Initially he only had short-term plans for the dairy industry as a way of funding his pilot’s licence. Then he discovered he was enjoying it and could move up through the industry rapidly, so stayed and made new career plans that include farm ownership in 10 years.
He’s already had diverse dairying experience, starting out on a 1000-cow herd near Nelson and then moving to a monitor farm in Marlborough as herd manager before heading to Taranaki as farm manager for Steven and Ann Nicholas.
His next step with his wife, Cheryl, will be an equity partnership with his parents.
“They’ve got the equity and we’ve got the knowledge so it gives me an opportunity to work on my own place pretty early on in life and it’s like a retirement fund for them,” he said.
“We’ll look at the West Coast of the South Island because it’s more affordable and there’s a lot of opportunities there to find a place that isn’t running to capacity where you can develop it to get a bit more production.”
The experience he has gained on different farms with different owners is one of the strengths of the industry that provides knowledge for people like himself.
“You find different ways of doing things and that’s great because it gives me new ideas to take to my own place. That’s the great thing about farming – there’s so many different ways of doing things and there is no set way that’s best.”
At Kaponga, the farm operates at the high end of system two, with about 11% imports including nitrogen, while growing turnips as a summer crop and 10ha of maize for silage.
“A lot of thinking goes into planning key decisions with feed, animal health and growing grass,” Michael said.
“I do a lot of monitoring like making sure farm walks are done each week and using the data from that for things like checking pre- and post-grazing levels and round lengths.
“And we have a big focus on mastitis control because if you let it go, you get a lot of problems, so I like to keep on top of it and our (somatic) cell count this season is about 80-90,000 which puts us in the top 5% with Fonterra.”
Entering the awards and gaining success has been a good confidence booster, he said, confirming he was on the right track toward farm ownership and had the skills to get there.
He also won the RD1 Farm Management Award and the Westpac Financial Planning and Management Award. Hawera farm manager Jayden Harvey was placed second and won the Staples Rodway Chartered Accountant Leadership Award. Eltham farm manager JJ Atkin was third and also won the Fonterra Best Practice Award. Hawera manager Michael Wilson won the NZ Farmers Livestock Best Livestock Award and Manaia manager Matte Kirk won the Primary ITO Human Resource Management Award.
