Dairy, sheep and beef - never a dull moment
New Zealand farmers are legendary for their ‘‘can-do’’ attitude. meets an example of the breed.
Waikato sheep, beef and dairy farmer Nigel Anderson is walking proof of that old maxim ‘‘if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it’’.
When he’s not farming on his Pukeatua property, Anderson is serving his community on a local government body, as a Scout leader, rugby and netball coach, Federated Farmers official, and school board trustee.
In his spare time he’s planting farm trees and getting to grips with a landscaping mission after extensive renovations on the family villa he’s lived in all his life.
His wife Monica works for Otorohanga accountancy firm Osbornes and is no slouch either. Raised on an Arohena drystock farm, she’s on the local hall committee, treasurer of the Pukeatua War Memorial Church, involved in Rural Women and has been involved in Scout administration.
And just to guarantee there’s never a dull moment, the couple have three children – Emma 15, James 13, and Benjamin, 10.
Anderson has just returned from leading a Scout camp in the South Island, pondering what to do with bumper grass growth in his absence – not that surplus feed is a novelty for this farmer.
‘‘I understock, people give me a hard time but I like it this way. It’s less stressful for me, for the livestock and for the environment. It all comes back to what land use suits what best – what suits dairy, what suits drystock, what suits cropping and pines.
‘‘To look after the land properly it’s better to make sure you match up the livestock to the land.’’
Five blocks of land make up the 380 hectares of the Anderson farming interests which straddle Arapuni Rd and include a dairy unit.
The home farm is 210ha and was established by Anderson’s late father Gordon, born and bred in the district on a nearby farm still in the wider Anderson family 106 years on.
A commercial perendale sheep flock, breeding cows and heifer and steer finishing is the main business of the home farm, which Anderson runs with his brother Lewis.
Pine trees are also in the revenue mix – Gordon Anderson was an early embracer of farm tree planting and oversaw two pine crop millings and a third pine planting before his death, says his son.
Expansion started in 1999 when the home farm was deemed too small to support Gordon, Nigel and Lewis and their families. With little debt, they decided to buy a drystock farm across Arapuni Rd.
In 2002, Nigel and Monica, who’d had a hankering to go dairy farming believing the income more stable, bought a dairying block with friends Tony and Christine Muller - also across the road. The two couples operate the dairy farm as a company and have equal shares.
The first year the partners milked 300 cows but Nigel and Monica have since added some of their own land to the milking platform which has enabled the operation to build to 400 friesian and friesian cross cows, milked through a 34-aside shed.
The dairy operation, which supplies Fonterra, started with a manager, but today is run by a 50:50 sharemilker. Last season production from grass and maize only was 155,000kg milksolids, the operation’s best ever. This season’s yield looks set to match it.
The Anderson home farm grows 16ha of maize a year – 11ha of which goes to the dairy farm and the rest is sold to neighbours.
The dairy farm doesn’t buy palm kernel extract. Anderson says it didn’t make any money in the milk price slump but neither did the partners have to borrow to get through it.
Anderson says with five blocks involved, the overall farming contour ranges from ‘‘dead flat to rolling to hilly to very steep’’.
It’s another reason, apart from spreading income risk, for the livestock diversity, he says. Also, about 70ha at the back of the home farm is leased to dairying neighbours for their young stock and Anderson takes on winter dairy cow grazing contracts when feed permits.
He says sheep farming is probably his favourite. But it’s a lot of work for ‘‘very disappointing’’ money.
He’s ‘‘down to’’ 700 perendale ewes, which are all mated to a terminal sire, mainly poll dorset. Replacement ewes are bought in as needed.
Most lambs are on the truck by Christmas – last month averaging 18.4kg – to optimise schedule return and to meet facial eczema risk, a perennial problem in the area.
In 1999, the year the family first expanded, buying the drystock block across the road, 550 ewes out of a 1000-strong flock were lost to the liver-damaging spore ingestion disease.
‘‘Either a drench capsule or helicopter spraying usually keeps us on track,’’ Anderson says.
He likes perendales as ‘‘freemoving, intelligent sheep’’ but given the post-Christmas plunge in the lamb schedule which is becoming a tradition, says he may cut his sheep numbers further.
‘‘We got nearly $100 a lamb for the first lot, but by December 22 it was down to $86. Three years ago we got $130 – that $30 on those first ones is all profit.’’
Lambs go to Affco for processing. Anderson runs 60 breeding cows, mostly herefordfriesian cross which are usually mated to a charolais bull. Steer calves are sold as weaners or finished. All heifers and finished steers are sold as two year olds at the Frankton saleyards.
He likes breeding cows because they’re great pasture ‘‘cleaners’’, and hereford-friesian cross particularly because they have plentiful milk and produce good calves.
‘‘You can’t push them as hard as straight hereford or angus but in saying that, because of the type of farming we are doing, they’re not getting hammered hard in winter. We have no trouble with them, they’re a very quiet animal, and with the charolais bull over them, the calves are quiet too. It’s about ease of farming.’’
With an eye to a lighter hand on the cutter, Anderson had been hoping to devote more of his land to dairying, but has accepted with the size of the existing dairy shed and the spectre of Waikato Regional Council’s Healthy Rivers’ policy, expansion could be limited to 60 cows.
‘‘It may not work as well as we wanted. But there’s the possibility of milking once a day. And we want to continue improving the place, we’ve planted a lot of trees, and we’ll wait to see if the kids are interested in farming.’’
Meanwhile Anderson, recently elected to the Te Awamutu district community board and vicechairman of Waikato Federated Farmers meat and fibre section, will continue his work developing young people. His farm has an area devoted to Scout camping and activities, enjoyed by youth from all over the Waikato and Auckland.
‘‘I like seeing them develop. They can’t light a fire or do much at all. We like to challenge them and generally, they rise to the challenge. At one event we gave them a mystery box for their dinner, and they had to cook it. I gave each patrol a sack with a turkey and a rabbit in it and they had to skin and gut them and cook them for tea. Some of them were town kids. They were pretty shocked but they loved it.
‘‘There were also plenty of potatoes too – it was funny how many of them wanted to do the potatoes. Some kids don’t know how to make a cup of tea or Milo. It’s great to see them grow and learn to cope with the unexpected.’’