Alister and Lyn Candy, who farm with their daughter Christine, are delighted with the outcome of three years of pasture utilisation and farm cost attention. The first milksolids (MS) budget for the third season was exceeded by 24% and production for 2013-14 was 35% ahead of 2011-12. Expenses were cut from more than $5/kg MS to less than $4 and milk income grew by more than $400,000.
“What a payout year ($8.30/kg) in which to see all the hard work and attention to detail pay off,” Alister said.
“The production target was revised twice during last season and eventually we went right over the top of our original goals with nearly 112,000kg.”
By their own admission the Candys had muddled along milking 320 Jersey cows on 106ha milking platform and 100ha runoff without ever budgeting or monitoring pasture growth. The average production before becoming a focus farm was 80,000kg MS/year (250kg MS/cow), although they had achieved 96,000kg MS one season on grass alone. Bettering that record was a strong motivator for Alister in taking on the focus farm challenge.
Alister and Lyn are second-generation Candys at Okaihau and Christine and her children also live on the farm.
“Work to live and not live to work” was the motto of the house, with each member of the family following their passions such as car restoration, horse riding, and fishing.
“If we needed anything for the farm we bought it,” Lyn said.
The family is very keen on environmental improvement, conservation, and biodiversity through sediment and nutrient traps, riparian retirement, weed, and pest control and a QE II covenant on 171ha of native bush and scrub.
They won the PGG Wrightson Land and Life Award in the 2012 Northland Ballance Farm Environment Awards, the year in which they committed to the Dairy NZ focus farm project.
Alister and Lyn began farming in their own right in 1991 and put three goals into the focus farm process:
- Reduce debt by $100,000 a year.
- Increase production by 10,000kg MS a year from 80,000kg to 100,000kg.
- Continue to develop the runoff.
All three have been well exceeded, following outside advice and because of the family’s enthusiasm and hard work.
The management committee for the focus farm included Dave Gray of Awanui and Peter Flood from Ruawai who introduced the importance of pasture platemetering on a whole farm walk regularly, to generate a record of covers in all paddocks, a feed wedge image, and the spring rotation planner.
Pasture growth records were kept on a Microsoft Excel programme developed and maintained by Dave and his son with Far North DairyNZ consulting officer Gareth Baynham doing some fine-tuning.
After a walk of all paddocks, by the most direct route, the programme converts the meter clicks times the paddock area to generate the pasture cover (kg/ha DM) with two extra columns – the tonnage of feed availability in that paddock at target residuals of 1100kg (dry cows) and 1500kg (milkers).
In practical terms that means for the following 10 days cows can be allocated to different paddock sizes and covers in order to target their pasture allowance for that shift.
The paddock rotation is worked out 10 days in advance for the main mob and any preferential cows, but is subject to amendment if continued wet weather brings a pugging threat. The programme displays on the screen the highest cover paddocks to lowest, along with the average cover. It also has a predictive aspect, by projecting all cover figures using current daily growth rate or anticipated growth rate, to represent the feed availabilities on each day for 10 days forward.
‘The focus farm policy is to use supplement to achieve the right rotation length and protect cows from grazing low residuals.’
Alister said the $700 paid for the rising platemeter for pasture measurement was money extremely well spent.
“You need to persevere to train your eyes and all that extra information is no use without comprehensive computer records, the analytical programme, and the knowledge to know what to do with it.”
The programme also let the Candys see where feed deficits were going to occur and fill the gaps between pasture growth and feed demand with supplementary feed, palm kernel in the most recent season.
In the first focus farm season of 2011-12 average pasture covers began at more than 2500kg DM/ha in spring and were maintained within the “sweet spot” of 2200-2450kg almost all of the ensuing season.
However in the second and third seasons summer-autumn droughts forced down average covers, as low as 1500kg in autumn last year. Rotation length is the key factor in trying to maintain covers within the sweet spot.
Between June 2013 and May 2014, 260 tonnes of palm kernel and meal was bought, which is about 16% of total feed demand and close to double what was budgeted. However the total feed cost of about $80,000 last season was financially viable because of the high milk price and higher production.
“The focus farm policy is to use supplement to achieve the right rotation length and protect cows from grazing low residuals. This means supplement should have been profitable even without the forecast milk price of $8.30,” Gareth said.
But the increased use of supplements raised questions about stocking rate, especially given the increase in herd liveweight (LWT) by 29kg/head during the programme. Baynham and the Candys said the past two seasons had been drier than the long-term average for the Bay of Islands.
“We want to avoid any knee-jerk response when making long-term decisions so the stocking rate will stay the same (3.1/ha) and will be reviewed again at the end of this season,” Gareth said.
He used milk production and stock numbers to estimate pasture and crop eaten in tonnes of drymatter/ha, stripping out the impact of supplementary feed or winter grazing so as to identify how much home-grown feed was harvested by the cows.
“Despite the greater use of supplement, pasture harvested has lifted significantly, which tells us that supplement has been used to drive pasture growth,” he said.
Imported feed and grazing amounted to 324t, or 3.15t/ha and 1029kg/cow. Deduction of that supplementary amount from the total feed eaten of 14t DM/ha showed that home-grown pasture and crop eaten was 10.8t/ha, against 8.7t the season before and 9.1t in the first season of the programme. The Candys believe there’s still room for improvement by getting rid of the pennyroyal and buttercup.
When analysing the milk production pattern, Gareth said the biggest gains came in early lactation as tighter calving and good cow condition contributed to gains in milk production and a higher peak. This year’s calving is moving five days earlier, which should produce another increase in milk production.
When asked to nominate the areas of increased workload for the focus farm programme compared with their previous approach, the Candys said doing pasture walks and weighing cattle. The objectives for reproduction over the focus farm programme were achieving body condition score (BCS) target at calving and improving the growth rates of young stock.
In the past three matings the whole herd three-week submission rates improved from 54% to 76%, but the target remains 90%. The six-week in-calf rate at 63% hasn’t improved and the target remains 78%. The BCS target of 5 at calving is a non-negotiable and has been achieved in all three seasons.
The Candy Jersey herd has a Breeding Worth of 98 and Production Worth of 111.
Improving heifer growth was very successful because paddock subdivision, water, and a lime application improved pasture quality on the support block. In past years heifers weighed about 300-320kg on June 1 but this year they averaged 349kg, on track to the mature cow weight of 400kg LW.
The average LW for the whole herd last December was 373kg, an improvement of 29kg across all cows in the previous year, 90kg LWT/ha, or 8% across the farm.
“We believe liveweight had been limiting milk production as the cows could not physically consume enough pasture to produce more milk,” Gareth said.
Farm working expenses (FWE) averaged $5.09/kg MS in the three seasons between 2008 and 2010, which on the milk production multiplied by $6/kg generated a surplus of 91c/kg when subtracting expenses from milk income. The first season of the programme was almost a repeat of the average but FWE fell to $4.11 in 2012-13 and the surplus rose to $1.89, using the constant $6/kg milk price. Extra milk production (111,745kg) diluted expenses last season – the budget was $4.37 and the outcome $3.70. At the constant $6/kg milk price the farm surplus soared to $2.30, which represented an additional $200,000 last season compared with the average before the focus farm term began.
Clearly the Candys had more than enough to pay down the mortgage by an additional $100,000.
In fact, because the Fonterra forecast payout is $8.30/kg the actual surplus was closer to $5/kg.
“A record production and a record payout – what a great final year of the focus farm term,” Alister said.
The ride with many take-home messages
The success of the Candy focus farm project in Northland in the past three years can be attributed to very willing farmers and a strong management team, DairyNZ facilitator Gareth Baynham said.
“The farmer input to the programme was exceptional. More often than not it was farmer members of the committee speaking out of their knowledge and experience and not the rural professionals.
“All members of that committee are as proud as the Candys are with what has been achieved.
“It has been a very successful programme, culminating in 170 people attending the final field day. Many were there at the start and can relate to what the Candys went through because they came on the ride with them.
“The feedback we got was that there were lots of take-home messages.”
Baynham said the keys to success were the spring rotation planner, pasture monitoring, and weighing of young stock.
Committee member and Far North dairy farmer Dave Gray said it had been a pleasure to be involved with an excellent team of farmers under Baynham’s direction.
“It is a real credit to Alister, Lyn, and Christine, to take advice from a bunch of strangers and some criticism of the past and have the courage to follow that advice.
“Feed budgeting and rotational planning is really challenging at the start but big benefits follow.”
