Friday, March 29, 2024

The long walk

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Challenging climate and a long trip to the dairy made the move to once-a-day milking an obvious choice for Murchison farmers Dave and Sue King. They told Anne Hardie that there’s still the same amount of work, but the benefits are showing up in cow health and the bottom line.
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It's a four kilometre hike from one end of Dave and Sue King's Murchison farm to the other and the dairy sits at the edge, so once-a-day (OAD) milking was an obvious choice when they bought the property seven years ago.

The couple have spent more than three decades milking cows, working their way up the ladder through management and sharemilking around the country to farm ownership, so the appeal of only milking once a day was also a factor.

Add to that a summer dry that often burns the grass off the non-irrigated gravel soils and forces the 420-cow herd to rely on turnips and palm kernel from January to carry on milk production and OAD makes even more sense.

Despite these challenges, the farm's best production has been 1180kg milksolids (MS) a hectare from 126ha and 333kg MS/cow.

‘It's all set up on timer so we can set the timer to any application rate. It's got a log of how much effluent went on and where, so we have proof of what's going on.’

In spring, it's a lush strip of land at the base of steep beech-clad hills that cradle the valley. The Kings own 365ha, but 140ha of that is native bush and 90ha is rough grazing on sprayed-out hillsides that is unsuitable for wintering cows or grazing young stock. On the other side of the valley beyond the main highway the Buller River flows west towards Murchison, a few kilometres further along the valley.

A mountainous border surrounds the valley, trapping the summer heat so temperatures often soar well into the 30s, making it a challenge to milk cows without irrigation.

"The dry is our biggest challenge and has the biggest impact on production," Dave says. "The thought when we came here was that if you put on 17-20% more cows for OAD, you'd pretty much do the same production.

"You've got to make sure that extra grass is converted into milksolids and as long as you can do that it should be much the same."

They've had the stocking rate up to 3.78 cows a hectare, which Dave says was high enough for the farm. They worked out their best production was from fewer cows, so they are down to 3.33 cows/ha.

"With the stocking rate at 3.3 we utilise pretty much all the grass with the cows and only make balage if we have a genuine surplus."

When they bought the farm seven years ago it was about 76ha with the 24-aside herringbone dairy on the boundary. They converted 50ha at the other end of the farm from drystock. Five years later they had regrassed the entire farm and are starting to regrass 15% each year after a summer turnip crop and chicory.

They bought the core of the Jersey herd already on the farm and added a mix of cows to make up numbers for the extra land brought in to the milking platform. For the first five years they bought empty carry-over cows as replacements as they had the rough grazing land to use and the mature cows were an opportunity for production gain. The downside was introducing fertility problems, so their empty rate has been 11-12% and the calving spread over 12 weeks. Last year they cut it to nine weeks but found that was too ruthless for the mix of cows they carry, so this year they will use artificial insemination (AI) for six weeks and take the bulls out at 11 weeks.

In spring it's a lush strip of land that burns off in summer.

Bought-in feed and grazing make up two-thirds of the farm's working expenses, which work out at $4/kg MS, with feed adding up $142,000 last year and grazing $150,000.

That’s the reason for the chicory, which is close enough to the dairy to be irrigated with effluent. This season the effluent will be spread over 30ha thanks to a new system that includes an above-ground Tasman tank that holds a million litres. Effluent passes through a gravel trap to two drainage pads before flowing to an effluent sump and pumped to the tank. A Plucks agitator on a pontoon runs every second hour to keep solids in suspension before being pumped to maxi pods.

"It's all set up on timer so we can set the timer to any application rate. It's got a log of how much effluent went on and where, so we have proof of what's going on."

One of the reasons they chose an above-ground tank was so a future owner of the farm could dismantle it and build it again in the centre of the farm if they chose to build a central dairy.

The tank cost $64,000 with its liner and by the time they had put in mainlines, pods, gravel trap, drainage pads and sump, the total was about $160,000.

While the effluent will help the chicory, they're trialling different grass species to improve pasture through the dry periods, including the fescue, Finesse-Q and a greenlea cocksfoot. SeedForce Seeds is using one of their paddocks for trials as well with a mix of ryegrasses and clover to test compatibility.

The goal for the farm now is to reach 360kg MS a cow on OAD while following a simple system and Dave thinks that is achievable. This season their target is 150,000kg MS from 420 cows.

Key points

Location: Murchison
Area: 126ha milking platform
Cows: 420 Jersey and crossbred
Production: 1180kg MS/ha
Stocking rate: 3.3 cows/ha

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