Dairy farming is a family affair for Mick and Paula Hughes, who milk once a day at Inverloch, in South Gippsland.
Mick and Paula have been milking their 500 Friesian-cross cows once a day for the past three seasons, finding it suits their business system as well as their lifestyle.
“We changed over to once-a-day milking mostly for health and workforce reasons,” Mick said.
“Paula has rheumatoid arthritis, so once-a-day milking helps with the workload when she has a flare-up.
“We were also challenged with employees who wouldn’t comply with workplace policies and procedures.”
Son, Robbie, completed a dairy traineeship, is studying further and works part-time on the farm. Paula is responsible for calf rearing, helped by daughter, Jorja, who is at school.
Mick takes on the bulk of farm work, and employs a part-time milker for three days a week, and contractors for AI joining and during harvest season.
Joining by AI starts in November for the seasonal-calving closed herd.
Friesian mop-up bulls normally follow the AI program for the cows; although this year they are using British White bulls with the idea of raising some beef-cross calves. Jersey bulls are put in with the rising two-year-old heifers. Calving starts on August 10.
“We use a synchronised program for the milking herd,” Mick said.
“For the first fortnight of November, our time is swallowed up — we AI for 14 days. We aim to get a 90 per cent submission rate in that 14 days.
“Then the bulls are in.”
They use New Zealand Friesian semen.
“I like black and white cows, strong, stocky-looking animals with moderate frames and good udders,” Mick said.
“On a trip to New Zealand about six years ago, I saw some NZ Friesians and thought they’d suit our country and production system.”
Grass the staple diet
Mick's farming philosophy is to measure productivity return against grass production.
“I’m very focused on pasture,” he said.
“It’s the cheapest source of feed on the farm, and what’s the point of having a dairy farm if you don’t harvest grass?”
Inverloch has an average annual rainfall of 900mm, exceeded this year with a wet spring and heavy falls of rain in October, after a very wet April.
The reliably high rainfall means the dryland farm, spread over mostly flat land, can rely heavily on grazing for production, which is how the family manages it.
“We struggle with high rainfall,” Mick said.
“This year, I’ve stopped reading the rain gauge. Some of the paddocks are horrendous.
“It’s not the wettest year I’ve seen, but we’ve been flooded at least six times with water over paddocks this year.
“The ground got so wet it’s been waterlogged. The neighbours are all saying the same thing.”
The farm has grey loam soils, over clay, with some low-lying spots that are slow to drain.
The milking platform is 150 hectares, plus a 120ha leased run-off farm used to grow-out heifers and harvest surplus fodder.
They rely on harvesting 1200 to 1800 tonnes of pit silage each year, along with wrapped bales.
Normal harvest season is from the end of September to the end of November. But this year, a wet spring created a grass shortage in mid-October, with lots of pugging in the paddocks, and pushed the start of harvest season to late November.
In late November, 950 tonnes of pasture silage was harvested. With no chance of getting machinery onto the waterlogged paddocks early in spring, Mick hired a helicopter to apply fertiliser in August and October, as well as gypsum and, in July, spray broadleaf herbicide across the entire farm.
“We used a helicopter to spray broadleaf weeds last year and it was effective.
“I measured the cost of doing it again, and applying fertiliser and gypsum the same way this year, and the cost measured against pasture response and timing of application made it worthwhile.”
Silage is traditionally a summer and early autumn fodder supplement. It’s harvested as genuine surplus.
“When it gets too high for the cows, I measure growth rates of the grass.
“I’ll come to a paddock and if I have four paddocks that need grazing today, I’ll skip over three of them and harvest them. I measure leaf for growth.”
Paddocks are topped up by direct drilling a perennial rye-grass. Mick is reluctant to renovate a paddock, because after cultivating, it often takes until the following spring to dry out. Instead, he relies on fertiliser for production returns.
“We renovated a paddock this year and we can’t put any livestock on it this year, nor machinery to harvest.
“We do soil tests on four monitor paddocks on the farm, to work out what the requirements are. Different rates of urea are applied all year round, following the cows.
“Our philosophy is we want as much grass growing and going into the cow, as cheaply as possible, going into the vat.”
Grain is used to put condition on the cows and manipulate their cycles, at an average annual rate of 500kg/cow, up to 1.2 tonne/cow if the return on investment is worthwhile.
“If grain is cheap and our milk price to grain price ratio is favourable, we’ll feed it in increased rates if we can get a return on it in the vat,” Mick said.
Calving pad paid off
Calving was managed this year by using the new calving pad, near the dairy.
“It’s the best investment we’ve made on the farm,” Mick said.
“Our farm is a wet farm traditionally, and it’s our second year using it.
“Cows were on the calving pad and we didn’t have to worry about them being in the mud and recovering calves in those conditions.”
He looked at a few calving pads before organising the construction of one to comfortably accommodate 300 cows; or the entire herd if it’s necessary to spell paddocks.
“We could do with rain now, because the surface 50mm is crusting over and the plants can’t draw moisture up.
“Fortunately, at the moment the warmer weather is helping to dry up the waterlogged soils. Two weeks ago, we couldn’t handle any rain.
“This time of year, it’s wet for only a couple of days, not weeks on end.”
The farm is roughly 1.6ha paddocks, allocated on a 24-hour period.
“That’s been the most challenging part of moving to once-a-day milking,” Mick said.
“At the moment I’m grazing the herd on 6ha, to match growth rates and the amount of feed the cows require.”