Friday, March 29, 2024

Celebrating sustainable progress

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Getting positive dairy stories into the media was the motive behind Mark and Jacqui Muller’s dairy farming entry into the Ballance Farm Environment Awards for Taranaki. The bonus was winning a handful of awards, including the supreme prize for the province. The couple told Jackie Harrigan they wanted to celebrate their family’s achievements of building a sustainable dairy business with happy staff and a high-producing herd.
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While Mark and Jacqui Muller are not fond of the limelight, they entered the Taranaki Ballance Farm Environment Awards to shine a light on their farm and the hard work that the family have put in over 100 years to develop it into a sustainable dairy operation.

Mark admits his arm was twisted slightly when it came time to enter the awards, being held for the second year in Taranaki, but that it was needed to “get ourselves out there and celebrate the effort that has gone in over many years” on the family’s Mangatoki farm, just outside Eltham.

“Dairy farmers have been getting a pretty hard slog in the media lately – we just wanted to get a positive story out there,” Mark says.

So when it came time to report the story, Mark was like “come on up, let’s get it over with”.

Building staff satisfaction is high on the priority list for Mark and Jacqui and shows in the good team culture the BFEA judges recognised on the farm. Both Conrad and 2IC Michael Stratton have clocked up four seasons on the property and farm assistant Bradley Wilson has worked 18 months for the Mullers.

Weekly staff meetings have a health and safety education component and visitors need to sign in at the dairy in the OnFarm safety manual. Staff are also well-versed in identifying hazards, filling in registers, and mindful of their health and safety obligations.

The staff work a 12-on 2-off roster, with every second weekend off, and milking separates the two herds so staff get a sleep-in every third day and don’t have to milk the whole milking. 

The early milking shift milk the first herd and then the next shift brings the next herd up and milks them.

Putting 620 cows through the dairy means a long milking time. The 40-bail rotary dairy was state of the art when it was built but with more land blocks added to the farm, it is neither big enough nor in the right geographic place for ease of cow movements.

The 40-bail dairy replaced a 17-bail version which was one of the early rotary dairies in the country.

“Tom Hotter, the local inventor of the rotary, said 17-bail would be as big as anyone could handle when it was built,” Mark says with a chuckle.

The Mullers won the Massey University Innovation award for their progressive attitude to new technology. Jacqui picked up their first automatic calf feeders on TradeMe and says while they make for an intensive first week while the new calves are being trained, the operation of multiple units takes a lot of the time and chore out of rearing the 150 calves.

“We have tried to keep up with new technology as it has evolved and have invested in Protrack, automatic teat spraying and cup removers.”

With a pressing need to upgrade the cowshed, the robotic milking units have piqued their interest, but both Jacqui and Mark agree the timing of the slump in dairy prices has pushed that plan out into the future.

On the effluent front, a travelling irrigator and sand trap and solids bunker along with storage ponds have revolutionised the effluent policy on the farm since Mark’s grandfather, father and uncle developed it. From a 48ha block in 1914 the farm has been expanded to 167ha, subdivided, raced, re-fenced, with two troughs placed in each 3.5ha paddock and waterways fenced and planted. 

Pasture renewal is carried out through an annual chicory-clover crop, with 27ha grown for the past two years. Before that 10-12ha of turnips were grown but the chicory is more useful with multiple grazings through summer and autumn-winter. In March or April Mark undersows the chicory into permanent pasture, using a mixture of clovers and ryegrasses One50, Prospect and Base.

While the chicory has been a high-quality feed with quick regrowth, 27ha is too much to have out of the rotation. Mark says they can’t make much grass silage with 27ha of crop. In the 2015-16 season they plan to establish 9ha of plantain with a three-year sward lifespan and grow a fodder beet crop on the runoff which they will lift into a silage wagon to bring home and feed out in summer.

Protecting the soils and pastures is something top of mind to the Mullers and Conrad, who whips the cows off the pastures to stand off on the dairy yard if the weather is very wet on the second day of a two-day winter break.

Mark has an ownership share in a seed drill so he does all the tractorwork – often cultivating and drilling at night so he doesn’t tie up the farm tractor. He and Conrad share the day-to-day management of the farm, with Conrad making 80% of the decisions and Mark 20%. Mark and Jacqui rear the calves and work on infrastructure projects. They have three children, two who are away training for careers off-farm and Ellie who is joining them in the business next year.

While Mark and Jacqui appreciate their staff and value their loyalty, they are passionate about seeing them progress through the industry and building their own farm businesses.

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