As we begin to pass the peak of calving on the new farm, we are starting to find our feet and get into the routine outside of training cows into the rotary and picking up new calves.

The appreciation that I now have for the simple act of a cow walking into a milking parlour is quite something. We have spent the last three weeks pushing freshly-calved cows onto the platform and likely have a few more hard weeks ahead of us. The light at the end of the tunnel is that we are around 70% calved, with cow flow starting to improve and the number of new cows to train each day slowly reducing.

This spring has without doubt been one of the most difficult in my life so far. This is likely down to a number of different reasons.

As the farm is a new purchase, the herd has been put together from cows across a variety of herds. This has been a challenge, as some cows are used to a traditional herringbone milking parlour.

Other cows are used to rotaries that spin in the opposite direction, which I can confirm, they do notice. This has led to longer than planned milkings and some serious shoulder workouts. Just a shame the rugby season in New Zealand is drawing to a close.

Cow numbers

Another factor is the jump for me personally from managing 850 cows in my last farm to 1,250 cows here. Thankfully, all my staff came with me from the old farm, plus there are a couple of new team members this spring due to the increase in cow numbers.

It might just be a case of “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”. So far, I can’t fault the farm team, as everyone has put in serious hours to make everything come together this spring.

The longer we farm here, the more we discover about the variety of soil types and where we can and can’t leave cows when the weather turns on us.

So far, this spring has brought some great weather after a very wet winter, when most farms worked hard to get condition back on cows.

Currently, we’re just waiting for soil temperatures to lift so we can get some urea over the grazing platform to drive on grass growth.

Another learning curve for us will be seeing when this farm “takes off” for grass growth, as we don’t yet have years’ worth of production figures because it is a new purchase.

We use a spring rotation planner to control the area grazed during the spring. It gives us a set area to graze daily, which increases over time as more cows calve, and grass growth improves.

It’s an extremely useful tool and forms the backbone of the dairying system that we operate in New Zealand.

Calves

Calf-rearing on the farm is done by an English girl, who has been working with me for the last six months. She looks after around 320 heifer replacements and rears them up to 100kg. They are then sent to a grazing block and return around one to two months before they are due to calve.

Once calves are disbudded, we aim to get them outside after a few weeks in the shed, weather permitting.

This is normally a day we look forward to, except this year, because it led to an evening spent fencing after they got a little overexcited being out in a full-sized paddock.