Wintering in - Turning to sheds in Southlands

Father and son team Charlie and Peter Copeland milk 580 cows on a 183ha milking platform (3.16 cows/ha) in Clifden in Southland. In search of a securer financial future for his family, Charlie originally converted the 250ha family sheep farm in Lumsden to dairy in the year 2000 and milked 680 cows there. He sold that farm in 2006 and bought the current farm 100km further south, which receives more consistent summer rainfall.

The Copelands also bought 150ha three kilometres away which is used to rear heifers (180 per year) and supply winter feed to the dairy herd. This farm was used to winter cows on crops, but in 2012 the Copelands spent $750,000 (€465,000 or €770/cow) building a polytunnel-type wintering shed capable of housing 600 cows.

The milk solids, fertility, pasture and profit performance of the farm is top class. Last year, they sold 496kg of milk solids (MS) per cow, which is 1,567kgMS/ha or 286,600kg milk solids from the whole farm.

Supplement fed to milking cows was only 80kg/cow, mostly palm kernel, which is a low-energy feed retailing at $220/t (€136/t) in NZ. Barley is trading at $475/t (€295/t) delivered in the yard.

Six week calving rate this year is 83% and only 5.5% of the herd (32 cows out of 580) were empty after an 11-week breeding season in 2013. The herd is in the top 3% of BW in New Zealand (NZ equivalent of the EBI) with an average of $155.

Cows are mostly crossbred and Charlie’s ideal cow would be a two-thirds Friesian one-third Jerseytype animal to get the right balance between production and liveweight. On average, cows weigh 480kg. When I visited, cows had just gone past peak, but were still producing 2.1kgMS/cow (6.6kgMS/ha) from grass only and after three weeks breeding 90% of the herd had been submitted for AI.

Housing

Charlie feels housing cows over the winter has allowed the Copelands to control the dry cow period more and have all cows calving in the right condition.

He sees this as an essential aspect of the current high performance of the herd. Charlie explained: “Winters can be really wet and cold in Southland and cows weren’t putting on as much condition as I would like on crops. I wasn’t impressed with the pasture after kale or beet crops, so I didn’t feel crop rotation was a huge benefit. Sometimes we didn’t get the target yield in crops to justify the cost.”

Overall, Charlie feels the benefits far outweigh the costs of the new shed. He said: “We can split the herd in four to start with and each bay can be split further into different segments depending on cow condition.

“Thin cows get access to ad-lib silage and get a longer dry period. Fat cows are on restricted silage. Every four weeks, we body condition score each cow and re-draft any that are in the wrong group. This was all much more difficult to do when cows were out-wintered.

“Previously when out-wintering, the average body condition of our herd was on target, but with too much variation – now each individual cow is on target and that’s a crucial part of achieving high performance.

“Now we are confident of good body condition score gain during the dry period so we are more comfortable milking on in late lactation, meaning extra milk solids. When out-wintering, we often dried off cows early to be certain they would achieve target body condition by calving. The other big positive is the higher utilisation you get when feeding under a roof.”

Cows are generally housed at the end of May for 10 weeks until the start of August and then they go back to grass as they are springing down to calve. Cull cows are always sold before the winter to reduce wintering costs. Any cow with an SCC greater than 150,000 pre-housing is treated with a dry cow antibiotic. All other cows and in-calf heifers get a teat sealer. To date, the Copelands have had no issues with mastitis and SCC last year averaged 77,000 cells/ml.

Woodchip

The shed itself is 114m long and each of the four housing bays is 10m wide. It has two 6m-wide central feeding passages and cows are wintered on woodchip at either side. Around 150 cows are wintered per bay, meaning 0.75m per cow of feed space.

Included in the total cost is a silage slab to store 600t DM of silage. Cows lie on a woodchip bed which is 500mm deep (20 inches). This year, just the top 250mm of bark will be replaced, while next year all the bark will be replaced. This costs on average $30,000/year (€18,600 or €31/cow/year). The woodchips removed are spread on paddocks planned for reseeding and ploughed into the ground.

Underneath the woodchip is a bed of river stones and underneath this is clay. Three pipes run the length of each bay to collect effluent. This effluent is stored in a 25,000-litre tank and is spread by a travelling irrigator on the land. There is no minimum storage requirement for effluent like in Ireland.

The polytunnel structure is expected to have a shorter lifespan than a European-type wintering shed (steel and galvanise). The Copelands were quoted $2.2m (€1.36m) to build that sort of a shed (three times the price of the tunnel). They were also given a five-year guarantee on the tunnel, but expect it to easily last 10 years. The plastic roof sheets are clipped down every second section to protect against the loss of the whole roof in strong winds. Strong winds of over 100km/h caused no damage to the sheds this winter.

Focus

While the Copelands have changed how cows are wintered on the farm, this hasn’t changed their philosophy on what drives farm profit.

Peter said: “Where some people go wrong is they try and intensify further and feed more to get more output from the wintering facilities. That’s not us. We are all about grass and that’s why even at the predicted $5.30 (€3.20/kgMS or 23.5c/l) this year we will still be making money and paying down debt.

“Our milk income will drop by nearly $900,000 from last year’s record payout, but our operating costs (including all labour and interest) are $3.90/kg MS (€2.41/kgMS or 17c/l) so we are still making money. This is driven by top class cow performance on a grass-based system with very little input.

“We plan how paddocks are closed off in late autumn and try and have an opening cover of 800kgDM/ha to be able to get cows back out to grass as soon as they calve – grass drives profit. We will stand cows off and feed silage in wet weather, but as soon as we can we always get back grazing high-energy grass.”

Charlie now manages the outfarm and has handed over management responsibility of the milking platform to Peter. Last year, they grew approximately 14t DM/ha and spread 200kg/ha of nitrogen.

Working with Peter on the farm are Elmer, Jeno and Bernard, who are all from the Phiillipines. Elmer is a trained vet and Jeno has worked on a large-scale dairy farm in Saudi Arabia. A typical farm assistant’s salary in New Zealand is about $45,000 (€27,900).

The Copelands value their farm team very highly – Peter is currently training Elmer for a management role (completing grass walks etc.) as he is considering getting involved in a second unit. If this happens, Elmer will take over management of the home farm.

Peter said: “On a large-scale farm, your people are everything. About half the people working on dairy farms in Southland are from the Philippines. You need reliable people and demand has outstripped supply here, so we have imported labour. With good people driving performance, I think there is a lot of scope for us to grow our business in the future.”

Dairying boom in Southland

Over the last twenty years, the number of dairy cows in Southland has increased from 20,000 to approximately 532,000 cows. There are 929 herds and average herd size is 573 cows. Average farm size is 206ha and average stocking rate is 2.7 cows/ha.

Many farmers have converted from sheep and the net effect on the economy has been very positive with extra employment and investment. In the 2013/14 season, dairying added an approximate $1.7bn to the local economy. The Fonterra milk processing plant in Edendale in Southland produces 25% of New Zealand’s milk powder.

Dairy farming in Southland is often seen as the most comparable to Ireland – winters are cold and wet and cows are wintered on crops of beet and kale or increasingly housed in sheds. Summers tend to deliver a constant supply of rain which drives grass growth.

In Canterbury, farmers must irrigate their farms during the peak grass growth months, while in the non-irrigated North Island lack of summer rain often means culling cows in mid-lactation and milking cows once a day.

Many farmers in Southland pay drystock farmers to graze their animals outside over the winter. The drystock farmers grow the crop (usually kale or fodder beet) on their land and the cows are trucked to the farm for the winter.

Typical costs of wintering are $35(€22)/cow/week which gives a return to the drystock farmer for their land and time. Cows are trucked back from the farm just before calving starts.

Some dairy farmers will grow a small area of the crop cows have been eating during the winter on the grazing platform to slowly transition the cows back to grass. Contract-rearing of young stock is also very popular in New Zealand, with calves leaving after weaning and returning as in-calf heifers.