More at stake for annual moving day
of a truck, heading off to get culled, that’s hard.’’
Herbert and his partner had built a herd of 210 cows, all of which would be trucked to their new home near Manaia, and had done their best to ensure they weren’t at risk of getting or spreading the disease.
‘‘We checked the M bovis status of all the animals and tried to buy from reasonably closed herds,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s always a risk when you’re bringing different groups of animals together but you try to minimise that risk with who and where you buy from and then doing things like making sure the trucks are clean.’’
Yesterday, Mid-Canterbury dairy farmer Will Grayling was moving a herd of 270 cows by road to winter grazing on a neighbour’s farm.
This was just one of several herd movements over a week as 3300 cows on two farms are walked about 6 kilometres to specialist winter feed crops.
‘‘It is one of four different properties we move cows to, all within a similar distance.’’
Cows are away for 50 days, before returning to the dairy farm just before calving.
Grayling and his wife Kim are equity partners in Singletree Dairies, near Ashburton, with DairyNZ chairman and former Fonterra director Jim van der Poel, the other main shareholder.
‘‘We won’t be the only ones on the road but we work in together to let people know. A little bit of communication goes a long way.
‘‘If there are cows bounding the road we will put in a single wire electric fence to separate cows by a metre or two. This is to avoid cows’ noses touching.
‘‘Luckily with cows it’s easy enough to put up a single wire to keep them apart. So there is more awareness of keeping herds apart, rather than cows sniffing each other through the fence,’’ Grayling said.
As Singletree Dairies had such a big herd, it was not having to share winter grazing blocks with other dairy farmers.
‘‘With Mycoplasma bovis people are more aware of the importance of recording animal movements, whereas in the past it was probably viewed as compliance,’’ said Grayling, who won the national Young Farmer of the Year in 2011.
While his cows were only moving to winter grazing, the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak meant there was a lot more angst among people moving dairy farms.
‘‘One of our managers is moving to a sharemilking role on June 1 and has had to purchase cows from different herds and check their animal health status. It’s a big investment and a lot bigger thing for him to deal with than us just walking cows around the district.’’
MPI said it was important to note movements had been taking place throughout May and would continue for some weeks.