Fast expansion for family-first couple
A Hawke’s Bay couple love the lifestyle dairy farming provides. Kate Taylor pays them a visit.
Apair of small pink gumboots kick the dust on the laneway as cows wander from their paddock to the milking shed. Three-year-old Annabelle has had enough of the hot summer day.
Bringing in the cows is often a family affair at White Stag – one of three properties farmed by Andy and Robbie Hunt in central Hawke’s Bay – but today, in the middle of the school holidays, it’s big brothers William, 8, and Ben, 6, doing the work. Andy and Robbie have been on this property since Annabelle was a baby – she was just a couple of weeks old when they had the roof shout for the new shed.
‘‘It’s been a busy few years,’’ Robbie says.
Andy was managing a dairy farm near Onga Onga when the couple started looking around for their next step. They knew of a property that had just been sold at Ashley Clinton and contacted the new owners to talk about the possibility of a sharemilking position, but instead agreed to an equity partnership. They’ve never looked back. That property was 147 hectare farm, Cabbage Tree. White Stag, bought at the start of 2011 from the Severinsen family, has a 108ha milking platform (130ha total) and a neighbouring 135ha runoff, Ratalea, was bought in 2014 from the Wylie family. Their equity partners are Stuart and Ann McPhail, who dairy farm at Opiki. ‘‘I had worked for a friend of theirs at Linton. We hit it off straight away and moved up to Cabbage Tree for the 2010-11 season. Looking back, we wanted a 50:50 sharemilking arrangement because of all the cashflow benefits that come with that, but we also wanted to settle in one place.’’
‘‘This partnership has been such a success for us,’’ says Robbie. ‘‘The business initially only involved one farm, but extra opportunities have arisen and Stuart and Ann have been totally on board. We’ve come up with ideas for development or conversions and they have supported us the whole way.’’
Andy agrees: ‘‘We didn’t come up here expecting to expand so quickly but neighbouring farms have become available so we’ve taken the opportunity to buy them because we might not get the chance again.’’ White Stag was originally bought as a runoff for Cabbage Tree but converted to dairy on the back of a couple of positive years and an $8 payout.
Andy and Stuart hold six-weekly farm meetings with consultant Parry Matthews and Stuart and speak regularly. ‘‘We don’t have formal reporting structures in place but have those discussions when we need to,’’ Robbie says.
‘‘We have a great relationship with them. We share the same ethics or values in terms of doing the right thing by the farm, the cows and the people we employ.’’ Robbie was brought up on her parents’ sheep and beef farm at Omakere, coastal Central Hawke’s Bay, and went on to do accounting at Massey University. After a stint overseas, she went back to accounting and has worked at BM Accounting in Waipawa for the past two years. ‘‘I really love the rural side of that as well. Rural businesses, particularly farms, present their own challenges and have a uniqueness not always seen in a commercial business. Being involved in farming certainly helps when dealing with clients.’’
Robbie says their two skill sets work well together. She started on a farm and went to an urban career while Andy grew up on a farm and chose to go farming. He was raised at Turakina, the son of a teacher and the local school principal. He says he had always loved animals. He started helping on neighbouring farms when he was 13, was milking every weekend by the time he was 14 and left school at 16 to go farming. His first job was for the Majors at Turakina then the Fullerton-Smiths at Marton. After time overseas and a short stint as a stock agent, Andy worked for the Cockrells at Linton before returning to manage the FullertonSmiths’ farm.
Having met Robbie and making the decision to move to Hawke’s Bay, Andy secured a manager’s job with Karen and the late Donald Fraser at Rawhiti near Onga Onga.
Andy also likes to have good relationships with his staff. Tim Hamilton is their farm manager – he works across the three farms although spends most of his time at White Stag. Josh Wardle was employed at the end of last year in a
2IC-type role at Cabbage Tree and will be joined by Kahlia Fryer in February. A herd of 365 cows is milked at Cabbage Tree which has a 150ha milking platform including
25ha from one lease, as well as another 25ha leased support block. The herd produces 1100kg of milk solids a hectare or 475kg MS for each cow. ‘‘The first few years we were up to 1200kg a hectare but as we got bigger we took our eye off the ball a bit,’’ Andy says. ‘‘The weather dictates a lot and we’ve had it tough both climatically and definitely financially with the payout. The goal is to get back on track up there and boost that production again. In the first year after we converted it, White Stag was producing 540kg a cow but then we had those harder seasons. This season we have 235 cows and we’re on track to produce 1100kg a hectare.’’ Cabbage Tree also milks 120 heifers once a day from midSeptember. Smaller cows are kept up there and larger ones move to the herd at White Stag. Both
We share the same ethics or values in terms of doing the right thing by the farm, the cows and the people we employ. Robbie Hunt
herringbone sheds have in-shed feeding of maize grain. Their fodder crops, chicory and turnips, are direct drilled. There is also 15ha of kale at Ratalea, where 350 calves were reared this year.
Robbie says they focus on healthy, happy cows and healthy, happy people. ‘‘We don’t have to have the big, expensive gear. Our business is about the cows. We can’t pay top dollar to our staff so we can’t compete with the bigger companies, but our accommodation is good and we have an understanding with the rosters that families and personal lives come first.’’
The same family-comes-first thinking follows through to the Hunts themselves. ‘‘The kids love the farm and love helping Andy and working with the cows. Dairy farming can be an unsettling industry for a young family. I’m happy we’ve been able to forge lasting relationships that have enabled us to make our business our home.’’