West Coast farmers Ron and Jackie Monk achieve similar production with their once-a-day (OAD) registered Jersey herd to what they did on twice-a-day (TAD) and attribute much of it to genetics.
The couple farm at Kokatahi, inland from Hokitika, where intensive dairying covers the expanse of flat land between the Southern Alps to the east and the Tasman Sea to the west.
Ron’s family has been milking cows there for three generations and his father, Cliff, had a registered Jersey stud that sparked his own interest in genetics. It’s resulted in a couple of premier sires including the most recent, Hawthorn Grove Zeus, with two young ones now coming through for Jersey Genes, the joint venture between Jersey New Zealand and CRV Ambreed. The mother of one of those bulls is a Jersey Genome team elite heifer with a BW at two years that ranked her within the top 0.1% of all cows in New Zealand.
Ron’s passion is genetics with a focus on breeding cows that produce milk efficiently on a grass system. Artificial insemination has been used since the herd’s inception and Ron has been on LIC’s shareholder council for the past 12 years.
‘And talking to most farmers, it’s the afternoon milking that is the drudgery and when the cows are less happy to be milked.’
The farm stretches over 80 effective hectares with another 20ha in bush and swamp. Beneath lies a range of soil types from river silt to peaty swamp. About a kilometre down the road is the 86ha runoff where they run all the young stock, winter half the herd and make about three-quarters of the silage requirements for the herd. Compared with some areas of the West Coast, their rainfall is a modest three metres a year, though it can vary from 2.4m to 4m and Ron’s 30 years of recording shows the rain events are getting bigger.
They follow a simple grass-based system with just a bit of molasses in spring. In their last season of TAD milking 12 years ago, the herd averaged 376kg milksolids (MS) a cow and 884kg/ha over 250 days. Last season on OAD milking, it was 375kg MS/cow and 843kg MS/ha, adding up to 67,500kg MS from the 180 cows at the peak for a similar 250-day production period that begins on August 10 and winds up mid-May as it starts getting wet and cold going into winter.
One of the things that prompted their move to OAD was the challenge to breed a cow that suited OAD milking and maintain a profitable farming system with it. It also offered a lifestyle that suited Ron and his family.
“The first year we went OAD on Christmas Day and from that day on we never milked twice-a-day again,” Ron remembers.
“We only lost 2% in production that year and that gave me the confidence to think we could do this quite comfortably and have nothing like the national average decline of 20%.”
Production dropped about 10% in their first full year of OAD milking and by their second year it had risen back to its previous TAD production. They’ve found the two-year-olds produce less than their TAD counterparts because they haven’t developed their full udder capacity. But it’s a short-lived deficit, with two-year-olds staying in good condition and hence getting in-calf again easily to become a three-year-old in the herd producing the same as their TAD mates. And they keep going.
Ron with his ideal Jersey cow, Hawthorn Grove Xray.
“And talking to most farmers, it’s the afternoon milking that is the drudgery and when the cows are less happy to be milked.”
Effluent hasn’t halved with OAD and Ron estimates it’s more like 60-65% of TAD collection from the dairy. He says that’s because the cows have to be milked right out when it’s just one milking, so they tend to spend longer in the yard.
When it comes to costs, the operating expenses on their grass-based OAD system worked out at $4.82/kg MS last season, while farm working expenses were $2.98/ kg MS.
Costs include an assistant milker five days a week, so there are usually two people in the dairy.
The Monks have two sons who may or may not come back to the farm, and the size of the operation works well for them to achieve their goals.
So instead of farm expansion, they’ve used their equity to make off-farm investments such as a house between the milking platform and runoff that could suit a manager down the track, and a house in Hokitika.
Ron sums up: “I want good healthy cows, a good living and a lifestyle as well.”
Key points
Farmers: Ron and Jackie Monk
Location: Kokatahi, West Coast
Area: 80ha effective, 86ha runoff
Herd: 180 Jersey cows BW 155, PW 152
Production: 67,500kg MS
