Melissa and Will McDonald have followed a clear pathway to farm ownership — and they hope others will follow in their footsteps.
Last year they purchased Melissa’s family’s farm at Bessiebelle, Boldrewood Dairies — named after Rolf Boldrewood who wrote Robbery Under Arms — which has been in the family for four generations.
They started on wages, Will was then appointed manager and they progressed through sharefarming agreements before achieving their ultimate goal of buying the farm.
Will was from a sheep farming background and worked in bricklaying and landscape gardening before turning to dairy.
He is now a WestVic Dairy board member and keen to help others, particularly young people, to find a path into the industry.
“I like to encourage young people to get in and WestVic and DA have some good resources out there to help,” Will said.
“Out of all the ag sectors, dairy still has the greatest potential to get started from nothing.
“There’s still a clear pathway of worker, manager, sharefarmer, owner. You don’t tend to see that in beef or sheep. If you want to work hard, you can create some serious wealth.
“I don’t know another industry where you can build yourself up so much in a fairly short amount of time,” Melissa said.
Melissa’s parents John and Naomi were big contributors to the dairy industry and other community groups, and Melissa and Will are following in their footsteps, also adding school council, football-netball club and community bank committee duties to their busy household of three children — Harry, 15, Georgina, 13 and Patrick, 10.
The eldest of four children, Melissa never expected to come home to the farm but is pleased the opportunity arose, which she also mixes with being a trainer and assessor at RIST and Hamilton College and running a cake making and decoration business, The Sweet Baker.
“We moved home with Will on wages about 15 years ago. We were able to buy an adjoining farm with the help of my parents as guarantor and then started on a 30 per cent share agreement. It was a big eye opener for us, having to take on staff.”
Ten years ago, they formed a 50-50 partnership with Melissa’s parents, building a new rotary dairy, buying a new outblock and forming Boldrewood Dairies.
“We worked through succession over many years with the support of good advisors, and we were able to buy mum and dad out last year and take over the farm,” she said.
When Melissa was a child, her grandfather ran the farm with about 40 cows. When John took over, he milked about 80 cows on a five-a-side double-up dairy and later built a 20-a-side swingover herringbone.
Today, Will and Melissa and their staff milk about 500 to 550 cows through a 10-year-old 50-stand rotary with automatic cup removers and ID.
Will thanks the dairy and its feeding system for much of the farm’s recent success, with the predominantly Holstein herd averaging about 8500 litres per cow and just under 600 kg/Ms.
“When we were in the herringbone it was about 6000 litres and about 500-520 kg/Ms,” Will said.
“When we went into the rotary, it gave us the ability to feed groups of cows instead of every cow getting the same.”
They started by feeding individually but eventually “dumbed it down” to groups.
“Being able to individually feed cows was the turning point, along with not having them on concrete so long. We saw production increase 1000-1500 litres per cow within 12 months of the changeover,” Will said.
“Since then, it has been a gradual steady build.”
There used to be a strong Jersey component and there are still a few in the herd, but Will prefers Holsteins.
“I always joke that if I’m going broke, I’d need big cows to get me out of trouble — the bigger the cow the more money they’ll make if you have to sell them.”
They bought about 60 cows not long after joining the business and since then it has been a closed herd.
“We just self-replace,” Melissa said.
“We don’t just get rid of cows, there has to be a good reason for it and we use careful genetics and selecting processes. What we select depends on the year and what we’re looking for.”
Animal welfare is always important and Will and Melissa want to add more polled genetics.
“There’s not enough to do too much at the moment but I imagine that will expand …that sort of genetics is a slow burn,” Melissa said.
They try not to sell bobby calves to trucks, instead selling to local farmers or growing them out themselves if there’s spare grass that won’t impact on the milking herd.
“We want to make sure our cows are in a happy place as well as healthy,” Melissa said.
The farm is also self-sufficient when it comes to feeding and hasn’t bought fodder for 10 years.
Over the past five or six years, they have gone full circle from about 90 per cent annual Italians to about 95 per cent perennials.
“We were growing a lot of grass from June to October with annuals and they flowered earlier in the spring so you had to manage it harder and we had a green drought — the whole farm looked green but you couldn’t graze it,” Will said.
They employ two full-time staff and two backpackers usually filling milking shifts.
Very little has changed since Melissa and Will took over the farm late last year, but they are keen to expand if opportunities arise.
“If the next-door neighbour wants to sell, the bank manager is expecting our call,” Melissa said.
“Dairy seems to be dwindling in the number of people willing to do it, but supply and demand means that if you are still in it, you’re going to be all right because the companies are still pushing for milk.
“There’s no specific plan, it’s more if something comes up, we will jump on it.”
They are on a fresh milk contract.
“It wasn’t something we had considered until Fonterra came to us,” Melissa said.
“You need to follow tight parameters to be clean, green and healthy and we realised we were already hitting those benchmarks so it made sense.
“It means we get an extra audit, but I love audits, because it means if there is a problem it will be pointed out and we can address it.”