Bells, whistles on this farm
STUFF The entrance to Landcorp’s Burgess dairy farm at Wairakei resembles a modern lifestyle village – a well-presented gateway, long, wide drive and pleasant houses situated discretely far enough apart to be private and personal. Not the usual dairy farm look.
The modern theme is carried on at the dairy farm office. It is part of the dairy complex and looks out onto the 54-bail rotary milking machinery. Inside is bank of computers and a large screen showing security camera views of the dairy, the implement shed, milk vats and other vital machinery. It is easy to see that this is a hi-tech operation using the latest equipment to monitor, control and enhance the dairy farm.
But Burgess is a young dairy farm five years ago it was mature pine forest. After harvesting the timber a development team prepared the land for pasture, fenced the property for paddocks and laneways, and constructed a dairy shed and five houses. All houses are brick-clad with double glazing, insulation, woodburning fire with wet back and set in pleasant gardens.
Burgess is run by farm manager Warwick Halford who reports to farm business manager Joan Barendsen. She oversees Burgess and Renown dairy units and also the management of Orakonui, a support unit for the 19-farm Landcorp Pastoral Complex at Wairakei.
Staff are right at the top of Landcorp’s priority. Barendsen says getting and keeping good staff is vital in today’s market and they ‘‘try to go the extra mile’’ to ensure staff are housed in warm, welllooked-after properties.
‘‘It’s not an easy job [dairy farming],’’ Barendsen says. ‘‘It can be cold, wet and miserable here in the winter so it is important to keep the staff well-fed and looked after.
‘‘During calving we have crockpot meals, made by our admin staff and given each day to the young men and women who are working in the wet and cold conditions. At least if they have a hot meal they will be more inclined to do a good job, less inclined to have accidents.
Farm manager Warwick Halford agrees. ‘‘I’m gaining good workers. It doesn’t cost us much and staff are happy and healthy. It’s not just about chasing [milk] targets.’’
They believe when they slow the staff turnover down it is a definite win. The cost of finding and replacing staff can be both expensive and time consuming.
Burgess is 270ha and carries 600 to 620 cows. This is only its third season of production. They started with’’ pretty ordinary’’ cows, says Halford, but they are starting to see the herd improvements coming through now, though it is a work in progress. The age spread is lower than the national average with half the herd three years or younger. Last season, out of the 19 farms, Burgess achieved top production per cow per day and finished top for overall cow performance for that lactation.
‘‘Last year we dropped our stocking rate by 20 per cent to help better feed our cows and to reduce the nitrogen impact. We don’t feed PK anymore and this year we will produce all our own supplements.
‘‘There has been a reduction in production, but only 6 percent and our overall cover has increased. We want to be self-contained from here on,’’ he says.
Halford and Barendsen say they were encouraged by Landcorp senior business manager Bruce Hunter to enter the Ballance Farm Environment Awards this year.
‘‘We both thought it was too soon but we did win the Massey University Innovation Award and the Waikato River Authority Catchment Improvement Award. The awards are just part of our journey and we will continue to improve and progress,’’ Barendsen says.
The innovations on this young dairy farm are many and varied. The multi-bay stand-off shed or cow barn is already in use this season with the dried-off mob spending about half their day in the warm dry environment. The springers will be brought in before calving. They will have a short time on the grass each day but will spend most of the time inside for their calving. Halford says the cow barn is beneficial to animal health and it also increases control of more of the farm effluent, which is collected under each bay and piped to the effluent pond.
The herd are all fitted with collars which allow monitoring of cow health, rumination and heat. All information is relayed back to the office computers. This allows cows to be drafted out of the mob at the dairy to allow for either mating, or veterinary attention and shows at a glance how the herd is doing on the available pasture.
The farm has several Niwa weather stations at various locations around the farm that link into the computer program to assist with decisions on irrigation.
Seventy per cent of the farm has irrigation, using a centre-pivot system.