Friday, March 29, 2024

Keeping the passion alive

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Southland farmers Owen and Cathy Copinga are focused on Friesians. Their breeding programme uses genetics from around the world, and the resulting production brought them a performance award from the Holstein Friesian New Zealand Association. Karen Trebilcock talked to them about future directions for their farm and their herd.
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If it wasn’t for their passion for breeding Friesian cattle, Owen and Cathy Copinga of Rivendell Farm at Isla Bank don’t think they would still be farming.

They’ve been dairying for 30 years and breeding the top black and white cow still gets them out of bed in the morning for milking. It also won them the 2013 Nutritech Performance Award at the Holstein Friesian New Zealand Association Conference in Invercargill at the end of June.

The prize was awarded to the association’s members with the highest dollar-earning herd average, based on the Fonterra A+B-C payment system for the 2011-12 season. Rivendell Farm’s herd average was $4195.56. Alistair, Bridget and James Sherriff of Temuka came second with $3896.99.

The Copingas helped organise the conference and had more than 150 people visit their farm, which milks year-round, during the three-day event. Although they have shown cattle in the past, their focus is now on production and the potential of their genetics.

The Copingas left Bay of Plenty for Southland 12 years ago, turning their backs on the heat, flies, black beetle, crickets and facial eczema.

“We used to double our stocking rate every summer with the insects,” Cathy says.

They defend Southland’s weather, saying it’s no colder than farming on the Central Plateau, and describe Isla Bank as having its own microclimate, with the southerly fronts and snow usually going around them to the west or to the east.

They converted the 320ha sheep farm and brought with them from Bay of Plenty a cow from each of their top cow families.

“We were calving there on July 1 so we couldn’t bring the whole herd with us.”

And with the change-over of Southland sheep farms into dairying in full swing, buying a good herd back then was buying a herd with records, not necessarily one with good cows. However, they kept focused, breeding for the same values they thought were important in Bay of Plenty – protein, udder conformation and what Owen calls strength.

They use genetics from the US, Canada, Holland and Italy with Owen artificially inseminating the cows during milking, usually until Christmas with only a few bulls needed on the farm to finish with.

They select semen from bulls for each of their cow families, using as many as 15 each year.

“If we use any more bulls than that we are reducing the number of daughters we get from each one and there’s not enough impact on the herd,” he says.

Their focus on protein sees them getting 20c/kg milksolids (MS) above the base payout from Fonterra as a result of their at least .95 protein to fat ratio in the spring and .85 for the rest of the year and they have mating contracts with CRV Ambreed and World Wide Sires.

Speeding up their breeding plan has been the purchase of embryos from the United States for the past two years, using vet Neil Sanderson to implant them. The embryos come in straws frozen in liquid nitrogen, just like semen, from cows and bulls housed in quarantine facilities in the US.

Wisconsin

Owen also visited Wisconsin last July to look at some of the cows on farms.

“I got to wander through the farms, and see all of the animals and it has confirmed the direction we want to go in,” he says.

That direction is starting to take shape about 100m away from the farm’s rotary dairy. By autumn next year there will be a 36m by 144m free-stall wintering barn built by DeLaval, able to house the whole herd.

“We just have too many valuable cows to have them on crop in the winter,” Cathy says.

They already milk about 120 cows in June and July, about half of those autumn calving and the others carryovers.

They hope to increase the number milking through the colder months by keeping them under cover and feeding them well.

“In Wisconsin it was really good to understand the feeding regimes and to look at their cows,” Owen says.

“A lot of their cows aren’t any bigger than ours, apart from their show cows, but they feed them differently.”

They have taken their time choosing the type of barn they want.

“There’s a lot to know about wintering barns before you start building and you just can’t have any builder doing the work. The measurements have to be so accurate. You need one who knows what they’re doing.”

With the wintering barn, the Copingas’ cows will no longer be sent to farms in the area when they are not milking but the graziers will still be needed.

“They’ve already said they’ll grow the feed for the barn for us,” Owen says.

“We have very good relationships with the farmers around us that we work with and we make sure we keep those relationships working well.”

They also source the wheat they feed to the cows from a local grower, rolling it in a grain crusher they bought at a clearing sale. It’s fed to each animal during milking on production, with 750kg/cow bought each year.

“We mix a little bit of molasses in it as well, between 300 and 500ml a day.”

Silage to feed in the barn will be made in the paddocks furthest away from the dairy, a 2.5km walk away.

“The barn gives us so many more options,” Cathy says.

With the average weight of their cows 600kg, their stocking rate has been kept at 2.5 cows/ha to minimise pasture damage on the farm’s heavy clay soils and maintain grass intakes. They also have concrete feedpads and a covered area for calving cows, topped up daily with straw, all of which will become redundant once the barn is finished.

The young stock are grazed at neighbouring farms and naturally mated using Jersey bulls except for 50 “specials” which are kept at Rivendell, many of which are the resulting animals from the US embryo transplants. Owen will AI these yearlings and some of them will be super-ovulated, inseminated and flushed with their embryos transplanted into other cows in the herd.

They employ three full-time staff – Ramel Batrina, Danilo Cagunot and Harold Benzon – who are all from The Philippines.

But Owen and Cathy are still hands-on at milking and when feeding the calves. Two of their staff are qualified vets but unable to practice in NZ as their degrees are not recognised here. Of the Copingas’ three children, Abbie is a pharmacist working at Southland Hospital, Hana is studying for a BA degree at the University of Otago and Isabella is a year eight boarder at Southland Girls High School.

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