OAD arrives early in Southland
Some dairy farmers in Southland are already moving to once a day (OAD) milking because they don’t have sufficient good pasture on which to graze their stock.
Dairy News went to a OAD field day in Manawatu recently to find out.
The day was beautifully fine, a rarity in this region for many months whose never-ending spring has brought little sun, only rain or cloudy windy days.
Whether it was the fine weather or the general interest in OAD, 50 farmers from the lower North Island attended.
The field day was held at a farm owned by the Finnigan partnership. Christine Finnigan has run a OAD operation in Manawatu for eight years and the family bought the farm at Linton where a field day was held a year ago. Christine’s son James and his wife Hannah are running the property as a OAD farm.
The milking platform is 115ha of which 90ha is owned by the Finnigans and a further 25ha is leased. As well they lease extra land as a runoff block. At present 310 cows – a mix of Jersey and Kiwi Cross -- are run on the property and they are targeting 100,000kgMS this season.
But Christine Finnigan says it hasn’t been an easy year.
“We had a tough spring like everyone else. The wet was horrific and it hasn’t stopped raining until about two weeks ago.
“We haven’t had more than three days sun for ages but it seems we may get a bit more in the coming days.”
With the wet, windy and cloudy weather has come slower than normal pasture growth rates. Christine Finnigan says OAD farmers face the same challenges as those on twice a day (TAD) -- poor utilisation of pasture. But things are picking up now.
The wet winter and spring and even summer have highlighted a problem on the farm which James Finnigan is in the process of solving – drainage.
James was brought up on a dairy farm and did work on one in the Tararua district before taking on this property. But he says this one with its heavy clay soils is much wetter. Since coming on the farm he’s been working on improving the infrastructure.
“We’ve redone a lot of the races, redone the effluent system plus fencing and water and have put drainage in. We have about 10ha in crops and we had planned to do a bit more but with the season it didn’t work out. We are doing another 4ha of grass now and we have turnips but they are pretty average, and one paddock of chicory plantain mix,” he says.
James says he likes OAD because of the flexibility it gives him as farmer.
“It helps free up time and you can go do a job and come back and milk the cows in the afternoon. It’s also better and less stressful for the cows and we don’t have any sick cows.”
The farm is now somewhere between system two and three; cow numbers have been cut from 340 to 310.
Finnigan says he is able to call on his mother Christine for advice and they also employ a consultant, Scott Ridsdale, to give advice. But right now his focus is on improving the drainage on the farm which he says is the major issue. The soil has become compacted and sealed over and he’s now installing a new drainage system using a combination of Nexus Novaflo and mole drains.
