The 630ha block is home to approximately 3,000 calves and 3,000 heifers. The calves all come from the Dairy Holdings farms which are dotted around the South Island of New Zealand. In total, they have 46,000 dairy cows spread across 58 farms.

Gingerbread Farm is the largest of their dedicated heifer rearing farms. The farm is overseen by operations manager Graham Blair and three others. The calves come to the farm in late November at about four months of age when they weigh 100kg and go back to the farms on the point of calving. They are mostly Jersey crossbred.

The scale of the operation is huge. The land is excellent quality – mostly in perennial ryegrass but some fodder beet is grown for winter grazing. Two large pivot irrigators are running all summer to keep the grass growing.

There are 25 mobs of cattle and these are moved daily. The biggest job is putting up and down reels. To speed up the process the quad bikes are fitted with Techno Fencing kit, which reels up the poly-wire automatically.

Most of the paddocks are 2km long with connections for portable water troughs every 200m. The herds are back fenced every second day.

Performance of each animal is managed closely. The stock are weighed and dosed every four weeks in a huge collecting yard and crush situated in the centre of the yard. Animals under target are reassigned to groups every month.

The grazing residuals were fantastic – literally every blade of grass was being eaten by the calves and heifers. If an animal is under target weight it is drafted out of the group and put into a smaller mob of similar weight. On-target heifers are in mobs of 250 but lighter heifers are kept in mobs of 100.

The only difference in management for the lighter animals is that they will be grazing better-quality grass for the next month, but are still expected to graze down to 3.5cm post grazing residual.

Four people can dose 1,200 calves per day. Each calf is fitted with an electronic tag so identification weighing, drafting and recording is automated. Calves are dosed with an oral worm drench but rising two-year-olds are given a pour-on.

Any heifer weighing below 225kg at mating is not put with the bull. This year, 25 out of about 3,000 heifers were under 225kg. No AI is used, just Jersey bulls. In total, 450 bulls are needed on this farm. A staggering 1,300 bulls are needed for the entire Dairy Holdings operation.

On achieving target weights at mating, Dairy Holdings CEO Colin Glass had this to say: “We are happy to accept our heifers being 15kg lighter than the industry target at mating. While we are constantly improving, we don’t see achieving the target weights as being financially beneficial. By accepting a lower target weight we can stock our heifer rearing farms higher and be more efficient with our resources across the whole business.”

Dairy Holdings Ltd is a farming corporation that is owned by three New Zealand based families.