Hayley switched around the summer management plan. Previously cows were kept close to the dairy at night, and spent the daytime in the back paddocks.
She flipped the system on its head and has had positive results from a less dramatic drop in milk production on hotter days and increased cow happiness.
“Once it gets over 26C they aren’t really going to eat, so they may as well be in the shade more, and it means they don’t have to walk as far in the afternoon sun for their second milking.”
Instead of the hour-and-a-half it used to take to bring the cows in, it now takes 45 minutes in the mornings, which makes a big time saving for Hayley who is pretty busy as it is, running the farm as a one-woman band.
Springer management was another item on her list to change, in an effort to be more productive with her time and decrease everyone’s stress levels, including the cows.
“Every farm I’ve been on, and most people I know, you go and get the calves out of the paddock in the morning, and then you chase out all the cows that you need.
"That can take up to an hour to get done and involves a lot of running round at times.”
Now, the calves are picked up and put into pens and the cows are brought into the shed and drafted manually. All cows are teat sprayed while they are in the shed which has helped with mastitis.
“It means the cows aren’t running around in the paddock getting stressed, I’m not running around and I can check out the ones I’m not sure about. Sometimes it’s hard to assess them in the paddock.”
Not everything Hayley has tried has been a success, but she says she’s learnt lessons from trying something new.
She tried different residuals in the lead-up to spring, rather than aiming for 1500kg drymatter (DM)/ha, but because the farm doesn’t have any supplement she says they ended up being a lot shorter on feed in spring than a lot of other people were.
“We struggled a bit through there – I started grazing down to 1600 to try and get faster regrowth which did work well for a bit and kept us out of the hole.
"Once the grass cover finally came up we started grazing down to 1500 again, although there was a bit of a drop in milk just from the cows eating that lower quality grass, but if they hadn’t of had that, they would have lost condition.
"Either way, there would have been a milk production drop at some stage. It wasn’t really a normal spring either, so perhaps not the best year to experiment with something new.”
Hayley was this year’s runner-up Farm Manager of the Year for the Manawatu region.
Hayley has also competed in the district Young Farmer of the Year competition for the last four years and although has placed in the top five several times, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
The sheep shearing module was a challenge and although didn’t end in tears, a bit of blood was shed.
“We had to crutch a sheep, I’ve seen it done but said to the guy ‘look I don’t know how to do this’ and he said don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I got stuck in and he said to go closer to the skin.
"I accidentally ended up slicing the inside of its thigh open! The sheep was fine and it looked worse than what it was.”
'It was quite a late decision so there weren’t a lot of manager jobs left out there, so it was lucky that this one popped up.'
The following year she learnt her lesson and although she didn’t draw blood this time, the judges did have a chuckle at her sheep handling ability.
“The guy said to grab a lamb, so I went and picked it up like you do a calf, and the guy just about fell on the floor laughing.
"Apparently you’re meant to drag them on the ground on their bum and here I am carrying the lamb. It was happy as, but I didn’t know because I’ve only ever been on a dairy farm.”
The farm has been on a year-by-year lease, which is coming to an end at the end of this season and won’t be renewed. That means Hayley will be shifting to the home farm to take up the farm manager role there.
The home farm is bigger with 650 cows and two full-time staff, which will be a change from her current role.
“It was quite a late decision so there weren’t a lot of manager jobs left out there, so it was lucky that this one popped up. The two staff that will be under me have been on the farm for a while so know it quite well.
"I’ve worked for the farm owner for three years now so I know how he likes things and have that relationship with him already.”
Unlike many of her peers, Hayley’s ultimate goal isn’t farm ownership. She says although it was her original plan, her mind was changed when she went on the 2014 Dairy Trainee of the Year study tour.
“At the start of the tour nine out of 10 of us wanted to own a farm, by the end only four wanted to. We listened to a lot of people speak and realised we could have the lifestyle and success without the burden of so much debt.”
Fifty-fifty sharemilking is the end goal for Hayley now. It’s something she hopes to reach in the next five years after stepping into a lower-order or contract milking role in the next few years, as well as continuing her involvement in Young Farmers.
