Anyone looking to try dairyfarming in NZ

trixi2011

looking for staff on a 800 cow farm. IF anyone was looking to get some large farm experience. Calving staring the end of july, great experience for someone with keen dairy interest.

earnyourturns

Whereabouts in NZ?

trixi2011

earnyourturns wrote: »

Whereabouts in NZ?

Just outside a place called dunsandle only half an hour from christcurch

delaval

Oh to be 25 again:eek::(

bob charles

trixi2011 wrote: »

Just outside a place called dunsandle only half an hour from christcurch

is that in a plane or car?:D

earnyourturns

Dunsandel eh? Shoot me over the details.

loveta

delaval wrote: »

Oh to be 25 again:eek::(

Never got the chance to travel because of family but boy would i not love the chance of that kind of experience, invaluable

delaval

trixi2011 wrote: »

looking for staff on a 800 cow farm. IF anyone was looking to get some large farm experience. Calving staring the end of july, great experience for someone with keen dairy interest.

Maybe you shoud start a thread on your farm from the start of calving, outlining progress, problems, prices, growth, fert prices, meal fed etc.,etc

I for one would be interested how you manage a large group of cows, especially as we are in freewheel on Irish dairy farms at the moment, i over silage saved etc:p:p:p

All the best with the new season. How many staff involved?

trixi2011

delaval wrote: »

Maybe you shoud start a thread on your farm from the start of calving, outlining progress, problems, prices, growth, fert prices, meal fed etc.,etc

I for one would be interested how you manage a large group of cows, especially as we are in freewheel on Irish dairy farms at the moment, i over silage saved etc:p:p:p

All the best with the new season. How many staff involved?

Hi delavel that's not a bad idea could b a good tread to start after calving. Hope to have 3 staff and myself for the season which maybe a bit tight at times but working to a tight budget. Farms is going to be producing 100% A2 milk and the herd is being made up of predominately heifers just to make things interesting. Teat sealing the heifers at the moment so busy enough already :eek:

delaval

Teat sealing heifers?
This is only the second time I've heard ofthis. We had a group of NZ dairy farmers visit us last week and all had test sealed their heifers before they left home.
I was always taught not to interfere with heifs risk of introducing infection etc. I presume that it is for this reason you are actually doing it. Do you winter these animals on a run off, pad or somewhere else? Are you starting your first season on this farm?
Last question do you get the shyte kicked out of you when doing?

trixi2011

last year was the first time I tried teatsealing heifers and was amazed with the results, clinical mastitis in heifers can be a big problem over here it may b due to muddy condition's close to calving, by teatsealing this problem is as good as eliminated. A lot of work involved in teatsealing every thing has to be spotlessly clean and yes they kick the living shyte out of ya. We have close to 3000 heifers to teatseal between 5 farms. It my first year on this farm, owned by a large company, they give me a budget and some guidelines and after that I can belt away. These heifer are currently on rape crop bought off a cropping farmer. Cows are on kale and syraw also a crop bought off a cropping farmer, we do all the fences and feeding out etc.

delaval

trixi2011 wrote: »

last year was the first time I tried teatsealing heifers and was amazed with the results, clinical mastitis in heifers can be a big problem over here it may b due to muddy condition's close to calving, by teatsealing this problem is as good as eliminated. A lot of work involved in teatsealing every thing has to be spotlessly clean and yes they kick the living shyte out of ya. We have close to 3000 heifers to teatseal between 5 farms. It my first year on this farm, owned by a large company, they give me a budget and some guidelines and after that I can belt away. These heifer are currently on rape crop bought off a cropping farmer. Cows are on kale and syraw also a crop bought off a cropping farmer, we do all the fences and feeding out etc.

You may regret coming onto Boards I will have a lot of questions for you.
You milk on your farm and only take grass surplus'? Do you have your young stock reared elsewhere to keep your block stuffed with milkers?

This is something I am considering when quotas go. Blacken the place with cows contract rear all young stock and buy in silage.

trixi2011

Just cows on the milking block calves moved off after weaning grazed by one contract rearer until the winter before they calve down. Fully grass based system so no meal feeding, any surplus grass baled and feed out as supplement when needed.This system has worked very well over here for years but contract grazing and winter grazing is getting harder to find due to sheer volume of extra cows from recent conversions and many of the farms who in the past contract reared young stock or grew crops for winter grazing are now converted to dairy farms. Have you any opinions on how Ireland is going to pan out post quota? I hope to move home in the next few years but not really confident about the dairy industry in Ireland at this stage I would really be surprised if the level of expansion talked about will happen.

kowtow

delaval wrote: »

This is something I am considering when quotas go. Blacken the place with cows contract rear all young stock and buy in silage.

Ditto, but simply in order to achieve a certain minimum scale on a small platform.

This is going to be an interesting thread. I'll get the popcorn.

delaval

kowtow wrote: »

Ditto, but simply in order to achieve a certain minimum scale on a small platform.

This is going to be an interesting thread. I'll get the popcorn.

This should be good.
For all we know trixi could be sitting on a bar stool in Mullingar!!!!!!!

trixi2011

I wish ;-)

Timmaay

delaval wrote: »

Blacken the place with cows contract rear all young stock and buy in silage.

What SR would you go to on the milking block, and what would be your plans to avoid running into serious fodder defects during times like the last 12months?

delaval

Timmaay wrote: »

What SR would you go to on the milking block, and what would be your plans to avoid running into serious fodder defects during times like the last 12months?

We could carry 3.5 with all Spring or 4 and continue with winter milk. I would get 30% of our silage requirments from that block also as we can tighten to 5/ha in good growth. All other winter feed would by purchased. We didn't run into any great bother this winter save March when we supplemented with Hulls. It would want to be very bad before we would feed pit to milking cows. Biggest weather threat here is drought and we are headding into one now.

kowtow

Assuming you found yourself short in March / April / even May and fully stocked, you would buffer with silage?

What I'm getting at - and you'll have to forgive my ignorance - is what would be the impact of buffering during the grazing season on milking performance. Can buffer feeding be started and stopped without any loss of yield when grass on the platform is temporarily tight, and if so what's the best feed and feeding regime to substitute? I know it could theoretically be done with zero-grazed grass if available but what about high quality baled silage?

I'm not thinking of cost here, rather management and performance...

delaval

Firsly wouldn't be fully stocked in Marh as cows would be still calving. My hesitane to feed pit silage is because of the hit the solids would take namely protein.As we are penalised for water or rather paid for solids I won't compromise this. Cows must be fed and I would use high quality bales along with conentrate and whatever grass I ould spare.
If you check Mahoney's threads he did this very successfully this spring, I had to use hulls as I had only pit left and was out of bales. I think it was posted in either Fodder Solutions or Grass Measuring.
Yes buffer can be started and stopped sporadically during season. Some guys with wetter soils or particularly high merit cows may in fact buffer very successfully for full season.
If you think of the way we grass budget we introduce feed when we see a deficit coming and reduce, stop and or take silage when surplus appears.

Timmaay

Fair enough, you're aim simple as is is to only need a silage requirement for the drycows/late lactation, alternative bought in feeds would include beet/maize etc?

I knew you didn't really run into trouble this year other than the few soya hulls, but I suppose the question above I was asking, would you have been in trouble if you were stocked at 3.5 this year, instead of the current what, 2.8 you are at? And if you think you would be, what would your alternatives be? (I'm thinking disaster planning here, you need to buy in silage every year, a summer like 2012 would have meant that buying in silage cost you a hell of alot more, combined with an extra demand due to more stock come say march 2013 and the fodder crisis.)

I'm certainly not trying to dish your idea of going to 3.5 either ha, I'd serious consider going north of 3LU also, over the next 5yrs if I could get away with it.

kowtow

delaval wrote: »

If you think of the way we grass budget we introduce feed when we see a deficit coming and reduce, stop and or take silage when surplus appears.

Exactly, with the overriding goal of putting the right grass in front of the cows all the time. No exceptions. Makes perfect economic sense.

Generally (probably wisely) you are coming at this from a slightly understocked - probably I should say comfortably or sensibly stocked perspective - i.e. slightly less cows than peak grass in a normal year, and when the grass gets ahead bale it because you'll need it during housing.

What I'm pondering is whether coming at it from a slightly overstocked perspective is also valid - i.e. stock at or near peak grass (5/ha?) and feed high quality bales to make up the deficit. If one was buying in silage in any event, buying more should not be a problem in itself.

I can see that this would not be as efficient economically, and some might see it as introducing further risk and complexity (nitrates?), but I'm thinking of specific circumstances where reaching a certain critical mass on a grazing platform is an overriding concern. One might think of it as using high quality bales as an alternative to zero grazing.

Would there be issues with bales degrading when kept more than 12 months? - clearly you'd need more than 12 months in hand in any year.