When the world is watching, or at least 600 email subscribers to a weekly farm progress report, there’s a real motivation to see things done properly.
“I might not have felt like a farm walk every week. In the drought there was more dirt than grass but the pasture growth numbers were needed for the weekly report and a newspaper ‘farm watch’ column,” sharemilker Mathew MacInnes says.
After three seasons of full-time dairy farming Mathew stepped into the spotlight on his parents’ farm at Waitakaruru when he accepted the challenge of managing the Hauraki Plains’ first dairy focus farm.
The project, organised by the Hauraki region’s farmer-run P3 Dairy Trust, was funded by DairyNZ to record each week for three years the farm’s actual performance, the tasks at hand, and the focus for the week ahead and month ahead.
Through two droughts, an extremely wet spring on marine clay that pugs easily, and the usual run of setbacks that can affect any dairy farm, their progress was sent by DairyNZ to the email list that included 400 farmers while Mathew and his staff put into action the advice of farm consultants who met at the farm every fortnight.
The project was made more complicated in its first year when Mathew’s parents, Angus and Karen MacInnes, decided to buy a neighbouring block of 70 hectares to add to the farm Mathew was contract milking.
Previously managing a 200-cow farm owned by his parents, Mathew’s focus project had escalated from 310 to 530 Friesian cows and the learning curve became that much steeper.
“I had to employ staff for the first time. That was a challenge,” Mathew says. He completed a human resource course run by DairyNZ and learned that some people prefer listening to instructions while others want to see a hands-on demonstration, or both.
“You need to be organised. That’s number one. And having a bit of patience is good too. You can’t expect people to be mind readers.”
Major tasks were to reduce the costly amount of supplementary feed used, improve pasture quality, shorten the herd’s calving period, and improve cow reproduction.
‘In the drought there was more dirt than grass but the pasture growth numbers were needed for the weekly report.’
The MacInnes family’s accountant created a parallel set of accounts for the focus farm, separating them from a combined account for the MacInnes family’s two dairy farms and two run-off blocks, so that progress could be measured against a budget for the focus farm.
The end result at May 31, 2014, was a real encouragement to Matthew, his family, the DairyNZ team supporting the project, and the P3 Dairy Trust who recently selected another farm, at Ngatea, for their next three-year focus project.
The MacInnes farm’s economic farm surplus (EFS), or profit before non-cash adjustments such as depreciation, had more than doubled from $1298/ha at the project’s start to $2898/ha for the project’s third and final year, based on a milk price of $6.50/kg milksolids.
Farm working expenses for the third year, with depreciation added, totalled $4.21/kg MS, which was almost 30 cents more than budget but extra palm kernel and silage was used to cover pasture cover shrivelled by the drought.
With the farm overall becoming more productive and costs reduced the MacInnes family were able to exceed their budget for debt repayment for the first two years and in the third year invest in the installation of a lined effluent storage pond with 90 days capacity for waste from 550 cows.
Getting residuals right has been a focus for farm consultant Wayne Stachurski and sharemilker Mathew MacInnes.
The drought last summer proved more severe than the previous summer and the amount of grass grown in the year fell by almost half a tonne a hectare – 12.6t grown in 2013-14 compared to 13t in 2012-13.
Independent farm consultant Wayne Stachurski, a former sharemilker and farm owner who is an equity partner in a farm in Canterbury and another in Chile, walked a third of Mathew’s farm every week so that he could see the whole 177ha property in a month.
“The farm walks were to make sure that the platemeter and visual readings reflected what was actually growing on the farm,” Wayne says. He was hired by the P3 Dairy Trust during the wet spring of year two as the focus farm project manager, a role he’s continued with P3’s Ngatea focus farm.
He believes the Hauraki Plains and a few other regions with focus farms are fortunate in having farmers like the MacInnes family who are prepared to put their farms and themselves under scrutiny.
“There are always some limitations compared to a perfect world, but we have farmers who are prepared to put their whole business in the district spotlight for regular scrutiny, occasional criticism and I am sure at times with a degree of inconvenience, so for that they are to be commended.”
Wayne says the target on the MacInnes farm was to balance pasture use and feed supplements in a cost effective way, increase milk production and cut costs.
“Better pasture use saw the base year’s $630/ha spent on dairy meal drop to $270/ha on palm kernel in the third year, despite the drought depleting pasture growth by half a tonne over four months.”
“The cows’ grass intake has increased and last season’s total pasture eaten was estimated at 10.9t/cow compared to 10.1t/cow for the base year, which back then included an unquantified amount of silage from a runoff.”
Cut and bagged samples of pasture were assessed for metabolisable energy content throughout the year and drymatter weights were used to verify the farm walk assessments of pasture growth.
Despite cutting back the supplementary ration of feed, the herd’s production performance had been tracking upwards last season to 335kg MS/cow, compared to 325kg MS/cow as the given starting position, but then slumped during the drought to a total of 310kg MS/cow for the season.
‘In the drought there was more dirt than grass but the pasture growth numbers were needed for the weekly report.’
However milk production per hectare has increased from 870kg MS/ha at the project’s start to 896kg MS/ha last season, despite consecutive droughts, and will be higher in a normal growing season.
Herd reproduction is another target.
At the final field day it was shown that previously 82% of heifers entering the milking herd were at their mature liveweight and for last season this had increased to 92%.
Similarly the herd’s 52% in-calf rate after six weeks of mating had been increased to 68%.
The herd’s empty rate used to be at 16% or more after 16 weeks of mating but last season was down to 13% after a shortened mating period of 12 weeks.
“We took the bull out of the herd four weeks earlier, so we took a hit with the empty rate to tighten the calving period and then culled out the late cows,” said Mathew.
More CIDRs (progesterone inserts) were used in the herd with better results than the first year – the difference being the selection of younger cows (less than eight years old) for treatment.
“We also tried to identify cows calving too light and put a lot of work into calving at a condition score of five or better,” Mathew says. His cows were scored during the fortnightly meetings with Wayne and DairyNZ consultant Fiona Wade, who is trained in condition scoring.
“We would each condition score the same cows to put us on the same wave length.”
Cows were dried off earlier with their lighter cows brought out of the milking herd in late March and the rest following so that by mid-May only 200 cows – fewer than 40% – were still milking.
“It works out to be more economical to dry off earlier and not buy in extra feed to keep them milking, and more so during a drought.”
The tighter calving strategy was also to increase the herd’s total days-in-milk before Christmas – a strategy to lessen the impact of dry summers.
“Our start of calving date is the same, at July 10, and we had a lot of discussion about changing it but we are trying for more condensed calving to put more milk in the vat before Christmas,” Mathew says. Seventy per cent of the total production of 158,000kg MS was done by December 31.
Other herd management changes to enhance production were more detailed mastitis management and periodic herd blood profiles for cow treatments.
Mathew and his wife Natasha have meanwhile built up their own herd to 170 cows and with 65ha sold from the focus farm and the herd down to 350 cows for this season are now on a 38% sharemilking contract with his parents.
Next year he plans to be on a 50:50 contract on the same farm after buying the rest of the herd.
Key points
Location: Waitakaruru
Owners: Angus and Karen MacInnes
Sharemilkers: Mathew and Natasha MacInnes
Milking area: 177ha
Cows: 530 Friesians at peak milking
Production/ha*: 896kg milksolids (MS)/ha effective
Production/cow*: 298kg MS/cow
Production 2013-14*: 158,000kg MS
*Drought affected
