Their farm is an expansive spread over 746 hectares beside Lake Brunner on the West Coast, which includes 86ha effective used as a support block on the hill across the road.
By the time you allow 100ha for a natural wetland and the numerous stands of native trees that are scattered on their landscape, they’re left with a 280ha milking platform that needs to be handled with care.
A road reserve along the lake edge of the farm retains its original native bush and, along with a big chunk of natural wetland, provides natural buffers that assist their management plan for the sensitive area.
For Liz and Henry, it’s like farming their 680-cow herd in a fish bowl, with the small township of Moana on its western edge, Iveagh Bay with its holiday homes to the east, a public road along one boundary and boats regularly pulling up on the shore for picnics and water sports.
Like the public surrounding them, Lake Brunner is also their playground with three young children growing up boating, swimming and fishing in its waters.
“It’s the perfect opportunity to teach the kids about environmental stewardship and looking after the land,” Liz says.
As a participant in the Dairy Environment Leaders Forum the past couple of years, she’s now part of the resulting Coast Environment Leaders Group creating a plan for the region and working out how to put that plan into action. The group will be a link between farmers and the different authorities and one of its goals will be working with farmers still grappling with environmental issues.
“If you want compliance change, you have to be working with people and not against them.”
Her experience and enthusiasm for the environmental starts at home. Like other dairy farmers in the area, it’s taken a huge effort and is still a work in progress to do their part in improving the water quality of phosphorus-sensitive Lake Brunner which was in decline a decade ago.
It was a pat on the back for the 21 farmers and community groups to get news in December that water quality targets for the lake had been achieved five years earlier than planned.
Environment Minister Nick Smith and West Coast Regional Council chairman – and dairy farmer – Andrew Robb helped mark the occasion on the lake shore and recognised the co-operation and effort needed to achieve that result.
Land disturbance, fertiliser application regimes and effluent management were identified as factors contributing to the phosphorus build-up in the lake and farms in the catchment now have the strictest regulations in the district.
For Liz and Henry, work to lessen the impact of their dairy operation began soon after they bought the property in 2007 with the addition of two HerdHomes for wintering part of the herd and getting stock off the paddocks during wet weather. It’s a climate that delivers about three metres of rain a year, with much of it thrown at them in spring – though that pales in comparison with the other side of the lake which averages 5m of rain.
Fortunately, the land copes with the copious amount of rain it receives and even though flooding is normal, it doesn’t hang around and is gone nearly as quickly as it appears. The support block on the hill has different soils that don’t drain, so they’re in the process of flipping it to bring up the gravels below. So far they’ve developed 45ha, with plans of completing the flipping over the next three years.
The previous owner had already built a stock bridge over a small river running through the farm which took it a huge step forward environmentally. The lake covers 41 square kilometres and plunges 109m, collecting any nutrients washed off dairy farms in its catchment. Many local farmers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars changing effluent systems, adding bridges and culverts, fencing waterways and making management changes such as the HerdHomes.
On the milking platform, the HerdHomes have changed the management of the farm by reducing damage to the soils and collecting the effluent at times when the soil is too waterlogged to distribute it around paddocks.
“We recognised there was an issue wintering cows on the coast and using wintering pads, and one of the shingle pads that was here was near the lake. There were other benefits from the HerdHomes as well like feed utilisation and cow condition.
“And it’s peace of mind, being able to put the milkers in there or get them off the paddocks.”
The two 64m-long, 11m-wide HerdHomes have concrete slats through the middle above 1200mm concrete bunkers that only need cleaning out once a year. The contents are distributed around paddocks from a hired slurry tanker.
“It means we can store the effluent until the conditions are right to put it on the paddocks,” Liz says. “It’s a high-nutrient product that is well utilised by applying it to the milking platform.”
About 200 cows can be housed in each HerdHome, but they chose to limit it to 125 of the lighter cows through winter to give each cow more space and comfort. By calving, those cows have put on condition and enjoyed their stay so much Liz says they run back to it when they’re let out to paddocks. The remainder of the herd winters on the adjacent support block and late calvers remain there through the first part of spring.
“Winter can be quite a dry time of year here and spring is our wet time. As long as good management practices are in place, and along with the infrastructure we now have, the environmental impacts over the wet periods are reduced.”
As well as the HerdHomes, Liz and Henry have fenced 10km of waterways, going beyond the required 1.5m strip to 2m or even 2.5m which is close to the flooding level rather than normal flow and that creates a larger buffer between dairying and waterways. The West Coast Regional Council, funded by a grant from the Ministry for the Environment, supplied the materials for fencing as well as plants sourced from a local nursery. Farmers provided the labour and those riparian plantings are still getting established.
On any farm, there’s the quandary over what areas to fence off and what’s okay to graze, but it’s even more of a challenge on low-lying lake-edge property.
“We had to identify, in conjunction with the council, what was deemed to be a permanent flowing waterway.”
Humping and hollowing about half the farm helps to cope with the frequent deluges of rain and has played a part in managing the soils.
Areas closer to the lake are more sensitive and the lower-lying softer ground is grazed lightly and managed carefully to reduce soil damage and possible sediment entering the lake.
The stocking rate over the entire platform is down to 2.4 cows a hectare and they’re lighter crossbred cows to tread more lightly on the ground.
Before the payout drop they milked 800 cows which worked out around 2.9 cows/ha. However, calves are also on the milking platform this season because of the low payout, but they have little impact.
“We’re very careful with our pastures to eliminate pugging as much as possible with the amount of rain we get.”
Their effluent system is the next major task to address and that will be updated this winter to include an above-ground covered storage tank and a solids separator with a K-line system to deliver effluent over paddocks at a low application rate.
“Changing the effluent system is happening this winter, irrespective of the payout. We are also investigating and working with our engineer on a green water yard wash system to further reduce effluent volumes.”
They are considering a TechniPharm Dungbuster, an automatic yard washing system aimed to reduce water use washing the yard by as much as 40% – as well as reduce the time it takes to wash it down.
“Disposing of effluent is the issue, so we want our water volumes to be a low as possible.
“We’ve reduced our per cow water usage as well, like reducing the amount of water on the cup wash by using a different spray nozzle. It’s just a bit of Kiwi ingenuity that means the water comes out as a jet with less water but more pressure. We’re constantly looking at ways to conserve water in the dairy.”
Three permanent staff and a relief milker help them out on the farm and Liz says it’s in everyone’s interest to look after the quality of the lake.
“Our herd manager and his family regularly use the lake and another staff member is a keen fisherman, so water quality is in their interest too.”
