Friday, March 29, 2024

Having a positive effect

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Organic dairy farmer Matt Minoprio doesn’t agree with the philosophy of minimising dairying’s impact on the environment.
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“That needs to be flipped around,” he said.

“We need to be thinking about how dairying can have a positive effect on the environment.”

His parents, Chris and Sally, had a dairy farm milking 250 cows out of Otorohanga, as well as a runoff, when he was growing up. They didn’t start farming organically until they moved to a 80 hectare property on the slopes of Mt Pirongia which had been a dairy farm for 60 years but five years ago switched to drystock.

Chris thought grazing 200 heifers on the farm would be his retirement option, but now admits he’s never worked so hard since they made their move four years ago, tackling a number of development projects such as fencing streams, improving races, extending the dairy and putting in an effluent system.

Meanwhile Matt, who completed a Bachelor of Science majoring in geography at Auckland University, was introduced to organics during a paper on resource management. He travelled in South America, Europe and India, which was where he discovered permaculture and biodynamics.

“That had the answers to what I was studying at university,” he said.

Returning home he spent two years as an assistant on a Raglan organic farm before managing a 100-cow organic herd in Kerikeri for a season.

He and wife Claudia, a contract accountant, then moved to Waiheke Island where for two years he was a house husband, jack of all trades and caregiver for daughter, Isabella, now two and a half. But talk of his parents selling the farm sealed a move back to the dairy industry.

“It was very bad timing to buy at the peak of cow prices and then have our first season a low payout one,” he said.

“But you’ve got to look at the big picture.”

He’s on track to produce 48,000kg milksolids (MS) from 155 cows.

Chris and Sally converted the farm to become certified organic two years ago so Matt and Claudia needed to source cows from organic dairy farms for their first herd. About two-thirds came from Morrinsville and the rest from Murupara.

Calving started on July 9 with two sets of twins being born. By mid-October 150 were milking with six still to calve. Matt said he’d only had four with mastitis, four with lameness issues and no bloat so far. Of four downer cows at the beginning of calving with milk fever and magnesium deficiency, three were culled. The culls were able to graze on grass on forestry blocks which aren’t certified organic, before leaving the farm.

‘It was very bad timing to buy at the peak of cow prices and then have our first season a low payout one.’

Through their first winter on their new home the herd was given Agrisea seaweed tonic and cider vinegar as well as some homeopathy treatments from time to time.

There are 32 rising two-year-olds grazing at Marokopa, on the west coast, which when they went to see them, looked so good they didn’t recognise them as theirs, Chris said.

He’s been helping out on the farm for the first five months of the season, continuing development work he’s undertaken since buying the property. There have been three extra sets of cups added to the 13-aside herringbone dairy as there was already a roof over that area.

“It was a no-brainer,” he said.

“And you’ve got to have something to do in the morning.”

It takes an hour and half to milk in the morning and then again in the evening with Matt saying he’s found the high nib wall a benefit in being able to hold the cups in the right place to get the correct alignment with each cow’s teats.

A $55,000 effluent system has been added which consists of a stone trap and 2.2m deep tank below the dairy yard where organic preparations can be added to the liquid effluent before it’s pumped up to a 400,000 litre lined effluent pond 40m away by Mono pump which was put in last year. It’s then applied to sidlings and steeper paddocks by way of a rain cannon irrigator on a sled, which has had no blockage problems.

With the farm’s deep Maeroa ash soils on top of clay their two metre a year average rainfall quickly soaks into the ground. The farm sits at 140m above sea level so receives considerably more rain than properties closer to Pirongia.

Before the Minoprios bought the farm a lot of 30% potassic super had been applied but no lime. The result was a ph of 5.3 and an Olsen P level of 46-49. After applying one tonne/ha of lime a year for five years they now apply Biophos and minerals every year to most of the farm, as well as liquid seaweed and fish fertilisers.

Matt has had a good response to 30t of composted chicken manure, trucked from South Auckland, which was applied to the hills and some of the poorer flats in mid-September. They’ve soil tested every other year.

‘We need to be thinking about how dairying can have a positive effect on the environment.’

A crop of turnips, chicory and plantain last year was average but this year they’re having good results from paddocks oversown in a mix of ryegrass, timothy, tall fescue, cocksfoot, plantain and clovers which was drilled in May. Matt mobbed up the herd on quarter of the paddock which contains an infertile ridge and spread more seed the morning after they'd worked the ground up, giving good results. He’s also noticed improved pasture in areas where hay’s been dropped in paddocks to be fed out.

Hedge mustard is a problem with cows eating it in its young stages but then refusing to touch it when it becomes stalky.

“And they won’t graze properly where it’s growing,” he said.

With 8ha already shut up for silage Matt has taken his round back to 24 days which will be bumped up to 30 days once the silage is cut and wrapped. He’s working on grazing breaks of 10 and 14 hours with cows coming into paddocks with covers of 2800-3000kg drymatter (DM). He aims to take them out of the paddocks leaving more than 1600kg DM behind.

There’s good shelter for the cows with barberry hedges trimmed higher than the fencelines and eucalypts planted five years ago growing well. Chris is planning further plantings but said it all takes time. Plane trees and chestnuts have already been put in with some of the latter being eaten off by hares before they were protected.

“It can be like a frying pan here,” Matt said of the paddocks sloping down from Mt Pirongia which get the full heat of the sun.

He started herd mating on October 16, planning to move the calving date forward to July 25. He’s moving to more Ayrshire in the herd using Ambreed semen, because of their longevity and foraging abilities.

He’s relishing being in control of onfarm decisions and hopes they won’t see a repeat of severe drought conditions which hit the area last season. He admits at times his first season has been very demanding but said that’s the same for anyone with a new herd on a new farm.

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