Troy Ainslie was bought up on a dairy farm and wanted to be a dairy farmer, but without the financial risk.
He is now the farm manager for a 180 hectare farm at Cressy, Tasmania, on one of eight farms in the state that are owned by Compass Agri Australia.
Compass Agri Australia owns the farm, infrastructure and herd, and Troy is paid a manager’s salary and a profit-share incentive.
“The profit share system means I still have a bit of skin in the game,” Troy said.
He was a guest speaker at GippsDairy’s Dairy Muster on April 30, where he was on the panel to discuss virtual herding.
Troy and Toni Ainslie, of Woodrising Dairies, received the accolade of the 2023 ANZ Tasmanian Dairy Business of the Year.
Also since 2023, they have been using HALTER collars and software for virtual herding, pasture management and to complement their herd health and reproduction systems.
The ease of adopting collars for virtual herding, and the results for their farm business has seen Compass Agri Australia install them across all their Tasmanian farms.
“We put it on the cows at Woodrising Dairies in June 2023, and it was Compass’s plan to roll it out across the other farms over the next 18 months,” Troy said.
“Within 16 months, they had rolled it out across the lot.
“The company really saw the benefits of some of the early indicators of the benefits of using it across all the farms.”
The Cressy dairy farm managed by Troy is fully irrigated, in a 500 to 600mm rainfall zone, and milks 540 crossbred cows off a 155ha milking platform.
Irrigation enables the farm to grow grass year-round, feeding out 1.2 tonne/cow of grain annually, and producing 1.08 milk solids per kilogram of body weight per cow.
Season-dependent, a decision is made pre Christmas whether to carry through or sell empty cows, or to join them for late calving, or to sell them in-calf and as late calvers in the autumn.
Troy said training the milking herd and heifers to virtual herding and virtual fencing was straight forward.
He was comfortable with the prompts used by the system.
“First there’s an auditory cue that you want the cows to move,” he said.
“That noise gets louder over an extended period of time. It’s much like a vehicle beeping sound, like when you’re backing.
“The auditory cue indicates to the cows that it’s time to move. They may be moving to go to the dairy or to move on to fresh pasture.
“If they have to move out of the paddock — to go to the dairy or for animal health needs — a vibration cue begins.
“The auditory alert is followed by a vibration cue that it’s time to move. As far as I’m aware, that’s the only two cues we’ve used.
“If the cow doesn’t move, the software pauses using the collar, I get an alert on my phone, and I go to investigate why that cow isn’t moving.
“Because there’s many reasons why a cow isn’t moving – she could be calving early, she could be a downer cow, or many other reasons.
“As a basic rule, we drop what we’re doing and we go and check on that cow.”
Troy said the two-year-old heifers coming into the mob were the easiest to train for virtual herding.
“When we bring our heifers home to calve, we keep them in a separate mob,” he said.
“They took just five days to know what to do with the virtual fencing and the virtual herding. By seven days, we were comfortable their training was complete.”
Since 2023, Troy has measured quantifiable improvements in time management and herd health.
“The one straight up is your virtual fencing and herding,” Troy said.
“Nobody was having to go and put fence reels up any more. Nobody has to go and herd the cows in to the dairy any more.
“That saved us a lot in fuel. I went from using 1000 litres to 100 litres of fuel a month.
“That was the first indicator that there’s something happening that you know is an improvement.
“Nobody is sitting on a quad bike behind the herd, twice a day, travelling at 4km/h.”
The morning milking shift starts at 5am, because no-one has to go into the paddock at 4am to collect cows.
Troy said that had a flow on effect to wellbeing among staff.
“Compass management wanted to eliminate the occupational risk of having staff in the paddock in the dark, which led them to adopt the HALTER technology,” he said.
“We haven’t had a sick day among the staff since we started using HALTER technology.
“When we arrive in the dairy in the morning, we’re dry and we turn on the heaters and it’s a comfortable atmosphere.
“We haven’t used wet weather gear in two years.”
When the lead cows leave the dairy, they return to fresh pasture, and by the time the entire herd is finished in the milking shed, Troy is able to allocate more fresh pasture to the end of the herd.
“Cows don’t stand at the back of the dairy and wait to return to the paddock,” he said.
“We use a pasture management tool to identify how much grass has been eaten and forecast how much we’ll need in the next seven and 14 days.
“We’re able to better utilise pasture and we use irrigation and fertiliser to make the grass grow when we want it.
“We’ve been able to ramp down our fertiliser use in spring to match our rotation.”
Next season, Troy expects to increase his herd from 3.6 to 4.0 cows/hectare.
He has also cut down the labour hours required on the farm, with the advantage of reducing overtime.
“Our busiest time on the farm is in July and September, when we’re calving and feeding out. We were able to cut 400 hours out of our staff of 3.4 equivalent full-time workers.
“So that’s a bit over four hours a day. That makes for a better lifestyle and work-life balance on the farm.”
For Troy, the immediate advantage of using the collars with an integrated software management system, is being able to sleep in occasionally, and to be able to rely on his staff to identify a cow in heat.
He said a flashing LED light on the cow’s collar made it easy for all milking staff to identify the animal was in heat.
“When it comes to reproduction, it doesn’t matter what system you’re using, it takes a long time to teach somebody how to do reproductive assessment correctly on a cow,” Troy said.
“With a HALTER collar, you have a flashing LED light that anyone can see.
“That allowed me to give a junior staff member with limited experience the responsibility of drafting off a cow, that me or a senior farmhand can follow up.
“We still teach the necessities of what you have to look for – but it’s sped up the process, and they gain new skills and confidence, and feel very much part of the team.
“And I, who’ve just come off nine weeks of calving, can get a sleep-in.”
Improving reproductive assessment has led to improved in-calf rates.
“This season we had a six per cent increase in our six-week in-calf rates, to 70 per cent,” Troy said.
“We only mate for nine weeks and we’re straight AI for the whole time.”
Troy said similar results had been recorded at other farms in the group.
“One thing that isn’t talked about enough is the benefit of the work-life balance and improved mental wellbeing that this system gives us,” Troy said.
“This is a better way of doing dairy.
“I chose not to be a sharefarmer or own a dairy farm because I wanted a better work-life balance than my parents had.
“I have that now with my kids. I’m at every school carnival, I’m at every football game, I’m at every football training.
“And it’s not only me. It’s my whole team who have this advantage.”