Featherston farmer gets gong

TOP-NOTCH: Wairarapa's award winning dairy farmer Nick Bertram earlier this year when he won a Hawkes Bay/Wairarapa regional award. PHOTO/FILE

Featherston farmer Nick Bertram is officially the best dairy farm manager in the country.

Mr Bertram, 27, took the 2014 New Zealand Farm Manager of the Year title at a special function held at Auckland's Sky City Hotel last night having last month won the Hawke's Bay/Wairarapa regional competition.

Judges said when they had left the Featherston farm contract milked by Mr Bertram they were buzzing.

He had picked up a below-average performing farm and made the most of resources available to him.

Farm manager judge Phil Irvine said Mr Bertram was doing the basics well and had a good handle on finances and on how his decisions affected the farm owner's finances.

Winning the national award brought Mr Bertram, who contract milks 260 cows for David and Lorraine Osborne of Featherston, a prize package worth $30,500.

Names of the winners in all three categories were embargoed last night meaning the successful contestants were not able to be interviewed before this edition of the newspaper went to press.

The judges noted Mr Bertram has developed his own feed budgeting spread sheet to help his decision making and nitrogen and supplement inputs to ensure pasture targets are met.

Runner-up in the farm manager contest was Ngatea contract milker Simon Player and third place went to Oxford farm manager Phillip Columbus.

In the other categories Charlie and Jody McCaig, of Taranaki, were named 2014 New Zealand Sharemilker/Equity Farmers of the Year and Ruth Hone representing Central Plateau was crowned 2014 New Zealand Dairy Trainee.

Miss Hone is the first woman to win the dairy trainee title and the McCaigs are the 25th winners of the sharemilker contest.

The competition celebrated the milestone with an Anniversary Ball following the awards presentations. It is the longest-running dairy farming competition and has its roots in Taranaki, where the contest idea was born in the 1970s before the first national competition was held in 1990.

Regarding the farm manager's contest Mr Irvine said the use of smart phones and other technology on farms was helping in day-to-day tasks.

"On one farm all staff had smart phones so they could access certain things, like rosters and milking procedures. They were also using snapchat to capture things like a leak on a water line," he said.

Mr Irvine said one farm was applying effluent, with solids removed, through irrigators.

"By using GPS technology they were able to cut the switch so the irrigator stops applying as the pivot moves over a water lane or sensitive area.

"It's clever stuff."

The New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards are supported by national sponsors Westpac, DairyNZ, Ecolab, Federated Farmers, Fonterra, Honda Motorcycles NZ, LIC, Meridian Energy, Ravensdown, RD1 and Triplejump, along with industry partner Primary ITO.

Mr Bertram also won the RD1 Farm Management Award and the Westpac Financial Planning & Management Award.