By spring next year, Waikino will be milking 4000 sheep on a dairy platform of about 400ha.
More importantly, it will be the home of Maui Milk’s genetic improvement programme and a showcase for developing an optimised dairy sheep production system for NZ. Waikino will target 300 litres a sheep a year.
Jake says that’s a fairly modest goal, considering the average production in France is 400l and even higher in parts of Europe where dairy sheep are farmed indoors.
Lactation length can also be up to two years in some overseas flocks. This would require sheep with 100% dairy genetics, he says.
Feed is also vital to reaching production targets. Equal parts of lucerne, plantain-clover and improved ryegrass are grown on Waikino.
Jake says lucerne silage is versatile, high in protein and performs well during summer, which will help achieve longer ewe lactations.
Peter Gatley and Jake Chardon see a bright future for sheep milking in New Zealand and are excited about the potential for genetic improvement.
It can also be fed in barns, cut fresh or as silage, but short rotation ryegrass provides an important food source during the main winter feed pinch.
The Maui Milk and Waikino farms should be achieving a combined production of two million litres of sheep milk in three years.
For marketing, the business will need more scale and volume, hence more suppliers. Peter expects the payout when new suppliers come on board to be $17/kg MS (including lactose) – equating to about $3l.
“It’s also around the level of payout we believe you would require as a farmer to make this attractive.”
Even at 200l, each ewe could potentially produce $600 worth of milk annually.
“After that it comes down to what proportion of that is accounted for with farm working expenses,” Peter says.
'Gross farm income including some meat and wool is five times what it would be as a conventional sheep and beef farm.'
Work continues to improve systems, feeding and genetics on the Maui Milk farm, which Peter says is rapidly heading towards optimum productivity for an extensive, all outdoors, operation.
However, if Waikino meets expectations with its hybrid system, the farm could earn $3.6 million from milk alone.
“Gross farm income including some meat and wool is five times what it would be as a conventional sheep and beef farm,” Peter says.
The model farm, Waikino, will be fully running by the 2017-18 season and other interested farmers will be able to get an insight into the management and financials of the operation, depending on the size, scale and farming systems applicable to them.
Farmers were already making inquiries looking for options that meet tough environmental regulatory requirements, Peter says.
Waikino has a particularly lean nitrogen discharge allowance, so there is a lot of interest in what can be achieved with such a low cap.
Peter also encourages anyone who thinks their future might be in sheep milking to attend the 2017 dairy sheep conference.
The Maui Milk farm is milking 3000 ewes and rearing 4500 lambs, working to improve milk production and efficiency through better systems, genetics and drymatter production, all outdoors.
