Today, the Grove Bush farm with its freestall barn, 64-bail rotary dairy and modern effluent infrastructure with new consents is for sale at $12.65 million.
It’s located 24km from Invercargill and 25km from Winton on flat to very easy rolling contour that is subdivided into 53 paddocks.
The entire farm has been regrassed in the past nine years, including 12ha this past season. A 7.73ha chunk of the farm forms a wetland with a duck pond, while 3.93ha makes up a gravel pit which is also used to graze the bulls.
On the milking platform, the farm has been milking an average of 550 cows throughout the year using a winter milk contract. Last season it produced 274,031kg milksolids (MS) and the previous season 329,344kg MS. It is now a seasonal milking farm.
All livestock can be housed in the barn, which caters for 600 adult cattle and 110 yearlings.
A free-stall shed with 46 stalls houses calves and a former woolshed has also been set up for calves.
A no-exit road runs to the centre of the farm where the dairy is situated; a 64-bail rotary with De Laval plant, auto cup removers and bail gates, auto teat spraying, full Protrack auto drafting, and in-dairy meal and molasses feeding. The shape of the farm with the dairy at the centre means walking distances for the cows are very short.
Effluent from the dairy and barn is collected in two lined holding ponds and a three million litre Kliptank, with solids going to a stone trap and then weeping wall.
Underground pipes take the effluent to hydrants that spread it via K-line pods. A slurry tanker is also used with trailing shoes. The collection of effluent from the barn means two applications of effluent covers the entire farm each year.
Half the supplements, mostly in the form of silage, are made on the farm. Built on to the side of the dairy is a four-bay implement shed and workshop and elsewhere is a four-bay gable-roof haybarn.
Three homes on the farm include the nine-year-old four-bedroom brick homestead set on an elevated site overlooking the farm, a four-year-old, three-bedroom brick home and a four-bedroom weatherboard home that has been extensively modernised.
Wayne Clarke from Southernwide Real Estate says the farm’s modern infrastructure has been constructed to a high standard which offers flexibility in farm systems and opportunities to maximise production on the shoulders of the milking season. It also limits pasture damage during wet weather.
The farm can be viewed at www.southernwiderealestate.co.nz. For further information contact Clarke on 03 218 2795 or 0274 325 768.
