NZ Dairy Winter 2021

66 | nz dairy DAIRY AWARDS » Monica & Kevin Campbell Pasture programme focus for high achievers Karen Phelps M onica and Kevin Campbell have just signed up for their second three-year term as share-milkers for the Herewahine Trust, owned by the Young family. Under the Horohoro Bluffs, 10 minutes south of Rotorua on the Central Plateau, it’s 200 hectares of rolling land, 160 ef- fective. They milk 330 Fresian cows with 25% replace- ments adding a further 85 R2’s and 85 R1’s. “They’re New Zealand Friesian,” says Monica, “so more of a stocky animal. We breed for large capacity as well as good fertility so we like the width through the chest and rump the New Zealand genetics give us.” In the last season they AI’d 50 straws of sex semen with an 80% success rate. The remain- ing cows with BW’s over 80 points, and that have produced at least 400kgs of milk solid, are put to an LIC Friesian bull, and anything else goes to Hereford straws with most of the resulting calves eventually on-sold to calf-rearers in keeping with their low bobby policy. The Campbells run a low-cost, low-input system. “It’s a system 1,” explains Monica, “so all our young stock are grazed on-farm and we don’t graze our cows off the milking platform during winter or import any supplementary feed.” It’s their relatively low stocking rate which sets this system up for success and while it’s partly a necessity due to the Horohoro Bluffs stealing the sun off the pastures it also works in well with the Trust’s big environmental focus. “We work closely with the Trust and share their aims,” says Monica. “Our stocking rate is 1.8 cows per hectare which means no extra costs and no having to top-up our feed by having to buy any in.” The pumice soil typical of the Central Plateau helps because although it’s free-draining for any excess it also has a water-holding capacity at root level which keeps it available for grass uptake. Silage is harvested in spring and as part of their newly implemented grassing programme the Camp- bells planted 15 hectares of chicory this spring. “They didn’t have a re-grassing programme as such when we came to the farm,” says Monica, “they basically patched what was damaged in the winter. So now we spray before we sow the chicory and then spray again before we drill plant a mix of grasses to get through the winter. Because of the slopes that we’re on we don’t conventionally cultivate.” The decision not to put heavy equipment across the slopes paid off when they received 130ml of rain in 10 hours not long after they’d put the chicory in last spring, drilling the seed in through the pasture left behind by the spraying. “We’d done our homework,” says Monica, “and it survived. If it had been conventionally cultivated the seed would basically all have washed away down the hill with the topsoil.” Before the Campbells did their cost-benefit analysis and instituted their re-grassing programme bringing chicory into the mix, the most production on the farm had been 120,000kg of milk solids with 360 cows. Last year the farm did a record high of 121,000kg with 330 cows, and this year they im- proved a further 10% doing 133,000 kilos despite drying off in April. “That’s about 403 kilos per cow on our grass system with chicory so it’s pretty environmen- tally friendly is another way of looking at it,” says Monica. “To manage the drying off in April we aim to have a compact calving spread so we have an 85% six week calving rate and finish at the start of week eight. We’re also well below the regional guidelines set for leaching with 26 units of nitrogen, well below the 30 units set as the lowest point for future leaching in the Upper Waikato catchment.” Farming under the Horohoro Bluffs provides enough of a challenge to keep things from getting boring according to the Campbells, and having just won the Financial and Business Merit Award, and come second for the region overall in the 2021 Cen- tral Plateau Share Farmer of the Year Awards, it’s clear that they’re rising to the challenge. “It’s a really beautiful farm with a lot of potential. We’ve got a really good working partnership with the Youngs and there’s a great community as well, so we’re looking forward to the next three years,” says Monica. 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