CREEKSIDE PASTURES
Page 68
Coast & Country
A Stirling effort to build new dairy The gentle, rolling slopes of Clydevale, near Balclutha, in the South Island is where Gary and Alison Stirling moved to from Canterbury.
The rotary dairy shed from the circular yard.
Waikato Milking Systems cluster.
Waikato Milking Systems’ Southland and Otago sales territory manager Diego Brandao and Chris Stirling stand outside the Stirling family’s new dairy.
It was a 185 hectare sheep and beef farm which they’ve converted to dairying in 1995-1996. “To do this, we leased an adjoining 212ha next door, built our first rotary dairy shed and employed a sharemilker,” says Gary. Five years ago their son Chris decided to come back on the farm. He’d completed a Diploma in Farm Management at Lincoln University and then went to the United States for six months to work on a beef ranch. He came back to New Zealand and worked on a cropping farm in Canterbury for two years. Following this Chris and his wife Sarah worked on sheep and cropping farms in Australia. “We decided dairy farming suited us best and started by working for the sharemilker who was on my parent’s farm at the time,” says Chris. When the sharemilker’s contract finished, Chris and Sarah took over
Cows enter the platform from here.
as managers with a small shareholding in the farm. The leased land became available to purchase in 2012; so with an increase in land area and herd numbers, the rotary dairy shed in use became too small and wasn’t well located on the new farm. The logical solution was to run the farms separately, and build a new rotary dairy shed in a central location on the new farm. It has worked well – 450 cows are milked in the new dairy shed in two herds, with 300 put through the older rotary.
Nice and simple
The older rotary dairy had some Waikato Milking Systems equipment in it. “It was nice and simple to use and anything not quite right it was easy to fix, so we decided to install a Waikato Milking Systems plant in this dairy shed,” says Gary. Dairy & Pumps Gore Ltd is the Waikato Milking Systems agent for the area and Mark Hosie, one of the owners, was able to offer Creekside Pastures Ltd a ‘turn-key’ option.
“We offer the total package from start to finish. The farmer is dealing with just one person and we use the sub contactors that we know do a good job and can be relied on,” says Mark. The builder, Paul Warren from Winton, was recommended by Dairy & Pumps Gore Ltd, as he has an unenviable reputation for building quality, within budget dairy sheds, both herringbone and rotary. “This was one of my standard rotary designs with a few modifications, such as a half wall where the hot water cylinders are in a corner of the building. Often there is a full wall, and a drop down vet stand, which takes up less room when not in use,” says Paul. “It has a galvanised Rectangular Hollow Steel portal, which makes it bird-proof and the roof has extra Clearlite on it and there are a few more windows for extra light. The walls are freezer panel, which are easy to keep clean,” says Paul. The size of the dairy shed is for a 54-bail rotary but has been fitted with a 50-bail platform, so there is extra room between the platform and the walls for ease of movement.
The new raceways formed by K D McKee Contracting.