Finding a good use for extra pasture
A dairy farmer has found a way to reduce bobby calves by producing a valuable beef animal, says Rob Tipa.
Patearoa farmer James Herlihy has plenty of good reasons to produce freerange, grass-fed wagyu beef cattle, a premium marbled red meat that fetches eye-watering prices in top restaurants around the world.
He is one of 49 shareholders of Firstlight Wagyu, a Hawke’s Baybased company that has an expanding New Zealand network of farmers contracted to supply fast-growing export markets in Britain, France and the United States.
‘‘I love the back story of a grassfed, free-range animal,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a healthy product with good provenance and a real point of difference in the market.
‘‘I like the company,’’ he adds. ‘‘They’re extremely good to deal with. I like their ethos and I like the idea that we’re getting less wastage on our dairy farms in the number of bobby calves we put out.’’
The Herlihy family converted
500ha of their 1100ha Maniototo sheep and beef farm near Patearoa into two dairy units, the first in
2010 and the second in 2012.
Sharemilker Nic Love milks 1600 cows on both dairy platforms while James runs all their own milking herd replacements and calves on the remainder of the farm, a self-contained dairy grazing business supporting both dairy units.
In a brain-storming session with their stock agent a few years ago, James and his father Gavan came up with a plan to add wagyu beef to the business because they had more land than they needed for dairy support. They have invested heavily in an 11ha water storage dam, four pivots on their dairy units and a one-kilometre long pivot that irrigates 180ha of their support block.
‘‘We needed something to turn additional pasture into money and to us wagyu beef was a good fit with the business,’’ he says.
They now lease purebred wagyu bulls from Firstlight and use them across their crossbred dairy heifers on one dairy unit and as a followup after cows are AI mated. The wagyu beef operation works well with the farm’s two dairy units.
‘‘For us it’s a good way of sourcing beef year-in and year-out from our own properties,’’ he says. ‘‘We don’t have any biosecurity issues and it works.’’
Rearing their own bobby calves generates an extra income stream from what would otherwise be a wasted resource.
‘‘We know with Firstlight what we’re going to get for them a year out, both as store or finished animals, so it gives you the ability to budget,’’ he says. ‘‘You’re not at the mercy of the market or seasonal variations in temperature or climate.’’
Wagyu stock are highly tradable between members of the Firstlight producer group with breeders enjoying the bonus of retaining a proportion of pool payments above the company’s schedule price, depending on how long the animals spend on each farm.
‘‘It suits our climate and our growth curve if we can quit yearlings in late October or early November and lighten up a bit when it gets dry,’’ James says.
‘‘This year we will probably have to quit some of our yearlings because things are looking drier than normal and my capital stock have priority over my wagyu beef.’’
Conversely, last season was a good one on the Maniototo. The Herlihys carried 200 wagyu cattle through to two-year-olds for the first time and have just sent off their third draft for processing at Anzco’s Ashburton plant.
Average carcassweight for steers was 313kg and heifers 279kg and gross returns ranged between $5.90 and $6.12 a kilogram, depending on their levels of marbling. Gavan says they won’t know how much their pool payment will be until April but believes it is likely to be about 70c a kilogram.
‘‘We’re budgeting on another $200 for steers and $150 for heifers in pool payments,’’ he says. ‘‘We hope to net $2100 - $2200 for steers and $1800 -$1900 for heifers.’’
James says wagyu calves are a bit more fragile than beef-cross calves and need to be well fed and well looked after until they are yearlings, when they start to bloom. ‘‘They are quite a small calf. They are not as vigorous as a hereford or other beef crosses so they need a little bit of special care in the early stages.
Calves are housed in a 10-bay calf shed and fed a fortified milk blend for three weeks then go on to straight milk powder, meal and lucerne hay before being moved out on to pastures.
James has found wagyu cattle take a bit longer to put on weight and are consistently 30- 40kg behind beef or dairy cross animals of the same age.
He is experimenting with a number of other beef breeds, including hereford and stabiliser crosses and a three-quarter dairycross bull calf that has shown impressive growth rates as a castrated steer. ‘‘We find the wagyu growth rates are back a bit, but the price you kill them at is higher so they’re still a better option,’’ he says.
All milking cows, replacements and all calves from both dairy units are wintered on the support block, mostly on fodder beet, grass, balage or lucerne silage.
He would like to increase beef numbers, but the business is constrained by the availability of water.
‘‘Water is everything on the Maniototo. We probably only get
350-400mm of natural rainfall, which is all right as long as you get it at the right time,’’ he says.
‘‘In five years we might have one good season in terms of rainfall, two average ones and two pretty shocking ones. We’re maxed out at the moment.’’
To mitigate this factor, the Herlihy’s have invested heavily in irrigation in the last few years.
They built an 11-hectare water storage dam that holds 380,000 cubic metres of water, which they fill early and late in the season with water drawn from a reliable creek and the East Maniototo Irrigation Scheme. They also built a kilometre-long pivot to irrigate
180ha of their dairy support block and use a variable rate monitoring system to carefully manage the amount of water used on each paddock.
First Light Wagyu expects to triple its current production of
18,000 grass-fed Wagyu beef animals in the next three years, general manager Matt Crowther says.
The company has a good spread of over 300 dairy and beef farmers from Northland to Southland contracted to supply it.
With over a hundred of the company’s suppliers now from the South Island, the company is now processing South Island stock through an Anzco plant in Ashburton.