The owners of one of South Africa’s largest dairy herds has found that what goes around comes around when it comes to expanding the business.
Edgar and Lynda Brotherton have 17,000 milking cows across 15 farms under their Just Milk banner, but adding pigs and cheese production to the mix at one property has been the cream on top.
The cows’ milk goes into cheese production, the whey byproduct from cheese making goes back to the pigs as feed and the pig manure goes back to the dairy farm as fertiliser.
It’s been so successful that Just Milk places to replicate the format on a second property.
Edgar was hosted by Genetics Australia to join the World Jersey Conference tour presented by Jersey Australia from April 6 to 21, and addressed a sponsors’ breakfast in Warrnambool.
Just Milk is a management company based in the Eastern Cape that manages dairies.
The milking herd comprises 17,000 cows, and the total herd size including calves is 25,500. It also has a small beef operation.
Just Milk is a unifying brand, not a single corporate entity, operating on farms with various land ownership and profit-sharing structures.
Edgar said he planned to use more Australian genetics and had joined the World Jersey Conference tour for the opportunity to see bulls they’ve used and to meet breeders.
He told the breakfast dinner in Warrnambool that a partnership with a piggery company, Number Two Piggeries, dated back in 2004, but the circle was completed with the addition of the cheese processing plant in 2018.
“When Number Two Piggeries wanted to expand, we were looking for opportunities at the same time,” he said.
“We acquired our first cheese factory in 2018 and the second in 2024, and what makes it work is the combination of dairy and pig manure.”
The processing side of the enterprise is managed by their son Buster, and Edgar said they would concentrate more on that area in the future.
Their Cookhouse operation has 4700 cows and 16,000 pigs.
“The combination works very well,” Edgar said.
“The milk production goes to the cheese factory, the whey byproduct is pumped back to the piggeries and used in a wet feed system to feed the pigs, and then the pig manure is distributed through the pivots onto the irrigation system.
“That means our fertiliser and nitrogen requirement is minimal.”
“We transport the milk about 5-6km to the cheese factory and the whey is pumped back to the piggeries, so transport is taken out of the equation.”
On another site, Just Milk has a farm and cheese processor and hopes to build a piggery in the next few years.
While the climatic conditions are similar to Australia — prompting Just Milk’s interest in Australian genetics — Edgar highlighted some of the challenges peculiar to South African dairy.
Electricity is unreliable due to poor maintenance, forcing many farmers to invest in solar panels and other methods of electricity generation.
“We try to get double use of our solar panels by putting them over the holding yard so they provide shade for the cows,” he said.
“That’s something we want to expand on.”
They also have to fix a lot of their own roads, and water infrastructure is another issue, with Just Milk relying on canal systems to supplement supplies.
Security is a major problem.
“We have a huge level of thefts,” Edgar said.
“We have guards on a lot of our farms all night to protect our cattle and look after our infrastructure.
“It’s not unusual to wake up in the morning to find your pivots have been stripped of all their cables.”
Just Milk has 491 employees, an average of 35 cows per person.
“That may be a jaw-dropping number for Australians, but we have high unemployment and also a largely unskilled and unreliable labour force.
“In Australia and New Zealand, a husband and wife might milk 450 cows, but it’s something we’ve never got right.”
Just Milk is taking a lead in addressing the issue, with a student program to introduce 15 agricultural college students to the dairy operations each year, along with 16 in the pig business.
“It has been a great success for us; we believe in growing our own talent,” he said.
Just Milk is also leading the way in addressing racial inequality.
“Traditionally, all farm managers have been white and the staff black.
“We’ve changed that significantly and now have six or seven young black men and women running our dairy operations,” Edgar said.
A government ban on farm schools has meant most staff have moved into towns.
“We have to transport them, which is not ideal,” Edgar said.
“If you start collecting cows at 4am in the morning, someone has to be up at 3 to collect the staff.”
However, he said the Just Milk group prides itself on people, cows and controls and invest a lot into people.
“We have a lot of challenges, but I’ve come to realise from going to other countries that we all have challenges.”
Apart from close ties with Genetics Australia through its South African distributor CRV Xseed Genetics, Just Milk uses rotary dairy platforms designed in Australia by Kevin and Mary Sorroghan from Rockwood Rotary in Shepparton.
“On a tour in 1995, we went to visit a farmer rearing ostriches in Shepparton,” Edgar said.
“It was Kevin’s son Mike. We got talking to Kevin, an engineer, who had built his own concrete platform which was something we didn’t have in South Africa.
“We had started building a swingover dairy, but I phoned Dad and told him to stop because we were doing the wrong thing.
“We filled the pit, broke down the building we’d started and Kevin came to South Africa and built three rotaries on three different farms.
“It was the first concrete platform built in South Africa and it’s still in use today.
“We were very fortunate to meet them … they made our lives a lot easier.”