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DAIRY PEOPLE: Gavin Windley & Sonia Ransom/Kurt McPike
NZ Dairy / Summer 2014
Drought proves rollercoaster ride Karen Phelps
Better times: Gavin Windley with baby Grace and fiancee Sonia Ransom.
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A cracker of a year followed by a drought presented a number of challenges for Gavin Windley, who farms at Orakei Korako, 32 kilometres from Taupo. Especially, as he had just extended his milking platform, increasing cow numbers from 700 to 880. Windley says this decision had its pluses and minuses: “It enabled us to increase production, even with the drought, but obviously on a per-cow, per-hectare basis we were well down on our usual production. It was tough in terms of feed costs, but we also benefited from producing extra milk during that time. It was definitely a long and painful journey for us during the period.” While most farmers in the area had dried off their cows by the end of March, Windley was able to keep milking until the end of May. He figured he could either dry his cows off and still have to feed them two-thirds of usual requirements, or buy in feed and continue to produce milk. The decision left him with no pasture silage and not much crop heading into winter, and he had to buy in palm kernel over this period. Freight was the biggest issue rather than supply, as Windley had been fortunate to secure contracts for a lot of his feed before the drought hit. “The trucking companies couldn’t keep up (with demand), so we had to try to be in the queue early, and we were lucky.” Windley’s farm is comprised of a 170-hectare home farm, a 160ha run-off and two lease blocks – 200ha and 20ha – used as support land. The herd of friesian/jersey cross cows is milked through a 40-a-side herringbone shed with an in-shed feeding system, Protrack and automatic cup-removers. Windley was keen to build a bridge on the 200ha lease block so that part of it could be brought into the dairy platform, and a contractor suggested using an old railway carriage as the
base – a saving Windley estimates of up to 50% on a traditional build. Timber was bolted on top of the carriage. A relatively kind winter and spring and good pay-out in October has helped overcome the effects of the drought, and Windley says he is now back to “ground zero”. Cows have calved in excellent condition this spring because of the palm kernel over winter. For the past two years Windley has not used CIDRs and he hasn’t induced for the past year. With a history of dry spells in the region for the past five years or so, he keeps a keen eye on feed – cost versus results. He has looked at the option of growing maize on his run-off, but decided against it. “This area is not great for growing maize because it is prone to cold and frosts. Since we extended the milking platform, we have already had to lose some land we were previously using as support, so it didn’t make sense to take away more unless we could be pretty sure of the result.” Production is running 4% above the same time (pre-drought) last season. This, in spite of not winter-milking, which he has done for the past two seasons and which, initially, put him 5000-10,000 kilograms of milksolids down on those seasons. With 490kg milksolids produced per cow during the cracker 2011-12 season, that has become the benchmark for the farm. Windley acknowledges weather conditions were ideal that year, but thinks the same figure is achievable again with the larger herd. He is aiming for 430kg milksolids per cow this season and a herd total of 380,000kg. There has been more good news: Windley and fiance Sonia Ransom now have a three-month old daughter, Grace. Windley says the aim now is to look to the future, which might involve converting the run-off to dairy and putting another shed on it or looking at buying another dairy farm.
Once-a-dayers ‘have just Karen Phelps Looking after the once-a-day herd has helped Kur t McPike reduce empty rates and improve cow condition and performance on the 370-hectare (effective) farm he manages near Te Kuiti. All 1020 cows in the mixed herd get equal treatment, and it’s paying off, he says “Some farmers might consider the oncea-day herd as second-class citizens and prioritise the needs of the twice-a-day herd. But, as I see it, they’ve just got a different job to do and they need to be fed right as well,” says McPike, who is in his third season as manager on the farm. The cows are run in two herds because of the lie of the land, which has varying contour and soil types ranging from flat slit loams to steep mudstone hills. Because they are smaller, the jerseys and the young cows are better suited for the longer walks and grazing the steeper land. This herd, which makes up 40% of total
cow numbers, is milked once a day from September, while the friesian and kiwicross cows are run together on the easier land, and milked twice a day. McPike is breeding towards a herd of jersey/kiwicross as the region is prone to wetness. He is achieving this by selling the friesian heifers and buying high-breeding-wor th (BW) jersey and kiwicross carry-over cows in autumn. The herd has a BW of 76/42 and production wor th of 102/71. “The heifers don’t perform as well on this farm because of the steep country. We get only around 240 kilograms of milksolids out of the heifers and 350-375kg from the older cows,” he says. The farm is a system-two unit. Around 200 tonnes of grass silage is grown on farm and 180 tonnes of palm kernel was bought last season. An autumn crop of 30-40ha of kale was being grown, but this took the land out of production in October and it was not back in grass again until April/May, he says.
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