Trading as Clovalley Farms, the couple are contract milkers for Bruce and Honey Grindlay, Te Nikau Trust, at Otakeho, near Manaia in South Taranaki. They are milking 240 cows on the 72ha effective milking platform.
This is Donovan’s sixth season dairying. From a non-farming background, he shifted to Taranaki and dairy farming from Auckland, where he worked in the automotive paint industry. Donovan’s uncle is a career sharemilker with Parininihi ki Waitotara (PKW). He acted as a gateway into the dairy industry, assisting Donovan with taking his first dairying steps with a dairy assistant position on a PKW farm
“When I was at school, farming wasn’t ever an option for me. I used to stay with my uncle when I was a kid, and I used to love it. I came down here to make a new start – it was the best move I’ve made,” Donovan says.
Sophie – another Auckland transplant with no prior farming experience – has been working at a nearby veterinary practice, recently completing a Diploma in Veterinary Nursing. With the couple’s first child well on the way, Sophie has given up her off-farm role this season, committing her time to their growing family and farming business.
While progressing through the dairying ranks, Donovan has also been studying with Primary ITO and is now close to completing a Diploma in Agribusiness Management. A business plan Donovan completed as part of that study made the couple take a hard look at their business and what they want to achieve.
Still in the establishment phase of their business, the focus is very much on equity growth.
With a goal of securing a 200-plus cow herd-owning sharemilking contract for the 2016-17 season, the couple have a target of building $220,000 in equity. They will leverage this to buy their herd, or consider an equity arrangement if 50:50 jobs prove scarce.
‘I came down here to make a new start – it was the best move I’ve made.’
To achieve that they have savings goals, putting aside a proportion of their milk cheque. The couple also own livestock, with 40 heifers calving for the first time this year – leased at no cost to Te Nikau Trust and Donovan’s uncle – as well as 30 yearling heifers. The farm owners are allowing them to rear 30 heifer calves on their own account this spring.
As contract milkers paid per kilogram of milksolids, milk production is another key driver.
In recent history, average production for the farm sat at about 85,000kg milksolids (MS) with the farm owner’s best season clocking up 92,000kg MS. Despite a dry summer and autumn for the 2013-14 season, with advisory support from farm owner Bruce, Donovan cracked 100,000kg MS – about 1390kg MS/ha – exceeding his target of 94,000kg MS. This was achieved though a canny drying-off strategy and a focus on pasture quality.
“I’m the sort of guy who every day is on Fencepost. If the cows drop, I’m trying to figure out why,” Donovan says.
But they are not chasing production at any cost.
For the three years finishing in the 2012-13 season, farm operating profit sat at $2699/ha, compared with the region’s average of $2538/ha. For the 2013-14 season, despite the dry weather, they achieved an operating profit in excess of $3000/ha.
Donovan describes the system as sitting at the high end of a DairyNZ System 2, classified as having 4-14% of feed imported. Last season’s dry meant they bought in about 600kg of palm kernel per cow, although the farm policy is normally about 400-500kg/cow. About 75 tonnes drymatter (DM) of baleage is harvested off the milking platform and the nearby 9ha support block, generally a 75:25 split.
Cows split their dry period between the runoff and the milking platform. Replacement heifers are grazed off for 12 months, returning in May before calving.
The farm is prone to dry summers so the race is on to get as much milk in the vat by Christmas as possible before nature turns the tap off. To facilitate that and make the most of what is usually a mild winter and early spring, last season Donovan encouraged the farm owners to bring their planned start of calving forward a week. This season the mixed age cows started calving on July 14 with the heifers about a week earlier.
In late August they had 50 more cows in milk than last year – though they have a higher proportion of heifers due to their farm owners supporting their progression by allowing them to bring in some of their own animals.
The shift forward affected the six-week in-calf rate but Donovan hopes to claw that back this season.
For Donovan and Sophie, at this stage of their dairy farming careers, equity growth and milk production are their key business drivers. Factors within their control feeding into milk production – calving spread, pasture production and quality, animal health and welfare, dairy hygiene – are also measured and monitored along the way.
