Future up in the air in Kaikoura

For about three weeks after the quake the 22 farms of the district had to dump milk, before Fonterra tankers could again make pickups. With the inland route now open and even the coastal road open – albeit only during daylight -- pickups are reliable but full recovery will be a long process.

Graham Collins milks about 700 cows on two family farms either side of Red Swamp Road, a few kilometres outside the town. He says one milking shed survived the quake “without a hair out of place,” while the other, built by his father in 1971, is in use despite being badly damaged.

The concrete has split and buckled and washdown water and effluent no longer drains from some areas. After shocks are continuing and Collins says that after a shaky night, nervous cows baulk at shadows and are reluctant to step over the cracks.

Alongside the damaged shed a feed silo used for meal pellets fell into the creek on the night of the quake. On the day Dairy News paid a visit – nine weeks on from the quake – a team from Dan Cosgrove Ltd, Timaru, was on the farm erecting a replacement.

The quake hit at a crucial time, three weeks into mating. Collins says the lack of feed, coupled with the need to reduce stress on the animals at a time when they needed to get into calf, meant he went from twice a day to once a day milking. So even with the feed restored, his milk yield is down 25% and not expected to recover this season.

The uncertainty now is over insurance cover and the rebuild. He does not yet know if the milking shed will be a repair or replacement.

And while Fonterra paid for the milk dumped during the three weeks when it could not be collected, Collins is unsure how far loss of income insurance may compensate for the continuing reduced milk yield.

“You just have to make the most of the situation. We had two years of drought and we had to make the most of that.

“Now, well, the paddocks I got [the cows] out of the past two mornings, probably a third of them have water a couple of inches deep in them. That’s just come up. It’s not blocked drains, it’s water that’s risen in the heavy ground all around the district.”

Meanwhile, neighbour Grant Wareham’s rotary milking shed is unusable. For two days after the quake they had tried to milk his herd through Collins’ shed but the cows, used to a rotary shed, didn’t take to it.

Wareham has now destocked, sending most of his herd to Culverden.

He says he now has no income. He was harvesting grass on his land but was unsure how much he could sell without affecting his business interruption insurance.

Nor does Wareham yet know whether his shed will be a repair or rebuild. “It was a rebuild a couple of weeks ago but now I’m not sure.”

Collins is also unsure of his way forward.

“To be fair I haven’t tried to ask anyone, with Christmas in the way. But we’re a bit short of a big school teacher coming along and saying ‘you can do this or you can’t to that.’ We don’t really know.”

“We want to milk here to the end of May. Then we want to be milking here again in August. So it only leaves a two-month gap. I have tentatively booked a builder to do whatever.

“We’re probably at a wee bit of a loss as to who actually makes the decision... you need a new cowshed or we can repair this one. But we haven’t chased people up. We’ve been too busy.”

Collins says the quake has caused a lot of extra work, mostly stock water pipes breaking and sediment getting in. The ballcock in the header tank of the farm house domestic supply was repeatedly blocking for the first time in 27 years.

The farm was also six weeks behind in harvesting fodder on runoff land because their contractor could not get into the district.

Collins is also questioning why a government wages subsidy announced for quake-affected Kaikoura businesses is not available to the district’s dairy farmers.

He employs three full-time staff and two part-timers, who he has kept on “because it’s not their fault that we’re milking only once a day now”. “The subsidy would have been quite handy, for them,” he says.