Business Rural Autumn 2021

| 53 Intensive system a juggling act Photos: Kolmar Dairies’ dairy shed and herd shelter. The farm is run on a 14-month lactation with four calvings a year. Virginia Wright DAIRY » Bruce Turpie B ruce and Susan Turpie run a 500 hectare dairy operation at Lyndhurst known as Kolmar Dair- ies, with a further 130 hectares 60 kilometres away at Geraldine where they run their younger stock. They’re milking 1600 cows and having a winter milk contract with Synlait has led to them calving four times a year to make sure they have a constant supply of fresh milk and no stale cows. “We have a high input system and the cows spend 40 to 50 per cent of their time in the barn,” explains Bruce. “Half of our diet is pasture and the other half is made up of Total Mixed Ration (TMR) in the barn, which is a mix of maize silage, palm kernel, grass silage and lucerne silage, and the mix of wheat, molasses and soya they get while they’re being milked.” Although they looked into the robotic system which involves cows being kept inside barns 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they opted for the inside/outside system which they believe is advan- tageous for the cows, plus there’s less that can go wrong than there would be with all the mechanics of the robotics system. It’s only 13 years since Bruce and Susan were arable crop farmers, and in the years since they partially converted to dairy, with an initial 700 cows, the economics of the situation combined with changing regulations around nitrogen leaching has led them to where they are now. “We were running three or four hundred hectare of spring crops then putting green feed over them for the cows to graze on. The double cropping meant we were pulling a high n-leaching number so now we grow fodder beet and kale to fill the 10% of our area we’re allowed to have in winter crops,” says Bruce. The decision to move to around 50% of the cows’ diet being pasture was also an economic one as previously they were importing 80% of their feed, which made controlling costs much more dif- ficult. Their goal this year is to do around a million kilograms of milk solids from their now 1600 cows, while keeping a close eye on the cost of produc- tion. They learned the hard way through two years of very low payouts to take nothing for granted. The Turpies enjoy juggling the many moving parts involved in running their intensive system with the split calving. “We only look for our heifer replace- ments from the top third of the herd, so we use sex straws with them so we know what we’re getting,” explains Bruce.“For the rest we have a contract with Wagyu so they’re all inseminated using either Wagyu straws or Wagyu bulls.” The farm is run on a 14 month lactation which fits in well with the four calvings a year and allows the cows more of a gap between one calf and the next. There are 2800 animals in the system, includ- ing 250 calves being fed at any one time,with a total of 15 staff to keep it all running smoothly. The Turpie’s oldest daughter, Sarah, runs the business side of the office which means she’s in charge of a complex roster reflecting the size of the operation. As well as the various managers of sheds and pasture there are a number of junior and inter- mediate staff and she has the job of rotating things around to make sure no-one gets stuck with the milking more than they do having a turn bringing the herds in on the bike. With eight different herds at any one time, that in itself is a full time job. “We have a high input system and the cows spend 40 to 50 per cent of their time in the barn.” Canterbury Motorcycles 23 Bridge Street, Rakaia Phone. 03 302 7156 The preferred milking systems partner for Dairy Farmers Ph 0800 577 583 | www.morrisonagri.co.nz Proud to support Bruce Turpie