NZ Dairy Winter 2021

22 | nz dairy DAIRY PEOPLE » Alexander Organics Slug bait prompts organic journey Virginia Wright 027 465 1906 info@truehealth.co.nz www.truehealth.co.nz Curious how organic dairies deal with animal health? I t was when Jesiah Alexander was spreading slug and snail bait around his vege garden, while he was working with his girlfriend Ellen Dixon on her grandfather’s dairy farm, that he started thinking about what was leaching into the soil from the bait, and from there into the plants, and from there into him. From that thought Alexander Organics was born, as Jesiah continued to wonder if there wasn’t a different way of doing things. Today, together with Ellen who is now his wife, Jesiah runs an organic dairy farm, milking 140 cows on 45 hectares of land owned by Ellen’s grandfather, David Civil. He had just purchased the 45 hectare block adjacent to the main farm when Ellen and Jesiah approached him about doing their own thing. Given that they wanted to go organic their current lease arrange- ment was agreed on rather than a traditional share- milking set up. “We were straight out of high school when we worked on his farm,” says Jesiah. “I learnt a lot about farming, conventional, big scale farming with 1200 cows, milking 800 all year round. But Ellen and I knew when we came to our farm that we wanted to go organic, so we started the certification process with Biogro straight away.” The certification takes three years to be certified for the overseas export market, 18 months for the New Zealand do- mestic market, and while they waited their milk was sold to Fonterra as conventionally produced milk. Because they live on farm Ellen and Jesiah were able to sell the rental property they owned in Cam- bridge in order to purchase their herd of 80 cows. “At the time we just bought 80 heifers because that was a cheaper option for us. They were Rising One year olds and we grazed them and got them in calf, so the whole herd was first time calving,” says Jesiah. Having done their research, and knowing they were starting with a clean slate, they bought Milking Shorthorns. “We decided we wanted to go with a breed that was very robust and hardy, and hadn’t necessarily been genetically manipulated as much as some of the other more commercial breeds may have been,” explains Jesiah. They bought their heifers, all registered with the Milking Shorthorn Association, from a farmer in Te Aroha and another in Taranaki, pleased to be moving away from the more commercial breeds. “We were going towards a herd which basically has negative BW’s and which doesn’t even register as a commercial breed, because it wasn’t simply about milk production,” says Jesiah. Five years later they’re calving 140, and they’ve brought in Ayresh- ire cows and bred Ayreshires over their Shorthorns in the interests of genetic diversity and availability of semen and stock. As well as selling their now fully organic milk to Fonterra, as soon as they got their 18 month certificate for the New Zealand market Jesiah and Ellen started their raw milk business. “We had this vision of setting up a fridge, and selling our milk to the locals who could help themselves with their billies, really old-school, small scale,” says Jesiah with some irony. “But MPI brought out these regulations in 2016 which meant no helping yourself from the cowshed kind of thing. We did the research and worked out that we would have to have a much bigger set-up just to make it economical.” Thanks to a loan from Ellen’s grandfather they had the capital to set up with quantities of glass bottles and a sophisticated dispenser machine that had to be imported from Italy. It has a 200 litre vat that keeps the milk chilled at the required 4 degrees. “It’s a self-serve shop with this awesome technology,” says Jesiah. “We have a completely separate herd of 20 cows that get milked first up in the morning and the raw milk gets taken to the shop which is able to be self-serve thanks to this awesome technology. We’ve got an awesome clien- tele including people who’ll drive all the way from Taumaranui just to get raw organic milk! “ Jesiah is now 28, and Ellen is 27. After three very busy years getting everything underway they’re now looking at ways to structure the two businesses to give them some more time to be able to focus on starting a family of their own. In the meantime they take pleasure from their herd’s unique colouring. “Coming along the road you go from seeing your normal black and white Friesians, or your Jerseys, then you see a paddock full of these really beautiful red and white cows which is spectacular to me and it always takes people by surprise,” says Jesiah. A separate herd of 20 cows gets milked first up in the morning to provide the Alexander Organics raw milk. A sophisticated dispenser machine imported from Italy with a 200 litre vat keeps the milk chilled to the required four degrees.