Bigger is better for Dannevirke holsteins
A Dannevirke dairy farmer likes his cows black and white and the bigger the better. Kate Taylor investigates.
Cows wander slowly into the milking shed at Robert and Stephanie Trainor’s Rua Roa farm … many of them stopping for a scratch from Rob on the way past. Some line up patiently, waiting for the rush of grain from the in-shed feeding system.
‘‘They’re not always that good. Some of them know how to pull the rope to get fed early or to get a bit more when it’s gone,’’ Steph says, laughing.
She is third-generation on the farm, which was converted to dairy by her parents in 1985. Holstein is breed of choice. They have 175 cows – 45 jerseys and the rest holsteins – producing an average of 500kg of milk solids each (on herd test results). All of the jerseys and 80-90 of the holsteins are registered and they’re fading out the crossbreds over time.
‘‘We had a whole herd of jerseys mated with friesians. Steph’s parents loved the jerseys and we had a few really nice jersey cows that milked well so we kept them.’’
But holsteins remain Rob’s firm favourite. ‘‘I far prefer black and white cows to brown cows. I like them as big as I can get them. They impress me. There’s no real reason, it’s just a preference,’’ he says.
‘‘The holsteins are exclusively North American genetics because it’s the easy way to get that size, plus type and genetic diversity. The jerseys are a mix of high index sires as well as some overseas ones.’’
Their biggest holstein is Ruanui Goldwyn Willow ET, but a jersey cow named Ruanui Nevvy Dixie gets the most praise. ‘‘We didn’t use most mainstream bulls so she had different breeding to other mainstream cows and turned out to be an extraordinarily highproduction cow. She had high indexes and as a consequence she became very popular with the AI companies.
‘‘Her daughters and granddaughters are providing bulls for artificial breeding as well,’’ Steph says. ‘‘Rob’s not taking the credit, but he did things differently and that was a good thing.
‘‘But still, it was a fluke she milked so well. Her full sister didn’t milk as good. There’s a bit of luck involved,’’ Rob adds, still not taking the credit. They do embryo transplants (ET) on their cows and IVF on their yearling heifers with embryos implanted into 20-40 hereford-friesian heifers.
‘‘Dixie is 10 years old. She’s only calved three times. We’ve kept her empty and dry and have done ET on her. She goes to Otorohanga for that. She must have produced 20 calves so far. She doesn’t produce the eggs easily, she’s a bit tight, it’s a bit like pulling teeth. We have another holstein cow that’s produced 25 heifer calves. She and her daughter are both good producers of embryos, which must be genetic.’’
They also import holstein embryos from Canada. They don’t take their animals to shows but believe in the theory behind the correctness of the breeds.
‘‘We have taken calves to the shows in the past but it’s a huge commitment time-wise. We breed show cows in that we strive for type but we don’t show them. If we got a super-duper cow we’d probably sell it to someone who did want to show her.’’
The 141ha farm (120ha effective) was originally called Ratanui. But Rob and Steph wanted to register their herd when they started sharemilking and that name was already taken.
‘‘We live in Rua Roa so we combined that with Ratanui to come up with Ruanui and we’ve been Ruanui Dairies ever since,’’ says Steph. Her parents, John and Carol Ellis, had been thinking about converting their sheep farm to dairy, but hadn’t actively pursued it until Rob was back into
The holsteins are exclusively North American genetics because it's the easy way to get that size, plus type and genetic diversity.
Rob Trainor
dairying permanently. They then converted the farm and the Trainors sharemilked for five years before taking over when Steph’s parents moved to a lifestyle block on the outskirts of Dannevirke. Carol and John had taken over the farm from John’s parents, Bill and May Ellis.
Rob and Steph have two adult daughters, Claire and Helen, who although not living at home, still love coming back to the farm and the animals. Rob and Steph started with 120 cows milking on half the farm as the Ellises still had sheep on the other half. They climbed to 285 when they took over the whole property but it was too many for the type of country. They have settled on 175 cows – both for the land and for their own peace of mind.
‘‘We were reliant on labour and good labour wasn’t easy to find,’’ Rob says. ‘‘Cutting numbers to 175 meant we could be become totally self-sufficient apart from the meal for the in-shed feeding, strive for higher per-cow production and to make it easier on us and the people who work with us. To try to eliminate the stress,’’ Steph adds.
They work with Derek Murphy, who is in his fourth season on the farm and lives on the 40ha runoff about 2km down the road, where Steph, who has never lost her love of sheep, has a hobby flock of 23 ewes who have just completed 200 per cent docked lambing.
‘‘We don’t do job titles. Basically, as soon as we leave Derek’s in charge. We try to have two people milking so we have a relief-milker as well, our neighbour Bryn Quigin.’’
Rob grew up in Dannevirke but always wanted to milk cows. ‘‘I didn’t know anything about sharemilking or the dairy industry, I just liked cows. My first job on a dairy farm was working for, well, let’s just say it was the worst person in the world you would want to work for. I went to a sheep farm after that, I was a bit shellshocked.’’
He then did a four-year carpentry apprenticeship with his builder father, while still harbouring a desire to go dairy farming.
‘‘I still liked the idea of working with cows. I was away on a block course at Tech and Steph applied for a relief-milking position on my behalf. I got the job. It was a flashas herringbone shed whereas the first one had been a small rumpity walk-through that only had about
50 cows. This one was state-of-theart and it reignited my spark. It was only short-term but I got another relief-milking job after that, and I knew it was what I really wanted to do.
‘‘I passed my trade cert exam and I was off. I had to do 8000 hours to qualify and my 8000th hour was at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon. I finished on the Friday and was working on a dairy farm, Bruce Charmley’s, come Monday morning. That was 34 years ago.’’
Ruanui Dairies is set in the foothills of the southern reaches of the Ruahine Range. It’s only a
10-minute drive to Dannevirke but their rainfall is double what falls on State Highway 2 and 11⁄2 times more than nearby Top Grass Rd. The Trainors have spent years fencing and planting waterways and drains, which has meant a tremendous increase in bird life. ‘‘Wood pigeons used to be a rarity but now we can get sometimes five or six wood pigeons by the river and tui love the flaxes around the dairy, too.’’
The Rokai River flows through the middle of the property. About
24ha of river bed and natural creeks were fenced off more than
20 years ago. ‘‘When we first came here we did the fencing along the river, which was pretty unruly and used to spill into the paddocks. The Catchment Board (now Horizons Regional Council) said they’d do something about it. They did the fencing, about 3-4km, and planting and we shared the cost. Quite a bit of the land was unproductive, extraordinarily stony and not a lot of use, so we fenced it into the river bed as well. We planted the larger areas in pine trees and the smaller areas in natives.’’
He says the pines planted were low-quality trees. ‘‘We never intended to do forestry so we never pruned them either. We went on to plant other unproductive banks and sidings ourselves, not with the intention of harvesting, just having them there.’’
‘‘There’s a lovely aesthetic value in trees on the farm,’’ Steph says. ‘‘It’s picturesque. It looks great. It feels great. It’s a nice place to work.’’
Steph’s father had also planted trees on the farm and especially loved native trees. There’s also a little patch of original native bush fenced off by Steph’s Dad about 27 years ago.
‘‘We’ve planted more in there over the years as well,’’ says Rob.
‘‘There are totara, rimu, kahikatea, californian redwoods and wattle. There are lemonwoods as well now. There are so many new natives popping up everywhere – the birds must be dropping the seeds from other places. We pick up some of the seedlings and replant them if they’re not in a good spot.’’
He says most of the work was done before the launch of Fonterra’s Clean Streams Accord and Horizons’ One Plan.
‘‘We’ve been planting and protecting waterways for years. This whole environmental thing has been simmering for a while and we strive not to be the rotten apple.’’
‘‘Dirty dairy’’ headlines annoy them both.
‘‘It’s frustrating dairy farmers are put out there as the baddies. We’re all branded with the same brush,’’ Steph says.
‘‘We haven’t had to change what we’re doing because the rules changed. We farm in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way because we want to, not because we have to.’’