Friday, March 29, 2024

Family life the focus

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Mark Cudmore hadn’t ever worked a full dairy season when he took up the challenge of managing a new conversion in 2012 but that’s been no impediment – he’s this year’s Canterbury-North Otago Farm Manager of the Year.
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Motivated into a career change by the loss of their unborn son at 37 weeks, Mark and wife Jess decided it was time to make family life a priority.

A Lincoln University graduate with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science with honours, Mark had been working as a technical field rep for PGG Wrightson specialising in pasture and forages but decided farming was where he wanted to be.

He was working for Nick Ensor at Cheviot when Ensor decided to convert land to dairying and Mark jumped at the opportunity to tackle the challenge of managing it.

“Nick took a risk but had a lot of faith in us – it was a fantastic opportunity,” he says.

Mark’s father’s family were dairying on the West Coast and he’d worked short stints on their properties so it wasn’t completely foreign to him.

“I talked to everyone and anyone, got expert advice from whoever I could. I’ve never been afraid to ask for information or help and there’s just so much of that available in the dairy industry.

“The transfer of knowledge in the industry is exceptional.”

He’s used tools and information on the DairyNZ website and drawn heavily on advice from his farm consultant Ed Tapp of FarmRight.

Pasture management is where he’s put an enormous focus right from the outset of the conversion, pushing for complete regrassing.

They probably saved money with the 40-aside herringbone that’s not adorned with bells or whistles and a herd that was almost 90% carryovers saving about $500/cow but he wasn’t going to cut any corners when it came to regrassing.

He put in cultivars with a range of flowering dates, included plantain in the mix in some paddocks and included some short-term ryegrasses as well so a continuous regrassing programme could follow on.

A lot of effort went into establishment but it is paying dividends with their focus on precision grazing management ensuring cows are consuming high volumes of high-quality feed in every break.

They follow the spring rotation planner to the letter, graze to a residual between 1500 and 1600kg drymatter (DM)/ha and go into paddocks at as close to 3100kg DM/ha as possible throughout the season.

Cows are consuming more than 16 tonnes DM/ha/year of high quality pasture, and along with summer turnips and autumn-grazed fodder beet that’s keeping bought-in supplement use down to less than 200kg DM/cow/year.

They manage to keep very close to a 20-day round from balance date, usually about September 27, through to autumn and pay strict attention to allocation using GPS to set up 12-hour breaks.

“If we find we haven’t quite got it right we go out straight away and adjust the next break. It’s nothing for us to have 9-10 fence reels out at any one time.”

They don’t use a mower apart from cutting any true surpluses but will move any dry cows onto the platform from the adjacent support land to clean up if necessary.

The summer turnips are sown on stony lower terraces as part of the regrassing programme and 3ha of fodder beet on the platform is being used this season as an autumn forage supplement grazed in situ.

Grown under irrigation, it’s just been measured at 26t DM/ha.

They had been using balage as supplement through autumn but last season had a lot of wastage in wet conditions.

Starting out with a herd made up mostly of carry-over cows has had its ramifications but culling and a strict focus on body condition score is improving reproductive performance.

The six-week in-calf rate was 57% last year but this season is 70%.

Last season North Canterbury Vets body condition scored every cow in mid-April and despite the temptation of the record payout, cows were dried off based on those results and calving dates.

Mark loves the people aspect of the job too and employs people based on attitude, knowing from experience that you can learn a lot quickly if you have a mind to.

He and Jess have four children, Cooper, aged 10, Flynn aged eight, Archie aged seven and Nate aged three.

Ultimately they’re aiming for farm ownership to give them a secure financial future. To get there they’re always striving to learn so they can grow their skills and have the courage to take on new challenges.

Central to everything they do is the importance they place on maintaining a positive home life with good work-life balance.

After all that’s what it’s all ultimately about.

Runner-up was Jonathon Hoets of Rakaia while Ben and Jemma Abernethy of Oxford were third.

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