Southland dairy farmer Kevin Hall has been looking into a different way of wintering.
Southland dairy farmer Kevin Hall has been looking into a different way of wintering.
From the day he purchased Hollyvale Farms in Waimahaka, Kevin Hall looked for ways to improve the wintering facilities for his cows.
Hall, who bought the Southland farm in 2008, had around 700 mixed-age cows and didn’t want to send them away for contract grazing; he reckoned there had to be a way to “winter better”.
That flows on with better cow health and better milk production.”
Hall said effluent management was essential when planning a shed system for stock.
“The way you manage, store and handle effluent is crucial to a well-functioning system.”
He discovered that was the problem with the first two sheds.
“The system didn’t work mainly because we were pumping whole effluent instead of separated effluent.”
The third shed has a weeping wall that separates out the solids.
“Most of the nutrients are in the liquid rather than the solids so from a pumping point of view, it’s easier to work with the liquids,” he said.
Kevin Hall has seen the benefits of installing sheds on his Southland farm.
Liquid effluent is pumped into a clay-lined 2 million litre effluent pond and then, come December, is pumped through an umbilical cord attached to tractors and spread across around 30 hectares of silage paddocks.
“We try not to lose anything,” Hall said.
“Effluent makes a great fertiliser, replacing the nutrients removed by the silage harvest.”
The fourth shed was built at the home dairy farm and makes use of a flood wash system. It is used to house predominately calving and colostrum cows that can make a mess of the dairy farm especially if the weather is wet.
This was proving to be the most successful system so far, not least because it used the farm’s effluent system; an existing water resource, Hall said.
“With the flood wash, you have a 25,000-litre tank that just floods the concrete structure but you are using green water – effluent from which the solids have been removed, which we already have.”
The sheds have constantly evolved over the years. Hall said the span of the latest building had increased to 11 metres.
Farmer Kevin Hall winters around 700 mixed-age cows on Hollyvale Farms in Southland.
“It makes it more user-friendly for getting in there to clean and also putting bedding in,” he said.
The farm uses sawdust for bedding instead of woodchips because it’s easier to handle and can be good for spreading over grass paddocks.
“It works because we don’t have crop paddocks so we wouldn’t be able to plough in woodchips. We did try them the first year, but they didn’t work for us.”
Hall said silage fed on concrete was better utilised and there was no transition needed at the end of the lactation period.
“While the sawdust bedding is an extra expense, my rule of thumb is that the saving in feed each year compared to a traditional Southland wintering brassica diet essentially pays for it.”
The sheds on Hollyvale Farms have constantly evolved over the years.
While Hollyvale’s systems were very different from wintering on crop Hall said careful management was crucial to make it work.
“We do our feed budget, so we know how much we need and what the quality it is for the right nutrition levels we need.
“If you don’t end up with the cow you want at the end of winter, you haven’t done your homework properly.”
Kevin Hall was the 2022 Ballance Farm Environment Awards Regional Supreme Winner for the Southland region.
The Ballance Farm Environment Awards promote sustainable farming and growing across the country, and are facilitated by the New Zealand Farm Environment Trust.
