Chinese strategy
OPINION: Fonterra may have sold its dairy farms in China but the appetite for collaboration with the country remains strong.
This latest conversion was done in record time, says PKW general manager of land assets, Ranald Gordon, overseer of this project. He’s an experienced agricultural consultant who’s been involved with PKW since the late 1980s. He’s ex Rural Bank and while consulting for Ernst and Young he did contract and valuation rent review work for PKW before joining them in 2009.
“The process started about November 2011 when we became aware that a 143ha property on Tempsky Road, owned by the Murphy family, was coming on the market. We were also aware that Ivan Willis, a third generation dairy farmer who owned three leases on the north side of Tempsky Road, was potentially interested in doing something with PKW so we negotiated the purchase of both the Murphy and Willis land. That was all stitched up in December 2011. “
Despite the custom of June 1 dairy farm transactions, Gordon and his team wanted a prompt start to work on dairy shed and infrastructure – water, races, sheds and fences – so they negotiated early access. “Ivan gave us early access to do the cow shed so this was started on March 1 and we had infrastructure access from May 1. PKW acknowledges Ivan and Felicity Willis’s allowing early access. The cowshed was completed and blessed by the local Iwi Nga Ruahine in mid July.”
The new conversion is 190ha, to run 570 cows, aiming for 225,000kgMS this season. The 60-bail rotary shed is impressive, replete with new technology. It’s identical to the other five sheds on PKW farms.
“It’s the sixth we’ve done. We’ve identified the need for standard facilities so we can shift staff between the facilities and they can go from one to the other and there’s no transition. They can just turn the same buttons on and that’s been a big help,” he says.
This latest rotary platform is made of Kevlar which is 22% of the weight of a conventional 46 tonne concrete platform. “We’ve got walk-on weighing, automatic somatic cell count detection, automatic cup removal, in-shed feeding and automatic teat spraying,” he says.
The $1.1 million shed is designed to mitigate against natural disaster. For example, during the Canterbury earthquakes, it took days to get some rotary platforms back on their rollers, but the new PKW platform can be repaired and restarted within a day. “The shed is set up so it can be run by a generator and we now have one generator for every two farms. Last year we had two snow [storms] and two weather bombs and because we were prepared we didn’t lose any milk.”
Making this dairy shed different is its easy access to the inside of the rotary – easier maintenance and user-friendliness for farm staff and contractors. “We use Waikato Milking Systems [which makes] all its own componentry in New Zealand so there’s no downtime in getting parts. Maintenance is easy, e.g. automatic oilers on the platform itself.”
A dairy shed worker told Dairy News the technology makes her job much easier. “It was designed so that only one person need milk in it during summer so you are not tied down to milking all the time and you can get out and do other farm work. I’ve worked in other sheds but this is a luxury.”
Gordon says the shed is designed to take account of new research on the work of milking cows, which shows that after about 90 minutes in a milking shed workers lose concentration. “So this shed operates on a 12-minute cycle. Once calving and mating are over the 500 cows can be in and out of the shed within 90 minutes which is pretty efficient.”
PKW emphasises the value of people: staff are rostered and get to take leave more or less when they want – calving and mating time excepted. “At PKW we tell staff… you’re entitled to four weeks holiday and you can take them in the summer and winter just the same as anyone else,” says Gordon.
Environmental issues get due attention. A 1 million L sealed concrete effluent pond is nearing completion to hold up to 30 days effluent. This anticipates Taranaki Regional Council requiring upgrades of effluent systems to avoid discharge to waterways – part of the environmental responsibility (kaitiakitanga) of Maori culture embedded in PKW. All waterways on all PKW farms will have riparian plantings.
