Kaikoura dairy farmers Wayne and Hannah Simpson are used to living on the edge, jammed in with others on a thin plain between mountains and a peninsula.
But the magnitude 7.8 earthquake of November 2016 turned the place into an island.
Dairy farmers around Kaikoura lost milk collection for weeks.
Roads were badly damaged, making them impassable, and 22 dairy farms had to discard vats of milk for 21 days. They were forced to dump up to 200,000 litres of milk a day as the blocked inland road prevented tankers from picking it up and cows being transported out.
The Simpsons are in their sixth season 50:50 sharemilking 80ha owned by Hannah’s parents and though they were affected by the earthquake count themselves as some of the lucky ones to escape with little damage.
“All things considered we were lucky to escape the quake relatively lightly with just a few broken water troughs, tanks and pipes and minor home damage,” Wayne says.
“We were lucky because we had a diesel generator on-farm already and our cow shed wasn’t that badly damaged at all so we were able to keep milking a few hours after the earthquake.”
But because their milk couldn’t be collected they switched to once-a-day milking immediately after the quake. They saw no point milking cows twice a day when it all had to be tipped down the drain or onto paddocks.
Milk collection resumed after three weeks but they stuck to OAD for the rest of the season, figuring the herd wouldn’t recover to twice-a-day levels after such a long layoff. OAD ended up opening their eyes to a more flexible work and family lifestyle.
Two other farmers used his shed for milking, one just for a day till he sorted his shed out but another did about four days, walking cows to and from a farm five kilometres away.
The farmers milked their cows separately over the day, managing without water to wash the plant or the concrete.
“The reason they came to milk in our shed was because they had no power but their sheds were pretty much intact and sustained only minor damage,” Wayne says.
“The milk would just run on the concrete and that was it. We couldn’t hose down or anything.”
He struggles to explain precisely how they kept the place going but manages to make it sound like just another job.
“I milked our cows and put them in the paddock and then, on that first day, another guy came and milked his cows and took them home. And then, once they were all done, a third guy came down.”
Life was definitely different for a while, he says.
“I guess you go into a bit of survival mode. You do what you have to do. The school was shut down so there was no schooling for a few weeks so the main thing was to just feed the cows and get water to them because we had no power for the water pump.”
But the quake did provide for the farm in one way, creating a temporary spring for the stock.
“There was a creek that would normally flow when you’ve got a lot of rain in the winter. Well, with the shaking of the ground it started flowing down there so we were able to put the cows in there to drink some water.”
A neighbour also started his irrigation line to pump water over the fence till Simpson’s power and pipes were back in service.
“So everyone helped each other out.”
The spring that welled up in those mixed up days after the quake stopped running after a couple of months but, thinking back, he is grateful for every bit of help they had from people and nature alike.
He recalls how a few days after Fonterra’s tankers stopped coming he and Hannah went out looking for leaking pipes.
“It was about seven o’clock at night and four guys turned up. They were Fonterra people and they were amazing. They had an electrician and a plumber and an engineer and all that.
“They were just going around all the farms, fixing what they could fix.”
Looking back on those extraordinary days he says “It was disheartening to have tip the milk out and was a big relief to see the tanker come down the road after 21 days.”
Fonterra’s Farm Source and emergency response teams went into the area to help with farm work and relief milking but three or four farmers lost milking sheds in the quake, some springs and wells on the Kaikoura Plain dried up and parts of other farms became boggy.
In fact, after the quake it was so wet across parts of the Kaikoura Plain that council and industry groups like DairyNZ and Fonterra started turning to Southland and Waikato for advice.
One Kaikoura farm owner reported 60% of his property was too wet to farm and has been working with Canterbury Regional Council on an acceptable way to spread consented effluent.
They are grateful for the flexible attitude that local authorities had at the time, including advice from DairyNZ.
“We had to get rid of the milk somehow and it was going into the effluent pond and sprayed back on to the paddocks. They came and told us to do what you’re not meant to do and just hammer one paddock with it.”
Knowing that tipping milk straight onto grass would kill it he picked a single paddock as a sacrifice. Even the usual rules about stock in waterways were relaxed so the cows could have a drink.
“That was quite good, knowing that you could just do little things you’re not normally meant to do, just to get by.”
The silver lining to come from the experience is their switch to OAD. At the time they were milking 280 cows and also milked 40 cows from another Kaikoura farmer who couldn’t milk because of quake damage.
By the next season they had enough young stock of their own for a 320-cow herd on a permanent OAD regime.
Wayne has noticed several benefits in milking OAD including reduced lameness and a general increase in cow health and condition.
“Lameness in the herd is pretty much eliminated. We get only one or two whereas before we could get several.
“We have also found the herd is getting in-calf easier and our shed costs have been reduced substantially so that helps boost our income.”
And OAD works well for his family life so he would never go back to twice-a-day milking.
Living by the sea the family bought a boat after going to OAD, knowing they would have time to use it. Even a trip to Christchurch is no longer a logistical hassle.
“We thought this is working and it’s a better lifestyle too.
“You can get off the farm in the afternoon and not worry about coming back. You’re not looking at your watch every five minutes to see if it’s milking time.”
The family has even taken up fishing – something they didn’t do before the earthquake.
“We can now have a bit more time off the farm as well as doing all the other things that need doing such as maintenance.
“When we can and if the conditions are good I’ll go out with the kids and do a spot of fishing. We usually catch a few blue cod without going too far out.”
Wayne grew up at Karamea on the northern tip of the West Coast where his parents were sharemilking. The family moved to Golden Bay where he finished his schooling and went straight into dairying.
“I never wanted to do anything else. Farming is in the blood so it was what I wanted to do.”
Wayne moved to Kaikoura in 2008 to go contract milking when he met Hannah who came from a non-farming background and grew up in Bath, England. She left school and trained as a primary school teacher in London and is now the principal at a local school. They met at a social event in 2009. At the time she was teaching at an International School in Jakarta and was in New Zealand visiting her sister.
Hannah moved to NZ in 2010 and they married in 2011. Between them they have five children: Samantha, 18, George, 16, Kyle, 16, William, 14, and Henry, 6.
Hannah’s parents bought the farm in 2014 and Wayne and Hannah moved there the same year to sharemilk.
For the Simpsons OAD is a permanent switch.
Together they’re enjoying the relative freedom of milking-free afternoons though Hannah is busy during term time at school. They employ one worker and milk through a 36-a-side herringbone shed, staffed by two people most of the time except for some weekends when it’s normally sole charge.
Milking generally runs through till the middle of May, followed by a dry-off on the home farm for the rest of the month then wintering on local lease blocks.
But last year was different.
“We actually sent half the herd up to Ward (southern Marlborough) for grazing for about a month. We kept the other half on the home farm and after a month they all went to the runoff block across the road.”
The new policy was simply a case of making things work, he says.
“We were leasing two blocks of land which gave us enough to winter all our cows but we lost one of them after it got sold.”
Last season the System 2 farm produced 1375kg MS/ha on OAD – only just under a peak of 1400kg MS/ha in the three years before the quake. They are on track to do the same production this season.
Wayne doesn’t have a grazing plan for this winter but he expects he’ll need to either send stock away again or buy more feed.
Pasture is a mix of ryegrass and clover plus some silage and the farm is irrigated by individual sprinklers moved daily over 70ha of the property. Most paddocks have three irrigators though some larger paddocks have five.
“It depends on the season of course but we do find in drier years the non-irrigated parts of the farm do get very dry.”
He does farm walks occasionally and measures pasture by eye and says the OAD herd does a good job of keeping pasture quality high.
“The herd is always fully fed but on OAD they can be pushed a wee bit harder than if they were milking twice-a-day.
“We aim to feed paddocks at about 2500kg DM and leave residuals of about 1500kg DM
They also grow silage, 12ha of kale and brassica each year on the neighbouring 40ha lease block for wintering cows.
Calving starts on August 1 and generally goes for nine weeks. Springing cows are checked several times a day and they bring calves in once a day. They rear about 80 replacements or basically all AI heifer calves born and sell about 20-30 Hereford calves as four-day-olds.
Calves are fed milk and meal but at times they use milk powder rather than taking milk from the vat.
“It actually works out cheaper to use the milk powder,” he says.
Calves are weaned at 90kg and remain on-farm till winter and are then sent to a neighbour’s block for grazing for three months before shifting to the run-off where they remain till they return as in-calf heifers.
Having found their Jersey and crossbred cows are better once-a-day milkers than the Friesians they are now using only crossbred or Jersey AI semen.
Mating begins on October 16 for the heifers and October 23 for the herd. They do four weeks of AI using crossbred and Jersey semen followed by two weeks of AI with short-gestation Hereford semen and a final few weeks of bull mating.
“We do four weeks of AI with the Jersey and the crossbred and then two weeks with the Hereford and then we put some Jersey bulls out for six weeks as well but we pretty much cull all the last ones in the last three weeks.”
That final few weeks of calving is really just a safety net for cows failing to get in calf though the farm’s in-calf rate is a very respectable 96%.
They have been using the short gestation AI Herefords for the past three years. It brings calving forward a week earlier than the crossbreds and Jerseys and provides the added benefit of being able to sell four-day-old beef calves.
Wayne doesn’t chase any particular genetics, opting to use LIC’s Bull of the Day. It’s a good, cost-effective option and seems to work, he says.
But the farm is starting to breed its own bulls meaning no more bull leasing from next season onward. The policy is partly an attempt to minimising the risk of Mycoplasma bovis, he says.
With business back to normal they are getting on with the job while enjoying the change of pace. As well as getting out on the water Wayne is a keen rugby player for the Kaikoura Crays social team (Golden Oldies).
In November last year the team visited Fiji where they played several games.
“After the final game we took our boots along with some rugby balls and some other bits and pieces that we had brought with us and donated them to a local school.”
Hannah is kept busy with her job, running the household and helping out occasionally on the farm, which she finds relaxing.
The 2016 earthquake shook things up enough to keep them on their toes for now but looking ahead they eventually want to step up to farm ownership. In the meantime they are planning on planting some trees around all waterways, which are already fenced.
Farm facts
Owner: DDB Dairy Enterprise
Sharemilkers: Wayne and Hannah Simpson
Location: Inland Road, Kaikoura
Farm Size: 114ha. Milking platform 80ha
Cows: 320 Jersey-cross
Production: 2018-19 110,300kg MS
Target: 2019-20 110,300kg MS
