When it comes to autumn calving and milking through the winter it is, as the Jackson Five sang, as easy as A, B, C for Manawatu farmers Greg and Amy Gemmell.
The couple are herd-owning sharemilkers on Amy’s parents’ 94ha farm at Bunnythorpe near Palmerston North and they also run a 52ha dairy support unit.
Four years ago they dived head first into the world of robotic milking.
Their pasture management is simple, effective and makes conditions perfect for autumn calving.
Their 191 Friesian cow herd is split calving with 90 to start calving in mid February with the rest in spring. This season about 15 two-a-half year heifers will calve in autumn and all autumn calvers have been mated to Ezicalve Hereford bulls they buy from Morrison Farming at Marton, meaning no bobby calves.
“Because it’s really just us on the farm it’s easier from a management perspective to have the split calving,” Greg says.
“Of course, there are other benefits like the winter milk premium from Fonterra and premium we get for our beef-cross autumn-born calves. We tend to get fairly mild autumns here in Manawatu so we might as well make use of them.”
When Greg moved onto the farm in 2003 it was winter milking but milking year round was taking its toll so they cancelled their contract and went back to seasonal.
But in 2016 after they had installed the robots and found them to be working well they switched back to autumn calving.
Milking through winter means they have keep a close eye on things, especially feed.
Their year-round pasture management is based on the Lely ABC grazing system.
Cows move between three paddocks in 24 hours, typically spending about eight hours in each paddock. They have access to the milking shed and are encouraged into the robots with a handful of meal, averaging about 2kg a cow a day. They feed Denver Gold with minerals, choosing to stay away from palm kernel to keep costs down.
“Paddock A they normally go hard and eat everything, paddock B they’ll eat a little and then C even less though not all cows will end up in all paddocks,” Greg says.
“As autumn gets going we can cut out one block and go down to two. There’s a bit of management involved in giving them enough grass for the period they are in there but we also want to get them moving and coming up to the shed as well.”
Greg uses his eye-o-metre for assessing pasture cover but says, on the whole, it is a cow-led system. When there’s too much or not enough grass the cows let them know by either staying in the paddock too long or moving to the shed too soon.
This year they made 400 rounds of hay and 252 balage bales over both properties.
“We could have made more. It has been a great growing season,” he says.
“As well as feeding out balage I get really good responses through autumn with hay.
“We do drop numbers right back going into autumn and we have some irrigation that we can and do use if things are dry through the summer and early autumn.”
The farm is Milson silt loam soil, which is quite a chewing gum clay and is unforgiving. In summer it looks like terracotta pots on the surface. To combat that they use regenerative farming practices to encourage deeper-rooting structures to tap into the more fertile soil below.
“A few years ago we started moving this way for a number of reasons. What we read about regenerative farming made sense to us,” Amy says.
“Healthier soils equal healthy animals and in turn healthy food for people. Improving the soil by no tilling, using mixed pasture species and healthy root structures.
“It is certainly trial and error but we have some really interesting conversations with people and are learning a lot.”
The farm and support block are soil tested annually then get one autumn fertiliser application, putting on only what the soil tests show is needed. Using the Albrecht-Kinsey approach through Kiwi Fertiliser, calcium, potassium, boron and trace elements tend to be the main ones in the mix.
“The tests are coming back now with good balances. We haven’t used any synthetic urea for a number of years.
“We were asked to participate in a trial for Biozest (Biogro certified pasture spray) this year and we have seen positive results from that,” Greg says.
“With our stocking rate we are never really under pressure and nor are the cows. We aren’t chasing big milksolids.
“We’re just a family run operation wanting to make a living and do the best for our cows and our land.”
Last season the herd produced 83,200kg MS including winter milk production of 10,305kg MS.
One of the most crucial things on a winter farm is having enough effluent storage capacity. With the robotic milking system cows spend little time in the shed so effluent collected is less than from a conventional milking shed.
“We pump out the effluent in summer and don’t have the cows standing around on the concrete for hours waiting to be milked so they deposit most of it out in the paddock so we tick the boxes there. Lely have advised us that the cowshed water usage (hose down, robots and vat wash) is around 7l/cow/day compared with our old herringbone of approximately 40l/cow/day.”
The Gemmells regularly host visitors who go to see the robots in action and take away information and inspiration for their own farms.
