I’m a dairy farmer from just outside the town of Fielding, which is in the Manawatu region on the North Island of New Zealand.

We milk more than 1,000 cows here on a 290ha (720ac) block. It’s very much a family dairy farm here that I run in conjunction with my dad Ross, my wife Jana and my two young daughters Anabelle and Gabrielle. I also have a great team of six guys working with me.

We mainly run Friesian cows on this farm but we also have some Jersey-cross cows. They’re typically 530kg mature liveweight. The cows have been going pretty well this season. We had a very dry November and December but we’re ahead of last year in production terms so shaping up to be a good end to the season.

Extreme weather

The weather’s been all over the place this year in New Zealand. We had a really wet winter and spring period here – probably the wettest spring that I can remember in my lifetime and the wettest that many local people can remember either.

But then things dried out very, very quickly in November and December, when we only had 8mm of rain over those two months. It was declared a drought in the Manawatu region just before Christmas and it was a real challenge.

But thankfully, post-Christmas we had 120mm of rain in a very short period. That was a real reset for us here and the farm started to grow some really serious grass again. I now think it’s going to be a good end to the season.

We typically say the six weeks from February through to mid-March can be dry. But it hasn’t dried out yet and we’ve got great grass covers in fields. We actually had too much grass and made 114 bales of haylage a couple of weeks ago.

Before that haylage came off, we had grass covers of 2,400kg DM/ha. So we’re typically looking to get down to a farm cover of 2,200kg DM/ha for this time of year.

Milk price

I supply milk to Open Country Dairy, the second-largest milk processor in New Zealand. The price for this year looks pretty good, with a forecast payout of between $6.25/kg and $6.55/kg milk solids (29.9c/litre to 31.4c/litre).

The company recently offered its farmer suppliers the option of a fixed milk price for the 2018 milking season (June 2018 to May 2019) of $6.05/kg milk solids (28.9c/litre).

I feel that demand is strong for dairy in global markets but a strong New Zealand dollar is not helping our exports right now.

The Kiwi dollar has strengthened almost 10% since early December, which is not good for our exports.

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