Growing the dairy industry one farmer at a time

“Opportunity is the best thing you can give people,” Benn said.

“When I was 21 years old, my parents gave me the farm to manage.

“Initially we bought the herd, and leased the farm.

“Now, 20 years later, with that early opportunity given to us, we feel we’re indebted to pass it on.

“Running a business is about looking after people. I think part of being successful as the managing director, is just being able to sum people up and providing them with opportunities and incentives to work to their best ability.

“With the right plan in place, we all grow together.”

Benn is the fifth generation of his family to work in the dairy industry and he and Peta are based on the Thexton family home farm at Gormandale.

Benn decided early in his career he preferred working with financial and management data rather than cows, and he understood the dairy industry was key to building wealth.

Thexton Farms is now spread across a mix of owned and leased dairy farms, irrigation and dryland, in Victoria’s MID.

Benn and Peta are the strategic managers of the agribusiness, employing on-farm managers in a mix of arrangements that enable individuals to share in profits or work for wages.

Clear contracts benefit all partners.

“When one equity partner left the business, we had an exit strategy in the contract that everyone had already agreed to, to clearly manage that,” Benn said.

The herd has grown from 220 cows on the initial home farm, and is getting close to 1900-2000 cows across multiple farms.

Up to 15 employees and managers milk in a mix of herringbone and rotary dairies.

Benn and Peta have identified the strengths and weaknesses of each of their farms, which has enabled them to focus on achieving key outcomes, such as raising calves in one location, parking all dry cows on one farm, growing out heifers for the entire business on one farm, and using another farm to grow silage and fodder for the collective.

Parking dry cows on one farm also helps build a fodder supply across multiple farms.

“Drying off a farm enables us to create its own autumn break, and build feed banks for spring and harvest fodder,” Benn said.

“Flexibility in the business enables us to try new ways of farming.”

All farms are seasonal calving, enabling Benn and Peta to reduce livestock numbers if conditions require. Obversely, they can also gear up milking numbers in a short time frame.

“Through the peak milking period, the maximum payment is earned by the managers, at a time when they’re experiencing maximum workload too,” Benn said.

“It’s an incentive to seasonal calving. Work hard for six months, have work-life balance for six months.”

At 12 weeks of age, calves are moved to one farm where they are raised together until point of calving.

This centralised mobbing also enables heifers and cows to be chosen to fit particular dairies — the larger cows go to the farms with rotary dairies, while smaller cows can be better milked in the herringbone dairies.

Benn said he and Peta managed multiple businesses within the Thexton Farms umbrella — including a real estate business, a machinery business, a fodder production component, cattle agistment and a milking production business.

The benchmark criteria for each farm includes achieving positive fat and protein, positive fertility, lactation longevity, milking herds of mixed breeds and moderate stature cows.

“Three of four of our dairy farms operate on a per kg milk solid model. The fourth dairy farm is progressing to that,” Benn said.

Grain is fed generously for production.

All cows are joined using AI, and beef semen is used selectively.

Benn has completed a range of Dairy Australia programs to strengthen his decision-making and improve his understanding of financial management and using data to benchmark and score the performance of their farms.

Benn said he had been able to use programs such as Our Farm, Our Plan and DairyBase to set goals for the business and understand risk and profitability against return on investment.

“I’ve been able to make incremental changes as I’ve better understood where my cost blowouts are and how I can minimise our exposure to risks,” he said.

“We know the strategic outcome we want to achieve for the business and they’re written down against time frames. One of our benefits is the bargaining power of the group.”

The size of their overall business gives Benn and Peta scale for negotiating such things as elevating milk price and reducing business costs.

Their planning has helped improve stocking rates on each farm, led to improved understanding about feeding, electricity and water costs, and led to better decision-making about how to best utilise the assets of each farm.

“Land investment is going to secure feed,” Benn said.

“But we don’t have to own the land, if we can lease it, and own the water. Owning water is a better investment than owning land.”

Another strategic decision has led to changes around electricity usage. The irrigation farms use a mix of flood watering and lateral sprays.

On the farm using lateral spray irrigation, Benn said his electrician identified the water pump was over size for use, which was creating inefficiencies and excessive power costs.

“We were able to lower the power usage by using a variable speed drive, which was recommended by our electrician and pump specialists to reduce the power draw on the pump from 80 amps to 39 amps,” Benn said.

“That’s a clear indication of significant improvement.”

The Gormandale dairy draws on the power generated by a 20kW solar panel system.

“Using that system and spreading loads from the traditional night rate to using electricity in the daytime, we’ve been able to reduce our power bill from $20,000 to $8000 per year,” Benn said.

His electrician was able to use the data from the [electric company’s] smart meter to identify how the dairy used power during the day, then compare that with how the solar system would produce power — and make recommendations about what system to install.