Friday, March 29, 2024

Farming with a laugh

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A Waikato farmer is gaining a loyal group of followers after tweeting farming posts and starting a YouTube channel chronicling their daily lives on the farm – and garnering a few good laughs along the way. Cheyenne Nicholson reports.
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After a challenging few years on the farm, a Waikato farmer has found solace and encouragement from social media.

An avid tweeter, Bart van de Ven started using Twitter a few years ago and last year started to upload videos about his daily life on the farm.

With close to 3500 followers, his videos are as educational as they are entertaining.

Bart chronicled his ‘Journey to Calving’ on Twitter, uploading weekly updates on where pasture covers were at and how he was feeling.

“I’m almost on there too much,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed it and the farming community there is awesome.

“You can ask any question, and you won’t get pushed down.

“It’s a supportive space, and I’ve learned a lot about different farming systems both here and overseas.”

He has noticed an increase in urban followers and says he’s enjoying the opportunity to educate them on farming and give them a few laughs along the way. 

He also started a YouTube channel called “Farming with a Laugh.”

The farm is a System 3 and is fed about a tonne of bought-in feed per cow along with chicory and maize grown on-farm.

“We’re always trying to do the maximum production for the least amount of money, so we’re always working on our budgeting and fine-tuning things as we go. Mistakes will (and have) been made, but we learn and move on.”

November 2018 saw the Paeroa district and surrounds get dry fast with no rain until the following March.

A cracking winter was quickly followed by a very dry spring.

Water tables were low, which meant the 2019-20 summer was just as unkind at the one before it.

Come April 2020, when pasture should have been romping ahead, the farm was 40t behind where they needed to be with pasture covers sitting around 1800.

Already relying heavily on the supplementary feed grown on the runoff block and PKE prices not looking inviting, Bart says he started to feel nervous for their situation leading into calving.

“This is our third season here, so I’m starting to notice trends, and it’s looking like the dry is starting earlier and earlier,” he explained.

“We are starting to calve earlier to combat that.

“It means we can dry off and prepare earlier, especially the runoff block as we rely on the silage and hay we take off it.”

Instead of jumping the gun and spending money on bought-in feed for the winter months, Bart and the farm owner decided to play things week-by-week and keep the option of buying in feed up their sleeve for when they really needed it while hoping for the rain they desperately needed to get them to the 2500 covers they needed.

He focused on the things he could control such as his weekly pasture walks, updating autumn feed budgets and sticking to a long round. He regularly punched the numbers to find the balance between feeding his cows fully and encouraging pasture growth.

“From a feeding perspective, we’ve learned a lot since coming here,” he says.

“When we farmed in the South Island we always tended to have overly fat cows with the weather being a lot colder.

“We then moved north again and as a result, had a lot of down cows at a 5-plus body condition score (BCS).

“Our second year here, our average BCS was 5.2 (excluding heifers), and we had the same problem.

“This year we’re averaging 4.8, and so far, no downers and calving is going a lot easier.”

May saw an increase in covers aided by the application of urea in April/May and sticking to a 100-day round. Youngstock were kept at the runoff a few weeks longer than usual to try and build covers on the home farm.

A big dumping of rain in June combined with good soil temps saw growth rates rocket ahead and got them across the 2500 cover line, just in time for the lead up to calving.

“I wasn’t confident we’d get there. The last 10 days of June were phenomenal,” he says.

“We grew the most grass we’ve ever grown this dry season which is crazy.

“It’s the middle of winter, it shouldn’t be growing like this but we were owed this growth coming off a drought.

“We’ve had only a handful of frosts, and soil temperature is sitting around 10-11 degrees.”

Bart admits his mental health was getting grim through March and April as his feed worries mounted.

“Having a supportive wife who is out there doing it with me and bouncing ideas off each other, along with sharing my problems on Twitter made a really big difference and helped me work through that,” Bart says.

The next cab off the rank is getting their planned start of calving earlier and ticking off 80% production before Christmas. This goal is largely to counter the effects of the dry summer period, which seems to be inching its way earlier and earlier each year.

Now that calving has kicked off, the main focus is sticking to his round lengths from his spring rotation planner, leaving good residuals in the lead up to silage season and getting in 80% of production before Christmas which is a three to five year goal.

Calving started on July 12 with 120 heifers reared as replacements each year. 

“I have reared calves for more than a decade but there are always new things or ideas that can be learnt,” Vanessa says.

“I am always listening to others and reading articles in case there is something I can put in place for our calf-rearing system.

“Our weaning policy is eight weeks on milk and then wean. Friesian calves will ideally be around 90kg, and the Jersey calves 75kg.

“Calves leave the farm for runoff in late November, early December and get 2kg of meal per calf until they leave to go to the grazier.”

Mating will start October 1 this season with five weeks AI using Friesian and Wagyu semen followed by five weeks with the bulls. For the time being, they’re using Jersey bulls and are exploring the low birthweight Herefords as an option for next year.

So what’s next for the family?

“Well, that depends,” Bart says.

“Kevin and Sandra are great bosses who let us run the farm how we want to, supplying us with what we need to do the job right. 

“We have warm houses, great infrastructure, a tidy farm and good pay – it makes it hard to leave. If we had to stay here for the next seven years, we’d be happy to.

“We would love to go 50:50 on this farm but that’s not really up to us. For now, we love it here and will see what the next few years bring.” 

“A lot of people comment on our step down from 50:50 to lower-order but honestly, for us it has worked out really well. I’ve experienced lots of different farming systems and ultimately the farm we’re on now is our happy place,” Vanessa added.

And in the meantime, Bart will continue to make his videos for social media and try to make people laugh.

Farm Facts

Farm owners: Kevin and Sandra Gillingham

Lower-order sharemilkers: Bart and Vanessa van de Ven 

Location: Paeroa, Waikato

Area: 171ha with 40ha runoff block

Cow numbers: 500 Friesian cross

Production 2019-2020: 205,000kg/MS

Production target 2020-2021: 210,000 -215,000kg MS

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