26 | nzdairy Steve and Faye to downsize the farm Russell Fredric Dominating the skyline to the west of their farm in Tariki near Inglewood, Mt Taranaki symbolically represents a maunga of change this season for Steve and Faye Fabish. Tariki has been the couple’s home since 1993, but aged in their early 60’s they have been turning their thoughts towards a change of lifestyle, while their farm is also undergoing transition as a part of this plan. “We’ve bought a home with 2.5 hectares and a bit of bush closer to Inglewood.” “We are going to downsize the farm a little bit. We’ve got a 33 hectare property across the road so we are selling that to a neighbour and downsizing to about 220 cows.” “I still don’t want to retire, I still want to do stuff, but just take things a little bit easier. While we’ve got a good sharemilker it’s working well.” When downsized, the herd will be supported on 80 hectares. Steve and Faye’s farm is run by lower order sharemilkers Karyn and Tyrone Awahou who have been on it for seven years, with farm advisor Sarah Burton is also a big part of the team. The farm currently peak milks 300 Friesian cows on a platform of 111 hectares effective. Summer safe, it usually receives 3000mm to 4000mm of rain a year, but the high rainfall is handled well by the farm’s drainage that lies in free-draining volcanic soils. It is supported by a leased run-off of 36 hectares, about seven kilometres away, that Steve looks after. This grazes young stock and grows grass for silage and hay along with wintering cows. Under the current situation, the farm’s herd of 300 cows was reduced from 320 in an effort to improve per-cow production and to reduce costs and this has worked well. “We are about 1% ahead last year but for this January we were about 10% ahead, so hopefully we’re on target to do pretty similar production to what we had last year, with a few less cows.” “Hopefully we are finding the sweet spot now.” Aiding that sweet spot is the addition of technology to help Tyrone run the farm largely on his own, with the assistance of a part-time labour unit during spring and mating. The 28 bale rotary shed is having automatic cup removers, teat spray and in-shed feeding installed and Steve is expecting the in-shed system to pay dividends in the cow’s condition. “We can struggle to get the cows to cycle so we are trying to keep the weight on them so that they cycle better and calf better. The farm advisor tells me that another one of her clients put one in a similar system and they’ve done 10% extra production this year without changing Under the current situation, the farm’s herd of 300 cows was reduced from 320 in an effort to improve per-cow production and to reduce costs. DAIRY PEOPLE » Fabco Enterprises anything else; that’s what we’re working on, 10% better production, but hopefully we will do a little bit more than that.” The herd’s in-calf rate is about 75% after three weeks and around 90% after six weeks. In addition to improving the in-calf rate, Steve is also aiming for the calving spread to be more condensed. The farm is a grass-based system two to three operation and grows five to six hectares of turnips a season for summer feed, supplemented by silage and hay from the run-off, plus Steve has historically made silage on his own support block. Equipment Servicing & Parts Agents of Phone: (06) 756 7785 Mobile: 027 663 5675 Address: 34 Richmond Street, Inglewood 4330 EXPERIENCED SERVICING & REPAIR OF FARM EQUIPMENT Email: wbusbycontracting@gmail.com · Digger mounted Tree Shears Proudly supporting Fabco Enterprises LTD
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