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RURAL PEOPLE » Mark & Jess Cudmore
Business Rural
The dairy platform on the terraces of the Hurunui River, developed by farm-owners Nick Ensor and Deanna Baldwin.
Opportunity knocks for couple Neil Grant The Hurunui River’s last big bend before it meets the sea has flat, terraced land on its south bank, backed by hill country. On the terraces, a 152-hectare dairy farm has been developed out of 500ha owned by Nick Ensor and Deanna Baldwin. In 2012, the conversion was managed by Mark Cudmore, previously a pasture and forage technical field rep for PGG Wrightson. He then took on managing the farm. Neither he nor the owners had any real dairying experience, so they went into it determined to make the farm fit the environment they had. “I had the most dairying experience. Dad is a dairy farmer, and I worked for him in the holidays,” Mark Cudmore says. “But it was a leap of faith for all of us. Nick is a very good farmer, and we
We certainly had a bit of learning to do. I taught myself from the Dairy NZ website. There’s not much you can’t find there.
surrounded ourselves with really good people. “We certainly had a bit of learning to do. I taught myself from the Dairy NZ website. There’s not much you can’t find there. If you use systems so that the place can run and adapt to what you’ve got
around you, if you are feeding your cows properly, things work.” The basic premise was they were running a grass factory. Because of his previous work, the pastures were up to scratch, so all they needed were some cows. “Nick went with 90-95 per cent carry-over cows, bought from all over. They were good in terms of production and produced plenty of milk, but threw up issues on the reproductive side. “In the first year, the six-week, in-calf ratio was 67% (the average is 76-78%). In the second year it dropped to 57%. Introducing a big line of heifers has brought it up to 70% this year. Our whole system is based around feeding and pasture, and working on the cows’ body condition.”
Mark Cudmore, a former pasture and forage technical rep, manages a 152ha dairy farm on the terraced flats of the Hurunui River near Cheviot.
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