Its owners bought the farm in 2000 and converted it to dairying, with pivot and spray irrigation providing large gains in productivity – achieving 1,332,069kg milksolids (MS) last season from a milking platform of 790ha, or 1686kg MS/ha.
Chris Murdoch from Property Brokers in Ashburton said two turbines used the borderdyke scheme to pressurise the water for delivery through pivot irrigators, gun and K-line, with energy also available to be sold back to the national grid.
“It pressurises the majority of its own irrigation water, so it’s almost self-contained,” he said. “It’s very well developed spray irrigation.”
The bulk of the irrigation is supplied through 10 pivots of varying sizes onto Lismore silt loam soils that respond well to this style of irrigation.
Everything is wintered on the property, totalling 2668 cows last year as well as 712 rising two-year-old heifers and 1087 rising one-year-old heifers. Split into two units, the southern unit has a 70-bail rotary dairy with meal feeding, while the northern unit has an 80-bail rotary dairy also with meal feeding plus an adjoining feedpad for about 600 cows. A large array of farm buildings is spread out in various locations around the farm. They are all in sound condition and cater for the management needs of the farm.
Owners and staff are catered for in a wide mix of accommodation that ranges from a character 1889 five-bedroom homestead, two four-bedroom managers’ homes and seven other houses, to five-bed singles’ quarters and a former woolshed complex with numerous bedrooms around an apartment area.
“They’ve developed the farm very well and a real effort has been made to keep as many trees as possible on the milking platform in the transition to spray irrigation.”
The farm will be auctioned on March 14 with no reserve. For further details contact Murdoch on 0274 342 545, Paul Cunneen on 0274 323 382 or Rodger Letham on 0274 333 436. It can be viewed at www.propertybrokers.co.nz.
