Leo and Rebecca Vollebregt’s South Wairarapa dairy farm is not your typical once-a-day (OAD) milking country.
The Bidwill family homestead was located on the property, although it burned down after World War One. In 1997 Leo and Rebecca built a new family home on the site of that homestead – deciding the impending sixth child was a bridge too far for the three-bedroom home they had been living in. An outdoor fountain and a refurbished tack-room/water tower (now workshop/lookout) next to the family home left over from the original homestead are reminders of times past – and reflect the ongoing nature of land stewardship.
“We had a farm with good productive land, a nice bush, a couple of lagoons, a river and some historic bits. We like to keep and improve all those aspects.”
Protecting the farm engine room – the soils – is also a priority and was picked up on by the BFEA judges.
An S-map culled from the National Soils Database curated by Landcare Research gave the rough foundation for a soil map but soil types were verified by LandVision the old fashioned way – digging holes. Three silt-based soil types were mapped – freely draining, moderately well-drained, and imperfectly drained. They fan out progressively from the river, the band of freely draining soils closest to its banks.
Soil moisture is monitored at two sites to ensure optimal timing of irrigation, within the framework of consent restrictions.
The soil map was used to identify low-risk soils for effluent irrigation purposes. Two years ago a significant investment was made to update and future-proof the effluent system. A lined, above-ground pond – double the 500 cubic metre capacity recommended by the pond calculator – was constructed, capable of storing a month’s worth of effluent. When soil conditions allow, effluent is irrigated directly on to the paddocks via the travelling irrigator, bypassing the storage pond to minimise pumping costs.
“We don’t want to pump twice if we don’t have to,” Leo says.
He identifies three strategies adopted to protect the soils – on-off grazing, no-till cultivation, and smart fertiliser use.
Two-thirds of the herd is wintered off at the runoffs, with the balance of early calvers and first-calving heifers remaining on the platform.
When conditions dictate, Emma stands the cows off to protect the soils and minimise pasture damage.
A contractor with a Cross Slot drill is used to sow the summer turnips while an older direct drill owned by one of Leo’s brothers is used to sow the permanent pasture post-turnip crop.
The permanent pasture is a 50:50 mix of tetraploid Bealey and diploid Trojan, sown at a rate of 25kg/ha. Leo says the Bealey brings palatability to the mix while the diploid offers plant density and tillering, closing up the sward.
The farm is divided by Pahautea Road, naturally separating the farm roughly in half and lending itself to two management blocks – North Side (with the dairy on it) and South Side.
The North Side herd, with no road crossing, gets milked first in the morning. The crew then hangs the cups up and heads home for a quick breakfast, letting the South Side herd out of its paddock to make its way to the road crossing.
By the time breakfast is finished, the cows are waiting at the crossing ready to make the short walk to the dairy for milking.
The system was adopted to prevent milkers having to spend long periods cupping cows – another example of the smaller decisions than can be made to make a farm sustainable.
It is the sum of all those efforts that will allow the Vollebregts’ vision of an attractive, productive, and profitable farm that everyone enjoys working on to come to fruition.
Selection pressure
Supplying top quality milk is the aim for Emma – and not just because as the contract milker any grades come out of her pay cheque.
Emma and her employees – 2IC Rodney Kendall and assistant Emma Smith – take pride in maintaining a low somatic cell count for the herd, last season averaging 128,000/ml.
“I like to keep an eye on the milk docket, so if we get above 120,000 then I’ll start looking for mastitis – strip the herd,” Emma says.
There is an investment made in dry cow therapy and teat seal, with the first-calving heifers also teat sealed pre-calving.
There is also heavy selection pressure on building a high genetic merit, low somatic cell count herd, driven by the top reproductive performance so often achieved in OAD herds.
Last season the empty rate was just 3%, with six weeks of artificial breeding (AB) and seven weeks of tail-up bulls. The herd also achieved an 88% six-week in-calf rate. Although there is no intervention used, Emma and her team pay close attention to how the cows are behaving.
“We write down all the at-risk cows – anything that’s had calving problems right through to lameness and mastitis – they are the ones we metri-check. Then four weeks before the planned start of mating I’ll tail paint, and then every week I’ll re-paint and just write down the numbers – just so I’ve got a fair idea of the numbers of cows cycling,” Emma says.
“A week before planned start of calving any new calvers will get another colour so that I know they’re going to be late cyclers.”
Heifers are also mated to AB at the runoff, being run through the yards daily rather than synchronised. To save costs, tail-up bulls are home-bred; Jerseys for the heifers – from a small mob of straight Jersey cows run in the herd for that purpose – and crossbred for the main herd.
With a 20% replacement rate (about 115 heifers), there are surplus AB heifers generated allowing for greater selection pressure for the herd replacements and an additional income stream.
