Candys hit the sweet spot with focus farm

They have benefitted from the advice of a special advisory board, DairyNZ and AgFirst farm consultant Gareth Baynham.

Neither Lyn nor Alister was born locally. Alister hails from Levin and Lyn from Hamilton. Alister’s family arrived at Okaihau in the early 1960’s when his father was helping his brother to break in the land. It was tough work, in the days when marginal land loans were available to help clear scrub on land with production potential. 

Alister returned to the farm when his uncle wanted to move away, and began working with his father. There were various family partnerships until Alister and Lyn bought a one-third share and took over the property in 1990. They had a rotary shed built and in the early days milked about 200 cows. The cow numbers increased as Alister cleared ti-tree and fern. 

Today they run 320 Jersey cows on the 103ha, stocking animals at 3.1/ha. Last year they produced 112,000kgMS. As well as the 103ha milking platform, the Candys have an 85ha run-off at the back of the property where they raise beef. A further 171ha of bush is covenanted by the QEII Trust.

For years there was talk in the district about having a DairyNZ Focus Farm because there hadn’t been one for many years. Gareth Baynham was one of the drivers behind this and the setting up of the Candys farm for this purpose. He says when the idea of having a focus farm was first mooted at a local discussion group, there was widespread support for this to be Alister and Lyn’s property. He says they had an interesting farm and the personality to go with the task. Four years ago it happened.

“It was a bit different in the case of Alister and Lyn, Baynham says. Five other top farmers drove the whole project and provided the support to Alister and Lyn in the first year, giving them a lot of advice. As the project progressed their role diminished and Alister and Lyn took advice or made their own decisions, the farmers and advisors saying “well done,” he says.

Before they became focus farmers, Alister and Lyn were just farming. Their previous three year average milk solids production was 73,000kgMS and the goal was 100,000kgMS. This was achieved last year at 112,000kgMS. The focus farm concept breathed new life into their operation, says Lyn.

“It changed the way we managed our farm. We’d never done budgeting before. In the early days if we wanted something we just went out and bought it. We learned about how to manage our grass and about condition scoring to get better reproduction from our cows and have a much narrower calving window. We also got good advice on how to better rear young stock. We’d never used PKE before and just used hay, balage or occasionally some crops.”

With a focus on condition scoring, Alister now dries off his cows earlier depending on their condition.  On the day Dairy News visited the farm Baynham was doing the rounds of the cows and checking their condition scores.

Like most Northland farms, climate and soil play a big role in the way the farm is managed. The Candys have had help from consultants, but they, like other farmers, say consultants and other farmers from within the local area are the best advisors. Alister says they have two soil types on the property – wharekohe, an old clayey soil, and Okaihau loam. 

“Wharekohoe is very wet and it has a silicon pan underneath it so the water doesn’t get away, so it’s not free draining. When it’s wet you have to watch the cows all the time when they are on the wharekohoe and be prepared to take them off at the slightest hint of trouble because of the risk of pugging. When it’s wet you can’t take tractors on the wharekohoe.”

Instead Alister puts PKE in trailers and brings stock from the wharekohoe to these. This type of soil also requires a different approach to fertiliser application. It requires little and often because the wharekohoe doesn’t retain nutrients for any length of the time. This is the complete opposite to the freer-draining okaihau loam soil which is also not as prone to pugging. The Candys have a travelling irrigator which enables them to irrigate about 28ha of the Okaihau loam. 

They have an ongoing policy of re-grassing, and chicory and other species of grass have been tried and have helped, but kikuyu (imported from Rhodesia in the 1920’s) remains a dominant species on some properties in the region. For grass species like chicory, lack of rain is the main problem and it tends not to persist. 

For Alister the big change has been the advice on getting cow condition right and focusing on the needs of young stock.

“One day a guy came here, threw up his hands in horror and said we’d never get the cows in calf so we put them on OAD and got most of them in calf with only a 6-10% empty rate. Setting those condition score targets and having a big focus on that right through the year has helped with reproduction. So the six week in calf rate has gone from 42% before we became a focus farm to 71% last year and 78% is the target.”

The other big change that has arisen out of the focus farm programme has been a move to a ‘techno’ type system – something which seems to be catching on in Northland. The Candys now have 60 paddocks instead of the original 15 on their support block. Water has been reticulated to all these ‘cells’ and Alister says it is a great time saver and has helped in raising production levels on the property. They have also taken the opportunity to fence off creeks.

For Alister and Lyn, having a lot of advice and scrutiny of their operation has been hugely beneficial. The numbers tell part of the story. Their expenses have dropped from $5.06/kgMS  to $3.70/kgMS while at the same time their surplus has risen from $0.94/kgMS to $2.30/kgMS. Now highly motivated, they are looking to achieve new goals; any thought of retirement is on the back-burner.  

This week their time as a focus farm will end. The last field day will be on May 26.  Not only  have the Candys learned a lot about themselves and their operation, they watch with interest as neighbours and colleagues quietly take up some of the ideas that have arisen from the focus farm field days. In every sense of the word it’s been a success.  

Blue beef and bush

Out the back of the farm is the Candys’ run-off block where the young stock are grazed. There they also run about 40 beef breeding cows behind the heifers, and keep some low producing cows which they mate to a Hereford or a Belgian Blue bull. 

The most famous advocate of the Belgian Blue is the well known Northland farmer-politician, and now NZ High Commissioner to London, Sir Lockwood Smith.

“When you mate a Jersey cow with a Belgian Blue bull, the resulting calf is a much better looking beef calf and sells better in the yards. We used to use Herefords but they come out too brindle and they didn’t sell anywhere near as well as the calves from the Belgian Blues,” says Lyn Candy.

The run-off block is used to winter the fatter cows while the thin ones are kept up on the main block where they can closely monitor them.

Next to the run-off block is the 171ha of bush covenanted by the QEII Trust. It’s a conservation measure that has benefits for the environment in preserving the bush which is a habitat for kiwis. The QEII status also saves the Candys a rates bill.   

“There we have a community pest control area and we are trapping mustelids, possums and rats. The result is we have seen an increase in bird life – tuis, tom tits, wood pigeons and of course kiwis. They have always been in this area and with the enhanced habitat their numbers have increased,” says Alister.

The way the Candys have configured their farm is a model for others to follow. It shows that production can be substantially increased, but at the same time, the environment can be enhanced.