Thursday, March 28, 2024

Integrated operation brings big benefits

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A large-scale, efficient irrigation system enables top production on a South Canterbury dairy farm heading for 700,000kg milksolids (MS) from 1500 cows this season.
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The 344ha farm for sale near Pleasant Point has a further 109ha of leased land available, with four pivots irrigating 360ha of the land, with K-line covering another 45ha.

“It’s efficiency at its best in irrigation when you’ve got that cover,” Dave Finlay from PGG Wrightson Real Estate said. “It’s less labour and the experts will say you’re growing more grass with pivots, so it’s efficiency and utilisation.”

The soil helps – deep silt loams are well suited to dairying and retain moisture well from the irrigation. Shares in the Opuha Irrigation Company and a private consent enable the farm to irrigate 432ha at 3.6mm a day for 157 days.

The farm is owned by a farming group that has increased its area and capacity during the past few years and last season produced 1525kg MS a hectare from 1350 cows on a 400ha milking platform. This season cow numbers have been lifted to 1500 on 420ha.

A symbiotic relationship with neighbouring farmers sees cows wintered nearby, while grain from those neighbours comes back onto the farm to be fed to cows during the season.

“The blocks are well linked with an underpass and the stock can walk to their winter grazing, while the grain used on the dairy farm is provided by neighbouring farms. So it’s right under their nose. All the neighbouring farmers are grain and crop producing farmers so it works very well.”

Two different blocks of leased land belong to neighbours and are transferable to a new owner. Both those blocks are included in the milking platform and are connected into the cow access ways. Forty paddocks subdivide the freehold area with good lanes providing flexible cow flow to and from the dairy, a 54-bail rotary with automatic cup removers, Delaval plant, grain, molasses and minerals auto feed, and automatic teat spray. Outside, a circular yard holds 800 cows.

The effluent systems for the dairy, two feedpads and the underpass include a 90-day lined storage pond with a pumping station to deliver the stored fluid regulated through the pivot irrigators. Solids are removed by a separator and spread on the farm as necessary.

“The effluent systems for the dairy and feedpads are compliant and first-class facilities,” Finlay said. “Putting the effluent through the pivots gives them the opportunity to spread that effluent very thinly and be compliant with application rates. It’s very well constructed.”

One of the feedpads is concreted, while the other is limerock-sealed. Other infrastructure is extensive, including a 12-bay implement and calf-rearing shed, two three-bay haybarns/calf sheds, a four-bay implement shed and a barn.

Ten staff are employed on the farm under an overseeing manager and work in two split shifts, with accommodation provided between four dwellings. The main homestead is just four years old with five bedrooms and an office. There’s also a three-bedroom home with office, a four-bedroom home and a two-bedroom single accommodation unit.

Aesthetically, it’s an attractive farm, Finlay said, with numerous rows of shelter trees such as poplars, willows and specimens.

“It’s a real opportunity to purchase a special quality dairy farm set up to operate efficiently with the benefit of productive leased land adjoining and built into the milking platform.”

The farm is for sale by negotiation and the herd, replacements and Fonterra shares can be bought as a going concern. For further details contact Finlay on 03 433 1340 or 027 433 5210, or Richard Scott on 021 352 701. It can be viewed at www.pggwre.co.nz.

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