Switching to autumn calving wasn’t about making more money for Taranaki farmers Jaiden and Hannah Drought.
It was solely so they could enjoy long summer days with their children.
The couple who milk 360 cows on their 105ha effective farm at Riverlea near Kaponga say the pros of autumn calving far outweigh the downsides.
They switched to autumn milking so they could have downtime for their kids during fine weather when the herd is dry in February.
“Our motivation to switch wasn’t money,” Jaiden says.
“It was more to do with being able to spend time with our children during the summer when the weather is at its best.”
They say from a farming point of view there are big advantages.
Calving occurs during settled, warm weather and the calves usually go outside after a week in the calf shed.
“We undertake farm maintenance during summer when the cows are dry and the paddocks are firm. It’s much easier to get around without chopping the paddocks up and contending with the wet, cold, winter weather,” Jaiden says.
They decided if they were going to autumn calve they might as well begin again because they couldn’t afford to take a production hit. They are about to start their fourth year of winter milking. The first year they spring calved and sold those cows and bought an autumn-calving herd.
“Generally, there are two ways to go into autumn calving. You can either sell your existing herd and buy another or milk your cows through an extended lactation. We decided there was no real reason to milk through,” Jaiden says.
“In total we calved 900 cows in spring and autumn on 105ha that first year. The spring herd left on January 20 and we started calving the new autumn herd on February 15.”
As a result they went through a full calving twice and say it was a hellish year.
They were fond of their herd but because there were no real ties to it such as years of breeding, selling and starting again was a relatively easy choice. If there had been 50 years of family breeding history behind the herd then they might have looked at things differently.
“It probably set us up to do stock trading in which we sell our young stock. We’ve worked out the cost of bringing a heifer in. By the time you rear, graze and get her to the size we want it’s cheaper to buy grown, proven cows,” Jaiden says.
“We sell our calves as weaners and have found that buying in carryover cows is better in terms of production.
“But you do have to be careful not to increase the average age of your herd.
“There’s sometimes a bit of a stigma about buying carryover cows but you can’t shy away from the fact they’ll have a decent calf and produce a lot in their first lactation.”
There is a risk trying to sell and buy stock at that time of year but as 40-50 cows are replaced at a time they feel that they will be able to source that number of cows.
“We’ve sometimes sold in-calf heifers for around $1800 and then purchased carryover in-calf cows for $1300. So there’s a $500 profit margin straight away plus a calf and a saving on the cost of grazing. Again, they are older cows so we need to bear this in mind,” Jaiden says.
“It could be different in spring but in autumn there’s an abundance of empty spring cows that farmers have carried over to get in-calf for autumn. We often buy from beef farmers who’ve used them to clean up behind their beef cattle or sheep.”
They try to buy in late October but every year is different and can go one of two ways. If there doesn’t appear to be a lot of stock on the market they buy early but if there appears to be plenty they wait and buy later.
“When we sell our weaner calves we don’t have as much competition from spring calves. It’s not so much about achieving better prices, rather it’s easier to move them when the market isn’t flooded,” Hannah says.
Autumn dairy calves mostly go to autumn calving farms and beef farmers favour autumn beef calves because they take them through one less winter.
Hannah hates the thought of bobby calves and one of the couple’s first stipulations when they bought the farm was that they wouldn’t have any.
“We are proud of our no bobby calf status with all calves reared, achieved by using beef over our herd at mating time,” Hannah says.
Mating runs for 10 weeks, which includes four weeks of AI, five-weeks of Hereford bulls and a week of short-gestation bulls to tighten up the tail end so calving runs for nine weeks. They use high BW bulls for saleability.
“This year we put collars on the cows but they weren’t quite ready at the time of mating so we decided to use beef bulls for the entire herd for this calving. It’s making us a little nervous,” Jaiden says.
“When we had half the herd put to Friesian bulls we had the opportunity to sell Friesian bulls, a keeper line and the Herefords, whereas this year we’ll have 350 Herefords to sell.”
The high beef schedule has proved to be a challenge this year as farmers hold onto their cattle for longer to gain a higher price for them. Grass growth will dictate when buyers will start looking.
“We try to get our empties in calf for spring to sell as spring cows. We don’t carry over any for ourselves. We don’t have the grazing and don’t want to do split calving. We want to stay with autumn calving because otherwise we wouldn’t get a break,” Jaiden says.
“The cows are dry for 45 days from February 1 and start calving on March 15. Carryover cows that we buy in arrive in the first week of February so they are on-farm for about six-weeks before they calve.”
One downside of winter milking is the need to buy expensive protein. Though they get a premium for their winter milk they feel they might not be that much better off financially because of the high feed costs, the cost of mixing and feeding it out on the feed pad.
They run a System 4-5 farm and need to buy their feed at the lowest possible price because that’s where their margin lies. As well as their crops, they feed maize and grass silage, palm kernel, dried distiller’s grain and soya meal.
“If we had to feed out in the paddock during winter I believe there would be 50% wastage, possibly more,” Jaiden says.
“We don’t have in-shed feeding.”
Jaiden is worried he would never turn it off, cows can be fed only a limited amount during milking and he is happy with the feed pad but mindful of the amount of time cows are on concrete.
“Our stocking rate is 3.6 cows per hectare but if you take off our cropping area which is 25% of the milking platform it bumps it up. We must try and grow as much per hectare as possible and in Taranaki you’re not going to do much better than maize silage and grass although we do dabble in other crops.”
They say it is easy to spend money to make milk but the operation must be as efficient as possible.
This season they will produce 235,000kg MS but there are no heifers on the farm, which might slightly skew the figures.
“The payout is pretty good at the moment but we would change our system if it was $5. We couldn’t go to a System 2, though, we’d just change the types of feed,” Hannah says.
Jaiden feels autumn calving can be tough going and not for the faint-hearted. They have to contend with high rainfall because of their proximity to Mount Taranaki so the feed pad is essential.
The farm has three effluent systems, holding ponds, a travelling irrigator and a tanker.
“When you winter milk you have to cope with a lot of rain and effluent,” Jaiden says.
“Most of the effluent is contained on the feed pad. We hold it all to spread when the weather is better or for the crop paddocks.”
The farm is in a drought-prone area and it can get pretty windy but those conditions usually hit at a time that is not so critical for them because at that time the herd is drying off.
“You have to be careful that you don’t end up without any grass at the start of calving.
“You’re on a total ration diet then and trying to feed cows 25kg and no grass. It’s not mission impossible, just expensive,” he says.
“It’s not as simple as spring calving because you are on a decreasing pasture growth curve just when your feed requirements are going up. But the mid January pasture quality isn’t as critical.
“Last year the herd produced 652kg milksolids per cow. It is a real juggling act with imported feed sitting at three tonnes of dry matter per cow. Bought-in feed cost us $1.80/kg MS and is our second biggest cost behind debt servicing so we need to be mindful that we are getting a return on that.”
The employ one full time staff worker, one part-time and a nanny during calving. They feel they’re slightly overstaffed for the size of their farm but are prepared to do that to ensure their staff are happy and to give themselves time to be with their children.
Winter milking suits Jaiden because he prefers working with machinery to milking.
“If you didn’t like tractors and feeding out you wouldn’t winter milk. We couldn’t afford to take the kids to Fiji in June as some families do but we get good stress-free family time over Christmas. During the nice weather we relax and do things with the kids,” Hannah says.
Jaiden and Hannah both come from a rural banking background and say it showed them what type of farming operation suited the lifestyle they aimed to have. This is their fourth autumn-calving season but they’re unsure whether farmers should go into it for financial reasons.
They quickly learned the most profitable sized farms and the pros and cons of the different farm systems and the costs involved in raising calves and farming cows.
“Our rural banking background allowed us to see the financial side of many different farming operations and to see what worked and what didn’t. We felt that the same financial skills applied whether we were running a coffee cart or a farm,” she says.
“We could have just farmed by ourselves but we wanted staff so we could have time away with the kids. We could do it ourselves but we’d be low input and couldn’t get away for a break.
“When we were banking we saw so many farmers who were tied down and working themselves so hard.
“We love the lifestyle that our kids have.
“They have a pretty free run of the farm.
“With our debt level at $1.96/kg MS, like many farms our focus is on reducing debt and are continually looking for efficiencies to help achieve this.”
