NZ Dairy Winter 2021

| 45 nz dairy DAIRY AWARDS » John & Kristina Wyatt Virginia Wright Putting in the hard yards • from page 44 P 06 323 0255 M 027 928 8630 W farmworxbikes.co.nz - On Farm Service - New and Used Sales - Fully Equipped Workshop Proud to support John & Kristina Wyatt Please give us a call for all your effluent pond pumping & irrigation needs (06) 765 6668 Effluent and Irrigation Services Schurr & Ireland is proud to support John and Kristina Wyatt NEW PLYMOUTH 36 Eliot Street / 06 759 0105 ELTHAM 11 Stanners St / 06 764 8305 www.schurrireland.co.nz Empowering your ideal future. Taranaki Share Farmers of the Year John and Kristina Wyatt with son Caleb. B etween Opunake and Stratford, half way between Mt. Taranaki and the coast with a view of both depending on the weather, John and Kristina Wyatt are contract milking on 106 hectares milking 315 Kiwi-cross cows. “It’s fairly summer safe and doesn’t get too wet in the winter,” says John. “It’s mostly flat with a few creeks running through it so it’s pretty easy to manage.” Kristina finished Uni in Palmerston North in December 2016 and was working for Taranaki Vets in Manaia when she went out to the farm where they now work. “The contract milking job wasn’t even advertised but I mentioned John was looking for a position and that’s pretty much how we got the job,” says Kristina. The owner, Mike Hammond, was impressed that John had won both Dairy Trainee of the Year for Hawkes Bay/Wairarapa in 2009, and Farm Manager of the Year for Manawatu in 2015. That was what convinced Mike that John would be a good fit for the farm, and four years later that’s proven to be the case as they’ve just won the Share-Farmer of the Year Award for Taranaki. It’s clear that they work as a team, a team with a new member as of 18 months ago with the arrival of their son Caleb. “I had a year of maternity leave,” says Kristina, but I ended up working full time during calving on the farm. We work really well as a team, we’re always on the same page.” Kristina is still working for Taranaki Vets four days a week but now in Stratford. John operates the one-man milking shed on his own all year round with Kristina on call as relief milker, and extra staff brought in to help out with calving. They both agree that it’s a good herd having been on the farm for around 40 years: early calving with a 76% six-week in calf rate, a not-in-calf rate of 10%, and all empties sold. They’re aiming for an all A2 herd which they expect will take another five years of using A2 semen before they’re fully converted. “They pay a premium in Waikato and other areas,” says Kristina, “they don’t yet in Taranaki but we’re future-proofing the herd.” The key to their bottom-line, and one of the reasons Kristina believes they won the award, is the really good quality feed going into the cows. “John’s really good at pasture management. We’re a low input farm and that was one of the things that was mentioned for our farm on both a regional and a national level.” “To me farming’s all about growing grass and feeding cows,” adds John, who won the National Merit award for Pasture Performance. “It’s simple really. Grow good quality grass and feed the cows well and you’ll get a good quality product and good results coming out of the other end, so I spend quite a lot of time on feed manage- ment.” Attention to detail, and a focus on profit rather than straight production is another of their strengths. “It’s not just about the milk in the vat,” says John, “you’ve got to be getting the best return for the money you put in as well.” What this means in practice is that they run de- tailed budgets for all their systems including personal expenditure. They know exactly where their money’s going and they don’t make any changes without doing research first to make sure it will actually put money in the bank. “We looked at increasing inputs on farm,” says Kristina, “but we worked out that while it might increase the amount of milk in the vat it wouldn’t actually change our profitability. “ It’s that attitude that helped them win the Financial Award as well. They not only have clear goals about where they want to go but also how they’re going to get there. “We want to be able to buy a good chunk of land, to own where we live, to have animals and to be running a profitable business,” says Kristina. “We’re in Taranaki now and we’re happy here, plus dairy is what we know and we’re good at it but we’re keeping all doors open until we can decide on the best option.” Award winners ‘always on the same page’ It must have all made sense given that Karl also won the Financial Planning Merit Award at the national level. “I was pretty happy with that,” he says. “I had some pretty big goals and it’s based on being able to build the equity to get there, and the key to that is to build that equity in the right places.” Both in their late 20’s Karl and Jessica don’t mind putting in the hard yards to get ahead. “We want to be full herd owning in three years, and in three to five years to have a profitable busi- ness for ourselves that will give us the lifestyle we want.” The goal is to be financially secure enough to be able to take some time off-farm. “We’ve been pretty much working non-stop for the last few years so we don’t often get days off together while we’re busy saving. We don’t mind it as long as we know we’ll get to that point in the future where we’ll have that time to spend with each other,” says Karl.