The equity partners have environmental and economic imperatives to minimise water use, and have employed water efficiency measures including green wash and water metering. Water meters at the dairy measure all water coming to the farm and everything going out through the troughs.
Engineer and equity partner Neville Fisher says the metering has made identifying a water leak much easier and it’s interesting to know just how much water is actually being used.
“Once you start measuring the workers start to think about their water use. If you can’t measure it there is no incentive to change,” he said.
“The old rule of thumb was you use 70 litres H2O per cow for each milking day, but do we actually use that much? Now we can measure it. DairyNZ research shows large variations from highs of 150l down to 35l or less. There is potential to save a lot of water within the dairy industry just by monitoring actual water use.”
The metering data goes through a Harvest Remote station to all the partners’ smartphones and to staff in the dairy and Neville says you can tell who is milking by how much water is being used. As well as cup removers and milk flow meters linked to Protrack, the platform is set up to stop the flow of wetting water as soon as the platform stops, which saves a lot of water over the season.
“It’s a balance between keeping the dairy clean by having water coming through and not wasting the water.”
Much of the cleanliness of the dairy depends on keeping the milking regular and quiet – with the right music, Neville says – which encourages the herd not to defaecate on the platform.
With research showing they are more likely to empty out after milking, within 200 metres of the dairy, the cows exit through the feedpad where the manure is collected and washed into the sump using the greenwash from the plant, dairy and yard cleaning systems pumped to three 25,000l tanks at the top of the sloped feedpads.
Once a solids separator screen is installed this season the wash water will be screened and liquid recycled for yard and feedpad wash, enabling more recycling times.
Effluent ponds with 13 million cubic metres of storage hold effluent through the winter allowing its irrigation on to pasture and crops from December through to February during the driest weather.
All cooler water is recycled into the farm system and milk chilling – using offpeak power to chill water to 6-7C means milk temperature can be reduced quickly enough to meet the new MPI milk chilling regulations.
An annual electricity bill of $50,000 had the partners reaching for their calculators and looking at photovoltaic panels for the roof of the dairy. Partner Vern Brasell expects 17% return on investment on the PV panels if they can manage their load and use 80-90% of the power onsite.
