The property on the east of the Awhitu Peninsula borders the Manukau Harbour so it was essential that there was protection against any effluent leaking. The farm, where they all grew up, started off as 20 hectares bought by their grandparents after World War I.
“Growth was constrained by access to adjoining land which had been subdivided in the 1800s into smaller blocks for political reasons,” Warwick says.
“Due to proximity to Auckland and the harbour the smaller blocks also tended to be expensive and didn’t change hands frequently.”
After their parents took over in the late 1950s they built up the property by adding five neighbouring blocks over 40 years. The farm was known as one of the highest producing in the area in the 1960s and 1970s as they increased cow numbers to 200, milked through a 14-aside herringbone.
The farm has run as a split beef-dairy farm for most of the past two decades because the blocks didn’t share a boundary and higher traffic volumes make road crossing high-risk.
The Cutfield sons have continued that trend since taking over the running of the farm after their father’s death three years ago. They’ve amalgamated another two adjacent blocks which allowed contiguous racing to be installed. The farm has also reverted to 100% dairying with a 110ha milking platform and an adjacent 120ha used mainly for supplementary feed and wintering.
The original herringbone dairy was built in 1967 and with it there was one small, undersized effluent pond, which did not meet Fonterra Winter Milk or Auckland Council guidelines. So they started investigating different pond and tank options about a year ago.
‘If there was a problem and the tank overflowed the effluent wouldn’t go back to the harbour because of the location of the tank on a natural fall away from the harbour.’
They looked at different systems at National Fieldays, talked it over with their sharemilker, Willy Muir and their farm adviser, David Hawkins from Intelact. Warwick says they quickly realised that if their effluent storage was within 50 metres of the harbour they would need a resource consent. There would also be ongoing expenses for annual monitoring to ensure there were no leaks.
“That sealed it,” he says. “The tank size required was about 650m3, however, a pond for our existing configuration was more than 1000m3 in volume. At this size the final cost including other infrastructure would have been at least as expensive.”
They were also attracted to the safety aspects of an above-ground tank with no risk of humans or vehicles slipping or falling in while maintaining in-pond equipment.
“With a pond it’s basically a big swimming pool with all the safety issues that go with it,” he says.
This was particularly important because none of the family live on the farm, but visit regularly from their Auckland homes. An added benefit and cost saving was the easier ongoing maintenance around the tank, compared with a storage pond where a perimeter access track and fence around it would have been required. They decided on a Kliptank which was ordered in November and installed before Christmas, with the process of obtaining a building consent being very straight-forward.
A geotech assessment of the site was required which involved a Scala Penetrometer test to make sure the foundation site was suitable.
Installation took just one-and-a-half days, with three or four contractors onsite for most of that time. The tank was placed on a foundation of AP5 slag from the nearby Glenbrook Steel Mill, topped with Gap 7 drainage metal then crusher dust fines for the base, to provide a soft base for the polyethylene liner. The foundations made up about 15% of the $75,000 cost to install the tank.
“We had to dig in to the platform slightly to get the levels right for the 22.15m diameter tank,” Warwick says.
The site, just 70m away from the dairy, now extended to a 22-bail herringbone, was chosen for good reason.
The sump and irrigator system have been set up for ease of management.
“And the tank can easily be relocated if we decide to upgrade,” he says.
They intend to extend the property’s present effluent area of 40ha at the bottom of the farm to the full milking platform. Soil moisture meters will be used because they’re keen to make the most of the nutrients contained in the effluent as long as there’s no run-off into the harbour from the farm’s sandy and silt loam soils which are very free-draining. They think they should be able to irrigate for 300 days a year with July, August and September being likely months to store effluent. To deal with any emergencies they’ve retained their old effluent pond to keep as a back-up.
Annual rainfall is about 1100mm with westerly winds through summer usually meaning soils dry out rapidly, but that hasn’t happened as much this year as it usually does.
Beef to dairy and bigger numbers
There’s been a lot of change on the Cutfield farm in the past three years as the brothers have changed from a beef-dairy unit and lifted herd numbers from 170 to 340 this season.
Their intention is to get to 360-380 cows in the short term.
From their father’s best production of 57,000kg milksolids (MS), last year they did 129,000kg and are forecasting 140,000kg this season.
“We believe we can get to 160,000kg MS with no more infrastructure,” Warwick says.
Renewing fencing, races and improving the water supply made for a stressful period after they took over the farm.
Lower-order sharemilkers Willy and Keely Muir are on their second year on the property. They also have another lower-order sharemilking position further north on Awhitu Peninsula, where a manager milks 520 cows on 200ha, and is on target to produce 190,000kg MS this season.
They also own a 83ha high-input farm at Otaua, close to the Waikato River mouth, where 330 cows are forecast to produce close to 150,000kg MS.
They sharemilked that property for two years before buying it and now employ a manager there as well.
There’s a split-calving system on the Cutfield farm to fill a winter milk contract with Fonterra. Calving runs for eight weeks from April 1 and then 10 weeks from July 1.
With a 15% replacement rate culling concentrates on those cows with high somatic cell counts as well as low producers.
All cows are mated to Friesian semen from CRV Ambreed or Friesian bulls with an aim of producing moderate-sized cows. Surplus heifers are exported to China.
They feed 200 tonnes a year of palm kernel, with quantities being upped over recent years. It’s fed out in the paddock and there are no plans to build a feedpad in the medium term.
This year 13ha of maize silage has been made on their runoff, up from 12ha last season. About 40ha is cut for grass silage along with 15ha of hay, depending on grass surpluses. There’s also 3.5 to 5ha of turnips grown.
In the last five years a pasture renovation programme has seen about 6ha each year go into mixed herb species including chicory, plantain, two white clovers, one red clover and lucerne.
Up to 125 units of nitrogen go on each year but it’s hoped to cut this back because of the high nutrient retention properties of the farm’s soils, which will also be boosted by greater effluent application.
Key points
Location: Awhitu Peninsula, south-west of Auckland
Area: 110ha milking platform
Owners: Warwick, Garth and Paul Cutfield
Lower-order sharemilkers: Willy and Keely Muir
Herd: 340 Friesians
Production target: 140,000kg milksolids with Fonterra winter milk contract
Calving: Eight weeks from April 1, 10 weeks from July 1
Supplements: 200 tonnes/year palm kernel, 13ha maize silage grown on runoff, 40ha/year grass silage, 15ha hay, 3.5-5ha turnips
Runoff: 120ha adjacent
Dairy: 22-aside herringbone.
