Rebecca and her fire-fighting husband, Nathan, farm 300ha just north of Westport, with much of it still in native bush or scrubby pakihi and 80ha carved out for a milking platform that milks 200 purebred Jersey cows.
By today’s standards it’s small and with a low payout there’s no extra for staff, but it’s a farm built up over five generations of Keoghans and the extended family is very much involved. Eighteen family members and four generations now live on the farm in five homes, so finding a relief milker is never an issue.
And every Sunday night, every one of them congregates at the house of Nathan’s mother, Carol, for the traditional Sunday roast and a family catchup.
“It is a family affair, with every one of the Keoghan family living on the farm now with their own patches of land,” Rebecca says. “It’s part of our values.”
Dairying was new to Rebecca when she teamed up with Nathan. She was more familiar with deer that grazed the lifestyle block she grew up on near Invercargill, so it was a learning curve when they headed north for Nathan to manage the home farm. They bought the farm in 2012, so with just four years under their belt and a low payout they still carry a “fair bit of debt”. Her off-farm income as business manager for three Landcorp dairy farms, a machinery syndicate and its dairy support unit at Cape Foulwind makes a huge difference.
Right now, it’s a matter of tightening the belt and keeping costs down until the payout improves. They’ve managed to get farm working expenses down to $3.70/kg milksolids (MS) and while much of that is cutting back to the bare essentials, part is also because of family giving them a hand instead of employing staff.
One day, in a world where the payout lifts substantially, they intend to develop more of the farm to enable them to milk two herds of 300-350 cows once-a-day (OAD). The farm spreads over an area of flat land and then up to two terraces, with about 40ha used as support land. It’s heavy, wet soils on the flats in the 2.5m rainfall and they have flipped 17ha of pakihi soils on the top terrace to convert it from poor-draining bog into firm, solid ground. Now about a third of the farm is used for the dairy unit, a third is native bush or planted radiata and another third is scrubby pakihi with potential to develop one day.
With that goal in mind, Nathan has been selecting genetics in the herd, so when they decided to switch to OAD this season to cut costs, the herd had few problems.
In the past, on twice-a-day (TAD) milking, they employed a staff member who left about the same time the payout dropped, so rather than pay staff again, they switched to OAD. Now Carol milks three times a week and when they are away, while their nephew Alan relief milks at weekends and helps with other jobs.
Every second week, Rebecca is away with Landcorp or Westland Milk Products work, while Nathan can be called overseas for weeks at a time to help tackle major forest fires. This year he headed to Marlborough several times to join the battle against numerous fires.
On top of that, Rebecca is a director of Westland Milk Products and Buller Holdings, which provides a commercial focus in the governance and management of Buller District Council’s commercial assets. She’s also a team leader for the Dairy Industry Award’s Dairy Manager of the Year award and an OSPRI Northern South Island committee member. It all has to fit around her fulltime role with Landcorp where she has overall strategic leadership and direction for the 55 staff in charge of 5000 dairy cows on 4000ha, as well as 2500 young stock.
And back home there’s two young children, six-year-old Amelie and five-year-old Spencer, who need Mum or Dad to get them to a multitude of after-school activities.
“At the beginning of the week I do a roster for who is milking every day and a roster for the kids as well to know who is picking them up and going to after-school things,” she says, rolling off hip-hop, ballet, jazz, tap, swimming, piano and rugby among the activities. Hence the importance now of OAD and family support.
“We’ve only dropped 9% in milk production with OAD and haven’t had the full labour unit, which with ACC and PAYE becomes a big chunk of money.”
So while they have dropped 10,000kg MS, they would have been paying an employee about $50,000 if they were still on TAD, requiring a payout higher than $7/kg MS to make it viable to employ staff.
“There’s the tangible figure of lost production versus paying somebody. But we haven’t had to bring other people in to do things like spray gorse or spread fertiliser because Nathan gets 600 to 700 hours a season not in the shed now, so he’s doing those other jobs.”
Their cost structure on the farm is only slightly down because the short lead-in to OAD means they carried the same number of cows. Electricity will be reduced by about 40% this year though by milking just once a day, as well as less chemical use and associated costs of running the dairy.
Other costs have been cut wherever possible to compensate for the low payout. Fertiliser is down a bit this year by changing a few of the mixes and palm kernel has been reduced to cut costs, though they still feed about 1kg/cow/day when needed, especially around calving when the weather is particularly wet.
“Repairs and maintenance have been deferred this year, which may come back and bite us in the bum, but Nathan is quite handy at that and has more time for it now.”
Besides fewer costs with OAD, there have been animal health benefits such as less lameness which was an issue with TAD because of some long walking distances for the cows on gravel which is needed in the high rainfall. Healthy cows in good condition resulted in only 5% empty this season and though they hadn’t scanned yet, the six-week in-calf rates usually sit about 78-80% on TAD.
“It could be higher than 80% this year – they’re all humming and no stress. They get milked once a day and eat the rest of the day.”
The biggest challenge switching to OAD was keeping on top of somatic cell count as they are usually under 100,000 with about five clinical. This year they moved to between 100,000 and 150,000 with 22 clinicals. But they are confident they will get it back under 100,000 once the herd is completely transitioned to OAD.
“And it’s very easy to see when mastitis is kicking in with OAD and because Nathan has had a long-term plan to milk two herds on OAD, we’ve been breeding with udder capacity and somatic cell count in mind.”
The herd was averaging 400kg MS/cow on TAD to total 81,000kg MS and this season on OAD is down to 365kg MS/cow for a total 72,500kg MS which is 730kg MS/ha.
They are confident they can increase production as the herd adapts fully to OAD and regardless of that, profit is up, although they’re still waiting for the final numbers. That’s mainly because of the family support and Nathan being a “bloody good pasture manager”.
“You have to be a really good pasture manager in this environment and there are so many things that contribute to that.”
The lower paddocks get drenched and then the terraces come in handy, with enough native trees left in paddocks to provide some shelter against the worst weather. Paddocks are religiously topped when needed to retain quality and regrassing in recent years is paying off.
“I think we were lucky that when the payout was up we sank a lot of the payout back into the farm with regrassing, development and refencing, so with the $4 payout we can cope.”
Their success at converting that grass into milk has earned them Westland Milk Products’ Highest Production from Pasture award four years in a row. The farm grows 12-13 tonnes drymatter (DM)/ha compared to the West Coast average of 10-12t DM/ha, and they are making good use of it.
On the support area, that’s growing out young stock as best they can, with the goal of reaching 450kg liveweight by the time they enter the herd.
“We move them frequently and weigh them once a month right through to when they’re in the herd because you can’t manage what you can’t measure. We separate them out even after weaning and feed the smaller ones palm kernel to catch them up.”
Figures are put through MINDA Weights which provides liveweight analysis tools for rearing young stock and Rebecca says the graphs show exactly how each animal is progressing.
The success of their breeding programme has placed the herd in the top 5% of breeding worth for Jerseys in the country and they’re also some of the most docile animals you could find on dairy farms. So much so, they’ve even had a cow simply stand in the yard for the artificial insemination team.
“We’re both competitive and we like to do the best we can. You have to be passionate about it and we’re passionate about the animals. They’re important; they’re like your kids and if you treat them well, then they will treat you well.”
Heifers are artificially inseminated up to two weeks before the main herd for a July 28 start to calving and across the herd up to 60 calves are kept each year, plus some bull calves for their own herd after AI or to sell to other dairy farmers.
The average cow liveweight in the herd is 400kg and that is climbing toward their target of 450kg while also lifting their milk production.
“That’s the potential of their genetics and I can see them achieving their liveweight in milk production. I’d like that to be the picture that goes to the market place – I want our customers to see good, healthy cows.”
A diverse path
Rebecca Keoghan knows all about haematology and metabolic disorders, has worked in the cement industry and now oversees seven large-scale farms on the West Coast in between helping out on the family farm and raising two children.
Ambition and determination have carved a diverse career path for her, but it was her contribution to the dairy industry in the past decade that led to her being named Dairy Woman of the Year. The win gives her a $30,000 place on the 11-month Global Women Breakthrough Leaders Programme sponsored by Fonterra.
West Coast women seem to punch well above their weight, winning the Dairy Woman of the Year award two years in a row and even two of the three finalists in this year’s competition. The other two finalists this year were West Coast dairy farmer Renee Rooney and Waihi-based LIC farm solution manager, Michelle Wilson.
