Friday, March 29, 2024

Proactive teamwork

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Winning the Massey University Innovation Award at the 2015 Ballance Farm Environment awards has put Mark and Jayne Pescini in the spotlight for their efficient innovative systems, but they say the award is as much herd manager Darcy Fogden’s as theirs. They told Cheyenne Stein about their in-dairy automation and how it’s making a difference in their business.
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When they won the Massey University Innovation Award at the 2015 Ballance Farm Environment awards, Mark and Jayne Pescini were praised by judges for running an efficient, innovative system that produces high quality milk in challenging coastal environments. The milking platform, just north of Levin, has heavy loamy soil flats overblown with sand with old well-established sandhills with good topsoil. The runoff block at Waitarere Beach was the couple’s first farm, which they bought from Mark’s parents. It was tricky to manage because of the sand.

“It’s a bit more challenging, there’s a lot of young sandhills and if you have half an inch of black top you’re doing really well. The hills can shift a bit so during summer when things are really tight we try to keep the animals off that block to preserve the soil integrity a bit.”

The second runoff at Foxton, originally used for harvesting hay, has river silt over peat soils and although it is prone to being over-wet it is summer-safe and great for raising young stock. It’s currently home to Jayne’s weaner calves.

The milking platform is also home to a picturesque conservation area of native trees and a water conservancy in Tangimate Lagoon, which is fenced off. The lagoon features historic Maori eeling channels.

“If I showed them to you without telling you what they were, you wouldn’t even know, they just look like trenches in the ground.”

The couple, who have been living at their Levin farm for 13 years, made the decision to include herd manager Darcy Fogden in their entry for the awards because they run the farm as a team – all three have their roles. Darcy is in charge of the dairy and milking, Mark oversees the stock at home and on the two runoffs and Jayne does the accounts, calf-rearing and staffing. Mark says many of their ventures simply wouldn’t be possible without Darcy.

“We work as a team, if we don’t the whole thing falls over,” Mark says.

Mark is “the boy” on the farm. He does all the jobs no one else wants to do and that’s the way he likes it.

Monitors in the dairy make it easy to see individual cow information.

What started with a basic system has grown over the years to two large screens, sensors, automatic drafting, heat camera and scales, and Mark says they have “pretty much everything there is to have”. Having the automation and herd-management systems in place in the dairy has added value to the Pescinis’ operation, from savings in animal health to making the system more efficient.

“Having the sensors means you can keep track of things like mastitis. Normally milk goes into the vat and you get cell count back and then have to strip the entire herd to find that one cow or cows that have it. With our system MilkHub will give you about 10 cows depending on where you set your limit, and stripping 10 cows is easy. When you’re stripping an entire herd you’re pretty over it by the first hundred and by the last hundred you’re probably not even doing it properly.”

The average somatic cell count sits around 72,000. Darcy keeps a close eye on the counts and will take action when numbers are spiking.

“We’re on top of the problem before it’s even really a problem. We are able to target the right cows rather than blanket cover the entire herd, which saves a lot of money.”

Everything is logged into MilkHub making vet and AB technician visits easier by being able to pull up cow information on screen. The system also means any wayward cows from neighbouring properties that make their way over are noticed quickly.

“Our neighbours had an issue when some cows from across the road that were on antibiotics got into their herd and they ended up milking them and were at a loss as to why they had antibiotics in their milk, then they realised what had happened. If that had happened in our dairy, her tag wouldn’t have been picked up and the system would notify us and she wouldn’t have cups put on.”

Although farm working expenses haven’t shifted much with the high-tech dairy, Jayne says the money they are saving on their mastitis bill is able to be reinvested into areas of the business that can make them money.

“We have always run a fairly low-cost system and we aren’t spending less, we’re just spending it in different areas of the business.”

Although the price tag on a similar system would come in at about $120,000 today, Mark says he wouldn’t hesitate in installing the system again if he had to build a new dairy.

“It makes things very efficient. When I first built the dairy we had manual drafting because I couldn’t see the benefit in automatic drafting, but it’s not until you have it and use it that you realise how much time it saves, we can milk 400 cows on a 50-bail rotary as a one-man dairy.”

Mark and Jayne are fast becoming the people to talk to when it comes to in-dairy technology and with their continued work with MilkHub will be at the forefront of future innovations. Current projects are underway and Mark is looking forward to seeing the results.

They are working on dropping their stock numbers in an effort to reduce pressure on pasture and continue to create a more efficient and productive system.

“We don’t want to get bigger, we want to get smarter with what we’re doing and what we have. Nothing is set in stone around here, we’re always open to tweaking things if we think it will work
for us.”

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