But as they prepare for the new season they say it's all about keeping their eyes on the big picture. There will be better years ahead.
"In the four years we've been sharemilking, this is the first tough one. You've got to take the good with the bad."
Jump from farm management Jason, from Pahiatua, has been farming for about 20 years and made the jump from farm management to sharemilking with Nikki in 2011. They took on a high-input system-five farm, milking 265 cows at Opiki, southwest of Palmerston North.
They set a goal of milking 600 cows within three years and realised it. Jason says they enjoyed the higher production a system-five farm provided. The $8.50 record milk price in 2013/2014 was a bonus when it came to buying the cows they needed to make the move to their new farm.
"We grew massively in that final year. We were buying the extra cows anyway but the payout helped. You try to capitalise as much as you can when things are good." The new 255ha farm, managed by a trust on behalf of the Southern Star Abbey Monastery, which is on the property, is system three.
"I really love the experience of farming different systems and learning those systems." For most of the season Jason has been milking about 250 cows once a day and the rest of the herd twice a day. "We chose that because we have quite long walks up and down hills. They're also young cows, all the heifers I bought last season." Their older-style 40-a-side herringbone dairy shed works well with 600 cows.
In mid-March Jason reverted to milking the entire herd once a day in the lead up to the new season.
Hit the ground running in new season Jason is determined not to let any effects from the lower milk price and dry weather carry over into the new season.
Ensuring good body condition scores and good pasture cover at June 1 are top of his mind.
Jason and a staff member have body-condition scored each cow monthly to make sure that by June 1 they are all at 4.5 BCS.
To help the pastures recover from the dry, Jason has regularly assessed them with a pasture meter equipped with GPS, has been careful with rotation lengths and has applied urea.
Twenty-three per cent ofthe farm was cropped over summer, which has helped with the feed situation.
"You want to be planning and making sure you set yourself up for winter and a tough spring where you won't have the money to purchase feed.
"It's the same principle whatever system you are farming. Wintering is the biggest threat to dairy farming because they are so vulnerable once we send our cows out winter grazing. You've got to ensure cows have at least a chance of being in the spring and producing milk." They lease a 115ha block 6km away where they will winter the cows.
"By June 1 we are a long way through this problem. Yes, we are going to be looking at some pretty ugly cashflows in August, September and October but we are going to get through."
Difficult monthsJason's strategy to get through the tight times is to be very quick to pull low-producing cows out of the farm system. He says he can't afford passengers, particularly as farmers can waste so much money on imported feed. Empties went to the freezing works and pregnant low-producing young cows were dried off and went to the run-off.
"Concentrate on your capital stock and invest in them," he says.
The parched paddocks tell the story of just 75mm of rain in January and February. Jason and Nikki expected this and imported more feed at the outset and in mid-March Jason took the herd down to milking once a day. They are targeting 250,000MS for the season.
Jason and Nikki use the accounting system Cash Manager to do their budgets and are continually analysing how they can improve things.
Jason and Nikki have gone interest-only on their mortgage and plan to leave it that way for about a year. The first time it was suggested to them they weren't keen but then realised they needed to treat it as a short-term strategy to tide them over.
"These are the things you have to do to get through. I'm sure there are plenty of established farmers that have gone through this." Nor does he think the season will unduly affect their five-year plan.
"We can recoup very quickly in good payout years." Jason says they were planning to rear extra heifers but with the low milk price they've pulled back from that.
But there are things they were determined not to cut back on.
They have three full-time staff and say they wouldn't have been able to sleep at night if they'd laid anyone off.
"Looking after staff is absolutely paramount," says Jason. "We are having a tough time. You lay someone off and their time has just got tougher." Nor have they cut back on herd testing four times a year, which they both see as even more important than usual in a difficult season.
Stay positive Jason and Nikki urge others who are finding the going hard to remember that it is only one season.
"Your career is longer than one year. You have to look at it over a seven- to 10-year period. And this is a bad year in that cycle," says Jason.
The couple are used to financial pressure because they've always been aggressively looking to buy more cows to get ahead.
When they are in a bad patch they think about the good things.
"We are so lucky. And you have to take the small stuff. It's dairy farming, we will survive and we have positive people around us. My son William is growing up in a nice district. We run our own business, we employ three people and we own 600 cows. It's not all doom and gloom." Nikki, who is expecting their second child, says it's essential not to dwell on negatives.
"It's an industry where there can be so many overwhelming negatives in one year - payout and weather, it would be easy to go down that route."
Focus on your goals Jason and Nikki are goal oriented and urge others to set firm goals.
Jason has found the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards invaluable for his development as a farmer. The first year he entered in 2010 he didn't place and it made him take a hard look at how he was operating. In 2011 he won the National Farm Manager category. He says the competition gives people confidence and "keeps pumping out" focused farmers who have been surrounded by like-minded people.
Looking around the dry paddocks after a harsh summer is sobering but Jason remains positive. "We are so much closer to rain today than we were two weeks ago. Every sleep you are closer to it. That's what you have to keep reminding yourself." And as always, it's the five-year plan and their goals that keep him focused.
"In five years I want 1500 cows and irrigation. I want to challenge myself at that level.
"You have to have goals and they've got to be cemented in your brain and never really leave you."
-Inside Dairy, DairyNZ
