Banks Peninsula farm converts to dairy, cuts footprint by 46%

Willesden Farm, in the Kaituna Valley, is part of a recent surge in dairy conversions prompted by the healthy milk payout.

Equipped with a brand-new composting feed barn and state-ofthe- art rotary shed, the farm has recently started milking 700 cows in its first production season.

Owner Brent Thomas says it’s a formula that will vastly reduce the farm’s footprint while ensuring financial viability.

The composting feed barn that captures animal effluent and helps preserve the pasture will be a key to the new venture’s success.

It will allow them to exclude the animals from the pasture in adverse weather – most often when it’s particularly wet in winter but also when too hot in summer.

“We can afford to do that under dairy because of the revenue that’s generated out of dairy,” said farm general manager Matt Iremonger.

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He said it was a struggle to be financially viable on the farm’s land type under irrigation.

“It’s the best for the soil, it’s the best for the environment and it’s the best farm system for the natural assets that we have here.”

Iremonger said that environmental and financially sustainability were inextricably linked.

“The assets that we have here are the soil, the fertility, the pasture and the water. If we protect our soil and our fertility, we minimise the environmental impact, but we also minimise the financial impact and maximise the profitability.”

He said they submitted at a lower number in the consenting process to ensure a buffer, but the numbers are “quite achievable”.

“We suggested conditions that required monitoring and so we’re monitoring now through that process. So, we’ll be able to develop a whole lot of data, that demonstrates that we’ve having a net improvement across those metrics.”

Thomas said his family had been in the Valley since 1975. In 1987 they added to their holdings by buying a dairy farm close to the Okana Stream, a tributary of the Kaituna River, with about 180 cows. Thomas said that at that time, the effluent was going to settling ponds, then “flying” into the stream.

“The first thing was we put an effluent treatment system in there.”

That ran as a dry land dairy until 2005. Across the wider farm, the family has also tried various crops, and a vineyard and orchard, now both gone.

With the farm’s water originally coming from poor quality shallow wells, the discovery of good quality deep water in 2009 allowed extensive irrigation but Thomas said it was still a struggle to leverage the assets to make a profit, despite the various ventures.

“If you start going backwards, you’ve got to make a change,” he said.

The dairy conversion applies to about 300ha of the most productive irrigated land in the Kaituna Valley, only a small part of the farm’s total 4000ha, which extends high into the Kaituna and Prices Valley catchments.

Of the 300ha, 200ha is now the dairy platform and the rest dairy support, sheep & beef finishing.

It is consented for 820 animals and has started with 700 but will settle on 800 in the longer term. Previously that land was farmed as intensive dairy support, beef and lamb finishing, and some summer and winter cropping.

“Now it’s grass 12 months of the year and that allows us to ensure that we have no exposed soils,” said Iremonger.

Passion for Trees

On the rest of the farm, there is forestry, sheep and beef, and extensive native vegetation, both planted and regenerating naturally.

Brent Thomas says his late mother was an environmentalist who set up the Prices Valley Reserve under a QE2 Covenant. They also did a lot of planting.

“We’ve got an environmental background and passion, and I don’t think you meet any farmers who don’t want to leave it better for their family than when they took it over.”

Construction of the new barn and shed was hoped to begin late last year but was delayed first by consenting delays then bad weather during construction in April.

Cows were introduced to the barn in late July and milking began in Mid-August.

With the construction running late, early calving cows were able to be managed on the group’s two other farms near Leeston.

Thomas said that whole “ecosystem” of consenting takes longer than it should - pointing out that it took a week just to get the permits from three different councils to transport an oversize earthmoving machine up the highway from Ashburton.

“It was consenting, then weather, and so it’s been a difficult and frustrating process,” he said.

With the current uptick in dairy conversions, the pair describe composting barns as a “systems change” likely to become increasingly common in the New Zealand dairy industry, although every farm is different and they would not be for everyone.

They say automation collars are another technology that will become commonplace over time. Two out of the group’s three dairy farms already run Halter collars and they will assess the Kaituna herd over the season to potentially fit collars next year.

The new dairy shed also includes “a whole lot” of automation and they say their choice of systems means it is future proofed for further adaptation going forward.

“It reduces workload on staff, improves power efficiency and comfort in the shed, and also improves water usage, all those types of things,” says Matt Iremonger