Calving change paying off
Aswitch to autumn calving delivered unexpected benefits for South Taranaki farmers Andy and Lisa Tippett.
The couple have farmed their 135-hectare (effective) Okaiawa property for eight seasons and are in their third of autumn calving.
In their first four years on the farm, they discovered how much impact the area’s rapid moisture evaporation had on growth, producing just seven kilograms of dry matter a hectare over summer.
‘‘We got a bit disillusioned about the Okaiawa summers, what was and wasn’t growing,’’ Andy said during a Dairy Trust Taranaki field day at the property on Thursday.
‘‘In the last 15 years in this area, winter growth has been higher on average than summer. But of course in the last two years, since we went to autumn calving, that hasn’t been the case.’’
The couple peak-milk 400 cows on the system 2 farm and are targeting 170,000 kilograms milksolids this season.
‘‘We’ve tried to achieve the same amount of milksolids we would have got with spring calving because all we’ve really done is bring everything back by five months,’’ Andy said.
In the transition season, the herd was milked through, although there were other ways to make the switch, Andy said.
‘‘We decided to milk our herd through and not mate them so they had a longer milking period,’’ he said.
‘‘It could be easier to find a nice autumn calving herd and swap them over but there are also benefits to working with your own stock. You know what you’ve got and what you’re dealing with.’’
While there was money to be made by milking through in a good year, nothing was guaranteed, Andy said.
‘‘The weather was the hardest thing that first year and nobody can control that. The year we did it, it was dry and the costs went up because we had to keep the cows milking,’’ he said.
‘‘If you time it right with a good year there’s probably money to be made in the transition but I wouldn’t bank on it. It probably cost us about 30,000kg/MS in the transition but now that we’re back in it, production seems to have stayed about the same.’’
With 11-week mating, the empty rate on the Tippett’s farm last year was 12.5 per cent and was likely to remain around that level, Andy said.
‘‘In the second year after we switched, the empty rate was about 23 per cent and that was pretty scary but it was all transitioning.
‘‘Some of the older cows, they’re born in spring and everything about them is spring and now you’re asking them to be an autumn calver at the age of eight or nine and I think that might have gone against us a bit.’’
While the couple had ultimately made the switch to autumn calving to follow the growth period, reduced stress had been a welcome bonus, Andy said.
‘‘There’s a lot of talk about sustainability in dairy farming but it’s the farm people focus on – whether the farm can physically sustain what it’s doing. But what about the people who are working the farm? Can they sustain what they’re doing day in day out, year after year?
‘‘Having a business that took the stress out of it was a big thing.
‘‘The facts and figures are great but your own wellbeing is way more important, in any business, not just farming. If you’re not happy, nobody around you is happy, your business can’t run, your workers can’t operate and your family life is going to be all over the place.
‘‘Autumn calving definitely reduced some of that stress because you’re not operating in those stressful times.
‘‘Springtime now is just milking and feeding out so the wet period, you don’t notice it. The dry period, you don’t notice it because you’re not wanting production at that time of year. Those are big things.’’