| 41 nzdairy The move into sheep milking came at just the right time, when Scott was looking to diversify the operation. Randall Johnston Pukeatua-based farmer Scott Kirkham is refining his sheep milking operation each year and ovine and bovine milking on the same property his proving successful in 2024. Now in their 4th season milking sheep, Gordon and Linda Kirkham’s business of supplying Spring Sheep is going from strength to strength. Farming across 280ha on the main farm (240ha for the cows and 40ha for the sheep), the Kirkham’s use Zealandia sheep, which is East Friesian x French Lacaune and a registered breed developed by Spring Sheep specifically for New Zealand’s farming conditions. They have two other run-off/support farms nearby, one which is 110ha that contains lambs, calves, heifers and maize (30ha) chicory (45ha) chicory is total area across dairy and run off a few hectares of lucerne and another that is 130ha and is used mainly for beef stock dairy heifers. They had great support from Spring Sheep initially and still do, which Scott says was vital in the early days when they were converting and during their first season. The move into sheep milking came at just the right time, when Scott was looking to diversify the operation and add another revenue stream. “We have a friend Andrew McPhearson who was connected to spring sheep who gave us a little idea of sheep milking having success, so we slightly reduced our cow herd size and started looking into sheep milking. It has also allowed us to utilise the northern part of our property and reduce the distance our cows had to travel to the shed at the same time. It’s easier of the land too, so it has had quite a few different benefits,” Scott explains. “It was a fairly big investment getting it set up and the sheep I would say are a lot more involved and take a lot more maintenance than the cows, so that’s been a bit of a learning curve, but its worked out very well for us.” They are scaling up to milk 1,100 this season, up from 850 and Scott is interested to see how that goes and sheep milk production is currently increasing year-on year. Staff-wise things are going well. They have a reliable group of casual workers, a farm assistant Jekho and a new 2IC named Joel, who is new to sheep milking, but has 15 years diary milking experience - and will gradually take on a more manager’s role, which will allow Scott to have more DAIRY PEOPLE » Scott Kirkham Learning curve well worth it for Scott time out of the milking shed to oversee other vital aspects of the Farming business. Last season they produced 210,000 litres of sheep milk, which Scott is confident he can top by up to 20% - all things going to plan. 7%·2% 02/5$ 4/ 0!24.%2 7)4( 4(% +)2+(!-3 They do a lot of the jobs that others might contract-out themselves, making it a busy operation in spring but this allows them to schedule jobs exactly when it suits them and minimises delays, which is crucial at sowing. “The only thing we use contractors for is to cut the maize, so that can help keep our costs down. It’s also great for the lambs. The sooner you can get them onto chicory the better. They respond very well, very fast and we don’t have to solely rely on imported, concentrated feed,” Scott explains. Four years into the sheep milking journey, Scott is happy they got into it when they did and is confident he will be able to further refine the operation season-on-season.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=