Family first for large-scale farmer

This theme was underlined when Dairy News met the ‘other half’ of the team, his wife and partner Kelly Nicholls, on Fairmont Farm, one of the Rylib Group’s six dairy farms near the mid-Canterbury township of Hinds.

Even the name Rylib is a family thing — a contraction of their children’s names, Ryan and Libby.

“We are very much a family-based business,” says Kelly Nicholls.

They offer an equity scheme for their top performing managers, with shareholding and dividends to help them build ownership.

“We want our young guys in farm ownership. We want to give them the opportunity to run and own their own businesses,” she said.

Fairmont is managed by Todd Halliday, now a 10% equity holder, with his wife Renee and four young children. With three fulltime staff, he milks 850 cows on 196ha effective, producing 425,000 kgMS.

Halliday says the reason he is there is because Rylib’s values aligned with his own in terms of supporting its people, animal welfare, feeding levels, infrastructure —“the whole package”.

Rylib is big on community giving and encourages their team to volunteer.  Their managers are involved with the local Fire brigade, Search and Rescue the local rugby club and Halliday is the board chairman of the local school. 

“We try and give as much as we can – an example is free flu vaccines to the community every year.  The Rylib team are core to this community.”

Halliday is grateful for Rylib’s support through the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak last year. All 415 of Fairmont’s 1- and 2-year-old replacement stock had to be destroyed because they were potentially exposed while off-farm on a grazing block. Halliday said his herd was clear but was deemed at risk because one animal in another herd on the block tested positive. 

“So we’ve had a very difficult year last year with Mycoplasma bovis. But we had the support of John and Kelly through that whole process and that was huge for us.

“It was very daunting dealing with MPI, with the whole process. We learnt a helluva lot about ourselves and about emotions. 

“We reared animals here that would come up for a pat and a scratch and basically act like a dog, and we had to tell the children that the Government’s said they were a risk and were to be destroyed. That’s pretty rough.

“It’s hurt us deeply but we’ve worked through it, we’ve replaced the stock, we’ve had pretty much all the compensation. We’ve moved on; as farmers we have to.”

Halliday believed the rules had now changed and a herd in the same position would undergo more testing before any blanket cull.

Kelly Nicholls said farmers who chose to become more self-contained and insular in their systems to combat M.bovis would be “a little bit community-negligent”.

She said Rylib had two priorities through the episode: the wellbeing of Todd and Renee and their team, and the welfare of the grazier on whose land the disease struck.

“That’s their livelihood,” said Nicholls. “If we were to say, ‘you’re putting us at risk and we’re going to wipe our hands of you’, what happens to their future? What happens to their generational family? We’re still in an industry where we need to support and nurture each other.”

Their people-first values also came to the fore when the milk price collapsed in 2015, said Nicholls.

“We just got into a room together as the management team of Rylib and said the number-one focus here is that nobody loses their job. Everybody’s employed at the end of this.” 

Without compromising any essentials and even honouring expensive feed contracts pre-arranged on only a handshake, they kept everyone employed, got the cost structure down from $4.20 to $3.37 and still managed a record production year, she said.

Running a work hard, play hard ethos, Rylib employs the best but demands the best, said Nicholls.

All managers meet monthly to compare performance, and a big point of difference is the annual in-house performance awards, supported by substantial sponsorship from key suppliers.

When the Nicholls first arrived in Mid-Canterbury the first farm they bought had surplus water in the form of irrigation company shares which they were able to sell to neighbours to give them the cash to grow.

Fairmont was their second farm. It was already a dairy farm but Nicholls said they did a lot of development to get it up to where they believed it should be operating.

“We do spend money on infrastructure, because if you have simple systems behind a good infrastructure then there’s no reason why it won’t perform.”

Nicholls said the shed is now 27 years old but “you wouldn’t know it”.

Fairmont had always been one of highest performing farms in the group.

“When we look at growth — and we are always looking at growth — our blueprint is really Fairmont. 

“It is that 600 to 900 cow farm with a solid environmental adherence history, good water and good solid infrastructure. You get a good manager on there who knows what he’s doing and it’s a recipe for success.”

“John and I are very fortunate to have not a good but a great team beside us – delivering the results we strive for and are proud of”.