It is questionable for farms that need to invest a lot of money to winter milk cows sustainably anyway, but particularly in a low payout year, DairyNZ north Waikato regional manager Phil Irvine says.
Fonterra had plenty of interest in recent months from North Waikato farmers who applied to sign up for a three-year winter milk contract starting in 2016-17.
“They definitely need to think things through and consider how well they’re set up with infrastructure.”
The other key for farmers would be to source feed at a suitable price to fill the gaps, because grass wasn’t enough during winter, he said.
The winter milk premium, currently $1.40/kg milksolids (MS) less transport adjustments, would increase from May 2016 to $1.90/kg MS.
The premium could be attractive, but generally the cost of producing milk was higher without the spring grass growth.
Not wanting to milk through the dry summers was definitely a motivation for North Waikato farmers, but farmers calving in a very dry February and March in the past two years had found it difficult as well, Irvine said.
Farmers had to think the decision through and make the change for the right reasons, he said.
Regardless, farmers who switched to autumn calving had to be good operators. If farmers were struggling with their spring calving, switching to autumn calving wouldn’t fix their issues, he said.
For Eureka 50% sharemilker Dan Hinton, the major reason he was switching to autumn calving next season was because it suited his preferred high-input system better.
Traditionally farmers sought to match feed supply and demand, minimising demand for supplementary feeds. Hinton said that was now less of a necessity with the better infrastructure and variety of supplements available.
Now with better infrastructure and available supplements, that didn’t matter because farmers could put in feed at any time of the year, he said.
“I overlaid my supply-demand curve with my feed quality curve and when you can put in the feed where the deficits are it just matches better.”
Hinton calved 100 cows in autumn last year as a trial, but he would advise other farmers not to dabble in split calving because it got difficult with mating cows during spring calving and meeting different feed requirements.
“Don’t keep a foot in both camps. That’s what I did and it did my head in.”
The farm didn’t need a feedpad at the moment because the larger area allocated to the lactating cows during the winter took away the pugging issues that springing dry cows caused, he said.
His herd was fed predominately on grass and 600kg palm kernel/cow, with an extra protein supplement when necessary.
He traditionally grew plantain as a summer crop, but would consider growing 17-20ha of fodder beet or kale in future, he said.
Farmers making the transition should make sure they had low-priced feed contracts, winter and summer crops planted and good advice from a non-biased nutritionist.
“A lot of it comes down to good planning.”
Fonterra was still working through applications and would make decisions on suppliers depending on milk volume and distance from the Waitoa plant, Fonterra supply programme director Lisa Payne said.
The growing demand for UHT products would ensure security for those farmers changing their farm systems and investing in infrastructure to milk cows through winter, she said.
“We need a regular supply of winter milk for our local and international markets and there is increasing demand for UHT in Asia. We’ve invested $120 million on this UHT plant so that gives the indication of the importance.”
The new farmers signed up would aim to fill the plant’s processing capacity of 100m litres of UHT product a year.
The plant’s five UHT processing lines produced 250 tonnes, or 250,000 litres, of UHT product every day, along with a range of milk products and functional cream products used in food services.
Its technology allowed the plant to produce 24,000 milk packs every hour on each line.
