Challenging dairy season for Owl Farm

St Peter’s School’s Owl Farm has come through a challenging 2016-17 season with some big wins in production, profit and pasture improvements.

The farm’s total production for the season from its 423 cow herd was 178,000 kilograms of milk solids at 421kg a cow. Speaking at a recent farm focus day, farm manager Tom Buckely said it was a pleasing result after it looked likely the farm would struggle to reach 170,000kg milk solids in December.

‘‘This is up 1.4 per cent on last year and we were able to do this with less cows, less area and less feed.’’

Buckley said they fed the herd better for longer and milked 20 fewer cows on the same feed through autumn and summer. The farm had good pasture and chicory crop covers, which allowed it to manage its post-peak production decline, despite the poor weather affecting the spring milking peak.

The amount of home grown feed harvested lifted by 6.7 per cent, with 14.2 tonnes grown and 12.3t harvested. That resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in the amount of palm kernel used. There were fewer cases of cow lameness and facial eczema in the herd, but higher levels of mastitis in spring.

A higher payout contributed largely to the farm’s profitability lift between this season and last season, demonstration manager Louise Cook said. ‘‘Payout had a huge change in profit. The farm’s revenue was up well over 50 per cent, which was fantastic.’’

The farm had decided to drop purchased maize silage out of its system, resulting in a $72,000 saving for the new season. Instead, about 150t of grass silage will be produced next season to be used as a forage feed over summer. Total farm working expenses for the season had dropped from $5.08/kg MS last year to $4.52/kg MS and was projected to fall to $4.02/kg MS for the new season.

The average for Waipa dairy farmers according to DairyBase was $4.06/kg MS and the top 20 per cent of Waikato farmers was $3.94. For Owl Farm to keep pushing its costs down, it had to keep increasing its home-grown feed and dilute out some of its fixed costs. The profit earned from this season would be used to service farm debt accumulated over the past two seasons.

‘‘By the end of this season we’ll have closed our debt level to around $21.50/kg MS,’’ Cook said.

Owl Farm’s long term goal was to be in the top 20 per cent of farmers in the region, but it would take time.

‘‘The plan is to get there but it’s unlikely to happen in the next 12 months. It’s that whole ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, story.

‘‘Our big challenge long term is that we have to keep growing more feed so we can make more milk to pull that cost per kilogram down.’’