Farm Day Oz comes early in Paradise

Young Farming Champion Heidi Cheney has just landed a new job with Pfizer Animal Health and scored the dairy industry as the key area in which she will work with farmers.

Heidi’s mum and daughter Pippa get an early Farm Day OZ experience at Clover Hill Dairies

So where better to get hands on dairy farming experiences – well Paradise of course.

 

Autumn tones at Paradise

Heidi grew up on her parents beef and sheep farm but her children Hunter and Pippa are like most kids these days they learn where yoghurt comes from through pages of a book or the TV screen .

 

Pippa and Hunter just aren’t just yogurt fans, they love cheese and milk

So Heidi took the opportunity to bring Pippa and Hunter and her mum Lynne with her  so they could learn first hand where milk comes from. So whilst Heidi worked alongside Nick and Emma to get an inside look at dairy farm and cow management. Pippa and Hunter got friendly with the chooks

First Hunter decided he should collect all the eggs and was eyed off by this rooster

Heidi in the meantime was checking out the dairy

Where she caught up with Emma and they went through our procedures for drenching and vaccinations

Emma has just done an evaluation review of all our procedures with the team to ensure all our information is up to date

She is very pleased that task is almost ticked off

Then it was time for the whole family to see where their milk comes from

Farmer Nick has a soft spot for little kids and enjoys showing them how the dairy works

Then it was off to visit the baby calves and see how the robotic calf feeder works

 

Pippa and Hunter soon got the hang of it and made great friends with the baby calves

Robotic Calf Feeder mimics the natural experience VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The weather forecast says its going to rain in the next couple of days and so Michael is putting out some nitrogen fertiliser to see if we can get this recently sown pasture to get a wriggle on. Hunter was pretty taken with the really big green tractor.

 

But then it all got too much and Hunter says its time for a siesta

The sun goes down in the trees.

I enjoyed sharing paradise with Heidi and her family  as will many other faming families with their Farm Day OZ visitors this weekend

I am also pretty confident cows will get due credit for the dairy products in the fridge at the Cheney household from now on  

Frontbenders or backbenders – Being flexible in an inflexible market place

Contortionists according to wiki “have unusual natural flexibility, which is then enhanced through acrobatic training, or they put themselves through intense, vigorous and painful training to gain this flexibility”.

So how does this relate to dairy farming? Quite a bit in fact! Cows and farmers are living things that ideally should be able to operate in a flexible environment to achieve the best outcomes for their health and wellbeing. However more and more they are both finding themselves operating in a totally inflexible market place and quite a bit of intense vigorous and painful training is going on to help them bend and weave and duck to cope

Let me explain

Dairying systems in Australia are probably as diverse as they get and they depend on a combination of factors which include the best options for the cows, the milk market you supply, where your business is located, and your soil and the types of pastures you can grow, the amount of rain, the temperature range, your access to grains and other bought in feed. I could go on forever.

This diversity of production systems also means a diversity of calving patterns. These include batch calving, seasonal calving, split calving and year round calving

The most common is seasonal production where cows calve during the peak period of pasture availability. This system is used by nearly two-thirds of Australian dairy farms and is most prominent in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia.

Graeme Nicoll who farms in Victoria and writes the excellent blog Montrose Dairy has written a great post about the ins and outs of his seasonal calving pattern here

Most of Australia’s milk production is concentrated in Victoria with the second biggest milk production state being NSW

The second most common production system is year round production. Under this system, calving is spread throughout the year, which means that milk production is stable during the year (or as close as it can be.) This production system is most prominent in areas like ours which supply fresh milk for domestic production.

Hello welcome to my world

We supply two different milk processors (Parmalat and Lion via Dairy Farmers Milk Supply Coop) who both process and supply drinking milk for the Australian domestic market. This means they need a consistent supply of high quality fresh milk close to their processing plants which are invariably located either in or as close to the major capital cities as possible

Producing milk consistently all year round is not as easy as it might sound. It fact it’s damned tricky. Milk production is essentially the conversion of pasture to milk.

The paddock in front of my house was planted with ryegrass and oats 3 weeks ago and its not growing near as fast as it should be

Hopefully we will get a nice drop of rain, a bit of warm weather and it will look like this again shortly

So pasture is the Holy Grail and the best pasture is available in spring and early summer so logically cows produce more milk during this time of the year.

As you can see milk production goes up significantly in Australia in Sept – December

To encourage farmers who supply the domestic market to balance this and achieve a “flat supply curve” i.e. less milk in spring and more milk in the autumn/winter we are paid a higher price for autumn/winter milk for the milk we supply Parmalat

Lion/Dairy Farmers Milk Supply Coop. on the other hand have a two tier system (as Malcolm Fraser said “life wasn’t meant to be easy”)

Tier 1 milk prices are paid on milk supply volumes representing an allocation of what Lion (formerly National Foods) have estimated is their fresh drinking milk requirements (“anticipated full demand” or AFD). That is you are essentially allocated a milk quota

To discourage you (and believe me it’s very discouraging) farmers who supply milk in excess of these contracted Tier 1 volumes attract Tier 2 prices.( which in the main are half the price you get for Tier 1)

For farmers, the pressures arise because they must make investment decisions about the size and composition of their herds and their infrastructure investments more than nine months in advance. Those decisions necessitate a longer term investment horizon and exposure to ongoing fixed costs. Consequently, farmers look to the processors to provide guaranteed cash flows over the farmers’ investment horizons. However, the processors are not able to commit to supply arrangements with farmers until the processors have finalised their contracts for house/private brand volumes with the supermarkets.

The processors are exposed to the risk of significant loss when their milk supply arrangements with farmers extend beyond the term of their house brand contracts. In  2011, Lion claim changes in the configuration of demand for fresh white milk caused them to lose approximately $20 million on its fresh white milk contracts. On top of this Lion lost the Woolworths house/private label supply contract which was a whopping 20% of its milk intake and they have subsequently written down their business by $1 billion, this is on top of a ½ billion dollars write down in the previous financial year. Scary stuff

Milk producers like us contracted to Lion (through direct supply contracts or milk supply co-operative DFMC) currently suffer from the combined effects of a rationalization of Lion’s processing requirements in dairy products (other than fresh milk) and the loss of private label volumes.

Our business is doing the very best it can to listen to the market place and we are focused on changing with the world. We are not unique in this respect.

We have outsourced expertise to help us manage risk and adopt new technology and farming strategies that improve efficiency.

We have found novel ways to grow the businesses and have built strong natural resource management partnerships and have undertaken extensive Landcare projects to adapt to climate variability and build carbon in the soil

We have innovatively grown our business in a peri urban environment where 90% of the prime agricultural land is now owned by lifestyle farmers without large injections of capital through procuring lease land

We are actively working to secure markets for our products by working with the processing sector and supplying the companies that best fit our farming system. That is DFMC/Lion on the home farm and Parmalat on the lease farm.

We are also thinking of hiring a full time physio/chiropractor because the constant balancing act ain’t getting any easier

A Little Ray of Sunshine

Every new day on the farm brings new life and new hope

I remember being upset a few of years ago when we lost a special cow and a well meaning person in the room making the pragmatic statement “when you have live ones you will have dead ones”. Lets say I didn’t find it very comforting.

As yesterday’s post alluded a bit of good news wouldn’t a stray. Sadly not only did we lose Simola in the flood we lost our beautiful princess the Divine Eileen to what the vet believes was snake bite. That was devastating for everyone on the farm

Eileen now has a paddock named after her

So you can imagine the excitement yesterday when the world famous Magpie calved and had a little girl

Watch her first steps here – just adorable

My first steps–how clever am I

Magpie is destined for fame with her mum attracting widespread media attention over the last couple of years

She also stars at the end of this video which won Emma the Heywire Competition

Emma and Magpie

and then her sister with Emma last year

and then there is her grandmother the most bizarre cow on the planet

Testing day at the dairy

Today was a very busy day at Clover Hill. We hosted 10 Argentinian vets and cattle consultants who are touring the South Coast looking at different dairy systems before heading off to the huge event in Rockhampton next week that is Beef Australia 2012 .

In between this we used the midday milking to herd test and record the Clover Hill cows.

Whilst Clover Hill has a very modern dairy we haven’t got milk metres installed so we have someone come every 4 weeks to measure how much milk each cow produces. I have pictured it below and please note this is a fairly old fashioned way of doing this. The dairy at Lemon Grove is fully computerised with milk metres built in and we daily get milk records. It would cost us almost $40k to upgrade the Clover Hill dairy to do this and with milk selling for the ridiculous price of $1/litre there isn’t enough in the kitty and until Coles get over this marketing stunt I cant see an upgrade coming anytime soon     

The girls come home for their 4 week herd recording

Herd recording apparatus

 

Nick installs the milk metres and gives his mum a big smile 

Emma collects each cow’s herd recording number and writes it on each milk metre

Whilst the other girls wait patiently for their turn

Nick explains the process to the Argentinians

The herd recorder measures the amount of milk each cow produces

and records the details on a spreadsheet

Then a sample of each cow’s milk is collected in small bottles and this is sent to the herd recording test centre where the following data is measured

• volume of milk
• fat and protein percentages
• individual cow cell counts (SCC) – this helps determine the udder health 

We receive a herd test report after each test day and an annual report which summarises the performance of the herd for the season plus masses of other data which help us make decisions on breeding and management of the herd.

Over the years we have had some very high producing cows indeed .

This is Dimples who holds the Australian record for both the most amount of milk and kilograms of protein in 305 days with a whopping 22,734 litres of milk and almost 700kgs of protein .   

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This is Tangalla Leduc Fond 2EX who holds the record for the most amount of milk and protein produced by a three year old cow. Fond is also a bit of a looker and is one of our top show cows. Fond produced 17,214 litres of milk and 541kgs of protein when she was just three years old  

 

And the world renowned Tina who has produced the most amount of lifetime milk by any cow in Australia has just calved again  See previous story here http://wp.me/p22l8m-b2 . On top of this Tina has just turned 17 and recently featured in Holstein International 

 

Tina just before she had her thirteenth calf. Wow she looks pretty sprightly doesn’t she?

Will there be more money in non-farming than farming

There was lively debate on the panel session of dinner event component at our Field Day. It is well known that Mick Keogh from Australian Farm Institute has a fairly conservative view about the benefits for farmers from the Carbon Farming Initiative. Keen to put forward a balanced  perspective we invited Stephen Wiedemann from FSA who says he sits in the middle and already has some projects for the pig industry in the pipeline that may deliver for farmers. And at the other end of the spectrum to Mick was Louisa Kiely the glass half full girl on the panel and co-founder of Carbon Farmers of Australia who have developed a trading model for soil carbon which gives farmers access to markets before the formal Emissions Trading Scheme begins.

Dr Richard Eckard Mick Keogh Dr Neil Moss Stephen Wiedemann and Louisa Kiely provided a lively debate

I was MC for the event and currently waiting on the photographers in the room to send me pictures so I can share some of the insights from the podium and the floor with you. Not forgetting Department Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry taped the entire event ( not sure how long that will take to be a wrap).

Lots of questions from a diverse audience

So I thought in the meantime I would share some of Mick’s humour  on the CFI with you.

This excerpt comes from  If I get paid for not having cows, can I get paid a lot more for not having a lot more cows?

There has been a steady stream of publicity about farmers starting to make money out of carbon farming, but it seems the only way to actually generate real money will be by destocking cattle. This begs the question – if I plan to have a lot of cattle then agree not to, can I get paid more than if I just planned to have a few cattle then decide not to?!!

A rough estimate is that each adult cow generates approximately 2 tonnes CO2-e per annum, so each cow not run on a property presumably could generate $46 in offset credits in the official carbon market from July 2012 – presuming that by then a Methodology involving destocking cattle has been recognised under the Carbon Farming Initiative legislation.

Whether or not such a methodology will be accepted is an interesting question! Destocking cattle on one property will reduce national beef production, resulting in higher prices (all else being equal) which will encourage either Australian or overseas cattle producers to increase their cattle numbers, with the result being no net change in cattle emissions in the atmosphere (a phenomena known as ‘leakage’).

If a destocking methodology is recognised under the Carbon Farming Initiative, it raises some interesting questions for livestock producers. For example, if destocking credits are calculated based on a reduction from current cattle or sheep numbers, the best thing to do would be to absolutely stack on stock fence-to-fence, at very high stocking rates, then undertake to get rid of them all! This would generate a lot more credits in perpetuity than would be available for someone with low stock numbers.

In fact, there would be many opportunities generated by such a development. A business opportunity could quickly emerge for properties where stock from farms involved in generating destocking credits could be sent for ‘holidays’ in case the auditor was due to check that stock numbers had been reduced. Conversely, a good market could develop for rental stock – stock that could be ‘borrowed’ for a short while to prove high stock numbers prior to destocking!

Australian farmers have long been envious of their European friends, who for many years have been able to generate money by not farming. Finally it seems the Australian Government has taken up the idea!!

I never thought of it like that

Today’s post has been written by the amazing Stephanie Coombes creator of the Careers in Australian Agriculture website who also blogs at the laugh a minute  Steph’s Agventures

Steph was born and raised in the suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. She has just graduated with a degree in Ag Science with First Class honours and is passionate about the beef cattle industry and ultimately wants to work in the live export industry, in animal welfare, training, education and supply chain management. She is now honing her skills as a jillaroo just about to start work for Annabelle Coppin on the huge Yarrie station at Marble Bar in WA

Steph first told me this story on the couch at the National Press Club in Canberra and I was fascinated. I have watched the cows going to the paddocks backwards from the dairy for years and must admit they way they do it intrigued me but never understand the “science” behind it

Here is the “science” told like I will guarantee you have never heard it told before ………  

 

There are countless times I have said “I never thought of it like that”, and it always makes me think that well… I don’t think enough. How could I not pick up on something so fundamental? The skill of observation often sets people apart in this industry, if you have it, you’re one up, if you don’t, well… awkward! However, sometimes I tend to focus on particular things, and stop observing the bigger picture.

One example of when I have said “I never thought of it like that” was when the intricacies of cattle pads (tracks) were explained to me.

Question time! Cow pads… are they straight… or meandering?

If you answered meandering, two points to you! Next question… why do they meander?

 

Are the cows drunk? Are pastoralists all over Australia spiking the lick for a laugh? Are cattle just not blessed with the gift of balance like the Australian gymnastics team? Nope. Is my imagination in overdrive? Yes…

The answer is to do with livestock senses. In the short time I have been working with beef cattle, I have had two main teachers who have bestowed a lot of knowledge upon me. Well I don’t know if I have said that quite right, because it is not as if they dropped a bomb of knowledge on me. I suppose it was more not just what they taught me, but also how they taught me. It wasn’t just facts and figures from a book, it was about using my skill of observation, and asking myself questions about what I was seeing and why I was seeing it.

It should come to you as no surprise that both of these people are well respected in the beef industry, and very good at what they do. They are Doug “Dougie” Jenkins, and Boyd Holden.

There is a whole spiel on livestock senses I could go into, but I’ll cut to the chase about meandering cattle pads.

Cattle have peripheral vision. That means they have a wide angle vision, like a panoramic camera shot. They also have poor depth perception directly in front of them. Humans, on the other hand, have binocular vision, so we can see directly in front of us, but not so much to the side, and certainly not behind us!

One theory entertains the idea that our vision is dictated by our predator- prey status throughout evolution. Cattle are herbivores, they are the prey. Furthermore, they are grazing animals. Like that game we played in primary school “heads down, thumbs up”, drive past a paddock of cattle, and you will see them playing “heads down, bums up”.

Now, if the cattle are busy playing “heads down, bums up”, who is on the lookout for predators sneaking up in the grass?

If cattle had binocular vision, it would serve zero purpose to them as they had their head in the grass, munching away. They’d just be looking at grass. However, with their panoramic vision, they have poor vision directly in front of them (the grass) but good vision side to side.

Now first things first- that is an awful picture, yes I am aware! It looks more like a pig than a cow.

Now back to business. So can you see in this picture, with the panoramic vision, the cattle can be scanning for predators while they are grazing? Why it is more useful for them to be able to see around them, than directly in front of them?

Next, take note of the blind spot. Even with their panoramic vision, cattle, like us, are not blessed with being able to see directly behind them, which means they are also susceptible to people running up behind them yelling things like “boo” or “RAHHH”, things other people think are funny, but as the person with no eyes in the back of our heads, things we do not think are funny…

So imagine you are a cow walking around. You have poor depth perception directly in front of you, (I’m not sure if that is near or far sightedness?), good vision side to side, but then you have this annoying blind spot. That one spot which leaves you open to a dog or another predator, sneaking up behind you. Of course, being in the “prey club” as opposed to being a predator, I would be a bit paranoid on top of that if I was a cow.

So, you need to check behind you, to make sure nothing is eying you off as dinner (unless you are in a hoof and hook class and then you should be eying off that human on the other end of your lead rope!).

Now, we all have that annoying friend who bumps into us when we’re out shopping, they keep looking at window displays, cute boys walking past etc… Fact is, when you turn your head, you often wander off your pathway. That’s why we have mirrors on our cars, especially those add ons which show you your blind spot! Wandering out of your lane is far worse than bumping into your friends!

That is why cattle pads meander. Cattle need to check their blind spot as they go on their way. They have fairly short, inflexible necks, so when they bend them to play peek-a-boo, it affects their whole body, sending them off course ever so slightly.

Horses on the other hand, have longer, more flexible necks, are able to look behind them without such an obvious effect on their balance and as a result, their tracks aren’t as meandering.

I love learning bits of information like this. It is such an important concept to me, to be able to understand livestock senses, and why they do what they do, to be able to work with them effectively. Sometimes we are so focused on awesome research and discovering new things, we don’t discover what already is.

…. and a great night was had by all on the couch at the National Press Club as you can imagine with story tellers like this for entertainment. Thanks Steph I must admit my life is re-energised since I met you   

BTW Some more interesting stuff here via Emma http://www.slideshare.net/LandLearnNSW/cattle-whispering-emma-kay

Wow what a cow

This is one amazing dairy cow. Her name is Murribrook Lieutenant Tina 2EX and she is a superb example of a Holstein dairy cow.

Tina is 16 years old and has had 12 calves and has just gone into the resting paddock waiting to have her thirteenth calf.

In her lifetime she has produced a whopping 153000 litres of milk. That means Tina  provides 1500 Australians with milk each year

Up until recently Tina has always taken pride of place leading the cows to and from the dairy. She has this knack of knowing when milking is due and lines up at the paddock gate to notify the herd its times to walk back to the dairy.

Contrary to animal activist propaganda which suggests dairy farmers treat their cows  “as little more than milk-producing machines,” good dairy farmers select and breed from cows who have a number of qualities that ensure healthy and happy cows.

These qualities include:

1. longevity
2. compact udders that allow cows to carry their milk comfortably
3. good “feet and legs” which help them to walk comfortably. This is very important on our farm as we milk three times daily and our cows walk a lot. For more info see previous  post “ when too much walking is not a good thing “
4. Feed conversion efficiency. The aim here is to breed cows who can turn grass into milk as efficiently as possible. This has a number of advantages including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and all livestock owners know how important that is. Our cows have a feed conversion efficiency rating of 2.7 which is very high. This means they can turn 1kg of feed into 2.7 litres of milk  which means not only high productivity but little eco footprints

There is lots of science to cow breeding and genes that deliver these qualities have all been identified through genomic mapping

A mature cow like Tina is a product of both her genes (15% genetics) and how she was raised (85% environmental influences)

Tina is a great example of this proven science. Tina is a direct descendent of a very famous imported cow  called  Walkerbrae Triple T Toni, Ex 24*.  Toni was imported by Murray Sowter .

How gorgeous is she and how much does Tina look like her.

Murray was involved in the first live exports from Canada. See his website here http://www.murribrook.com/cow-families/toni.html

We are very pleased to have a number of Tina’s decedents in our herd such as Lightening Tina who is her granddaughter and just about to have a calf of her own

Lightening Tina – Tina’s granddaughter they are all peas in pod

These days Lieutenant Tina has a life of luxury. She lives in a paddock close to the dairy and doesn’t have to walk very far to access water and shade.  She is just adorable and she has a special place in our hearts.