20 | nzdairy DAIRY PEOPLE » Hayden and Alienor Diack (Matia Dairies) State-of-the-art wintering shed helping Rosa Watson A Southland dairy farming couple is seeing huge benefits from taking the leap and moving to a farm with a state-of-the-art wintering shed, monitoring collars and automated drafting gates. Hayden and Alienor Diack are 23 per cent lower order sharemilking 850 Friesian-cross cows at Matai Farms, a five-minute drive from Edendale. The 250ha property has a 54-bale rotary dairy shed and a 600-cow Redpath wintering barn with bark chip bedding and a feed pad that also comes in handy for calving. Now in their third season on the farm they have achieved some great results, with production increasing production six per cent to 517kg/ms per cow and 1840kg/ms per hectare since they took over. No-in-calf rates have dropped from the high teens to 10.5 per cent in the same time span, Hayden tells NZ Dairy. “The next three seasons will be quite exciting as well as we have stabilised cow numbers and with the in-calf rate at more acceptable standards, meaning we are better placed to cull harder.” Last year they mated heifers to AI (artificial insemination) for the first time, allowing them to select the replacements from the best genetics available. Hayden says extra culling should see the herd improve dramatically in terms of its production value and potential. He adds monitoring the collars on the cows has been a great management tool toward this success. “Datamars were producing weekly transition reports over spring to show the rumination data on the cows through the calving period where we could see how long our cows were taking to get back to desired rumination levels.” No-in-calf rates have dropped from the high teens to 10.5 per cent. Specialising in: • Agricultural Engineering • Dairy Shed & Yard Maintenance • Yard Design • Dairy Platform Repairs www.rurallivestock.co.nz Jeremy McLeod - 0274 730 106 Proud to work alongside Diack Dairies Ltd Jeremy Bekhuis M: 027 681 5002 jeremy@agrifocus.co.nz Campbell Wood M: 027 548 6711 campbell@agrifocus.co.nz Brett McDonough M: 027 681 5162 brett@agrifocus.co.nz Ian Orolaza M: 021 024 91814 ian@agrifocus.co.nz Thomas Hutton M: 022 318 7649 thomas@agrifocus.co.nz The Complete Financial Management Service for Agribusiness AgriFocus Limited is a financial management service & Chartered Accountants that provides specialist advice & offers a comprehensive range of services for farmers in the Southland/Otago region. Why AgriFocus? • Extensive experience in the rural financial servicing industry • Proactive approach to financial management • Strong relationships with industry specialists • Strong practical farming background • Personalised service with an excellent backup team who understand farming They also saw how changes to the cows’ diet affected this. “The cows are wintered on a silage and straw diet and even that diet going to grass requires a transition for rumination to bounce back, so we add silage and left over fodderbeet to their diet as the calve into the colostrum herd. “This season we will are going to keep them on this diet for longer as they enter the milking herd to further benefit their rumination and transition.” He says Datamars’ pre-mating and mating reports provided a good insight into the activity of the herd through mating. “In our first year we didn’t tail paint at all but last season we tail-painted through the first month of mating just to use as another tool. We found quite interesting results from it with the collars largely picking cows later in their cycles than someone on the stand would. “It’s hard to say if they would have conceived the next day if we hadn’t intervened, but given the importance of the first month of mating we found it was still beneficial to tail paint as it was another tool in the toolbox, and just being there to make sure cows are drafting correctly is an important part of the process.” Daily rumination is another area they couple are looking to focus on heading into the new season to gain further insights and stay on top of the feeding right throughout the season. “We will be strategically adding in straw bales in the paddock during certain periods where feed is lush to assist in digestion, giving production and other health benefits particularly lameness.” The data also showed an area of improvement in cows that had cycled earlier in the mating, didn’t conceive but never cycled again. “So, this year we will look to an early scan to make sure we are able to give these cows their best chance of getting in calf.” Hayden and Alienor are currently building a home on a 20ha section they brought off Hayden’s father, just 10 minutes away from the dairy platform. Hayden says it is a special milestone as his grandfather lived in a house that was on the same block. “So it carries quite a family legacy. It is also a good start in the succession process of our family farm, which was one of the reasons we went into the dairy industry to begin with - because of the pathway to ownership that is able to be achieved.”
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