Friday, March 29, 2024

Counting sheep

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Farming couple’s exciting sheep milking venture
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Sheep milking is a small but growing industry in the Waikato, where cows have ruled the dairy industry for decades.

After a lifetime of farming sheep for their meat and wool, Allan and Toni Browne have switched the sheep yards for the sheep milking shed.

They have joined the small but growing number of farmers who are part of the new Waikato-based sheep milking industry.

They carved off 80 hectares of their then 410ha beef cattle and lamb finishing operation near Cambridge, and are in their first season milking 1100 ewes for Maui Milk.

The potential for milking sheep interested the Brownes long before the conversion took place. Six years earlier they converted 160ha of their land into cow dairying and saw the potential in the economic returns.

He attended one of Maui Milk’s open days held on the company’s farm at Waikino Station near Taupo.

“It excited me straight from the start, as soon as I saw it,” Allan says.

“After being a drystock farmer all of my life, I suddenly realised how much money there is in milking cows.

“There’s just nothing that makes money the way that dairy farms make money.” 

The total farm business is an intergenerational farm, with all three of his children and grandchildren living and working in it, as well as Allan’s mother.

Diversifying into sheep milking was part of the Browne’s succession plan to keep the business family-owned, he says.

There was also a personal connection to Maui Milk’s senior staff.

Their farmland borders Maui Milk geneticist Jake Chardon’s property and their accountant is Maui Milk general manager Peter Gatley’s wife.

That connection meant they were the first farmers to lease sheep-milking rams off Maui Milk on September 20, 2018.

They leased 15 rams and mated them to 3000 of their ewes, which were a mix of a range of different meat breeds.

The Browne’s farm at Cambridge is 570ha which consists of 160ha dairy farm run by a 50:50 sharemilker, 330ha beef cattle and lamb finishing, 80ha sheep milking. Photo credit: Stephen Barker

Factbox: 

Owners: Allan and Toni Browne

Location: Cambridge

Farm size: 570ha – 160ha dairy farm run by a 50:50 sharemilker, 330ha beef cattle and lamb finishing, 80ha sheep milking

Herd: 450 cows

Sheep herd: 1100

Production: 2-3.5l/day

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