Just over a year ago, most of Sean and Laura Hayes’ new block of land near Westport was a sphagnum moss bog with dense manuka and gorse surrounding the remnants of a derelict commercial cranberry operation.
Numerous underground springs and an iron pan had created the waterlogged ground that was ideal for water-loving vegetation such as sphagnum moss but would have been a quagmire beneath a herd of dairy cows. Yet the Hayes visualised a milking platform emerging from that bog and set about flipping the entire 50-hectare block – digging more than a metre depth of soil to break through the hard pan and bring the gravel layer beneath to the surface.
In less than four months the property went through a metamorphosis, emerging from the swampy ground as levelled, grassed paddocks that were grazing the milking herd within weeks.
Flipping the soil and turning it into grassed, fenced, fertilised paddocks for the milking herd cost about $10,000 a hectare. The Hayes’ other three blocks of land abutting it are producing more than 700kg milksolids (MS) a hectare and still climbing as pasture improves, so they knew the land, once flipped, had the same potential and would enable them to lift cow numbers to 450 over time.
“The land has to be at a cost to sustain the development to justify doing it. You wouldn’t want to pay any more for it by the time you service debt,” Laura acknowledges.
It was helped by a good relationship with their bank, built up from their previous land development work and subsequent results. Plus they got the go-ahead before the milk payout slumped and the wheels were already in motion to develop the cranberry land.
Some of the flipped ground yet to be grassed.
“We were probably lucky to do it when we did.”
The land had lain idle for years with overgrown cranberry beds at the centre of the manuka-covered swamp. At one stage it was even a potential coal storage area – not the type of property usually earmarked for the dairy industry to milk cows.
Initially the Hayes planned to mulch the manuka and gorse, but the boggy ground was so soft the mulcher just sank into the quagmire. It was out with the mulcher and in with a 50-tonne digger to swap the waterlogged surface with the gravel beneath. The bulldozers followed to level and contour the land in preparation for the fencing, lanes, liming, fertiliser and grass seed.
Work began in November 2014 with the necessary resource consents and was all completed by the end of March, enabling most of it to be grazed before the end of the season, then used through winter to help build up humus on the gravelly surface.
Sean and Laura are no strangers to bringing flipped land into dairy pasture. Six years ago they bought the neighbouring 50ha Avery block in partnership with a local farmer that had just been flipped from the remnants of a pine forest.
They added that to a neighbouring 113ha humped and hollowed drystock farm that they had bought earlier the same year and converted the lot to dairying. Shortly after, they bought out the partner who had helped them purchase the Avery block.
“It was a busy year,” Laura says. “We bought the 113ha block and then the Avery block, built a 30-aside herringbone shed, a house for the sharemilkers and then found some sharemilkers.”
The cranberry challenge is the fourth neighbouring block they’ve bought to create the 206ha milking platform they have today. In a couple of years when pasture production has stepped up on the cranberry block, they plan to be milking about 450 cows at just over 2.2 cows/ha.
Sean and Laura oversee the business from their base at Charleston further down the coast where their dairy engineering business is based. The couple have a long history in dairying and Sean milked cows for 20 years, but a long-standing desire for engineering evolved into a fully fledged engineering company, Hayes Farm Services, which employs two full-time staff as well as themselves.
Meanwhile, the expanding farm beyond Westport has had 25% sharemilkers – with their own machinery – Damian (Dumpy) Kohrs and Tiffany Hampton at the helm for the past three years and the Hayes viewed the cranberry land as a way to increase the business for both parties.
“We could see the potential in the cranberry block,” Laura says. “If we wanted a sharemilker, we needed a milking platform that was big enough to give them a living as well as pay its way. What’s an economic unit these days? Four hundred and fifty cows is still only just over 2.2 cows/ha here, so we needed more land.
“The key is to maximise the per-hectare potential of this block over the next three years and going up in numbers offers a wee bit more for these guys.”
From 300 cows last year producing 115,500kg MS, the herd has increased to 368 cows this season on the increased milking platform with a target of 150,000kg MS, with the intention of lifting numbers further as the cranberry block increases grass production. Half the herd is made up of crossbred cows, with 25% Friesian and another 25% Jersey for a mid-range animal to suit the farm.
When Dumpy and Tiffany arrived on the farm three years ago, it was milking 270 cows on the mix of humped and hollowed land, plus the flipped Avery block that was still struggling to get decent grass production. By necessity, the digger had dug deep when it flipped the Avery block three years earlier to bury the forest debris, leaving little topsoil behind for grass to get a hold among the gravel.
“When you’re flipping, you’re trying to retain as much topsoil as possible,” Laura explains. “But you still lose most of it.”
To help build up the humus layer on top and add nutrients, Dumpy ran a disc over the Avery block and airseeded swedes on to it, that resulted in a small 7-8 tonne/ha crop, but was a good boost for the stony ground.
The following year he drilled rape seed that achieved a seven-tonne crop and was quite happy. By the end of this year, the entire Avery block will have been cropped and Dumpy says it’s making a huge difference to the flipped ground.
“To see the Avery block from what it was to what it is now is quite pleasing. And they say Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
After the cropping success with the Avery block, a similar approach will be used to improve the gravelly surface on the newly flipped cranberry block, which still has patchy grass growth. Paddocks will be chosen for winter crops to winter the herd, which will help replace the missing topsoil and provide a firm base for the cows. Those paddocks will be over-sown in autumn, with a roller going over them to push the emerging rocks back down.
“Cows don’t make a mark on the flipped land in winter and we’re putting humus on to it.”
Last year they planted 11ha of rape on the farm for winter and that will increase to 20ha this coming winter which will complete the cropped area on the Avery block and continue the cranberry development.
“I put oats behind the rape this year,” Dumpy says, “so we can grow a bit of balage for winter feed, but it wasn’t quite as successful as I’d hoped and a bit of a learning curve. We’re only growing it for winter to try and save buying in balage.”
Last year the farm made 170 bales of balage and bought in 60 more bales, plus 90 bales of straw to feed to the cows through winter.
They’ve sown One50 ryegrass on all the flipped land and it’s worked well once the topsoil starts building up. Some areas on the West Coast have had problems with pests such as manuka beetle and porina, but fortunately there’s been no major outbreak on any of the Hayes’ blocks. Gorse can be a problem because it flowers twice a year on the coast, but a couple of blanket sprays has kept the pasture clean and they will repeat it again in autumn on the cranberry block.
The goal is to grow more grass over the entire farm, which has been challenging even on ground that hasn’t been flipped because of a cool coastal breeze that causes quality and quantity issues. This year Dumpy mowed paddocks after the cows to address quality and has not had enough grass to pre-mow. So far, the farm hasn’t managed to grow more than 50kg drymatter/ha/day and the challenge is to lift that and get more grass into the cows.
Dumpy and Tiffany are making headway and compared to last season when the cows were fed 300kg of meal each and about 600kg of palm kernel, they’ve dropped to 230kg meal per cow and 330kg palm kernel this season.
“We’ve grown a lot more grass this year than last year, so we don’t need as much supplement.”
While crops are being used to improve the flipped land, about 10ha of the humped and hollowed block is being regrassed each year, mostly by spraying and then direct drilling, with some cultivation.
One of the plusses of having flipped land as well as humped and hollowed, is the balance it provides through the year. Humping and hollowing was common practice on wetter West Coast ground before flipping, but it’s still wet in the hollows that collect the run-off from the humps. However, it does have the advantage of growing grass through summer when the gravelly flipped ground dries out.
“It only takes a week for flipped ground to dry out,” Dumpy says. “We can have two inches of rain and need more a week later. That’s how quickly it disappears on the flipped ground.
“So we calve on the flipped ground and then come back to the humped and hollowed paddocks nearer the dairy. When it’s really wet we try and put the cows on the flipped, but you can’t do that all the time because the paddocks are further away.
“It certainly is a challenging block. We were after a good challenge and we certainly got it.”
The plan is to irrigate about 25% of the flipped cranberry block from a bore and a small man-made lake that was used for the former cranberry operation. K-line will be set-up for the irrigation when finance allows. In the meantime they will work on building up the soil.
“It’s like any country anywhere,” Laura says. “You have to feed and nurture it. It will come through and it just takes time.”
Engineering enterprise
‘just grew’
Sean Hayes spent 20 years milking cows, but what he really wanted to do was engineering. No apprenticeships were available when he left school, so he opted for the Federated Farmers cadet scheme on a dairy farm instead.
Down the track, Sean and Laura bought their first farm, an 80-hectare dairy unit near Charleston where they milked cows until it simply became too small. After turning it into a drystock block, Sean began dabbling in engineering and “it just grew”.
It grew to employ two full-time staff at the Charleston-based business that covers the top half of the West Coast as well as inland to Murchison and Springs Junction. Instead of milking cows, he covers a range of engineering work from building dairies and effluent systems to the endless maintenance jobs on farms. He’s also a registered milking machine tester which is a handy skill for the business.
At the same time they’ve been developing the blocks of land north of Westport into dairying, with sharemilkers Dumpy and Tiffany now milking the cows. Down at Charleston they run the young stock on their 80ha property; taking well-weaned calves through to in-calf heifers that return to the milking platform at the beginning of June.
Their engineering business means they rely heavily on their sharemilkers and catch up every couple of weeks. Once a month they get around the table with farm adviser Michael Robb as well to go over the business.
“I much prefer to have people involved in my business who have their own business,” Sean says. “They have skin in the game.”
The Hayes’ involvement in dairy farming means they understand the issues farmers face with infrastructure and quite often trial new ideas on their own farm. It’s how they developed the palm kernel trailers now sold to farmers to tow into paddocks, hay feeders and basically “anything a farmer wants”.
Winter is the busiest time for the engineering company and although Sean expected last year to be quieter because of the lower payout, it was actually busier than usual.
“Capital work has slowed up, but not maintenance. And there’s capital investment that has to go on, like effluent, so projects are still going ahead.”
Capital fertiliser for flipped land:
- 5 tonne lime/ha
- 0.5 tonnes of dolomite/ha
- 0.5 tonnes of pakihi starter/ha
- Followed by 0.5 tonne/ha super when grass sown and Cropmaster at grass strike
- Nitrogen applied post grazing
