Friday, March 29, 2024

Doing the hard yards

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Taking on a farm during a conversion process and turning it into a sustainable and profitable business has taken several years, but hard work and good support have helped them succeed.
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It’s been an eight-year journey for Brian Vergeest and Sheryl Hamilton to transform Southern Pastures-owned Manako Farm into a sustainable and profitable business.

With its owners’ guidance, it has swapped imported supplementary PKE for locally produced forage and silage, and increased the farm’s ability to grow more pasture.

The result is a farm producing grass-fed dairy, which is more in balance with the local environment without major sacrifices in production.

The couple have operated the farm for 14 years, firstly under its previous owner, Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) and then for Southern Pastures after it bought the farm in 2012.

Manako was part of the 10,000ha pine to pasture dairy conversions CHH completed in late 2006. 

The couple were sharemilking in Lichfield prior to shifting to Manako. Their first season in 2007 was one they will never forget.

The farm was still being converted when they arrived on June 1. 

Fences, the milking shed and even the loading ramps for their cows were still being completed. As a result, their herd had to jump off the truck when they arrived, Brian recalls.

As the cows calved, they were walked to a neighbouring farm, where they were milked until the new machines were started on August 13.

The rest of the farm infrastructure was finished soon after.

“We call ourselves modern pioneers,” Brian says.

“When our cows came, they were break-fed on swedes and there was no fencing and no water and we had to ring fence everything. While they were grazing the crops, contractors were putting the water in.

“It was pretty challenging and when you look back, we think, ‘how did we do it?’” Despite the obstacles, the couple look back at the time with great fondness. Not only did they enjoy the challenge, but they formed a close bond with the other sharemilkers working on the new conversions in the district, with those friendships remaining to this day.

“It was a very tight knit group and we just bounced ideas off each other,” he says.

The 1000 cows on Manako farms are producing 469kg MS/cow or about 488,000kg MS. It is hoped once the herd settles down production will lift to 500,000kg MS

“The way the world has gone, it probably hasn’t been a bad option,” she says.

“On a day-to-day basis we still get to enjoy what we do. We get to dairy farm, we get to work with leaders of the industry and work with a great team of people on-farm. I think we get the best of both worlds.”

Mark says they want the farm to keep performing at its current production level while fine-tuning it to improve its efficiency.

“It’s about nailing it down and doing it better,” he says.

“If you count performance by production, we’re at that level. We don’t desire to do more production off this farm, we want to enhance it and have it in a steady state.”

That will mean consistently good mating performances and well-grown calves.

“We now sit there and focus on doing the very basics and just doing everything really well and driving those efficiencies,” she says.

“It’s about hitting that sweet spot and once you hit it, it’s about maintaining it,” Sheryl says.

Brian says they have really enjoyed the journey over the past 14 years.

“As a sharemilker, it was pretty challenging in those first few years. But staying on the farm has meant that we have seen the rewards from all our earlier hard work that we put in. We’ve treated it like our own (farm) and hence we’re still here.”

Farm facts

Farm Owners: Southern Pastures

Contract milkers: Brian Vergeest and Sheryl Hamilton 

Farm size: 429ha, effective dairy area – 357.1ha, bush/wetlands 48ha and forestry 12.8ha

Herd Size: 1000 split in two mobs

Production: 2019-20; 469kg MS/cow or 487,095kg MS 

Target: 2020-21; about 500,000kg MS

Cost of production: $4.18

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