Their families were sheep, beef, and cropping farming at Nathalia, just north of Shepparton in Victoria, they told the Australian Dairy Conference in Geelong earlier this year. Paul’s a third-generation farmer who had always milked 10 to 15 cows through an old walk-through dairy to rear calves for the family beef operation. Robyn’s parents were dairy farmers before they moved to sheep and cropping.
The couple married in 1991and moved on to the Lindsay family farm of 950ha, which supported Paul’s father and brother as well. With three sons to support “we started looking for something better”, Paul said.
The answer came eight years later in the form of a disused dairy just down the road on a 260ha sheep farm, which the three Lindsays purchased. They also bought 80 cows at $600/head from a farm that had never used AI as that was all they could afford. They struggled to begin with to find a processor to pick their milk up but stuck their principles, believing that it wasn’t so much breeding that would determine future milk production but fully feeding the animals.
“Our first milk cheque was $3000,” Paul said.
For the next five or six years they tried to kick the business along, using a lot of pasture in the process and seeing their cows get scalded in temperatures which would sometimes reach 40C.
By 2005 they realised they couldn’t keep going the way they were so bought out the rest of the family to own 400ha, consisting of the milking area as well as support and cropping land, along with 280 cows. But the next season was one of the worst droughts in some time and they received only 30% of their water rights.
“We wondered if we’d done the right thing.”
But the dry had a silver lining in the form of failed cereal crops that were being made into hay. Robyn completed a nutrition training course and they built a feedpad on gravel, complete with concrete troughs, for $30,000. Other purchases were a $70,000 mixer wagon and a $3000 loader.
They worked out a feeding plan based on the price they could pay for grain, hay, and protein meal, and the quantities needed to reach targeted milk production at the forecast price.
The result was a $200,000 profit that year and they’ve continued to use the feedpad every day since it was built. Their partial mixed ration/total mixed ration (TMR) system means they use no grazing for their cows between mid-November and late April.
“The drought showed us what we were doing wasn’t sustainable,” Robyn said.
“We would get more droughts. But doing the nutrition course put us in control, and the consistency has flowed through.”
Paul was hospitalised for more than a month in 2010 with septicaemia and Robyn took on all the farm work with fewer than two full-time workers when there was 2000t of grain sitting in nearby paddocks. They chose to buy a header for $20,000 which they estimate saved them $100,000.
“Now we do it all ourselves when we want to,” Paul said.
It didn’t put them off expansion either. They own 1236ha, of which 587ha is used to run more than 450 cows with the rest cropping and grazing. They’ve also invested in 1200t of grain storage and 600t of hay storage.
They believe irrigating pastures so the herd can graze them during the summer is inefficient because of the quality of the pasture which can be grown and the ability of the cows to graze in the heat. Their solution is to use irrigation water to grow annual and Italian ryegrass pastures on the milking area from April to November. At the same time lucerne is grown under a centre pivot for high-quality silage which is fed as part of the TMR the cows receive over this time. This has led the Lindsays to buy more high-security water rights as well as temporary water rights at a time when prices and interest rates are both low.
They sow mainly annual and Italian ryegrasses in late March, watering them with a combination of irrigation and natural rainfall. The herd grazes them through until mid or late November when the pastures are dried off.
Along with 13-14kg drymatter (DM)/day during this time the cows are also fed 4-5kg DM of cereal grain in the dairy and 1-2kg DM/day each of cereal grain and conserved fodder on the feedpad.
The conserved fodder is made up of ryegrass harvested off the milking area, irrigated lucerne from the support area and wheat silage from their dryland support blocks. It’s made into chopped bales that are tube-wrapped and stored next to the feedpad.
They aim for feed quality of a minimum of nine megajoules of metabolisable energy, preferably 10, and try to be self-sufficient so they can build fodder reserves for dry years. They put a strong emphasis on low start-up costs which means they haven’t yet looked at maize silage as an option
During the time when there’s less pasture available the cows are moved to a full TMR system with grazed pasture gradually replaced by conserved fodder. Grain feeding in the dairy is lifted to 6kg DM/cow/day and through the mixer wagon to 3kg DM/cow/day with protein meal adjusted depending on what the cows are receiving from other sources.
The grain is all grown on land under their control and stored on silos onfarm so there are minimal handling costs. Trading their better quality grain for feed grain hasn’t yet stacked up financially because of handling costs and the expense of selling or buying.
The Holstein-Friesian cows are split-calved from August 10 and March 10 to make the best of higher milk prices through even milk flow. They chose AI bulls for traits such as teat placement, udder type, good feet and legs, looking for a physically strong cow.
Their feeding regime revolves around making the smallest changes possible. Robyn aims for a consistent diet of 20-22kg DM/cow/day with no more than 6kg DM/cow/day of grain fed in the dairy. Her aim is a minimum crude protein level of 16% with enough fibre for rumen function.
She knows that if production/cow drops below 8000 litres the quality or quantity of the diet needs to be increased.
They now have two full-time employees and one part-time, but labour efficiency is boosted by having virtually no input from contractors in any of their farming operations including farm development work.
The Lindsays admit their cropping background might make them more risk-averse than many dairy farmers and consider the 500 cows they will be running shortly as perhaps being the point of diminishing returns. They believe debt is there to be paid off so there’s the chance to take on the next opportunity when it arises.
“If Paul wants to buy boys’ toys they have to come out of cashflow,” Robyn said.
But they have taken the decision to built a new concrete feedpad and upgrade their mixer wagon.
Two of their three sons, Thomas and Nathan, work on the farm with the youngest, James, a diesel mechanic, helping out at the weekends. There’s now enough support area for another 500-cow dairy but they believe the time needs to be right when it comes to the younger generation taking on extra responsibilities. Thomas has already made his decision and is buying some land from them at the moment. Nathan has taken another tack, saving enough to have the deposit to buy his first home at 21.
“We’re growing the business and if the boys want we will split it,” Paul said.
“If they don’t we’ll go on a cruise.”
Farm details
Area: 1237ha
Effective dairy area: 587ha
Irrigation: 350ha pivot and flood
Stocking rate: 2.3 cows/ha
Production: 577kg milksolids (MS)/cow, 1332kg MS/ha
Labour: 5.5 full-time equivalents, 85 cows/labour unit, 45,000kg MS/labour unit
Total income/kg MS: A$6.30
Feed costs: A$1.97
Cost of production including cost of capital @ 6%: A$5.48
Operating margin: A 82c/kg MS.
