Friday, March 29, 2024

Testing times in the tropics

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A dairying environment doesn’t get much more challenging than one where three metres of rainfall is the annual average.
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But in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland’s far north, Ray and Donna Graham have also faced family, staff and processor challenges aplenty.

“In times of extreme stress you’ve just got to make conscious decisions about what you can and can’t control,” Ray told the Australian Dairy Innovators Forum last year.

“Reinvent yourself and put the most effort into what you can control.”

The couple are the fourth generation dairy farming on their property, Cheelonga, an hour and a half’s drive north of Cairns. The business has grown from 45 cows in 1980 to the 800 cows run today, producing 5.2 million litres annually. They own 400ha and lease another 200ha which is run as a separate enterprise. There’s a total of 160ha between the two farms under irrigation.

When the second property, 2km from the home farm, came up for sale in 2006 it had a new rotary dairy but was milking just 100 cows. The Grahams worked out an arrangement where another person bought the land while they funded the herd and plant.

They milk crossbreds on their hilly to steep home farm. The cows have to walk up to 2km a day so need to be strong, resilient animals with good milking ability.

As the leased farm is relatively flat they milk their Holstein/Brown Swiss herd there in a low-input system. There are advantages in being able to move cows from one property to another through the year.

They manage both farms under the same management systems to ensure that their seven full-time and four casual staff, including backpackers, can freely rotate between them.

Ryegrass grows from July to October and tropical pasture, seteria, during the rest of the year, but is hard to manage.

Both farms calve year-round although no heifers are calved during the wet season.

A mixed maize silage ration is fed year-round on the home farm and on the leased property whole crop silage is used when there’s not enough pasture for the herd.

The AI breeding season is from April to December to help manage low conception rates in the summer. From December to March they run bulls with the cows to clean up problem cows but don’t rear any of these calves.

They use this time to pressure clean and disinfect the calf area, meaning they have no calf deaths. The calves are reared to six weeks then go to a contractor paid on a per kg basis for weight gain until they reach 200kg. They’re grown out and mated on another farm and return as pregnant heifers.

Ray admitted he’s a bit of a technophobe – “but I realise it’s an essential part of the business”. He and Donna, who still do most of the morning milkings, see it as a skill to be able to take information from someone else and move on.

They aim to be compassionate, resourceful and resilient and have had to be through their son Jason’s divorce, the suicide of a young farm worker, and Cyclone Larry which left them without power for eight days, then fuel rationing.

A major risk they face now is that they rely totally on one processor, Lion, which has capped their ability to increase milk production as well as paying a price close to that of production

But success has come through regular staff meetings and social get togethers to which they also invite other businesses which support them.

Jason, now happily remarried, was described by his mother as having had “zero people skills”.

“Every time we went away there were fewer people on the farm when we came back,” she said.

But he’s now become less of an introvert and the family have drawn up clear, concise job descriptions so all employees know the one person they need to look to.

“It works well and is growing and evolving.”

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