Couple farming for the future
Looking after their farm today will help secure the future tomorrow for Chris and Sally Guy.
By investing in their family, livestock and the environment, the Auckland/Hauraki share farmers of the year hope it will provide a secure future for their children.
‘‘We believe at this stage that even though we are starting out small, in the future if we keep working the way we are and investing in our family, in our livestock and also on the farm, we will have a bigger business in the future,’’ Sally told about 50 farmers at a field day held on the farm they 50:50 sharemilk near Karaka.
They are in their second season sharemilking for Chris’s parents Allan and Wendy Guy, who are fifth generation farmers on the 80 hectare property.
As well as winning the share farmer title, the won merit awards for dairy hygiene, their environmental work and pasture performance.
Sally grew up on a large sheep and beef station in rural New South Wales, Australia. They met while Chris was working as a contractor, harvesting wheat, and decided to pursue a career in the dairy industry.
‘‘We decided to give it a go and see how it went and then I’ll never regret not giving it a chance. We had a good opportunity to come here and farm and that’s why we decided to come here,’’ Chris says.
They knew there was going to be a sharemilking opportunity on Chris’ parents farm with the previous sharemilker finishing up. But Chris wanted to gain more experience first by working on a Matamata dairy farm as a farm assistant in 2014 before moving to a second-in-charge position at Te Kauwhata a year later. During the same period, Sally worked as a high school art teacher in Te Aroha.
A year later and they established their business, the Guy Partnership.
They came to the farm of Chris’s parents in 2016 as 50:50 sharemilkers while Sally worked as a teacher at Rosehill College before going on maternity leave after having their first child later that year.
The property has an 80ha milking platform, including the 70ha home farm and an additional 70ha adjacent lease block, of which 10ha is incorporated in the platform. The rest of the lease block is used to run young stock and grow grass for silage. There are also 115 yearling and 115 two-year-old cows run on the lease block.
The Guys milk 200 friesian cows that calve in spring. Last season they ran the property as a system 4 farm, but this season they have tried to de-intensify by running it closer to a system 3.
Last season the herd milked 997 kilograms of milk solids a hectare from 10.3 tonnes of dry matter of pasture grown per hectare. Chris wants to lift that to 12t/ha to match the performance of top farms in the district.
Their stocking rate is 2.5 cows per hectare and next season he plans to lift that to 2.7 cows to help maintain better grass quality.
The one person operation is solely run by Chris, with Allan helping out from time to time. Chris said they try to make the most of the the lease block to build equity and stock numbers. The land is used to grow grass silage for the home block and to grow their younger stock.
Chris oversees the farm’s financials and spends an afternoon once a week catching up on office work. Sally describes him as an organised, meticulous person, making record keeping one of his strengths. ‘‘He is methodical in how he works. It’s something he should be very proud of and he does that in all aspects of his business.’’
This season, they have focused more on harvesting pastures and maintaining their quality after spending a lot on maintenance work on the lease block during the first year. He runs a plate meter over the farm every fortnight to read pasture levels and has reduced the amount of palm kernel fed to the herd from last year.
‘‘There’s still room to improve. This is my first time managing grass on this farm, I’ve never done it on any other farm, it’s been a massive learning curve.’’
Chris targets 2800kg of dry matter a hectare for pre-grazed pasture cover in spring, down to 1600kg post-grazing and reduces the herd’s grazing round to 20-22 days at the fastest point. He uses chicory as a summer feed crop with 11ha planted in October, grazed in the latter half of December on a 28-day round. He also starts feeding out grass silage during December and stretches his pasture round out to 30 days over summer. He also uses his dairy shed effluent to irrigate the crop.
The chicory can be ‘‘the only green thing’’ in the paddock over summer and provides the cows with high energy feed over that time, he says.
In winter, he has a target pasture cover of 2300-2400kg by the start of calving and pushes the grazing round out to 80-100 days. The farm’s low stocking rate means he does not need to stand the cows off during wet times. Instead, he monitors them closely to ensure there is no pasture damage.
Calving takes place on July 12. This date is chosen so every cow in the herd has their calves by the balance date when pasture growth rate increases to meet feed demand by September 5.
The environmental aspect to the business is important to the Guys and there is a strong desire to invest in the property to make it sustainable in the future. Chris has developed farm nutrient and riparian plans, the latter being carried out with local schools. He has also fenced off all of the running drains and farm boundaries.
He brings in CRV Ambreed semen to inseminate the herd and used the company’s ‘low N’ sires last season to try and further reduce their nitrate leaching.
The Guys have installed a new effluent system and have shut off the old system which permitted them to discharge effluent into water. This new system has a 90 day storage pond and he pumps it out onto 20ha of the farm using a cannon-style irrigator. Timers and stop valves are used as fail safe measures to prevent ponding.
Chris strives to keep the 16 aside herringbone shed clean and tidy and this approach has paid off with his milk rated grade-free last season, and he is on track to repeat this again this year.
Sally says there are pros and cons for living on the family farm. While it was great having family support and being close enough to Auckland to commute for her teaching job or to catch a plane to visit her family back in Australia, it was not realistic for them to remain there if they wanted to grow their business.
This is because of high land prices, urban sprawl and the farm’s aging infrastructure. Once they have paid off debt by raising young stock on the lease block, they aim to move to a larger sharemilking farm that has at least 500 cows and then eventually, farm ownership.