Friday, March 29, 2024

Showing the way away from home

Avatar photo
Grant Rogers is a Canterbury sheep farmer’s son who was encouraged to do anything but follow in his father’s footsteps.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

So he became a vet with the idea that he would like to work with red deer. But as he told the Australian Dairy Conference in Geelong earlier this year, his timing coincided with the dairying boom in Canterbury. Some of his clients were milking 25,000 cows and making a lot more money than he was.

His wife Melanie was a herd manager on a 950-cow farm, but after they married in 2000 they spent three years on his family’s farm, steep country which ran 1500 ewes, 100 cattle and 400 red hinds. 

Drought years intensified their desire to go dairying and they started to look at suitable properties. The fact they were keen trampers added extra appeal to casting their net into Tasmania where they found farms an hour out of Hobart. While the country looked similar to Canterbury the big attraction was its unlimited water.

They bought a run-down 91ha farm at Ouse in 2003 and started milking 180 cows, continuing feeding regimes they were familiar to them with no grain used. They dried off in mid-May in their first season having made a A$10,000 profit.

“We thought if we put grain in we could make more money by extending the season,” he said.

They now feed 0.7 tonnes of grain/cow, mostly in late lactation to help extend it as growth rates slow.

With gradual development funded from cashflow they were milking 320 cows seven years on and producing 140,000kg milksolids (MS) through an extended dairy.

Grant put into practice grazing to low residuals and at the correct leaf emergence stage from work carried out at Lincoln University Dairy Farm. He used his veterinary experience to keep systems simple and increased the number of crossbred cows, reasoning he had seen little of them as a vet.

“They’re an easy care cow,” he said.

“Everything we do we ask, ‘Can it be done simpler or cheaper?’.”

In 2011 they bought 160ha, of which 110ha was irrigated, next door. They had approached the property owner before but were well aware of the main detraction, a 20-aside herringbone dairy.

“We questioned if we should put a rotary in but it was all cost, cost, cost,” Grant said.

This would have meant they could milk 600 cows but they struggled to justify the capital outlay on top of the farm purchase which had seen them take on more debt. Another option would have been to milk 700 cows once-a-day, but that would have meant higher numbers of replacement stock so more off-farm grazing would have been needed.

Their eventual answer was to milk 450 cows on 125ha, the same stocking rate as they’d had previously with 325 cows on 91ha. They leased 24ha under centre pivot irrigation to a vegetable grower which they will continue to do in the future.

The remaining 100ha, of which half is under irrigation, will be used to run all dry cows and replacement stock as well as the grow hay and silage.

And they made the big change to milking three times in two days from mid-lactation onwards. The theory is that cows are required to carry no more milk in their udders at any one time that they are when they’re being milked twice a day at peak.

“I saw it in the Dairy Exporter and chewed it over,” Grant said.

The major benefit and attraction was the reduction in labour that would be required so he decided to give it a go.

“If I didn’t like it I could always go back to milking twice a day,” he said.

“But it’s working really well.”

He only employs one worker with milkings at 5am, 7pm and 12 noon. He helps out every fourth night and morning and believes the system could work year round under different circumstances.

The Rogers plan some minor changes in their dairy which won’t cost much but will reduce milking times. And Grant is now putting his vet skills to good use working off farm to help Tasmanian dairy farmers improve their herds’ reproductive performance.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading