Decision time for Owl Farm
De-intensify or invest in infrastructure - those are the choices facing Owl Farm as its management team contemplate the demonstration dairy farm’s future development.
Work has been ongoing over the past 12 months to work through different options as it shifts to its second stage of development after the farm spent the past three seasons addressing on farm performance issues.
The two options represented a fork in the road, farm management committee member Ian Tarbottom told farmers at a recent focus day.
‘‘We feel that where we are now, we can’t stay there.’’
Waikato farmer and fellow committee member Doug Storey said they wanted to get ‘‘ahead of the curve’’ when it came to environmental compliance and wanted to lead, not just talk about it.
He hoped that by starting conversations about environmental mitigation at Owl Farm, it would carry on back on their own farms.
They would also share its results with Waikato farmers because many farmers would be considering changes within their own businesses as tighter regulatory requirements come into effect.
‘‘We take this responsibility seriously, and we would like to take a leadership position on this environmental challenge and we don’t want to get caught in the middle ground in the years to come.’’
The farm at St Peter’s School in Cambridge winters 430 cows on 148 hectares and 18ha leased, it grows
16 tonnes of grass per hectare, imports 300 tonnes a year in supplementary feed, but has no existing infrastructure to minimise feed wastage. Its nitrogen losses are 39 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year.
This season it has milked
151,777 kilograms of milk solids to date, which is just under 5000kg MS at the same time last year. Demonstration manager Louise Cook said the herd had suffered from prolonged and significant heat stress this season and estimated it had caused over 2200kg MS in lost production.
Despite the challenges over summer, farm performance had improved immensely over the past few seasons, but the business still needed to improve its profit and further reduce its environmental footprint, Cook said.
‘‘We have to take stock of the fact that progress has happened.’’
De-intensifying would see the farm drop from 2.95-2.6 cows per hectare while keeping their turnip summer feed crop and pastures at their current levels.
The model would see a lift in profit, an improved return on assets and a reduction in Owl Farm’s N leaching footprint by 5kg N/ha/year.
Investing in infrastructure would lift Owl Farm’s stocking rate to 3 cows per hectare.
Maize silage would have to be grown as well as continuing to grow summer feed turnips, pasture and purchasing extra supplementary feed.
A feedpad would be constructed to ensure proper feed use and the cows would be stood off the pasture to capture nutrients during certain times of the year.
Cook said a ballpark cost to embark on this system was $750,000.
‘‘But out of that, we can get profit to target, we get our N loss down to the same level and we drive efficiencies from home grown feed.
‘‘Both of them maintain or improve our profit over current levels, both of them definitely shift our environmental footprint closer to our target.’’
Cook said their community perception would also improve once they were able to deliver on environmental targets. ‘‘They are both viable.’’ Cook said they had yet to make a decision and were not rushing the process and both negatives and positives.
‘‘We have not finished the modelling, we have not finished the costing, we still have unanswered questions.’’
An informal vote among farmers at the field day showed a 28:18 split between those who favoured investing in infrastructure and versus deintensification.
"Both of them maintain or improve our profit over current levels, both of them definitely shift our environmental footprint closer to our target."
Louise Cook