When calving kicks off later this month Blair Kingsbeer is well prepared for it with his trusty calving kit.
Kingsbeer and his business partner Grant Bell sharemilk on the 155ha Bell family farm at Aokautere on the outskirts of Palmerston North, where they will calve 500 cows this season.
The calving kit, which he keeps on his motorbike, is fully stocked with metabolic bags, starter drench, a spray can, neck tags for the calves, rope and gloves.
When he checks the herd at 9pm at night he puts the neck tags on the heifers and bulls are marked with blue dots.
“It goes everywhere with me.
“Always carrying the kit saves a lot of time having to traipse back to the shed to get whatever is needed,” he says.
“Having it right there at my fingertips makes everything so much easier and I am not scrambling to find things. It also makes it easier when it comes to recording cow and calf information.”
They keep and rear every heifer calf born and decide later in the season if they will sell any.
“We still have 153 heifer calves from last season and we still haven’t decided how many or if we will sell them in the spring.
“We were only able to do that because the weather was favourable and enabled us to rear them at the runoff.”
They collect calves twice a day, spray their navels to help prevent health issues and take them to the sheds to feed.
“We get them in the shed and get colostrum in as soon as we can after the calf has been born. We give them two feeds of gold colostrum in the first 24 hours to give them the best possible start.”
Giving calves warm milk makes it easier to feed and train them and the calves appreciate having a warm feed in their bellies when it is cold.
They use a Brix refractometer to test the colostrum to ensure calves get the best quality. When the colostrum runs out they use milk powder.
Calves have access to water, meal, hay and sodium bentonite from day one and are kept inside for 10-14 days, depending on the weather.
After three to four weeks the calves are moved to the support block where they have access to a big shed and large paddock with meal and hay. The calfeteria is taken down daily.
The six-bay calf sheds were built seven years ago and there are water troughs in all the pens. A pumping system allows milk to be pumped from the colostrum tank directly to the shed through pipes.
“It saves a lot of time not having to lug buckets around. And it saves the old back.”
Wood chips are used for bedding and are dug out at the end of calving. The sheds are left to dry out over summer.
The calf sheds are cleaned weekly with Virkon and the team takes biosecurity seriously.
Only the farm staff can enter the sheds and the equipment used by the calf rearer remains on the farm. Sick calves are quarantined and managed in a separate pen.
Blair had never worked on a dairy farm until he went to work for Grant Bell. Campbell, Emma, Abbie and Blair enjoy the change in lifestyle.
Once the calves are moved outside they are fed twice a day but he might look at reducing that to once-a-day feeds depending on how they are tracking.
They have a keen interest interested in data and this year he has installed a set of scales in the calf sheds. Calves will be weighed when they arrive and at each drenching.
“They will be weighed at birth and then again at two weeks just so we can keep an eye on how they are growing.
“This will allow us to identify and manage a calf that is not doing as well or meeting targets.”
The farm is moving away from bobby calves and creating more income from beef calves.
Last season it reared whiteface bull calves that are being finished in Hawke’s Bay and will again rear 60-70 whiteface bulls to finishing at about 18 months. Their heifers were mated to Herefords with a buyer already lined up to take them all.
They will rear some more whiteface again this season and everything else will be sold.
He’s learnt a lot and has come a long way in a short time.
Kingsbeer entered the dairy industry in 2016 after working as a plumber and gas fitter and spending three years as a milking machine fitter before jumping ship.
“I met Grant when I was doing some fitting work on the effluent system and we got talking.
“I mentioned I had always wanted to go farming. Two weeks later I was working full-time on the farm as a farm assistant.”
Kingsbeer had never worked on a dairy farm before, let alone milked a cow so had to learn the ropes from scratch.
“You could say it was a baptism of fire but it went okay.
“It’s been a great change, a lot of hard work but definitely better for family life. My wife Emma and our three children are all enjoying living on the farm and having me around more.”
The following season he and Bell formed Udder Bliss, the company they sharemilk for.
He manages the farm and works closely with Bell to make decisions. There are two full-time staff, a full-time calf-rearer and milk harvester and a number of student relief milkers from Massey University.
Kingsbeer has embraced the opportunities and is keen to build equity to take on more of the company.
“We are in the process of fine-tuning our management systems.
“I really appreciate having the opportunity to learn more about creating an efficient business and fine-tuning our calving operation to create a more efficient business.”
