Twelve years ago Chris was a night shift supervisor in a plastic injection moulding factory in Australia and Carla a cook managing a restaurant when they decided to return home and take up a job on his parents’ West Coast dairy farm.
They stayed there nine seasons, including four as 21% lower-order sharemilkers, had their two children, Jessi and Caleb, and began building equity to buy their own farm, which could be within their grasp in the next two to three years.
In their first sharemilking contract, they were able to rear 25 calves each year and in the first season the payout soared above $8/kg milksolids (MS) which gave them a good start.
“We used those calves to borrow money and because we had no debt and our calves were valued at $800 each, we were able to buy another 75 rising one-year-olds, so we ended up with 100 that first season.”
The Staples are now working on improving production/cow and profitability, so have begun inseminating their heifers with straws from bulls with high Production Worth to increase their genetic gain.
“We’re trying to get as many replacements as we can to have animals to sell. Up until this season we’ve been buying extra cows in, so still have debt. But from now on we’ll be going the other way.”
The Staples also won the Triplejump Risk Management Award and Westpac Business Performance Award. Runners-up in the competition were Greymouth equity farm mangers Kelvin and Heather McKay. The DairyNZ Human Resources Award went to Tapawera equity farm managers Steven and Kerry Semmens who also won the Federated Farmers Leadership Award, the Honda Farm Safety and Health Award and the Meridian Energy Farm Environment Award.
The Ecolab Farm Dairy Hygiene Award went to Kowhitirangi lower-order sharemilkers Ant and Suzi O’Malley, while the LIC Recording and Productivity Award went to Murchison lower-order sharemilkers Jon and Vickie Nicholls. The Ravensdown Pasture Performance Award went to Ikamatua lower-order sharemilkers Gareth and Jenny Evans.
