Waikato dairy farmer Bryan Clausen says his key to success is he’s never worked a day in his life.
For most of his life he’s headed out into the early morning to milk cows and at age 70 little has changed. But he and wife Jenny, married for 50 years, now own two extended dairy farms as well as a grazing farm and are partners in two other dairy farms.
“I love being here,” he says.
“It’s never been a job for me. I haven’t worked a day in my life.”
Bryan started his farming career on his parents’ 40-cow dairy farm at Palmerston North.
As a three-year-old, so he’s been told, he knew the name of every cow in his parents’ Jersey herd and during his school days he would bike home at lunchtime to see which cows had calved.
“I’ve always been a farmer, except when I dug spuds,” he says.
“I was paid £4 a week on the farm but got £5 a day picking potatoes and that was six days a week. That was a lot of money for a 15-year-old.”
He bought his first car, a Vauxhall, from his savings.
On his farm today the cows don’t have names any more, except when one goes the wrong way out of a gate. That’s because the Clausen family milks 1080 cows, of which 650 are on their home farm at Gordonton. Bryan moved to Waikato with his parents, married Jenny and sharemilked on a 25% contract for his parents until they could afford to step up to a 50:50 contract.
Five years later, when his parents sold their farm at Matangi, he was able to borrow some family money to help him buy the land they have developed over the past 38 years.
“It was full of rushes and we had to drain it and crop it,” he says.
He continues to crop maize for silage, about 200 tonnes each year, as a pasture supplement.
“As time went on we bought three neighbouring farms and then one across the road so we added four extra pieces of land as they became available, plus the grazing block at Te Kuiti.”
Financially it had been tight at times but the same bank obviously had confidence in Bryan’s abilities as a farm owner and operator.
“Production was good and maybe I’m just an easy person to get along with,” he says.
“That could be part of their consideration. I would just go along to the bank and present our case.”
Bryan’s day now starts a little later, at 6.15am, when he gets up to help milk the second herd so everyone can leave the dairy by 8am and go home for breakfast.
“We have got to be out of the dairy by eight,” he says, readily admitting he likes a routine.
“We just have to… the washdown and everything all done. That’s the time because we have to be back at work by nine.
“I have a few guys here and we all do our own jobs. I will wipe the rails down while someone else puts water through and someone cleans the yard and then we can all go to breakfast.”
While Bryan was born into a dairying routine, Jenny, a hairdresser when they met, has never felt compelled to milk cows.
“I didn’t say anything in my vows about having to milk his cows,” she says.
She quips that Bryan doesn’t want to quit milkings because he might be landed with extra jobs on the donkey farm and in the park-like garden she maintains around their home. The house was originally a Keith Hay rectangle that had one corner sinking in the peat until it was repiled, improved, extended and reclad, a couple of times.
Bryan is the ‘help’ in their front paddocks where a collection of animals have their heads down grazing until they eye visitors coming along a tree-lined drive – usually children’s groups. They’re mostly town kids, thrilled at the chance to get an up-close encounter with animals.
Each year Jenny also organises an open day, sometimes two, as fundraisers for worthy Waikato causes such as Waikids health services, the recipient of this year’s gate takings.
“We will have a paddock full of cars,” she says.
“The children get a donkey ride and see all the different animals and birds. The adults get tea or coffee from the garage and there’s a real crowd here.”
She runs a Christmas barbecue and provides the drink and sausages as another fundraiser.
“People phone almost every day to ask if the donkey farm is open but apart from the public open days we are only open to the kindies, early childhood centres, schools, gardening clubs and other groups.”
As their website www.mammoth-donkey.co.nz explains, “children’s play groups frequently visit … to ride a donkey, cuddle a soft rabbit, see the Anglo Nubian goats, birds, deer, fowl, emu, miniature Belted Galloway cattle and a miniature horse”.
Bryan’s main interests in their “zoo” are the pigeons and donkeys.
“We do all the donkey shows each year, maybe 10 A&P Shows,” he says.
They imported the country’s first Mammoth donkeys 12 years ago. They stand 14-16 hands high (about 1.5m) to the top of the shoulder and tower over the small English and Irish donkeys which were the main feature of their Awapuni Donkey Stud when it started 30 years ago.
“I have kept pigeons all my life and my father had pigeons,” Bryan says.
“I don’t race them. I let them out every morning to fly around the farm.”
He is a patron of the region’s poultry and pigeon club and breeds purebred laying hens for shows.
The couple’s interest in donkeys has drawn them to North America several times and it was from Texas that they imported their first two Coffee Hollow Mammoth jenny (female) donkeys. A year later Ace, a Mammoth jack from Texas, arrived and since then other Mammoth donkeys from Illinois, Las Vegas and Canada have been introduced.
Bryan says he’s often been asked when he’s going to step out of the dairy.
The answer, he says, is the same as it was 10 years ago: “What else would I do?”
He takes the cups off at milking, a task he considers essential to do well.
“You look at a cow and you know she’s finished milking,” he says.
“She may not look that way if she has a big fleshy udder but she has finished and you haven’t added extra time by sending her round again.”
The 40-bail rotary on the 198ha home farm has meal feeders, as does the 30-bail rotary on the adjoining 118ha farm run by a manager. As well as the dairy herds they are grazing rising two-year heifers, while a 411ha (120ha mowable) grazing block south near Te Kuiti hosts 225 rising one-year heifers and carryover stock.
Bryan and Jenny bought the grazing block 13 years ago after selling smaller blocks at Te Uku, near Raglan, and Waikokowai, west of Huntly. Two other farms are owned in partnership with their sons Craig and Karl who are milking 600 cows in total.
The 1080 cows being milked at Bryan and Jenny’s two Gordonton farms this season – 680 on the home farm and 400 next door – provide all-year supply and their production has risen from 312kg milksolids (MS)/cow in 2009-10 to 354kg MS/cow the following year and 423kg MS/cow in 2011-12.
Progress was set back by last summer’s drought, which saw 120 cows trucked to Te Kuiti and overall production dropping to 385kg MS/cow for the season, but it is back on track this season.
“It’s a low-cost system,” Bryan says.
“We have extra feed in our in-dairy ration and there’s 200 tonnes of maize silage but while that’s about 20% of their diet we are relying on good pasture management.”
Key Points
Location: Gordonton
Owners: Bryan and Jenny Clausen
Area: Two adjacent farms of 198ha and 118ha
Dairies: 40 and 30-bail rotaries
Runoff: 411ha (120ha mowable)
Herd: Milking 1080 cows (Friesian, Jersey and crossbred). Grazing 225 one-year heifers and carryovers at Te Kuiti
Production: 375,500kg milksolids (MS) in 2012-13 (30-year drought) and 413,086kg MS in 2011-12.
