Ulke De Kleine moved to Australia for the opportunities and to south-west Victoria for the rain.
The large barn at his Pirron Yallock farm was a big bonus and he likes it so much, he might build another one.
Dutch-born Ulke likes high-intensity and high-production farming and the barn has been a major tool in achieving his goals.
Ulke had tried a few different options before settling on Australia.
“I didn’t come from a farming background but I wanted to get into farming so I explored the world,” he said.
He worked for more than a year in New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Ireland to experience their farming systems and look at possibilities.
The last resort — Australia — turned out to be the best option.
“I moved here in 2011 because of the opportunities offered by Australia,” Ulke said.
“It was affordable then, and I still think it is now as well.
“I always wanted to be a dairy farmer. I liked the idea of the freedom of farming, being in the open environment and out in the elements and I had a love of cows.”
Ulke settled in northern Victoria and in 2012 moved to another farm.
In 2013 he met his wife Sarah, and in 2015 they took over half of her family’s farm at Katunga, about 45 minutes north of Shepparton, from her parents Ray and Lorna Trimby.
They had no plans to leave the region, but fate intervened.
“We weren’t for sale but someone knocked on the door and asked if we wanted to sell the farm,” Ulke said.
“They were after the water. There is an issue with less allocations and high water prices.
“We considered the opportunity and thought if we were going to move, we were going to go to an area with more rainfall.”
They decided to go south for the rainfall and moved to Pirron Yallock on July 1, 2021.
Ulke recently shared his story during a WestVic Dairy workshop to give farmers options to improve their feedbase and nutrition strategies.
They started with 405ha and 750 cows, and in the past six months have expanded to 688ha, including 73ha in a long-term lease.
The plan this winter is to milk 1100 cows.
While more regular rainfall was the driving factor in the move, the 20-year-old barn was a definite attraction.
“We had a feedpad in northern Victoria but not a barn,” Ulke said.
“I always had a vision to build a barn or something similar for housing cows so that was one of the main reasons we went for this farm.
“I like more intense farming; I’d always had an ambition to push production.”
The barn is 172-metre long and can house 500 cows. It has open sides for ventilation.
Because of his experience in Northern Hemisphere farming systems, Ulke was familiar with barn operations.
The Holstein herd is divided into inside and outside herds, with the high-producing cows in the barn and the low producers outside.
Since moving into the barn, the cows’ production has continued to increase.
They are fed home-grown silage, lucerne hay bought in from northern Victoria or southern NSW, and concentrate — all fed through the mixer wagon.
About eight months ago, Ulke introduced a robotic feed pusher.
“It has made life easier for us,” he said.
“You don’t have to think about it. It does it eight times a day at a set time so the cows always have access to good feed.”
Ulke is confident the cows enjoy the barn system.
“The biggest thing I found is that our cows became a lot calmer in the shed.
“They like it — there’s always feed in front of them and it’s not like in the paddocks when you give them feed and they all push up against the fence trying to get it.”
The shed is flood-washed twice a day using a system that was already installed.
The daily routine starts with the cows being let out of the barn at 3.30am, with milking starting at 4am and the first cow is back in the shed by 4.15am.
They repeat the same process again in the afternoon, starting at 2.30pm.
It takes about 90 minutes twice a day so the cows get about three hours out of the shed. The grazing cows are milked after the shed cows.
With his desire to push production, Ulke will look at further expansion options.
“We’re going to be 50:50 grazing and barn because of the capacity of the shed, but long-term we have ambitions to build another shed.
“I’m not going to stop grazing but I reckon another barn would be good in the hot months so the cows can be in the shed out of the sun during the day and at night they can go out and graze.
“When it’s very wet, the same thing. You can house them for a few days instead of pugging the paddocks.”
He is also considering a shift to three times a day milking.
“I reckon in a couple of months if we keep getting more production, we might have to do it.”
Ulke aims for 10,000 litres or 750kg MS and is close to hitting the mark.
Another potential change is the calving pattern. They currently calve 10 months of the year, starting February 1, only missing December and January.
“I’m not sure what we do next year — we might go to 12 months a year,” Ulke said.
“I want to keep the milk flow going. My bills are the same every month so I want to keep the income coming in.”
Along with Sarah, who Ulke describes as the backbone of the business, the farm has six permanent staff members and four backpackers.
“We’re happy with the move to the south-west; we don’t regret it one bit,” he said.