| 3 nzdairy DAIRY PEOPLE » Karl Wood Hard work on farm starting to pay off Virginia Wright P 06 323 0255 M 027 928 8630 W farmworxbikes.co.nz - On Farm Service - New and Used Sales - Fully Equipped Workshop 06 323 0309 | tractors@trctractors.co.nz Logan 027 224 7679 | Aaron 027 224 7677 | Peter 027 224 7678 • Tractor & Machinery Sales • Side by Sides SemaLtd. Great Quality and Great Value info@sema.co.nz www.sema.co.nz Specialists in the design and manufacture of variable speed Milk, Vacuum, Water and Effluent Pump Controllers 3 Year Warranty on all our products On June 1st this year Karl Wood and partner Jessica Hodges took the next step towards their goal of owning their own herd and being nancially secure enough to start mixing more lifestyle into their hard work in three to ve years. For now the hard work is starting to pay off, although not without some help from the bank. “We’re full herd owning with 240 cows. Jess and I sold our house in Fielding that we bought four years ago and we still had to borrow about half of what we needed to buy the cows,” says Karl, undaunted, and excited that he and Jess have reached this interim goal in good time. They run the cows on 90 effective hectares in Shannon, 20 minutes out of Palmerston North, with an additional 19-hectare support block running along their northern boundary for which they share the cost of the lease with the farm owner John Gardner with Wyke Partnership. “We don’t milk off it but we can carry our young stock and cut and carry baleage from there.” Interestingly the initial contact Karl and Jessica had with the farm they’re now 50/50 sharemilking on was through the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards. In 2021 when Karl won Dairy Manager of the Year, Manawatu, Sam Howard was Share Farmer of the Year. “I think it was the winners’ eld day that we came here and I said to Jess that if this job came up in the next couple of seasons we’d go for it. We saw a great little farm that day that we liked the look of and said to Sam to let us know if he was moving because we’d be applying, and we did and we were lucky enough to get it.” Of the 240 cows they brought 24 cows, 17 Rising 2 heifers and 21 yearling heifers with them and bought the remaining 198. Keeping an increasing number of their own animals while on their previous job managing Karl’s family farm was part of the deal Jess and he had with his parents. “It’s a de nite advantage having had the help from Mum and Dad in building up a herd over the last couple of years, that was de nitely a big stepping stone,” acknowledges Karl. Jess and Karl have an initial three year contract and see themselves in the short term focusing on how best to run the farm they’re now on, as well as working out the direction they want to take their cows genetically in the next three to ve years before potentially looking at going to a larger job further down the track. They bought their cows in an even split from two retiring farmers. “They were both well-established herds that had been bred over the last 25 to 30 years by one person so it’s a pretty solid base to carry on from,” says Karl. They run 80% Kiwi-Cross and 20% their own purebred Milking Shorthorns and Holstein-Fresian; but regardless of their genetics, across all the herd, the intention is to breed medium-sized, really ef cient cows that produce 100% or more of their live-weight in milk solids. “The goal this year is for about 430kgs a cow and over the next couple of years building up to 450kgs” says Karl. Karl is mindful that he owes a lot to the Dairy Industry Awards which is one of the reasons he volunteered as Team Leader for the Farm Manager of the Year Award this year. “I wouldn’t have really pushed and got the inspiration of doing what we’re doing without having gone through the process. I started out as a Dairy Trainee in 2016 and went to nationals and did the study tour which kick-started everything.” While this coming year he wants to take the time to nd his feet with the new job, he’s de nitely planning on entering again sometime in the next two to three years, hoping to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps as Share Farmer of the Year Manawatu. Karl Wood and partner Jessica Hodges. “I started out as a Dairy Trainee in 2016 and went to nationals and did the study tour which kick-started everything. It’s a de nite advantage having had the help from Mum and Dad in building up a herd over the last couple of years, that was de nitely a big stepping stone.”
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