I am now five years into my decision to move my dairy career across the pond to Tasmania after getting tired of an average of three to six months of depressingly housing cows back home, which for me is in East Sussex, England, where I grew up on a small dairy farm of around 130 cows.

I now manage one of four dairy farms for Ashgrove Cheese, a family-run business in Central North Tasmania in a quiet little place called South Riana with its rolling hills of highly productive red soil.

The property was purchased almost six months ago and we’ve basically ended up doing a full farm conversion due to the property being so run down.

Aiming to set it up to be as efficient as possible, we refenced everything to make more suitable grazing paddocks and put in a whole new water trough system.

The property is roughly 217ha and our milking area consists of 168ha, with 92ha being irrigated by one large centre pivot that actually walks over the milking shed, and the other 76ha being rain-fed (1,531mm average rainfall).

The remaining 49ha is used as a support block to rear replacements and cut fodder.

We currently block-calve in spring and are about to transition to fully autumn block-calving and increasing from 400 to 500 cows to supply our factory demand for winter milk for the local fresh milk market and for the rapidly growing cheese demand, with the rest of our milk produced being supplied to Fonterra.

Leasing

I currently own 20% of the herd myself, leasing the cows to the owners with the eventual goal of owning the whole herd.

I’ve found that there’s far more opportunity in Tasmania to grow yourself in the dairy industry, with lower rearing costs and a positive attitude towards young people in the industry.

Having the cows outside all year is a huge advantage for us, as we see very few herd health issues, have a far lower cost of production compared with housed systems and have a very nutritionally simple diet, all due to a mainly pasture-fed diet.

However, we do supplement with a well-balanced grain and mineral ration to make sure the cows are fed to their requirements to achieve good production and body condition.

We aim to have our system meet three requirements, which are being profitable, replicable and simple.

Milking

We milk through a 50-unit DeLaval rotary that has been set up as a one-man milking shed, with cup removers, individual ID cow collars, automatic teat sprayer, flood washdown collecting yard and auto draft.

We have a 30,000l milk vat. We individually feed the herd with the DeLaval management program ALPRO at certain times of the year to challenge feed and also help manage body condition in poorer members of the herd.

Our team currently consists of myself, one full-time person and a casual milker, with seasonal help at calving.

Our breeding programme consists of using exclusively PP Polled and A22 protein genetics, with 99% of calves born being polled and not requiring de-horning. Mating lasts for nine weeks using only AI sires.

Milk price

Dairy farmers have just come out of a milk price drop last season and are still feeling the effects, and could be looking at going into a similar or lower price next season due to an ongoing slump in the market.

Australian milk processors are currently paying an average of $5.60/kg MS excluding additional payments relating to a milk price cut last season.

Volatile weather conditions are always a constant challenge.

Armyworms (which are actually the caterpillars of three species of moths and not worms) have been an issue in certain parts of the state, attacking pastures and cereal crops in plague proportions, causing need for some farmers to spray them to control their numbers, with some areas seeing over 200/m2, doing hectares of damage.

Most people will be starting to, if they have not already, lengthen their rotations with silage and fodder crops and hoping for a good rain to see them through until the autumn break.

Spring farms will just be finishing AI and sweeping up with herd bulls, with autumn farms starting to look towards dry-off in a month or two.

The amazing scenery makes up for all the challenges though!