| 85 nzdairy DAIRY PEOPLE » White Gold Pastures Goal of ownership and sharemilking in sight Hugh de Lacy It might have been commercial fishing but, with a young daughter and partner, Hayden Goodall didn’t want to spend months at sea, so he and soon-to-be wife Chelsea Goodall settled on dairy farming as a career path, and today they’re within four years of owning their own herd. The Goodalls are contract milkers to the Gow Family Trust, not far out of Whakatane, where the 215ha flat farm – just a couple of metres above sea level in some places – carries 700 crossbred cows on high-fertility volcanic soils. The Gows are the fourth generation farming what was originally swamp land. The Goodalls, by contrast, were city people, living in Tauranga where Hayden worked as a residential insulation installer. But in 2014 the couple decided they needed a job with a career path, and there was no such thing available in the insulation industry. So having decided against commercial fishing, Hayden looked to the land for a career, in part because he liked the thought of riding round a farm on a motorbike. Originally hired as a farm assistant, Hayden within two years had been promoted to herd manager, then second-in-command 12 months later, a post he kept for a season before leaving to gain managerial experience. Three seasons ago he returned to the Gow farm as a manager, which led to a contract milker position for the last two seasons, trading under the name White Gold Pastures, with the goal of herd ownership and sharemilking in sight. It hasn’t been an easy introduction to Hayden’s new responsibilities: a drought in 2021 was followed by last year’s massive rainfall in the upper-central North Island that continued well into this year. “We usually get between 1350mm and 1400mm a year but last year we got a massive 2.8m.” Hayden has three staff working for him and the overall focus of his stock management is cow health, with the herd producing 300,000kg of milk solids a year. With the farm operating on a system using predominantly grass, Hayden ensures he does a weekly farm-walk to measure grass growth, a vital tool in his pasture management that allows him to fill deficits with maize and grass silage as needed. Milking is typically twice a day, but last September Hayden started putting his young cows – about a third of the herd – on once-a-day milking to ensure the best possible subsequent mating. The old cows are milked twice a day until Christmas, when they too are reduced to a single milking for the rest of the season. Over the six weeks of the artificial breeding period, Hayden uses Livestock Improvement Co sexed semen and Kiwi-crossed straws. He also uses locally sourced Jersey bulls over the mixed-breed herd after the artificial breeding period, and removes the bulls from the herd before Christmas. In winter 200 of the cows are sent to graze off-farm for six weeks, while another 150 see the cold months out on a 50ha block the Gow family owns just a kilometre up the road. “We usually get between 1350mm and 1400mm a year but last year we got a massive 2.8m.” Budgeting and Forecas�ng Company Restructures Tax Planning Succession Planning Equity Partnerships Financial Accounts FARMit Accountants are proud to support White Gold Pastures Ltd (07) 307 7245 team@farmit.net.nz www.farmit.net.nz GOLD PARTNER Hayden and Chelsea Goodall are contract milkers to the Gow Family Trust on a 215ha farm near Whakatane. Below: Hayden with daughter.
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