergency.

Instead, keep things happy, polite, move it along. You want your guests leaving feeling good about the world, not seething in anger.

Try not to overwhelm them with too much detail – you don’t need to explain the nitrogen cycle or the microbiology of a cow’s rumen but do say that cows need to drink a lot of water as they are making milk and some of that water goes into the cow’s urine and because they’re eating lots of grass, that urine is high in nitrogen, which is what everyone is worried about with our rivers and streams.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

And if you have a wetland, or stream on your farm, show them how you have fenced it off and planted it. While you are there, a bit of eel-catching can add to the fun or maybe you know where a duck has a nest of eggs that you can show off.

Overwhelming them with technology though is just fine. Explain about EID tags and Protrack if you have it and how the farming apps work on your phone to give you information such as the flow rate of the irrigator, the soil moisture level or whether 215 is pregnant.

Show that the industry is progressive, up-to-date and an exciting place to work.

And, as you are speaking, keep an eye on your visitors. If they start to yawn, look away and they stop asking questions you are boring them silly. Talk about something else or get them doing an activity. Remember to have rest periods.

After an hour’s worth of talking and looking at cows it’s probably time for a cup of tea for the adults. And make sure you have your own milk at the ready.

For school visits, ask the teacher before the day when and if the kids will bring their own food and drink and provide a safe and comfortable place where they can all sit down to eat it.

And make sure hands can be washed and dried, and that there are loos available.

You don’t want any of your guests adding to your soil’s nitrogen levels.

At the end of the visit you should be able to wave goodbye to your happy guests, just in time to start afternoon milking.

A group have a look at a dairy.

Make sure you have thought about parking for your visitors.

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DairySolutions

The Condor has landed The Howard Condor has arrived in New Zealand. The Condor is a new generation of mowers from Howard, Australia.

The range has been designed for general mowing in a wide variety of applications, including parks, sports grounds and turf farms, as well as the wilder and more demanding conditions of reserves and roadsides.

Howard Australia (a Power Farmingowned brand) has a 100-year history of mower and slasher development.

Recently, it has met Australians’ demands for a flexible, high-performance, practical, easy-clean and easy to maintain, all-conditions mower.

Designed by Power Farming’s full time designers, the Condor Range has been developed to meet those demands.

Graeme Leigh, general manager of Power Farming’s Machinery Division says the company expects it to quickly gain traction amongst discerning mower operators.

“As there may be an abundance of grass around later this summer, it could be just the machine needed by councils and private operators.

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Its versatility and design enable it to perform in both fine and heavy cutting conditions and it provides very good distribution of the mown grass.”

The Condor flies high in numerous categories.

Providing versatility: • Its easily adjustable rollers provide precision height control and allow the Condor to tackle conditions that other mowers can’t.

• Cutting height indicators ensure even height settings.

• The blade and blade beam is designed to accommodate fine and heavy cutting conditions.

• The high, blade tip speed provides an excellent clean cut every time.

• Improved belt engagement on larger drive pulleys reduces any slippage in heavier grass conditions.

• A two-year warranty on the extra strongly designed spindle and beam.

• The Condor can be used with tractors with a low power of 30-70 hp, but can also be used with a higher hp tractor, up to 110hp.

• •

Providing safety: Hydraulic wing locks to prevent accidental lowering during transit.

The electro-hydraulic safety switch must be activated at same time as the tractor’s hydraulics.

• The Condor’s unique and convenient transport lock leads to a smoother ride and even greater ease of operation.

• Providing practicality: The Condor is easy to clean, the open design assures easy maintenance and therefore greater longevity.

• The hot dipped galvanised body provides extra strength and a lengthened life span.

• With ease of operation and easy maintenance the Condor is a userfriendly machine.

The Howard Condor Range offers three mowers with overall widths of 1.78 metres, 2.50m and 3.61m.

The largest model is proving the most popular in the Australian market.

More? Contact your local Power Farming dealership, or see the Power Farming website at www.powerfarming.co.nz

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Governance training empowers business growth Learning how to practice effective governance will help you build predictable, sustainable performance while you grow your business.

When you think of growing your business, you probably think of investing in new equipment, increasing profits, or expanding staff – but in most cases, these are the outcomes of growth, not the momentum that starts it.

The most sustainable growth starts in the place where you form strategies and make decisions. If your board isn’t wellrooted in the way it makes decisions, even the best growth initiatives will eventually fall flat.

Learning how to practice effective governance will help you build predictable, sustainable performance while you grow your business.

That’s the goal of Business Torque System’s Rural Governance Development Programme (RGDP).

Sponsored by DairyNZ and in operation since 2013, RGDP has sparked measurable improvement in the governance capability of rural boards throughout New Zealand.

Facilitator, Peter Allen, takes a unique

approach to governance learning that has proven to be incredibly effective. He believes in tailored learning, learning by doing, and measuring progress over time.

His programme puts theory into practice by taking the time to analyse and address the real-life challenges that participants bring to the table.

The principles of governance covered in the programme include acting with a purpose in mind, working with people, decision-making, risk management, and compliance – proven building blocks for effective governance that enables growth.

A better understanding of these topics will empower owners, directors, and managers in your business to make better decisions, fulfill their purpose, and build sustainable performance.

Whether you’re trying to increase the effectiveness of your board, transitioning the ownership or management of your business, or just wanting to expand your understanding of how governance can improve the way you do business, RGDP can help.

To find out about programmes running near you in 2018, visit: www.businesstorque.co.nz

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PROPERTY â&#x201D;&#x201A; NORTHLAND

Lifestyle potential near Dargaville

A

s they say, location is everything and a 147-hectare dairy farm near Dargaville is in the right place to enjoy Northlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifestyle as well as encompassing fertile flats for the herd and is for sale at $3.2 million.

Just 3km from Dargaville in a good farming community gives it the best of both worlds. In Dargaville, you have a small country town with a lot to offer, including saleyards with weekly sales.

Good limestone lanes connect the 75 paddocks with the tidy 27-aside herringbone dairy which has its own access off another road.

A short drive from the farm takes you to popular Baylys Beach as well as an 18-hole golf course, while a little further north are the idyllic Kai Iwi lakes.

On the farm, 310 cows are being milked this season with 100 younger cows in one

herd that is sometimes milked once a day, depending on weather, staff and mating.

The Friesian herd, which is available for sale, has a three-year average of 116,000kg milksolids (MS) and last season achieved 122,000kg MS, with just 60 tonnes of palm kernel bought in and two thirds of the herd wintered on the farm.

Megan Browning from PGG Wrightson Real Estate says the family has owned part of the farm for three generations, adding a couple of adjoining farms over the years to expand the operation. Fertile flats that are some of the best in Kaipara, have been largely tile drained and rises near Waihue Rd to gentle hill where the house is positioned to overlook the farm.

The retiring owners graze young stock on neighboursâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; properties who also grow 2ha of maize for them and 100 of the cows are wintered at neighbours as well.

Another 4ha of maize is grown at home and 20ha is usually shut up for grass silage which is made to stack by the feed pad.

Last year they fed 60t of palm kernel and this varies depending on the season, with the overall result being a low-input, lowcost regime.

Good limestone lanes connect the 75 paddocks with the tidy 27-aside

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

herringbone dairy which has its own access off another road. The owners have installed a new ice bank for the milk refrigeration and put in a UV system for water treatment. Near the dairy is a feedpad for 200 cows, plus a calving pad that has sawdust over nova flow for drainage. Effluent from these facilities is collected in a three-pond system which is then pumped onto 22ha via a travelling irrigator.

Also beside the dairy is a six-pen calf shed with bobby calf-ramp facilities, while a five-bay calf shed sits below the house.

Other sheds cater for implements, storage, chemicals and a maize bin made from interlock bricks has a capacity for 120t.

The main home overlooking the farm is a character kauri villa which has been renovated and modernised over the years, while a second home is also a villa with kauri weatherboard cladding.

Fully paid up shares for 111,000kg MS are not included in the sale but could be purchased separately.

The farm is for sale at $3.2 million and the price is negotiable. To view the farm visit www.pggwre.co.nz/DAG26992.

For further information contact Megan Browning on 027 668 8468.

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PROPERTY │ CENTRAL OTAGO

Exceptional value in Omakau Satinburn Dairy Farm, Omakau, is on offer to the market. Set in the midst of Central Otago close to the Central Otago Rail Trail, with Alexandra a few minutes away with its stone fruit shopping and with Queenstown and Wanaka a little over an hour away in either direction to enjoy the close proximity to everything that this stunning region has to offer.

‘The conversion has all the bells and whistles and is supplied from a reliable low-cost source.’

Up for sale alongside neighbouring dairy property Wildon Farm, the property represents outstanding value for money from a just three -year-old dairy conversion with growth potential.

The approximately 475-hectare property is irrigated across 306ha of the 376ha, more or less, milking platform via seven variable-rate centre pivot irrigators supplied by way of the Omakau Area Irrigation Company complimented by

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significant onfarm storage. Shares in the Omakau Area Irrigation Company and accompanying water rights allocation are included in the purchase price.

The further 169ha, more or less, provides supplementary feed, wintering and dairy support options.

Irrigation designers advise that the potential exists for an additional 65-75ha, approximately, of expanded irrigation within the irrigation allocation.

Soils are predominantly Lauder silt and clay loams with an area of Conroy silt loam on the flat/rolling fully cultivatable property.

The conversion has been completed with top class facilities and infrastructure.

The 64-bail rotary cowshed is fully automated, with Protrack, in-shed feeding, cup removers and auto drafting.

Farm infrastructure includes a five-bay fully enclosed concrete floor implement shed and significant calf rearing facilities that can more than cater for any potential farm growth. A Portacom building provides a dedicated farm office space.

The effluent system is state of the art with a 120-day storage pond and effluent application via a variable rate system through a centre pivot.

The conversion has excellent tracking and lanes, formed with material from an

onfarm quarry, servicing the 36 paddocks, and high producing rye/ clover pastures were established during the conversion.

Satinburn is a real ‘A’ grade property, with lots of growth potential. This season it is well on track to exceed 1400kg milksolids (MS)/ha and similar properties in the area are reaching up to 1800kg MS/ha, so the potential is there is keep growing production at a low cost base of operating costs around $3.50–$3.60/kg MS. The conversion has all the bells and whistles and is supplied from a reliable low-cost source.

The main home has four bedrooms and a commanding position while a further two brand-new three-bedroom homes provide ample warm and modern staff accommodation.

Since the farm conversion the farm’s policy over the last three seasons has been to winter some of the cows on the property. Fodder beet and kale has been cropped for winter feed with fodder beet also utilised in the autumn to help maintain cow condition while extending lactation days.

The property also takes advantage of fodder beet in the spring as a low-cost high-energy supplementary feed.

For further information, contact Geoff Norris on 0273809965.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

PROPERTY │ CENTRAL OTAGO

Opportunities on Racecourse Rd Wildon Dairy Farm is a neighbouring property from Satinburn Dairy Farm, and has been converted by the same vendors from two highperformance sheep finishing properties on Racecourse Road, 5km from Omakau and just 32km, more or less, from Alexandra.

The conversion is exceptionally well developed, planned for ease of management with a central lane through the reconfigured 278-hectare, approximately, property and exactly the same high level of farm infrastructure as Satinburn, but with a smaller 54-bail rotary shed, still with automated cup removers and auto drafting capability.

The 260ha, more or less, effective Wildon Dairy was converted at the same time as Satinburn dairy and is comfortably producing 1400kg milksolids (MS)/ha this season. A separate additional 121ha irrigated grazing block, Jacks Block, also situated on Racecourse Rd is also available for purchase.

The irrigation system on Wildon includes four centre-pivot irrigators, fixed-grid sprinklers and k-line. The property also has considerable onfarm irrigation storage with the property’s irrigation supply via the Omakau Area Irrigation Company. All four centre pivots are equipped with variable-rate irrigation and also handle the effluent application from the 90-day, (based on current cow numbers), storage pond.

Wildon Dairy still has two woolsheds with covered yards, along with the new dairy, implement and hay sheds and large calf rearing facilities.

The housing consists a substantial four-bedroom homestead with a new brick and tile three-bedroom home and a further three-bedroom homestead.

Dunedin LJ Hooker agent Geoff Norris says as with the Satinburn Dairy Farm, Wildon Dairy Farm is situated in a real growth area with considerable recent development and many lifestyle opportunities within a 90-minute radius.

“Central Otago is an unrivalled adventure playground with many opportunities no matter what the season.”

Queenstown and Wanaka are just over an hour away and there are fantastic investment opportunities in the region.

Soil types on Wildon are Patearoa and Manuherikia deep silt/clay loams and Clyde and Flaxton shallow silt loams. The property is bordered by roads around the perimeter and has stock underpasses and bridges for ease of stock management.

A further grazing property adjoining Wildon Dairy is also on the market with a separate vendor, should expansion of the dairy platform be an option a new owner is interested in pursuing.

For further information, contact Geoff Norris on 0273809965.

GENUINELY GOOD DAIRY FARM

• Situated on Kakariki Road in the Hukanui District is this very well laid out and run 174ha dairy farm.

• Currently running a 300 cow milking herd of Holstein Friesians.

• The farm has produced up to 139,000kgs of milk solids on a consistent basis off the114ha effective milking platform.

• Bore supplies high pressure water to all stock troughs and dairy.

• Top quality 32 aside herringbone dairy. Fully equipped with modern electronic • Waikato plant with cup removers in-bail feeding and 480 cow circular yard.

• Great opportunity to secure one of the best farms in the Hukanui District.

• Call Les to inspect.

Sallan Realty Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

Google ‘Sallan Realty’ Your Farm Sales Specialist

• 116 hectares in five main titles situated on Hansens and Rangitikei Line, Newbury.

• Very well farmed with soils that would grow anything from pasture to vegetables.

• Centrally located 30 aside herringbone dairy, with adjacent feed pad and silage bunkers.

• Featuring four family homes, with the main set in established gardens.

• Very good well water supplied via a 50mm main line to stock troughs.

• The farm is currently running a dairy herd and supplying Open Country Dairy.

• With outstanding soils, great location and potential to subdivide this is a great opportunity to grow your farm business or land bank your future.

• Price $6,250,000. Call Les to inspect.

CC0087833©

HUKAVIEW HOLSTIENS

LES CAIN 0274 420 582

Licensed Agent REAA 2008

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PROPERTY │ MARLBOROUGH

Productivity by Sounds

‘The irrigation provides security and there’s reliable water with a 30-year permit. So there’s still upside in the farm with extra irrigation and another 20ha that was in forestry which could be developed to add further scale.’

In a fertile valley in the Top of the South, a 313-hectare dairy farm produces a threeyear average of 1217kg milksolids (MS) per hectare, but the best part is that it lies just 10 minutes from the Havelock marina and access to the Marlborough Sounds.

As Andy Poswillo from Bayleys points out, it’s also good value for money at just under $26,000/ha, or $8.1 million for a property with scale and four titles.

About 227ha of Dalton Downs is fenced into more than 50 paddocks which are spread over the valley floor and up the gentle sloping sides before the farm bounds Department of Conservation land. On this milking platform, the farm has produced a three-year average of 276,200kg MS from 642 cows, with predominantly palm kernel added into the diet as a boost when needed.

Good water rights are a key factor for the farm which has K-line over 61% of its area and the rights to irrigate a further 40ha.

“The irrigation provides security and there’s reliable water with a 30-year permit.

So there’s still upside in the farm with extra irrigation and another 20ha that was in forestry which could be developed to add further scale.”

Dalton Downs is a well-presented unit with good soils and an annual regrassing history that has produced a predominantly perennial rye grass/clover mix with plantain. Last year 19ha of chicory was added into the summer mix.

The Friesian-cross herd is also for sale at valuation, plus plant, which means the farm can be bought as a going concern.

Cows are milked in two herds, with about 220 milked once a day from September 18 and the balance on twice-a-day.

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Each herd heads to the 44-aside herringbone dairy which sports an in-shed feed system and a 30-tonne silo alongside.

Water for the dairy is supplied from a well beside it, while stock water from that well in conjunction with a natural supply from the top of the farm via a holding tank is reticulated to troughs in all paddocks.

Effluent from the dairy is collected in a pond before being irrigated over 23ha.

Other farm improvements extend to a five-bay implement shed and workshop, a seven-bay shed, a four-bay Ned’s shed and a bobby calf shed adjacent to the dairy with a load-out ramp.

A five-bedroom brick home was built in 1996 as the main residence and further accommodation is provided with a threebedroom weatherboard cottage and a three-bedroom Versatile cottage.

Coming back to location though, Poswillo reckons it doesn’t get much better when you can be at the marina in 10 minutes to access the vast expanse of the Marlborough Sounds.

“The key is its location. You wouldn’t have any problem attracting staff to a location like this. And it’s handy to good schools at Canvastown, Havelock or Rai Valley.”

While fishing is within 10 minutes, deer stalking, pig hunting and duck shooting is available on the farm and trout fishing is on the boundary.

At same time it’s not far to town, with the farm positioned halfway between Blenheim and Nelson.

To view Dalton Downs, visit www.bayleys.co.nz/4132220 and for further information contact Andy Poswillo on 027 420 4202.

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

January Events How is your summer?

W

ITH

D A I RY

NZ

CONSULTING OFFICERS – CONTACT DETAILS Northland

A hot, dry start to summer has created challenges for many farmers. If you are looking for information on different summer strategies to help you get through visit dairynz.co.nz/summer.

Find out what’s on near you For information on all the dairy industry events happening in your area, visit dairyevents.co.nz

Regional Leader

Chris Neill

Far North

Denise Knop

027 499 9021 027 807 9686

Lower Northland

Mark Forsyth

021 242 5719

Whangarei West

Chris Neill

027 499 9021

027 483 9820

North Waikato Regional Leader

Phil Irvine

South Auckland

Jamie Haultain

027 486 4344

Hamilton North

Jaimee Morgan

021 245 8055

Matamata/Kereone

Frank Portegys

027 807 9685

Morrinsville/Paeroa

Euan Lock

027 293 4401

Hauraki Plains/Coromandel

Annabelle Smart

021 242 2127

Regional Leader

Wade Bell

027 285 9273

Te Awamutu

Stephen Canton

027 475 0918

Otorohanga

Michael Booth

027 513 7201

Invercargill: Wednesday 21 February 2018

South Waikato

Kirsty Dickins

027 483 2205

Palmerston North: Thursday 22 February

Bay of Plenty Regional Leader

Sharon Morrell

0274 922 907

Consulting Officer, Special Projects

Wilma Foster

021 246 2147

Central BOP (Te Puke, Rotorua)

Kevin McKinley

027 288 8238

Eastern BOP (Whakatane, Opotiki)

Ross Bishop

027 563 1785

Central Plateau (Reporoa, Taupo)

Colin Grainger-Allen

021 225 8345

Katikati, Galatea, Waikite/Ngakuru

Jordyn Crouch

021 619 071

What can you do to have great people asking to work for you?

People Expos are back in 2018 and bringing in the experts to tackle the big issues - 9:30 am – 2 pm, lunch provided.

Register now at dairynz.co.nz/peopleexpo

Discussion Groups

South Waikato

Interested in farm systems, reproduction, progression, pasture management, budgeting, people management, or milking smarter? We hold a range of different discussion groups on specialist areas of interest as well as other topical field days and road shows around the country. Find out what’s on near you at

Central Taranaki

Sarah Payne

027 704 5562

dairynz.co.nz/events or phone your local consulting officer.

Coastal Taranaki

Anna Arends

021 270 0074

North Taranaki

Lauren McEldowney

027 593 4122

Regional Leader

James Muwunganirwa

027 499 9020

Horowhenua/Wanganui/South Taranaki/Southern and Coastal Manawatu

Scott Cameron

027 702 3760

Dairy farmers share their budgets DairyNZ’s budget case study farmers have provided a summary of last season, sharing insights into what was a challenging time for many. They have also updated their 17/18 forecast budget. Visit dairynz.co.nz/budget-case-studies

Change of Address If you’ve shifted farm or changed your supply company, make sure you’ll still receive your copy of Inside Dairy – visit dairynz.co.nz/address and let us know your new details.

Taranaki Acting Regional Leader

Simon Sankey

021 228 3446

South Taranaki

Ryan Orchard

021 246 5663

Lower North Island

Wairarapa/Tararua

Abby Scott

021 244 3428

Hawke's Bay

Gray Beagley

021 286 4346

Central/Northern Manawatu/Rangitikei

Jo Back

021 222 9023

Top of South Island/Westland Regional Leader

Wade Bell

027 285 9273

Nelson/Marlborough

Mark Shadwick

021 287 7057

West Coast

Angela Leslie

021 277 2894

Canterbury/North Otago Regional Leader

Virginia Serra

021 932 515

North Canterbury

Teaghan Lourie

021 246 2775

Central Canterbury

Natalia Benquet

021 287 7059

Mid Canterbury

Stuart Moorhouse

027 513 7200

South Canterbury

Virginia Serra

021 932 515

North Otago

Trevor Gee

021 227 6476

Southland/South Otago Regional Leader

Richard Kyte

021 246 3166

South Otago

Mark Olsen-Vetland

021 615 051

Central/North Western Southland

Nicole E Hammond

West Otago/North Eastern Southland Liam Carey

0800 4 DairyNZ (0800 4 324 7969) I dairynz.co.nz Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017

021 240 8529 027 474 3258

Eastern Southland

Nathan Nelson

021 225 6931

Western Southland

Teresa Anderson

027 702 2219

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Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | January 2017