dairy news australia june 2014

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JUNE 2014 Issue 48 // www.dairynewsaustralia.com.au

CeNTRAL QueeNsLAND

Swiss Brown handle heatPAge 14

mAkINg A sPLAsh

Australian Dairy Farmers Co-op opens at $6.53 PAge 3

Tasmanian dairy in demandPAGES 4-5

FORWARD ThINkINg

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PAge 4

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Dai ry NewS aUSTraLia june 2014

NeWs // 3

NeWs .......................................................3-9

OPINION ....................................................10

AgRIbusINess ..................................... 11

mARkeTs ............................................12-13

mANAgemeNT ................................ 14-15

bReeDINg mANAgemeNT ......16-19

ANImAL heALTh .......................... 20-25

CALF ReARINg ............................... 26-31

mAChINeRy & PRODuCTs ...................................... 32-34

Numurkah farmers Peter and Diane Letcher inceased profitability when they switched to seasonal calving. Pg.19

Gippsland farmer Darryl Light has upgraded to the latest model of Whoppa Choppa, 21 years after purchasing the first. Pg.33

Western Victoria farmer Jess Fleming made simple, low-cost changes to her family’s calf rearing system with good results. Pg.26

New player opens with $6.53kg/MS bidThe bATTLe for milk in south-ern Australia continues to rage, with Australian Dairy Farmers Co-Oper-ative announcing an opening price of $6.53kg/milk solids, which it will lift to $6.81kg/MS if its opening price is matched during the year.

The Australian Dairy Farmers Co-operative is an offshoot of the Dairy Farmers Milk Co-operative (DFMC), whose members supply Lion.

It has signed a long-term deal to supply dairy company Bulla with 120 million litres of milk.

ADFC chairman, Scott Sieben, said they wanted to be one of the first companies to announce an opening price for the 2014/15 season.

Mr Sieben said he feels it is a solid opening price and that the flat milk pricing model would also appeal to farmers.

Dairy Australia industry analyst,

John Droppert, said as a new player, ADFC had to offer attractive terms in its bid to secure milk.

“However, the offer of a flat, guaranteed minimum price does tap into some key themes in the farm-gate market at the moment,” Mr Droppert said.

“Farmers are looking for sim-pler payment structures as well as tools to manage risk. A lot of farm-ers have also given ADFC credit for announcing its pricing so early.”

Mr Droppert said all processors want more milk and many have introduced new schemes as a form of value-adding.

“If this payment structure is visibly successful, it will be a help-ful demonstration of another way to overcome the perennial conun-drum of securing milk supply.”

Mr Droppert said the industry needed a new approach to invig-

orate national milk production, although it was too early to say whether ADFC’s pricing structure would change the industry.

Rabobank senior analyst, Michael Harvey, said processors are looking to add to their service in a bid to secure milk but “ultimately it is about milk price”.

“Murray Goulburn has its Next Generation package, Bega is putting money aside to help farmers grow, it all shows how concerned proces-sors are for milk.

“Until the milk supply grows, it’s always going to be a battle. They all get milk from someone else.”

Mr Harvey said the current shortage of milk makes it difficult for new entrants.

“It’s a tough environment to come out with an opening price,” he said.

ADFC and Bulla held public

information sessions for farmers at Colac and Camperdown earlier this month.

Their ideal suppliers would be based closer to Colac but Mr Sieben said recruiting quality farmers was the first priority.

Mr Sieben said farmers are look-ing for stability in their milk price. Farmers can sign either 1, 2 or 3-year contracts but ADFC only has a 12-month milk price at the moment.

“Ideally in future, we’d like to implement longer term base price to milk contract,” Mr Sieben said.

“They don’t like peaks and troughs in milk pricing. Hopefully we can offer a milk price that’s stable over the longer term.”

Bulla chief executive officer, Reg Weine, said Bull wants to encour-age farmers to invest and in doing so, increase production and the Aus-tralian milk pool.

Contented cows on the Clews family farm at Rossmoya in Central Queensland. see page 14 for more

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DAi ry NEwS AUSTrALiA june 2014

4 // NeWs

DAIRy CONVeRsIONs and diversifica-tion, particularly in the non-dairy areas, create excitement, but the traditional dairy regions of north-west and north-east Tasmania are also brimming with confidence.

This confidence was easily detected in the National Dairy Farmer Survey published by Dairy Australia as part of the 2014 Situation and Outlook Update Report.

Turns out dairy farmers in Tasmania are more confident about the future of their busi-nesses than any of their interstate colleagues.

‘Rises in farmgate milk prices and improved profitability have nearly doubled positive farmer sentiment in Tasmania to the highest level since 2008 with 91% positive about their business this year compared to 50% last year,” according to Dairy Australia’s Norman Repacholi.

“Tasmania’s dairy farmers are reaping the benefits of high international commod-

ity prices brought about by the Asian dairy boom and they are among the most likely to be in an expansion phase,” Mr Repacholi said. “The survey shows that 68% of Tas-manian dairy farmers made a profit in 2012/13 and 84% expect to make a profit this year: 66% of those expect to receive higher profits than their five year average.” The survey also reveals that 45% of Dairy-Tas farmers intend to invest in their busi-ness in the coming year and that milk production is anticipated to increase 9.2%. Share farmers Matthew and Lyndal Luck farm at Riana, near Burnie in the north-west.

The couple are 50:50 sharefarmers with brothers Andrew and Matthew Radford, milking 250 cows on 110 hectares, and supply Cadbury.

“The last 12 months couldn’t be better,” Mr Luck said. “Twelve months before that, it was super tight.

“We have gone from one end of the scale to the other with milk prices.”

Mr Luck said Cadbury, like all processors on the state, wants more milk so the option to expand is there for all farmers.

“If you want to go up 50 cows there’s no wor-ries. Five or 10 years ago you needed permission. Now, everyone is chasing milk.”

Riana is located in a traditional dairying dis-trict, populated with family farms.

Mr Luck said rainfall is consistent and they don’t have climatic extremes, which reduces stress.

DairyTas executive officer Mark Smith said Tasmania expects to increase milk production by 15% this season because of the improved con-ditions. The 2012/13 season was particularly tough, with a 4% drop overall.

Farmers have had better feed and cows have been in better condition as a result, he said.

Brimming with confidence

Matthew and Lyndal Luck.

TAsmANIAN DAIRy farmers will head to New Zealand’s largest field day, Mystery Creek, this month in a bid to recruit Kiwi farm-ers across the ditch.

One of the biggest impediments to Tasma-nia’s ambitious growth plan is a lack of skilled workers, share farmers and manag-ers.

Up to 200 new people a year will be needed at all levels.

DairyTas executive officer Mark Smith said Dairy Tas, Dairy Australia and the Tasmanian government were collaborating on the scheme.

The promotion will include a stand in the Fonterra pavilion and include NZ farmers who have proven suc-cessful in Tasmania, Into Dairy project manager Steven Jarman, and real estate and bank representatives.

When asked whether Fonterra had a conflict of interest – taking farmers from its largest supply base to its second – Mr Smith said it wanted more milk in Tasmania.

They chose New Zealand because of the skilled workforce and because of the comparable climate to Tasmania.

They will dangle the carrot of cheaper land and good return on assets. They will also be appealing to share farmers and managers.

Mr Smith said potential recruits could buy a farm for two-thirds of the price of a similar property in NZ. The currency advantage was also significant.

The Mystery Creek campaign will include a compe-tition with a prize of a trip to Tasmania to look at farms.

The move follows a similar recruitment drive earlier this year, when Australian dairy, banking and invest-ment interests travelled to New Zealand to recruit workers.

Andrew Radford, a director of ATR accountancy and owner of two Tasmanian dairy farmers, two Rabobank rural managers from Tasmania and Victoria, and Rabo-bank senior analyst Michael Harvey travelled the coun-try in March.

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The IRONy was obvious to all those sitting in Clarke Hall at the Campbell Town Showgrounds.

The meeting was called to investigate expansion, diversification and investment opportunities in the Tasmanian dairy industry – and it was being held in the heart of wool country.

On the walls were portraits of former Campbell Town Show presidents, and stud Merino sheep were in a shed a stone’s throw away, waiting to be judged.

Welcome to a new Tasmania, where dairy is the word on everyone’s lips.

Livestock agency Roberts organised the meeting in conjunction with DairyTas and 100 people attended. Local conversions by mixed farmers have garnered more interest and the meeting was organised to provide further information.

Local dairy farmer and DairyTas chairman, Grant Rogers, chaired and his enthusiasm swept up those in the room.

Rogers and his wife, Melanie, moved to Tasmania in 2003 and purchased their farm at Ouse, in the Derwent Valley, because of the excellent water availability, the land price, proximity to Hobart and similarity to their former home of Canterbury, in New Zealand.

Mr Rogers believes dairying can change the face of the Derwent Valley as access to irrigation water and demand for milk push the industry into new regions.

He believes sheep and cropping areas, such as the Midlands and Derwent Valley, could soon be running thousands of dairy cows.

He told the forum that with access to reliable irrigation water, anything was possible.

“There are massive areas of potential,” he said. “We could milk 20,000 cows in the Derwent Valley without too much difficulty.”

Mr Rogers has seen firsthand the impact of a thriving dairy industry in Canterbury, which is one of many dairy strongholds in New Zealand. Canterbury had few dairy farms 20 years ago and local communities are thriving

now as a result.“The thing that I saw happen in

Canterbury is also happening here as well and that’s what it can do for the local communities because of the jobs it creates, not only on-farm, but off-farm,” he said.

Fonterra, the state’s biggest milk processor, has just started collecting milk from the Derwent Valley, which Mr Rogers said was critical for the region.

Potential returns from diversifying into dairy have captured the imagination, but two developments have driven it – massive capital improvements by all processors on the island, and the new irrigation schemes being developed across the state.

The state-owned Tasmanian Irrigation company has built nine irrigation schemes across northern and central Tasmania for $310m, with five more costing another $192m planned if the federal government will chip in $110m.

Water started flowing down the Midland scheme early this month, with 38,500 megalitres of water delivered into the three valleys of the Macquarie, Isis and Jordan rivers.

The water will generate enough power to drive the Midlands scheme’s water pumps and provide power to at

least 5000 homes, before reaching 68 farms downstream, where extra water has rarely been available.

It will enable former wool farms to grow the pasture required for high-value dairy operations.

Farmers have contributed two thirds of the cost of this scheme from their own pockets. However, that only gets the water to their farm gates – and water is currently trading at $1140/ML.

Tasmania has seen unprecedented investment in dairy processing capacity over the last two years.

Fonterra recently completed $11.5 million upgrades at its Wynyard and Spreyton manufacturing sites; Tasmanian Dairy Products (now owned by Murray Goulburn) invested $75 million in a milk powder plant at Smithton; Lion has almost completed a $150 million expansion at Burnie, a project which consolidates all soft cheese production in Tasmania to build on the state’s ‘Clean, Green’ brand opportunities. Cadbury is another significant investor in the State.

DairyTas executive officer, Mark Smith, said the current expansion in processing capacity has unlocked the potential for a major expansion of the Tasmanian dairy industry by 350 million litres per annum, a 40% increase.

“The Tasmanian industry has achieved 3% per annum growth over the last decade and DairyTas is seeking to accelerate growth over the next five years,” Mr Smith said.

“The Into Dairy – Sustainable Dairy Development project (formerly Filling the Factories) is a $1.5 million project, supported by industry and government, which targets the attraction of new investment and skills and promotes industry growth.”

Under this project, DairyTas not only looks to attract investment, but funds approved applications for dairy conversions in the State.

The goal under the project is to increase Tasmania milk production to 1150 million litres by

2018. To do this it requires 67,500 more

milking cows, around 30,000 more on existing farms and 37,500 on new farms; 550 new jobs in the dairy industry, 450 on-farm and 100 in processing and service sectors; and farm investment of $600m.

It’s a big goal but with processors demanding more milk and some of the state’s best farmers (across all commodities) seeing dairy as a worthwhile investment, the state’s dairy leaders are confident.

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muRRAy gOuLbuRN is proposing to put its restructure proposal to a vote in January or February next year, with a pos-itive response seeing the structure imple-mented two months later.

The timeline was included in an updated capital structure proposal released last month.

Among other changes, the co-op said it would not be compulsory for suppliers to be “shared-up” - own one share for each kilogram of milk solids supplied - from the first day of the proposed new struc-ture.

Those who do now “share-up” will stay on a share offtake arrangement sim-ilar to the current share offtake arrange-ment until they reach the required share amount.

In the updated proposal, the co-op said undertaking a $500 million invest-ment purely from bank debt funding would push the co-operative ‘very close to reaching its prudent and permitted peak borrowing levels’.

The structure is designed to make Murray Goulburn less reliant on debt funding, and encourage reinvestment in the dairy industry.

Murray Goulburn hopes the struc-ture will also encourage new suppliers to join it, aiding its efforts to attract higher volumes of milk and ultimately, help to deliver a “sustainably higher farm gate milk price”.

After taking feedback from the sup-plier meetings into consideration, the modifications were aimed at ensuring the model to be employed by MG is suit-able over the long term “giving MG’s bal-ance sheet the strength and flexibility to deal with changes in the market that MG operates in”.

Under the proposed structure, sup-pliers will continue to hold shares in the co-op and capital will be raised by the

issue of units in a unit trust, which will be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

The unit holders in the trust will not have voting rights in relation to MG’s operations and, as is the case today, only active suppliers will hold voting shares in MG.

The second round of consultation meetings began last month. The board will then determine the next steps. There will be further supplier discussion and consultation before the board makes any final recommendation.

The unit price of shares would not be determined until after the final capital structure has been approved by share-holders, regulators and the Murray Goul-burn board.

Former MG chairman and Yarram dairy farmer, Ian MacAuley, contacted ABC Radio last month to air his concerns at the proposed restructure.

Mr MacAuley said the proposed restructure would provide capital but he questioned where the benefit of that extra capital would end up.

“A true co-op will provide that to its members, a hybrid structure has a conflict of interest that is very hard to manage,” he said.

“You have unit holders in this case who will be looking for capital gain and dividend, and on the other side you have farmers looking for capital gain and div-idend on shares, but also looking for the best possible milk price.”

Mr MacAuley said history shows hybrid structures other co-ops have gone into over recent years, very few have sur-vived as full co-ops. They have been either fully listed or absorbed into some other business.

“So the track record is not good.”Mr MacAuley said Murray Goulburn’s

plan to remove A class shares had caused

ex-farmers to contact him.“These shares have been offered at

$1.25 per share to cancel the share. That will create some convenience to Murray Goulburn, but the concern is the value under capital restructure will be signifi-cantly more.

“The current concern is it’s not fair to those who invested in the co-op over many, many years.”

Mr MacAuley described the upcom-ing vote as the largest issue the industry has faced, not just Murray Goulburn sup-pliers.

“It will be a huge change in what drives the industry. Over the last 20 years, Murray Goulburn has driven the indus-try into the modern world.

“That will change with a hybrid structure. That will then impact the milk price for every Australian dairy farmer, because Murray Goulburn has underwritten the milk price for the whole industry.

“Shareholders get to vote but people with the most to gain have most shares. So it will be interesting to see.”


6 // NeWs

MG wants proposal vote in January

Gary Helou

Cobram, Koroit upgrades enhance export capacitymuRRAy gOuLbuRN’s $19 million investment at its Koroit facility will increase its capacity to produce nutritional products des-tined for Asian consumers.

The Koroit investment forms part of a larger $127 million cap-ital investment, announced by managing director Gary Helou last month.

The Koroit site – which is the largest dairy manufacturing facil-ity in Australia – currently pro-duces about $600 million annually of premium, mainly export des-tined, dairy products including powders for infant nutrition and bulk ingredients; retail butter, bulk butter, and retail milk powder.

Mr Helou said Devondale Murray Goulburn had identified the growth of nutritional prod-ucts, such as infant formula, as a significant opportunity to add value above commodity milk pow-ders to customers in China and South-east Asia.

“Among the products that are driving demand are nutritional milk powders, particularly baby and follow-on formula for tod-dlers,” Mr Helou said.

“Global demand for infant for-mula is expected to increase by more than 4% cent in 2017. Fol-low-on formula is expected to grow by more than 6% and grow-ing-up milk powder will exceed 7% growth.”

The investment at Koroit will increase the capacity to produce these products by installing the necessary capability on existing production lines.

It also secures sustainable,

skilled jobs in the region and cur-rent staff will be trained to pro-duce the new, higher value-add products, he said.

Work has already started on the project which is expected to be fully operational by May 2015.

MG has also invested $91 million in its Cobram plant, delivering new technology for processing and packaging a range of dairy foods destined for Asian and Australian consumers.

Amongst these investments will be a $74 million investment to build a world class cheese cut and wrap facility at Cobram over the next 12-18 months.

He said investment in world-class equipment and automa-tion will increase capacity across cheese portions and slices, as well as shredded cheese.

An additional $17 million will be invested in optimising capac-ity for nutritional products at Cobram. The investment will enable MG to produce a wider range of high value nutritional products.

As a result of changes within operational processes and activ-ities, the co-op has made 54 positions across the company redundant.

The reduction in permanent roles is made up of 13 positions at Kiewa; 4 at Cobram; 23 at Leon-gatha; 3 at Rochester; and 11 at Maffra.

All impacted staff will receive full entitlements, be offered coun-selling and career transitioning services.

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muRRAy gOuLbuRN (MG) announced its sixth step-up in the farmgate price for the current season early this month.

Rises of 9c/kg butterfat and 19c/kg protein takes its weighted-average available price to $6.81/kg MS, according to the co-op.

MG managing director, Gary Helou, said external factors including fluctuating international commod-ity prices and currency movements will influence the final season price.

“Market demand for key dairy ingredients remains strong but increased milk supply from New Zealand, Europe and USA has led to recent declines in prices,” Mr Helou said.

“Nevertheless dairy ingredients prices remain above historical average levels.

“The Australian dollar continues to be stubbornly higher than we expect it to be and remains a source of risk to next year’s farmgate milk prices.”

MG steps up

Positive despite price fallsThe FALL in global dairy auction prices may grab headlines but the immediate future still looks bright, according to Rabobank senior analyst (dairy), Michael Harvey.

The global dairy trade auction has seen prices fall at eight events since Feb-ruary, with this month’s fall the most significant since April 1.

With the average sell-ing price peaking above US$5000 per tonne, the average selling price was US$3594/tonne for the first auction of June.

The 4.2% fall in dairy prices on the Global Dairy Trade platform came as a surprise to many ana-lysts and disappointment to farmers following signs the market slide was slow-ing.

Westpac senior econo-mist Anne Boniface admit-ted the extent of the fall, particularly in whole milk powder, wasn’t expected.

“There can be some volatility fortnight to fortnight between GDT events. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a bit of sea-sonality,” she said.

Mr Harvey said Rabo-bank also thought the market would have stabi-lised by now, but is con-fident there is enough demand in markets out-side China to provide sup-port.

“Inventories are quite low in South East Asia markets and in this envi-ronment buyers wait to see if the market bottoms out before coming back in.

“This drop will bring the buyers back. We

expected them to have re-entered the market already but they haven’t. We’re certainly not pan-icking.”

The strong prices paid for global dairy products last year and the first quar-ter of this year was fuelled by China. Its current inac-tivity has seen market prices fall but Mr Harvey said buyers from China will re-enter the fray as early as July-September.

“For 2013, prices were near record levels and stayed there longer than many, including us, thought they would,” Mr Harvey said.

“However, commodity prices above $5000 are a two-pronged negative – it encourages too much milk to be produced, and it’s not sustainable.”

“This year will still provide a price positive for most farmers, just not the boom milk price of 2013/14.”

Dairy Australia indus-try analyst John Droppert was also surprised at the fall of the recent GDT auc-tion.

“The GDT result did surprise me, although the results aren’t as alarming as first indications would suggest.”

Mr Droppert said price falls in certain categories affected the result.

“WMP (whole milk powder) pricing did most of the damage, and I sus-pect that’s a function of the bullish expectations for yet another New Zea-land season as well as the silence from China.

“The Chinese bought

up big in early 2014, and are still working through their stocks – the date of their likely return to the market keeps getting pushed back.

“Most other buyers are purchasing hand-to-mouth as they wait and see how far prices fall.

“ I suspect we’ll see a bit of an uptick when

China starts buying more regularly again, and then perhaps a bigger boost as everyone else realises they’re about to miss a bargain.”

Mr Droppert said ‘bar-gain’ is a relative term as prices are still historically high.

In New Zealand, Fon-terra has set an opening

milk price of $7/kg milk solids for the upcoming season and has revised down its forecast for the current season in response to weak international product prices.

For the current season, Fonterra has forecast a milk price of $8.40, down from a previous forecast of $8.65.

Fonterra said the $7kg opening forecast matched the open-ing forecast provided 12 months ago at the start of the 2013/14 season.

Fonterra has announced an opening price of $7/kg MS, the same as last year.


8 // NeWs - emPLOymeNT

Making farm jobs more attractiveTONy FLeTT is one of a group of dairy farm-ers from across the coun-try involved in the Dairy Australia pilot to make it easier to access overseas workers.

Like other farmers involved, Mr Flett and his

wife, Tracey, who milk 500 cows on their Cobram farm, have trouble attract-ing and retaining farm-hands.

Mr Flett said finding farm managers is much easier than finding staff for milking and farm hand

roles.They currently employ

one farm-manager and one permanent part-time employee, who works 2-3 days per week, but would like another full-time employee and 2-3 milkers that can be relied on.

“Labour has always been a big issue for us and I’m sure the lack of labour is suppressing people who want to expand.

“It’s disheartening when you train a new staff member and get excited and then they’re gone. We

focus on milking now with new staff, and if it looks like they’ll stick around, we invest our time in teaching them other skills, like driving the tractor.

“If you could get reli-able milking staff, 3-4 people, then that would free me up. Milking staff are the hardest of the lot to find.

“Dairy farms are a chal-lenge to staff, we have a lumpy workload, trying to cover 14 milkings over seven days.”

Mr Flett, like other farmers, would be pre-pared to pay above the award to reliable work-ers, and said this and the flexibility that milking shifts provide could prove appealing. It’s a message he says farmers need to share.

“I grew up on a farm, so it’s natural to you. If you

grow up in town, it’s natu-ral to migrate to Safeway. We pay better than retail wages.

“The full-time wage for a milker is $18 an hour and we pay more than the award. Milkers can get $25, while the pizza manager in town gets $17 an hour.”

The flexibility of a milking roster could also suit mothers with primary age children, retirees and a host of others.

Mr Flett believes the perception of the industry could be a problem.

“When we advertise, we should be clearer with what people expect.

“We should promote the flexible hours, the good pay, and remember that most of the popula-tion don’t see 5.30am to 6pm as normal.

“When employees arrive, we need to ensure

we provide a clean, safe environment. If the posi-tion includes a house, make it something they want to live in.”

Mr Flett is deputy chairman of Murray Dairy and said it was cur-rently undertaking work to change perceptions of dairying in the commu-nity.

There are relief milk-ing courses held in Shep-parton and the North East, which show people how to milk, but Mr Flett’s com-ments would suggest more work could be done to stimulate interest in the first place.

“I’d like to see stalls in employment fairs and trade fairs in major cities, aimed at attracting tree changers and people want-ing to top up a wage with an additional part-time job.”

Cobram dairy farmer Tony Flett says greater availability of milkers would make a huge difference.

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NeWs - emPLOymeNT // 9

Visa changes would ease skilled labour shortagesDAIRy AusTRALIA has submitted an overseas labour agreement appli-cation to the Department of Immigration in a bid to address difficulties access-ing overseas workers to fill chronic skilled labour shortages on farms.

Dairy Australia policy strategy manager, Claire Miller, said DA undertook the initiative in response to growing frustration among farmers seeking overseas workers through 457 Visas, or backpackers on working holiday visas.

“The 6-month limit on employment for the latter is disruptive for the business, while the former is proving time-consuming, frustrating and inadequate,” Ms Miller said.

“Compounding the issue is that many farmers do not necessarily want a university-qualified farm

manager, but rather are seeking skilled farm hands or production managers responsible for many daily operational tasks includ-ing milking cows, detect-ing/treating animal health issues and animal hus-bandry.”

These positions are currently not recognised as skilled in the ANZ Stan-dard Certification of Occupation (ANZSCO) list that the Department of Immigration relies on for eligibility for 457 Visas.

Labour agreements may offer a solution, as they may allow recruit-ment of overseas work-ers with skills equivalent to the NCDEA (National Centre for Dairy Educa-tion Australia) certificates II, III, and IV.

Labour agreements are generally effective for two to three years, and allow for temporary and perma-

nent visas to be granted. Ms Miller said DA is

undertaking this initiative because it will benefit the industry as a whole, and few farmers have the time

or resources to attempt an application on their own.

DA has submitted labour agreements on behalf of a group of farm-ers across the country.

Ms Miller said this would then help pave the way to an industry-wide template labour agree-ment with the minister.

The farmers in the pilot

group filled in a pro-forma statement prepared by a consultant.

The statement included evidence of advertising trying to find

suitable staff for full-time positions locally, with no success over time; a com-mitment to training staff; and a good record as an employer.

Country-city visit opens up career optionsgIPPsLAND FARmeRs opened up possibilities in agriculture to 15 secondary students from the West Heidelberg area of Melbourne this week.

The students, mostly Somali, from Charles Latrobe, Macleod College and Thornbury High, vis-ited farms and spoke with farmers, educators and researchers.

Sue Webster, of Agribusiness Gippsland, which organised the tour, said most of the students had never been on a farm before. “Some had never been out of Melbourne. They were a bit overawed by the size of the region, even though we only travelled as far as Wonthaggi,” Ms Webster said.

There they visited the three-generation dairy farm of Ian Hitchens and watched the cows being milked.

Mt Hitchens told his visitors – ranging from year nine to VCE – of how his family farm had grown from one cow to 250 cows and urged the young people to grab the opportunities offered in Australia, as his pre-decessors had done.

Ian Hitchens with students.

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10 // OPINION

eDITORIAL

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Budget cuts harm agriculture’s futureTHE FEDERAL Government’s proposed budget cuts make little sense, and will harm Australian agriculture and regional commu-nities.

Never mind the applause it received on budget night from var-ious farm groups for token efforts including $20 million fund-ing over four years towards establishing a “Bio-security Flying Squad” or $8 million funding over four years to improve access to chemicals.

Its decision to slash funding for research, as well as Landcare, defies all logic.

The Government wheeled out clichés and platitudes (“we’re all carrying the load”, “age of entitlement is over”) but cutting funding to programs that pay back the investment many times over is nonsensical.

Its decision not to fund the National Centre for Farmer Health in Hamilton, western Victoria, shows it knows the price of every-thing and the value of nothing.

Healthy communities are productive communities and mental and physical health is clearly an issue in rural Australia, particu-larly amongst farmers.

Agriculture was named one of the pillars in this Government’s five-pillar economy, and yet cuts to research and development will clearly affect its competitiveness.

Agriculture needs R&D, which has been reinforced by govern-ment reports such as the Productivity Commission, the Asian Century report and the National Food Plan.

Despite allocation of $100m to agriculture specific R&D over the next four years (designed to get a positive headline), it has cut $146.8m from the CSIRO, which will result in 500 job losses.

Funding for the Co-operative Research Centres program will be cut by $80 million (20% of the overall program budget) and $11.5 million of funding was slashed from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

One of the most disappointing decisions for many farmers has been the reduction of $483 million in funding for Landcare nationally over the next five years, despite farmers investing $5 of their money for each Government dollar spent.

We’ll leave the last word to the President of the Victorian Landcare Council, Terry Hubbard:

“The expectation there is that the farming community should do all the heavy lifting for the benefit of the community.

“There is always a desire to increase and improve food pro-duction, there is always a desire to improve the natural environ-ment, and those are things that are enjoyed by all people and yet the farming community’s expected to carry it.”

Wage envyAuStRAliAn FARm in-stitute executive director mick Keogh was talking dairy to a packed house at the Campbell town Showgrounds in tasma-nia last month.

He was part of an in-formation day for farmers wanting to diversify their farming operations – a hot topic at the moment.

mr Keogh was telling the crowd about the demand for dairy globally, and the success of the Swedish-Danish co-op, Arla Food, producer of the world-beating lurpak butter.

“this is a co-op hav-ing to pay the highest wages in the world, higher than even Australia,” he started.

“impossible!” shouted meeting chairman and local farmer, Grant Rog-ers, shaking his head in disbelief.

mr Rogers would go on to give advice of his own to the room.

“Cash flow is crucial,” he started, “because no-body spends money like dairy farmers.”

Australia (missing) PostYou mAY remember we brought you the tale of an Australia Post decree that any mail with an “s” on the end of the street name would not be delivered.

the correct family name, correct town, cor-rect post code and most of the correct street would not be enough.

Seems there isn’t just one rogue officious of-ficial making these bizarre decrees.

We have since been informed of a parcel (containing a birthday present) that was returned to England because of the wrong suffix. You guessed it, correct name, number, street name, town and postcode, but the suffix “road” instead of “street” after the street name.

the sender was origi-nally miffed they hadn’t been told their fam-ily members had moved, before sharing a joke and a few unkind words at Aus-tralia Post’s expense.

back to the bottom linetHE FEDERAl Govern-ment has pocketed $23.4m after all but three South Australian farm-ers of 48 who applied for low interest loans were knocked back.

South Australia signed up to the Farm Finance loan scheme late last year, with loans on offer at a reduced interest rate of 4.5%.

it was revealed at the Senate Estimates hearings recently that most appli-cations were refused.

As a result of the low approval rate, only $1.6 million of the $25m al-located by the Federal Government was distrib-uted, with the remaining money remaining with the treasurer.

time to light up another cigar, mr Hockey, and per-haps put on your dancing shoes.

Tall tale? sadly notPuBliC intERESt in what happens on our farms is in-evitable but sometimes un-welcome, especially when misperceptions colour the public’s view.

in nebraska, uSA, a couple of unlucky farmers had to defend themselves all the way up the judicial system to the nebraska Supreme Court.

the charge? Growing corn taller than seven feet at an intersection, thus allegedly obstructing driver vision and causing a fatal accident.

Common sense finally prevailed, the court finding in favour of the farmers, ruling that the drivers were negligent.


AgRIbusINess // 11

A NeW EXPORT dairy producer based at Camperdown in south-west Victo-ria aims to milk 10,000 cows to serve a booming international market.

Camperdown Dairy International has been formed after agricultural investment management company EAT Group combined with resource devel-opment company MCG Group to buy an infant formula blending and filling business, the Camperdown Cheese and Butter Factory and local farms.

The arrangement will be the first farm-to-distribution supply chain oper-ation in Australia.

It aims to process 100 million litres of milk in the first year of operations with the target to supply both bulk whole milk powder and infant formula powder to Asian markets, primarily China.

The plans include a new $120 million spray drier at Camperdown.

Camperdown Dairy International chief executive Phil McFarlane said the business plan was based on supply-ing a premium product in high demand by consumers in international markets and selecting the right assets to meet that demand.

“Our business is very much about bringing the whole supply chain together to bring value, ensure efficien-cies, keep control of costs by investing in both the farm gate and supply chain assets,” he said.

“We didn’t think it was sustainable to leave the farmer out of our business plan; that is the key difference in our model.”

Mr McFarlane said traceability was demanded by Asian markets, particu-larly in China.

“Manufacturers need to demon-strate where their produce comes from. Our business represents traceability

from the production plant right back to the farm gate.

“That’s one of the advantages of owning the farms. That is a real credi-bility tick along with ensuring the qual-ity and the volume that those markets require.”

Mr McFarlane said the company had acquired some farms in the area and aimed to buy more. He would not reveal specific details of the purchases.

“We have acquired some farms and are accumulating more. We have a target of 100 million litres of milk under our management portfolio. We will work to build up our own farms as well as contracting milk from existing farmers who may want to be part of our supply chain,” he said.

“There’s no point us stealing milk that Murray Goulburn or Saputo is get-ting.

“We need to develop our own supply and we need to develop bigger farm enterprise systems. We have to select farms that we can expand via capital investment that can double or triple production.

“It comes down to managing herds, managing replacements, breeding and inputs. We also want to integrate graz-ing and grain producing enterprises so the farm system becomes self-supporting.

“We have 40,000 litres and aim to reach 100 million litres by the end of next year. We want to milk 10,000 cows so we need to build to that level. It won’t be overnight but it will come from our internal breeding strategy, managing the genetics and the health of the cows.”

The first phase of the project will involve farms in Western Victoria and South East South Australia but proper-ties in northern Victoria and New South Wales may be future targets.

“It’s not about trucking milk in from other parts of the state. It’s basically getting control of the milk source.”

He added that farm acquisitions took time to negotiate but local farmers had been very receptive to the idea.

“We have built our business from the customer end first. We have started at

the front door to come to the back door. We hope that by opening up new inter-national markets we won’t be talking to farmers about what’s the price of milk. Rather, we will be talking about quality

and volume because we’ve got our foot on costs and efficiencies. The bottom line will tell its own story. We need them to stay and we need them to grow.”

It is hoped the new $120 million spray dryer at Camperdown will come on line by the end of next year. “That’s not stopping us securing farm gate milk

supply now and trading it as we build to our targets,” Mr McFarlane said.

He said the company could work with the majors but added that “we’re not trying to be Murray Goulburn or Saputo”.

“Our model is very differ-ent. You can’t expand unless you invest in the farm and tie that to the supply chain asset

and open up new international mar-kets.”

Aussie Farmers Direct’s Camper-down Dairy will also continue to oper-ate from the site.

WestVic Dairy chair Lisa Dwyer wel-comed the announcement as a show of confidence in the local industry.

“We are very pleased to see a project that demonstrates a sense of confidence in the future of dairy in south-west Vic-toria,” she said.

“Our focus at WestVic dairy is assist-ing dairyfarmers to have profitable enterprises now and into the future, and anything that demonstrates confidence in the future of dairying in this region has to be positive.”

Ms Dwyer said south-west Victoria produces 23% of Australia’s milk.

“We are critical to Australia’s dairy industry. We have had some difficult times so it is nice to see more positiv-ity in the outlook and a lot of talk about potential investment.

“However, most farmers are sitting back rather cautiously until they see more sustainable milk prices and some stability, rather than one good year,” she said.

New Camperdown investors target ChinaRICk bAyNe

“Our model is very different. You can’t expand unless you invest in the farm and tie that to the supply chain asset and open up new international markets.”

– Phil McFarlane

WestVic Dairy chair, Lisa Dwyer, pictured on her farm with her husband, Eddie, says: “Anything that demonstrates confidence in the future of dairying in the region has to be positive.”


12 // mARkeTs

FOR The past few years dairy has been a good news story for global agriculture and trade. The rise of China as a serious dairy consumer and importer, steady demand from SE Asia and the Middle East, the increasing needs of Russia, fed by increased supplies from NZ and the US have resulted in a significant expan-sion in dairy trade. With the likelihood of continued demand growth, and parts of the EU gearing up for post-quota exporting strategies, dairy trade will expand in coming years.

For a number of reasons, Australia hasn’t played a major role in this good news story. Flat-lining milk production and a strong currency have hampered our ability to grow our exports in line with an expanding global dairy market – our share has declined from around 17% in the early 2000s to just 7% in 2013, placing us fourth behind the ascendant US industry as a dairy trader.

As a result, there has been relatively limited local investment in process-ing capacity, as dairy companies have focussed on right-sizing capacity, with limited ability or requirement to invest in new stainless steel.

This has not been the case with our competitors. Freshagenda has analysed overseas dairy investments as part of our Global Dairy Directions analysis for clients. Our estimates indicate that completed and planned investments in dairy processing by our export competi-tors between 2012 and 2017 totalled well over US$6 billion, as they attempt to

seize opportunities offered by expand-ing dairy trade.

Cooperatives lead in terms of pro-cessing investment, accounting for about 48% of expenditure across the major dairy exporting regions (New Zealand, EU, US and South America). Fonterra alone has invested or will invest close to US$1 billion in addi-tional capacity. EU-based cooperatives Arla and FrieslandCampina have also invested heavily in processing infra-structure, while completing a number of cross-border mergers within the EU. While much of the New Zealand invest-ment focus has been on building plants to cope with the growth in output, more of the focus in EU investments has been to extract greater unit value from milk solids.

All of these cooperatives have much larger membership bases than our own in Australia, but even that has not been sufficient to provide the capital required to fund the investments required. All have had to evolve their structures to

access to capital well beyond the capac-ity of their current membership base.

In the case of Netherlands-based FrieslandCampina, the cooperative owns 100% of the shares in the com-pany Royal FrieslandCampina NV. Cap-ital instruments are tradeable amongst the 19,000 suppliers as well as former suppliers, and there are arrangements in place to ensure a high level of profit retention to enable the company to maintain a permanent and building capital base.

The Danish giant Arla has 12,000 members across six countries. To sup-plement the contribution of its mem-bers, Arla issues external bonds to access funds. It has also sought to sig-nificantly expand its membership base through acquisitions, and also retains a high level of profits to ensure it can fund its investment requirements. The structures of these two large enti-ties have slowly evolved, with the ben-efit of EU’s soft competition laws which favour farmer-owned aggregations.

With a smaller membership than its EU competitors, and a growing need for expansion investment, New Zealand’s Fonterra established Trading Among Farmers and the Fonterra Sharehold-ers Fund in 2012 after several earlier steps to facilitate change to a more flex-ible cooperative model. The scheme was designed to reduce redemption risk to the cooperative, allow non-members to invest in investment units listed on the Australian and New Zealand stock

exchanges but retain full farmer con-trol of the cooperative’s assets. This has arguably been the most revolutionary change to a cooperative structure that is designed to retain farmer ownership of all assets into the future. It has required – by law – the development of a number of instruments designed to increase the transparency of price setting and dis-covery for farmers and investors alike.

Each of these cooperatives has had to adapt its approach to evolving its ownership and governance structures against backdrops of different policy and market settings each faces to ensure it is able to continue to pay a compet-itive milk price, retain farmer control and access sufficient capital to invest, compete and grow. No specific model works in all cases, nor can be gener-alised as a preferred approach.

Given the speed with which com-

petitors are arming their businesses to compete in the future, the current discussions back here at home around Murray Goulburn’s structure and cap-ital structure are vital – not only to the cooperative and its members, but to the wider Australian dairy industry. It is in everyone’s interests to engage in these discussions openly, and under-stand what is proposed and what is at stake. One thing is certain, the strictly traditional cooperative model where “revolving” capital is provided by mem-bers is unlikely to be up to the demands of the expanding global market for high value dairy products – change is inevi-table.• Jo Bills is a director of Freshagenda, a Melbourne-based consulting and analysis firm that provides food value chain insights and solutions to a wide range of clients from farm to retail.

Co-op funding evolving

frESh AGENDAjo biLLS

Cheddar cheese prices, dollar hold their groundFReshAgeNDA’s exPORT index has essentially marked time over the prior month. While milk powder prices have continued to slide, losing 5-8% in the past month, cheddar cheese prices and the value of the $A have held their ground, keeping the index in line with the start of May

Freshagenda’s Australian export index remains at around 200 points in early May, close to where it was a year ago.

The market appears to be getting close to a stable posi-tion – falls on the Global Dairy Trade have been small in the past couple of auctions. With market prices a bit weaker, margins for milk production in the year ahead will be skin-nier in Europe and New Zealand, with the uncertainty of the production effect of an El Nino event hanging over the market.

In addition however, now that prices for milk powders and butter are 20-25% lower than their peak, we might see a few of the larger buyers of dairy commodities from the developing world come back into the market to stabilise things for several months. That would be a good outcome – demand growth for dairy products in domestic markets of Europe and the US is sluggish, pushing most of their pro-duction growth into exports.

The index is a lead indicator of average export returns - based on spot prices, currency movements and export mix. The index measures current market sentiment, but in real-ity it takes 3 to 6 months for prices to translate into actual returns, depending on the timing of contract negotiations. It was set to 100 in January 2000.

For weekly updates, visit http://www.freshagenda.com.au/

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mARkeTs // 13

DAIRy AusTRA-LIA’s recently released May Situation and Out-look report comes amid another year of intense change within the industry and the broader economic environment. Austra-lia’s economy is transi-tioning from a prolonged period of intensive mining investment, while the global economic picture is broadly better than even 12 months ago.

The dairy industry’s corporate landscape is also changing: the sales of Warrnambool Cheese and Butter, United Dairy Power and Harvey Fresh have proven once again the level of investment interest that exists. As the short term expansion-ary cycle of global supply catches up with growth in demand, dairy commod-ity prices are transitioning from a period of near-record highs.

Nevertheless, the cur-rent season has reminded many of the rewards that

dairy markets can deliver in the longer term. Strong farmgate pricing signals have been reflected in con-fidence levels across most dairy regions in Austra-lia: according to the latest National Dairy Farmer Survey (NDFS), farmer confidence has improved significantly in most regions over the last 12 months. Seventy-five per-cent of farmers are now positive about the future of the dairy industry, com-pared to a low of 43% this time last year. Big jumps have been seen in six of the eight dairying regions, with at least 70% of farm-ers in each now feeling positive about the future. As gauged by the NDFS, positive sentiment in

these six regions is now at 10-year highs.

Improvements to sen-timent have been more subdued in Queensland and northern New South Wales (Subtropical Dairy), and Western Australia (Western Dairy). Accord-ing to the 2014 NDFS, 33% and 60% of farmers in these regions are now feel-ing positive, respectively. Having less of an export exposure, low farm-gate milk prices remain a key source of negativity amongst farmers in these two areas, along with cost pressures and the ongo-ing impact of supermarket milk pricing strategies.

At the national level, improved profitability compared to 12 months

ago has bolstered the out-look for many farmers. In 2012/13, 57% of farm-ers reported making an operating profit, whereas the latest data reveals 79% expect to do so in the 2013/14 financial year. In turn, confidence to increase on farm invest-ment has increased nota-bly since 2013, with 62% now feeling confident compared to 42% last year.

Improved margins, better weather and a boost

in confidence have seen Australia’s milk produc-tion recover from early season sluggishness. After several months of strong growth, 2013/14 output is now expected to finish between 9.1 and 9.2 bil-lion litres, a modest lift from Dairy Australia’s last production estimate, and roughly on par with 2012/13.

Looking ahead to 2014/15, margins are likely to be leaner as easing

international commod-ity returns see a moder-ate reduction in farmgate milk pricing, along with the possibility of El Niño-induced weather challenges keeping pressure on input costs. Measured growth in milk production across south-ern regions (led by Tasma-nia) will be partially offset by continued challenges in northern areas. Dairy Aus-tralia’s initial forecast for 2014/15 is for national vol-umes to reach 9.3 to 9.4 billion litres, an increase of around 2% on the expected 2013/14 season total.

More rapid growth is possible should the cur-rent level of positive sen-timent continue, margins remain more profitable than anticipated, and if the current expansionary trajectory has carry-over effects for next season. Similarly, several fac-tors could see the outlook deteriorate. These include

further significant falls in international commod-ity prices with flow on effects to farmgate pric-ing and margins. Non-irri-gated pasture production, purchased feed costs and reduced on-farm invest-ment could all suffer from the effects of an El Niño weather pattern (although a strong outlook for irriga-tion allocations provides some mitigation poten-tial). Ongoing develop-ments in the Ukraine and Thailand add a further level of uncertainty to the outlook for global dairy, grains, energy and cur-rency markets.

In any case, most of Australia’s dairy farm-ers will finish the current season in a much stronger position than they started it, in both sentiment and financial terms - good foundation from which to tackle 2014/15.• John Droppert is indus-try analyst with Dairy Aus-tralia.

National milk pool to rise as farm margins contract

GLobAL imPAcTjohN DroPPErT

Dairy NewS aUSTraLia june, 2012

With season 2011/12 only a few weeks from ending, attention is now focused on 2012/13 milk prices as farm-ers consider strategies for the coming year. In some domestically-focused regions, renegotiated contracts incor-porating lower prices and reduced ‘tier one’ access are undermining farmer confidence and supply stability. For many farmers in export-oriented regions, a lower price outlook relative to the current season not only adds to the challenges of doing business, but seems to contradict the positive medium term outlook of Asia-driven dairy demand growth.

Dairy Australia’s indicative outlook for southern farm gate milk prices – published in the recent Dairy 2012: Sit-uation and Outlook report, is for an opening price range of $4.05-$4.40/kg MS and a full year average price range between $4.50 and $4.90/kg MS. The report considers the wider market pic-ture and summarises the many factors at play; the key theme of the current sit-uation being that of re-balancing in the dairy supply chain.

In regions of Australia focused on producing drinking milk, many farmers face a re-balancing market in the form of renegotiation of supply contracts and reduced access to ‘tier one’ supply.

Shifts in private label contracts and pro-cessor rationalisation have seen milk companies adjust their intake require-ments and pricing to meet the chang-ing demands of a highly pressured retail marketplace. Lower contract prices and a lack of alternative supply opportuni-ties present challenges in a market with limited manufacturing capacity. Despite these challenges, the underlying domes-tic market is stable, with steady per-cap-ita dairy consumption and a growing population providing a degree of cer-tainty beyond the current adjustments.

In the seasons following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent com-modity price recovery, farmers in export-oriented regions have seen solid global supply growth (see chart) - with higher-cost competitors in the North-ern Hemisphere amongst those expand-ing output as their margins increased. This season, favourable weather con-ditions have further enhanced milk

flows. 2012 milk production in the US is up around 4% on 2011 for the year to April (leap year adjusted), whilst early data suggests EU-27 milk production finished the March 2012 quota year up 2.3% on the previous year. New Zealand production is widely expected to finish this season up 10% on last year - a huge market influence given 95% of NZ milk is exported. Argentina is also enjoy-ing solid production growth, but a sig-nificant supply gap in Brazil prevents much of this additional milk from leav-ing South America.

Despite wider economic uncer-tainty, demand has remained resilient as importing countries like China and

those in south-east Asia and the Middle East maintain consistently higher eco-nomic growth rates that support increased dairy consumption. How-ever, the surge in supply has outpaced demand growth in the market.

This situation has seen the scales tip in favour of buyers in dairy mar-kets, with commodity prices retreat-ing steadily over recent months. Butter prices are down some 30% from their 2011 peaks, whilst powder prices have lost more than 20%. Farm gate prices have subsequently been reduced in most exporting regions. The average basic farm gate price for milk in France for example, dropped 12% from 32 Euro

cents/litre in March (AUD 41c/L) to 28 Euro cents/litre (AUD 36c/L) in April. Profit margins are under pressure in the US, and in NZ Fonterra has announced the final payout for the 2011/12 season has been cut from NZ$6.75-$6.85/kg MS to NZ$6.45-$6.55/kg MS (AUD$4.96-$5.04).

Effectively, global dairy markets are rebalancing. Lower prices will both slow production growth and stimulate demand, and as this occurs we will ulti-mately see a price recovery. Key factors to watch on the global scene will be the rate at which milk production overseas slows in response to lower prices, the impact of the current financial worries on consumer confidence, the path of China’s economic growth, and the value of the Australian dollar.

Demand for exported dairy prod-ucts remains a positive and will con-tinue to grow with the middle class in large emerging markets such as China, with changes in diet and with increasing urbanisation - and also in conjunction with global population growth. Locally, the domestic market is supported by a growing population and stable per-capita consumption. Whilst the dairy market is currently a challenging place to be a seller, all signs indicate that bal-ance will ultimately return.

agribusiness // 17

austraLian FooD company Freedom Foods Group Ltd is to build a new milk processing plant to cash in on growing demand in Asia.

The plant, to be built in southeast Australia, will be the first Australian green-fields expansion in UHT in 10 years.

Freedom’s wholly owned subsidiary Pactum Australia will run the plant. Some of its products will be sold in Australia.

The company says given Asian consum-ers’ rising incomes and improving diets, demand there will grow for qual-ity dairy products from low-cost production bases such as Australia, whose milk is well regarded.

The new plant will allow Pactum to meet growing demand for UHT dairy milk, and add to capacity for value-added beverages at its Sydney factory. Pactum is expanding its capabili-ties at the Sydney plant

to provide portion pack (200-330ml) configura-tion for beverage prod-ucts.

The NSW location will provide access to the most sustainable and economic source of milk. Pactum has strong links to the Austra-lian dairy industry and will expand its arrangements with dairy farmers for supply of milk. The new plant will increase scope for Australian milk supply – value-added, sustainable and export focused.

Initially the plant will produce 250ml and 1L UHT packs from a process line capable of 100 mil-lion L. The processing and packaging plant will emit less carbon, use less water, and be more energy-effi-cient than equivalent UHT facilities in Austra-lia and SE Asia. Pactum expects site preparation to begin in October 2012 and start-up by mid-2013.

Pactum makes UHT products for private label and proprietary customers.

Freedom Foods planttargets Asia

Malaysia FTA benefits dairyaustraLian DairY, rice and wine exporters to Malaysia are the biggest winners in a free trade agreement (FTA) signed between the two coun-tries last month.

The deal, signed after seven years of negotia-tions, allows a liberalised licensing arrangement for Australian liquid milk exporters and allows access for higher value retail products.

It guarantees Aus-tralian wine exporters the best tariff treatment Malaysia gives any coun-try. It also allows open access arrangements from 2023 for Australian rice with all tariffs eliminated by 2026.

The National Farmers’ Federation says the trade deal will improve inter-national market access for Australian agricultural goods.

“After seven years of negotiation, the NFF is under no illusion of how challenging it has been to complete this FTA with Malaysia,” NFF vice presi-dent Duncan Fraser says.

The FTA will fill a number of gaps within the

ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand FTA (AANZFTA).

“Protectionist senti-ment over agricultural goods is rife and grow-ing across the globe, so in this context it is pleas-ing Australia has managed to forge an agreement with Malaysia that has dealt with some sensi-tive agricultural issues not effectively covered by AANZFTA,” says Fraser.

“While under the AANZFTA agreement most of Australian agri-culture’s key interests had tariffs bound at zero, dairy and rice are two sec-tors where incremental market access improve-ments have been negoti-ated under the Malaysian FTA.

“This trade deal was also particularly impor-tant for sectors such as dairy that have been facing a competitive dis-advantage in Malaysia compared with New Zea-land which already has a completed FTA with Malaysia in place.”

The FTA also sig-nals some administrative benefits for Austra-lian agricultural export-

ers through streamlining of rules-of-origin dec-laration processes and improved marketing arrangements for certain commodities.

The Malaysian market is worth about A$1 bil-lion in Australia agricul-tural exports – including being its fourth-largest sugar export market and fifth-largest wheat export market. With an annual economic growth at about 5%, Malaysia forms an impor-tant part of the ‘Asian Century’ story and the opportunity this presents for Australian agricultural producers, says Fraser.

Despite the comple-tion of this agreement, much remains to be done for Australia’s farmers to tap into the full potential of the Asian region and beyond.

He says the NFF will now throw its attention towards ensuring agricul-ture remains front and centre in completed FTAs with South Korea, Japan, China and Indonesia as immediate priorities.

“These are all markets with enormous growth opportunities and where significant barriers to trade in agriculture still exist, not only through tariffs that restrict trade

but also through technical or so called ‘behind the border’ restrictions.”

The FTA was signed on May 22 in Kuala Lumpur by Australia’s Trade and Competiveness Minis-ter Craig Emerson and his Malaysian counterpart Mustapa Mohamed.

Emerson says Australia will be as well-positioned in the Malaysian market as Malaysia’s closest trad-ing partners in ASEAN, and in some cases better. The FTA will guarantee tariff-free entry for 97.6% of current goods exports from Australia once it enters into force. This will rise to 99% by 2017.

incremental change in milk production (year-on-year)

Export demand remains strong

Sealing the deal: Malaysian trade minister Mustapha Mohamed with Australian counterpart Craig Emerson after signing the deal.

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14 // mANAgemeNT

A CeNTRAL QUEENSLAND farm-ing family is taking proactive steps to ensure a viable future in dairying for the next generation.

Ray Clews said he was hopeful that higher milk prices would eventually flow through, but in the meantime the family was putting the business on a better footing with a modified farming system to reduce costs and improve yields.

Ray and his wife Ailsa have just enacted their succession plan with sons Aaron and Michael taking over the busi-ness. But they will continue to be closely involved, helping out with milking.

Ray’s family operated a traditional cream dairy for years when most of the Rossmoya district north of Rockhamp-ton was dairy country.

They switched to pork production, building up a 100 breeding sow enter-prise, before deciding to recommit to dairying in the early 1990s with a future for their family in mind.

They invested in a new 15-a-side her-ringbone dairy, bought milk quota, and built a 300 megalitre ring tank to pro-vide irrigation security. The storage cap-

tures runoff-from the local catchment and they also pump overland flow after heavy rain.

“We can get dry spells, although in recent times the problem has been too much rain. We’ve had more than a metre in the last three months.”

The continuous wet poses herd health challenges and has disrupted their farming program.

The milking herd has been built up to 290 cows all either Swiss Brown or infused.

“We are right on the Tropic of Cap-ricorn and we have found the breed is best adapted to handle the climate,”

Ray said.They have a two million litre con-

tract to supply the Parmalat processing plant in Rockhampton which needs all the milk it can get with farmers leaving the industry.

“The factory is pulling milk from a wide area, but it has no certain future. They really need about 30 million litres a year, but at the moment they are get-ting more like 20 to 25 million,” Ray said.

Their herd is continuously calved to help flatten the year round production cycle. With an automated calf feeding system they raise all their own heifers.

This gives them growth options if and when milk prices pick up and in the meantime they are culling heavily to improve overall herd performance.

A computerised milking and herd management system with automatic cup removers was installed two years ago and this has been a big help in mon-itoring performance on an individual animal basis.

To improve their feed security, the family have extended their irrigation with three centre pivots covering 10 ha, 25ha and 50ha.

They have traditionally relied on winter ryegrass with clover and chicory

for strip grazing from about June until the middle of October before switching to tropical summer grasses with some silage made from dryland dolichos pas-ture.

Aaron Clews who is focused on the farming side of the enterprise, said the family had been doing some pad feed-ing for several years, with a mixed ration containing up to 5kg of grain.

About 1.4kg of wheat is fed in the bails at each milking.

Aaron said the family was moved to step up the pad-fed ration, growing corn under the pivots for silage.

“The heat and sunlight is good for growing corn and we’ve had some very heavy yielding crops which are har-vested at the milky grain stage.”

Moisture probes placed at different soil depths help make optimum use of irrigation.

They have pit storage capacity for about 3500 tonnes of silage and are

building up reserves for feed security.“We hope to get to the stage where

our grain ration is nearly cut in half, replaced by the starch in the corn silage.”

The cattle will still have access to ryegrass grown under pivot for night grazing.

“We will be able to start managing our summer pastures better. Tropical pastures grow quickly in the heat, but there is a small grazing window before they get too rank.”

They plan to try double cropping corn under their large centre pivot with August and January plantings.

Cover crops of barley or triticale will give them the flexibility of making silage or green manure, depending of seasonal conditions.

“Our total costs will be reduced under the modified feeding system and we hope to improve our milk yield up to 22 to 23 litres a day,” Aaron said.

Irrigated corn cuts grain use

who: Ray and Ailsa Clews whErE: Rockhampton whAT: irrigated corn

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Aaron Clews focusses on the farming side of his family business.

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mANAgemeNT // 15

DAIRy mILk produc-tion can increase by 17 to 30% in areas with native shelterbelts, a new report shows.

The report compiled by the Basalt to Bay Landcare Network in south-west Victoria demonstrates potential improvements in crop yields of 25% and pas-ture yields by 20-30%.

The report brings together more than 30 years of local, national and international research into the benefits of native shel-terbelts.

It shows that on a 27°C day unsheltered cows have 26% less milk production than shaded cows.

Basalt to Bay Land-care Network Facilita-

tor Lisette Mill said the report shows heat stress can markedly reduce stock fertility and milk produc-tion and increase mortal-ity of calves.

The report cites one study that found over the 40-60 year lifetime of fencing and shelterbelts, total dairy production would increase by 30%. This would be achieved through 20% improved pasture growth and 10% improved milk produc-tion.

Another study found that the use of trees could reduce summer heat load in cows by 50% and pre-vent heat loss in winter. The report said this was more cost effective than

using electricity-driven sprinklers and fans.

Milk yields are depressed by cold at a rate of 1.34kg per day.

Mrs Mill hopes docu-mented proof of the pro-ductivity and biodiversity benefits will prompt more farmers to plant native shelterbelts to change the landscape and agriculture for the better.

“This report provides proof which should con-vince landholders of the economic benefits of implementing shelter-belts,” she said.

Mrs Mill said all evi-dence in the 10-page E - report was backed up by references, including elec-tronic links. Many of the

Shelterbelts prove worth

links connected readers to industry research and case studies located on other Australian websites.

The report was initiated after Mrs Mill started work with the network two and a half years ago and found that farmers wanted proven “facts and figures” about why they should do revegetation and Landcare works.

Consultation with local farmers found they were keen to consider native shelter belts but needed more information about what and where to plant,

costs, and how it would financially benefit their businesses.

“There was a very clear directive – we need to provide the proof and the game-changing information that would convince farmers and industry of the commercial advantage of planting shelter belts, just like inoculating your animals and purchasing proven semen/seed is an

investment for the future of the farm.”

The report describes how shelterbelts work; the benefits for different agri-cultural industries includ-ing dairy, wool, meat, cropping and horticul-ture; biodiversity benefits, and shelterbelt design and maintenance.

Mrs Mill also hopes the report will prompt an increase in the investment by industry in programs

to encourage farmers to plant more shelterbelts.

“If there was a pro-gram for landholders to receive rebate support and information about what to plant and how to plan belts the uptake of such a program would be high”.

The report is available online at www.basalttobay.org.au and will be updated with new research and links to stakeholders every six months.

PHOTO: MARIAn MACDOnALD.

STOCKFEEDSWith pasture in short supply and calving season looming, all eyes are on cow condition and having enough feed to get the herd through winter. In this special report we focus on how farmers can use stockfeeds to plug feed deficits and lift cow condition and milk production.

BOOKING DEADLINE: June 25AD MATERIAL DEADLINE: July 1PUBLISHED: July 8CONTACT: CHRIS DINGLE | T: 0417 735 001 E: [email protected]

NEXT ISSUE: JULY 2014

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through lateral irrigation, and a 36ha centre pivot installed two years ago has proved an important and labour-saving decision.

Joining occurs in autumn (April-May) and spring (November-December), for split calv-ing in February-March, then August-Septem-ber. Cows are dried off in June-July, with some going to their Karridale prop-erty or other leased land. Bull calves are also raised and fattened to steers off farm. Some heifers are also raised there, making it a busy part of their oper-ation.

The Noakes’ ongo-ing national success, cal-culated through herd recording and reported back though the Austra-lian Dairy Herd Improve-ment Scheme (ADHIS) is further traceable, follow-ing the introduction of Genetic Progress Reports from the ADHIS.

The Noakes’ latest Genetic Progress Report, which shows their herd as ranking 337 out of 2293 herds Australia-wide holds no surprises for Ian Noakes, rather it confirms positive breeding deci-sions and reinforces areas that may need adjust-ments.

“We saw our herd’s Genetic Progress Report for the first time last year. It confirms that we are heading in the right direction. Looking at the results, I can say I am happy with production and happy with the way mastitis resistance is turn-ing around,” he said.

FertilityThe Noakes have been

looking at improving fer-tility for some time, and the Report’s Fertility graph is reflecting their work in this area.

“Fertility had been an issue for us. The graph says we are average in this area, but I’m not happy with average.

“We have always tried to use better bulls, par-ticularly from the Good Bulls Guide to work on higher breeding values and now we are on an

upward trend. We believe the Fertility Index, intro-duced (by ADHIS) a few years ago is going to make a big difference to fertility in our herd. As an exam-ple, we know the Genetics

Australia bull Bullbar has a well above average fer-tility index – and we have proven Bullbar progeny get in calf easier than any-thing else.

“We won’t use Hol-stein bulls if they are rated average for fertility. These genetic reports will tell that story in a few years’ time. I believe our fertility statistics will improve rap-idly,” Ian said.

Mastitis resistanceIan believes his herd’s

graph for mastitis resis-tance (pictured) is an accurate monitor of their work in this area.

“About five years ago they (ADHIS) bought out an index for masti-tis. We have stopped using bulls that are below aver-age for mastitis resistance and had an immediate response,” he said.

Genetic production for fat and protein

The Noakes’ excellent report results in Produc-tion Fat and Production Protein show their herd tracking extremely well in these areas. Ian says this is simply a result of picking better bulls.

“These days we don’t worry too much about type, but we do have set requirements. We look more at udders, in addi-tion to fertility, mastitis resistance. We look at rea-sonable milking speed and good temperament. Feet and legs are also impor-tant because we have hills,” he said.

Dai ry News aUsTraLia june 2014

16 // breeding management

Report influences selection of genetic herdsHaVing a top-rating Australian Profit Ranking (APR) dairy herd is noth-ing new for the Noakes family from Warner Glen, but a report tracking their efforts in building higher breeding values, is.

Four generations of Noakes’ live on the undu-lating 300ha partially irri-gated farm. Ian and Helen Noakes dairy with their two sons Steven and Brad, Ian’s father Eric still lives on farm, and Brad’s newly

minted son Gordon, born earlier this year, make their business an ongoing family affair.

The 580-head Hol-stein and Holstein Cross split-calving herd has an average production of 550 kilograms of milk solids. Feed is pasture and a mix-ture of pellets and grains. Grain and silage is fed out on the feed pad.

The property, which includes some leased land, has 100ha irrigated

who: Noakes family where: Warner Glen whaT: Mastitis resistance

Ian Noakes at the Dura Betail AI centre in France inspecting the Montbeliarde sire Valfin. Ian has ET calves on the ground by this nationally acclaimed sire.

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“We saw our herd’s Genetic Progress Report for the first time last year. It confirms that we are heading in the right direction.”


breeding management // 17

Report influences selection of genetic herds

Genetic Progress for Type

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

Ove

rall

Type

ABV

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Year of Birth of 613 (Holstein) & 172 (Holstein X) cows

National Avg Your Holstein herd Your Holstein X herd

Genetic Progress for Longevity

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

Surv

ival

ABV

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010



Genetic Progress for Mastitis Resistance

95

100

105

110

115

120

Cell

Coun

t ABV

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010



Genetic Progress for Fertility

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

Ferti

lity

ABV

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010



Genetic Progress for Production - Fat

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

Prod

uctio

n AB

V (F

at k

g's)

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010



Genetic Progress for Production - Protein

-10

-5

0

5

10

Prod

uctio

n AB

V (P

rote

in k

g's)

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010



Published by ADHIS Pty Ltd. This report is for your information only. It is generated with due care and attention to accuracy but ADHISaccepts no liability if, for any reason, the information is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date whether negligent or otherwise.For more information contact ADHIS at Level 2 Swann House, 22 William Street Melbourne, Vic 3000, or at www.adhis.com.au

The graph below tracks the Noake’s work in the area of mastitis resistance.

Cross breeds and jerseysThe Noakes’ dairy herd

includes Jersey, Reds and Montbeliarde breeds. Responding to the frustra-tion some years ago with very good high production cows that lacked strength and fertility, Reds and Montbeliarde cross prog-eny are producing as much as their Holstein counter-parts and performing sig-nificantly better in the fertility stakes.

In 2011, 18 Montbe-liarde cross cows were calved and of those, only three are not going to calve for the fourth time in February March 2014. Ian has found the Holsteins can slip back six months after three to four lacta-tions.

The Noakes’ also have a number of cows from a Red bull, which are performing very well

in these areas as well as Longevity.

MonbeliardesIan’s interest in cross-

breeds, in particular the French breed Montebe-liarde, has led to his first crop of purebred Mont-beliardes calved this month through the use of embryos purchased from France and from all reports, they are looking excellent.

Despite never having a desire to be a stud breeder, he says the ‘Mon-ties’ could prove a bit of fun in his retirement. Until then, the business of choosing good genet-ics and running the high performing dairy herd is the primary focus for the Noakes family.• This article was first pub-lished in Farmwest News (www.farmwest.com.au)

and has been reprinted with permission.

Brad, Steven, Eric, Ian and Gordon Noakes at their Warner Glen property.

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18 // breeding management

NZ wants higher fertilitytHe neW Zealand dairy industry is embarking on a new seven-year research project in a bid to produce higher-fertility dairy cows.

The aim is to lift the six-week in-calf rate from the current industry average of 65% to 78%, which would boost industry profitability by $500 million.

The research study also

seeks to help farmers take advantage of the cows’ better genetic makeup.

DairyNZ senior scien-tist and project leader Dr Chris Burke said the study requires 700 purpose-bred Holstein-Friesian heifer calves with low and high fertility attributes, cre-ated from selected contract matings in spring 2014.

“[At least] 2800 con-tract matings will be required and we need the support of dairy farmers to achieve the required number of animals,” Dr Burke said.

New Zealand genetics companies LIC and CRV Ambreed are supporting the establishment of the herd.

LIC is managing the contract mating, having first contacted 1000 dairy farmers last month.

Dr Burke said lifting the six-week in-calf rate from the current average of 65% to 78% would be challeng-ing.

“This challenging target cannot be achieved using current knowledge and

technologies alone,” Dr Burke said.

“A biological break-through is required.

“The research herd will help us unravel the under-lying biology that differ-entiates genetically fertile cows from infertile cows.

“Some of the best sci-entists in New Zealand and Australia will work

together with this research herd.”

The biggest challenge is to reduce the apparent 30% of conceptions occur-ring in the first 35 days after insemination that are not sustained as a pregnancy.

The magnitude, timing and possible reasons for pregnancy failure in com-mercially operated herds will be measured.

This has not been done before. It will involve col-laboration by DairyNZ, AgResearch and Fonterra.

The project is also aimed at increasing the power to select

for improved fertility genotypes through use of novel phenotypes (new ways to measure fertility for selection purposes), improved recording and enhanced statistical analysis models.

Dr Burke’s colleagues will include other scientists from DairyNZ and teams from AgResearch, Univer-sity of Victoria-Wellington, University of Queensland, Cognosco (a division of Anexa Animal Health), New Zealand Animal Eval-uation Ltd and genetics research company Aba-cusBio.

LOngeVitY and milk solids are the two most important determinants of a dairy bull’s genetic merit for profitability.

“Survival – or longevity as many people call it – refers to a bull’s potential to produce daughters that last in the herd for many lactations,” Michelle Axford, of the Australian Dairy Herd Improvement Scheme (ADHIS), said.

“Farmers can get regular feedback on the herd’s performance for milk solids through their milk supply company, but understanding survival involves looking a little further.”

Ms Axford said farmers who want to place greater emphasis on improving survival can refer to the Sur-vival Australian Breeding Value (ABV).

“The best way to breed cows that survive and thrive in your herd is to select bulls from the Good Bulls Guide with a survival ABV of more than 100,”she said.

The survival ABV is calculated from actual survival data as well as predictors of survival such as overall type, pin set, udder depth and likeability.

Mrs Axford said that actual survival records were the best way to analyse survival.

“However predictor traits are used, especially for young bulls whose daughters aren’t old enough to provide their own survival data. In younger bulls, this group of traits gives a pretty good early estimate,” she said.

“As more actual survival data is collected, its weight in the survival ABV increases. This in turn increases its reliability.”

Survival contributes to profitability in two ways. Firstly, if cows last longer in the herd, fewer replace-ments are needed. That means lower heifer rearing costs or greater income as surplus heifers are sold.

Secondly having cows that last longer means the herd is more mature, and mature cows produce more milk than younger cows.

“In Australia, the average age of most cows at their most recent calving is very close to 60 months, that is, five years. A third of herd-recorded Holstein, Jersey and Holstein/Jersey cross cows are at least six years old.”

Herd-recording farmers can now monitor the genetic merit of their herd for survival. Available from herd test centres, the Genetic Progress Report shows the genetic trends for six traits, and the Australian Profit Ranking within an individual herd.

“You can benchmark against the herd’s past genetic performance or the national average,” she said.

Survival ABV for cow longevity

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breeding management // 19


Jobo Enid #5186, GP 84

Seasonal calving boosts profitabilitymiLking OVer this past summer provided Northern Victorian farmer Peter Letcher with further affirmation that his switch to seasonal calving in 2002 was the correct one.

Peter and his wife, Diane, who farm at Numurkah, purchased a farm at Strathmerton 18 months ago which operated a split calving operation.

“I was milking over summer and it drove me nuts,” Mr Letcher said.

“We were going to change the herd to seasonal calving over two years but we made the decision to do it in one hit.”

The Letchers were share farming in Tongala before they purchased their Numurkah farm in 2002. They started seasonal calving the same year after an ultimatum.

“Diane said: Go back to one calving or I won’t help,” he said. “I wasn’t joking either,” Mrs Letcher said.

They now calve in April and dry off in January. Although the seasonal calv-ing pattern is less demanding for the couple than split calving, it has also proven more profitable, and provides flexibility to minimise financial damage in years of poor seasons and poor milk prices.

The couple used to milk 253 cows through their 25 head swing-over dairy but have reduced this to between 190-200 autumn calvers on the home farm (with 270 on the new Strathmer-ton farm) and have lifted production, producing 6000 litres and averag-ing between 500-540kg of milk solids from perennial ryegrass pastured sup-plemented with 3/

4 tonne of grain. They

recorded components of 4.9 and 3.9 last year.

They have also reduced costs, which has improved their profitability.

“We are producing more good qual-

ity grass and the herd costs aren’t there for most of the season. Cows harvest more but you don’t need to grow as much.

“You also get that break at the end of the year. You can get some maintenance done, get some time off, everyone gets a break. I don’t think people put enough

importance on it.”Mr Letcher said seasonal calving also

provides flexibility, which is particularly important if a tough season coincides with a poor milk price.

“Under our system, production won’t be the same every year, it will be what’s profitable to produce that year. In the odd year we’ve had it, when it hasn’t been profitable to produce milk, you’re better to produce as little as you can, to minimise your loss.”

The Letchers use LIC genetics for two reasons – crossbreds are the most profitable choice, according to Mr Letcher, and because of the seasonality of the New Zealand system.

“They are very strong seasonal farm-ing enterprises over there,” Mr Letcher said.

Mr Letcher began share farming in New Zealand in 1990 when the predominant cow was Frieisan. He said there was a big shift to crossbred in 1995 and 60% of the NZ herd is now crossbred.

“The evidence is too strong there, you can’t ignore it.”

Jersey sires were selected to start their crossbred herd when the Letch-ers were share farming and in 1997 the crossbred bulls were introduced by LIC.

“Back then, fertility was not as big an issue but it was becoming an issue,” he said.

“We went for the highest fertility bulls we could, straight away.”

The Letchers utilise an 11-week joining period. “We get them in early enough to get them in calf again.” They PG 21 days before joining, join for a week, then PG again. Two full rotations are performed in 5 weeks, then the bulls are put out. It is estimated bulls impreg-nate 20-30%.

They normally record a 6-10% empty rate and have consistently recorded 65% calves on the ground.

Drying off at the end of January gives them eight weeks off over Febru-ary/March.

The use of scratchy stickers has been implemented and this has made heat detection much easier.

The Letchers grow 65ha of irrigated pasture. This year they have had the best autumn break since their arrival.

Typically, perennial ryegrass pas-tures are sparingly irrigated over the summer months to assist their survival into the following autumn.

The crossbred milkers are calved in autumn relying on fully productive perennial ryegrass pasture from early April till mid-January. The cows are then dried off from mid-January through to mid-March.

Perennial ryegrass pastures are usu-ally sparingly irrigated through the dry summer period, more so to keep them alive and healthy rather than produc-tion, as the cows are dry during this time grazing run off pasture supplemented with hay.

who: Peter and Diane Letcher where: Numurkah whaT: Seasonal calving

Peter Letcher


20 // animaL HeaLtH

Camera reveals cows in heat

Vulval image of a cow in heat (A) and a cow not in heat (B).

infrared cameras could hold the key to improving heat detection of dairy cows.

FutureDairy postgrad-uate student Saranika Talukder, has studied the use of infrared (IR) cam-eras to detect changes in vulvar skin temperature, which can be related to

the period of heat or oes-trus.

This study was per-formed under the super-vision of Dr Pietro Celi and Associate Professor Dr Kendra Kerrisk at the University of Sydney’s Camden dairy farm.

“Heat detection is always a challenge. It is

time-consuming and the logistics can be tricky, especially with large herds or automatic milking sys-tems,” Dr Kerrisk said.

“Many herd manag-ers would welcome an affordable and less sub-jective tool to assist in heat detection; and the IR camera has the potential

to be just that.”In a report submit-

ted to the recent Austra-lian Dairy Conference proceedings, Ms Taluk-der said infrared ther-mography (IRT) is a non-invasive technique that measures body sur-face temperature.

“The period of heat or

oestrus is associated with an increase in body tem-perature. The study was conducted to assess the potential of an infrared

camera to detect cows in heat by monitoring the rise of body surface tem-peratures on the muzzle and vulva.”

Twenty Holstein Frie-sian dairy cows were enrolled in the study. Cows were synchronized using a controlled inter-nal drug release device (CIDR) and prostaglandin (PGF2).

Thirty six hours after the PGF2

injection, cows

were monitored at 4-hour intervals for any signs of heat until ovulation by visually observing them for changes in behaviour and colour changes of EstrotectTM.

Ultrasound scanning was performed to detect the time of ovulation. While vulva and muzzle skin temperatures were monitored with an IRT camera, vaginal tempera-tures were also recorded with a digital thermom-eter.

Out of the 20 cows in the study, 12 cows were recorded for ovulation and the IRT camera was able to identify 11 of the 12 cows (92%) in heat whereas only 8 of the 12 cows (67%) were observed or identified with an acti-vated oestrotect.

However, the IRT camera also identified five non-ovulated cows as positive for heat (i.e. false positive).

“It is ultimately hoped that the IRT image cap-ture might be automated if the accuracy of heat detection with the tech-nology can be improved,” Ms Talukder wrote.

“However, it is diffi-cult to envisage automat-ing the capture of vulva images particular as the hanging tail would need to be move sideways to ensure it doesn’t obstruct the camera view and it is expected that any manure on the vulva would limit the accuracy of the tem-perature measurement.

“The head, the eye and the back of the ear are

likely to be less challeng-ing for regular and auto-mated data capture and it is reasonable to think that the technology could be incorporated into a feed-bin for such an applica-tion.

“Consequently, differ-ent body regions such as eyes and ears are currently being evaluated to deter-mine whether they are more suitable.”

The current price of the infrared camera is $21,000.

“However, it is recog-nised that there is cheaper equipment available but that automating the equipment and the infor-mation reporting would add to the cost of the technology,” Ms Talukder wrote.

“It will be important to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of the technology if it proves to have a suffi-cient level of accuracy to allow it to be automated and adopted on farm.

“This technology would have even greater potential for adoption if it could also be used for the early detection of lame-ness and/or mastitis. In addition, IRT does not require any veterinary assistance to operate.”

Ms Talukder said the results suggested the IRT has the potential to be a heat detection aid; but that the technology is not likely to be the silver bullet that will completely resolve the challenge of detecting cows in heat.

Further studies inves-tigating the potential to reduce the chance of over-prediction by capturing data throughout entire 21 day reproductive cycles would be worthwhile, she said.

This project was funded by the Dairy Research Foundation and four investors of the FutureDairy project; Dairy Australia, NSW Depart-ment of Primary Indus-tries, University of Sydney and DeLaval.

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For more information on Ultravac Scourshield contact your vet or call Zoetis on 1800 814 883.

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animaL HeaLtH // 21

Western VictO-rian dairy farmers Ste-phen and Tania Luckin were able to use a Masti-tis Focus Report (MFR) last year to help rectify an emerging problem with mastitis.

The Luckins detailed their problem and solu-tion at the Australian Dairy Conference earlier this year.

They milk 500 cows near Heywood, employing two permanent full-time staff and one relief milker.

The Luckins milk on a 50-unit rotary dairy, fitted with DeLaval harmony clusters with 2x2 pulsation and automatic teat spray-ers (on both cups on and cups off position). They do not have automatic cup removers.

In the first few months of 2013 there were increas-ing numbers of clinical cases of mastitis and it was difficult for the herd to stay in the premium range (<250 000cells/ml).

The Luckins had organised two full plant tests by milking machine technicians and had reconditioned the pulsa-tors without any effect on the bulk milk cell count (BMCC).

They then engaged the services of John Penry to help them overcome the challenge.

The farm team has excellent recording pro-cesses and this allowed the investigation to prog-ress and swiftly move to improving the situation.

To help with defining the problem, Mrs Luckin organised a backup file from EasyDairy (their dairy management soft-ware). This was then used to create a Mastitis Focus Report (MFR) to quickly give Dr Penry a sense of what cows were involved with the problem, as well as the scale of the prob-lem.

In this case the MFR provided excellent infor-

mation that was then fol-lowed up with two milking time visits.

Samples were taken from cows with ele-vated ICC (individual cell count) and from cows with previous clinical mas-titis, to generate critical information as to where the main spread of infec-tion was occurring.

Milking time observa-tions included teat scor-ing and assessment; cow behaviour; milking times; completeness of milk-ing; frequency of cup slip;

cluster alignment; assess-ment of milking hygiene; and routines and assess-ment of teat disinfection process.

From observing two milkings, and review-ing the culture results, the Luckins and Dr Penry found:

■ Strep uberis and other teat skin pathogens.

■ Teat end damage (due to inferior liners and increased working vacuum)

■ Poor teat disinfection coverage with auto-matic teat sprayer

■ High challenge of mud and manure onto teats

■ Some overmilking ■ They were able to rule

out Strep ag and Myco-plasma (using PCR testing).Once the investiga-

tion had taken place, some meetings were held with the Luckins and then the milking staff.

The changes required for improving the milk

Solving mastitis puzzle

who: Stephen and Tania Luckin where: Heywood whaT: Reducing mastitis

To PAGE 22

quality were discussed and tasks assigned to differ-ent people. Some time was taken to discuss the rea-sons why changes were being made to improve staff implementation.

In this case, some of the changes included put-ting different liners in,

lowering the vacuum, moving the cups on posi-tion to 6-8 positions from the bridge, increasing platform speed, re-intro-duction of manual teat dis-infection, shortening of dropper tubes to improve cluster alignment and changing the feeding prac-

tices to reduce the expo-sure to dirt and manure.

Through this process, the Luckins and their staff were able to see how the information they had entered was being used and the way in which it can

Stephen and Tania Luckin at their dairy.

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22 // animaL HeaLtH

be used for monitoring milk quality in a proac-tive way.

Continuously enforcing correct milking pro-cedures with keeping the platform moving and excellent post milking teat disinfection have been instrumental in maintaining results.

The Luckins are continuing to regularly gen-erate Mastitis Focus Reports, also utilising the Countdown app (in particular using the test assessment calculator), herd testing and their computerised herd management system.

Through using these tools they are able to monitor milk quality more closely and keep it as a focus of their business.

The herd’s New Infection Rate is now at 2.4%, well below the trigger point of 5% average. BMCC for December was less than 160,000 and teat health has improved markedly from 24% rough or very rough teats to 13% rough or very rough teats.

The Luckins were happy their information recording systems had allowed Dr Penry to quickly investigate and improve the situation but noted engaging him earlier would have led to less clinical cases of mastitis and less culling of cows.• This article was first published in the 2014 Austra-lian Dairy Conference program.

FroM PAGE 21

Solving mastitis puzzle

Drench resistance a growing problem for dairy farmersresistance tO de-worming drugs is becom-ing a huge problem for many farmers and intro-ducing new drugs is not a viable solution, accord-ing to Dr Stephanie Bullen of the University of Mel-bourne.

Dr Bullen, speaking at the Australian Veterinary

Association’s annual con-ference in Perth late last month, said heavy reliance on drenching in livestock industries has led to para-sites developing resistance to anthelmintic drugs, particularly in the dairy industry.

“Preliminary results from a study currently

underway indicate that there are very high levels of resistance on dairy farms and more research into strategies specific to the dairy industry needs to be undertaken,” Dr Bullen said.

“The ultimate goal is to be able to achieve a bal-ance between reducing

the impact of parasites on farm profitability, while ensuring long term sus-tainability of current and future anthelmintics.

“There’s an abundance of studies that demon-strate the importance of highly effective drenching drugs for dairy farm profit-ability. But for most farm-

ers, drench resistance is a secondary consideration following the production advantages gained by their use.”

The widespread use of low-price drenching products has also meant they’re often used on ani-mals even when parasites aren’t definitely present.

“It’s easier and cheaper in the short term to drench rather than address underlying prob-lems such as nutritional deficiencies or subclini-cal diseases to reduce par-asite susceptibility. Then when drenching fails it’s common to blame drench resistance.

“It’s also seldom recog-nised that once resistance develops, it’s virtually irre-versible even after the use of a different class of drug.

“And earlier recom-mendations such as appli-cation of anthelmintics at

set intervals and drench-and-move to safe pasture have been identified as promoting resistance.

“History suggests that without modification of these high-risk drench-ing practices, new drugs will not be a sustainable option in the medium to long-term.

“It’s a complex prob-lem. Many cattle pro-ducers don’t see drench resistance as a significant problem on their farms, which highlights the need for more active veterinary support.”


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animaL HeaLtH // 23

Heifer check for future chequesee cHeng OOi

keeping a close eye on your heifers now prevents fertility frustration later, and investing a few hours of your time today can mean saving days and dol-lars tomorrow.

Your heifers need to reach 65% per cent of their mature weight by the start of joining, which means you need to know the weight of your mature cows.

This target is critical to the future reproductive success of your herd.

The onset of puberty is linked to bodyweight: larger heifers reach puberty sooner, are joined earlier, are younger at their first calving and are easier to get in calf at their second joining.

Under-sized heifers also struggle during the calving period. If their pelvises are too small, they have a dramatically increased risk of needing assistance at calving.

For you, this leads to lost sleep, more vet bills and, potentially, the loss of calf and/or cow. For the heifer, it increases her chances of calving-related problems, such as retained foetal membranes and endometritis, which in turn lead to delayed cycling.

To make matters worse, poorly grown heif-ers find it harder to com-pete for feed, are more likely to be culled, and produce less milk in their lifetimes.

To prevent this, heifer monitoring needn’t be excessively time-consum-ing. Here are some handy tools and tactics that can help to ensure that your heifers are fulfilling their growth potential.

Visual monitoring is the most basic way to keep an eye on your heifers. Any animals whose backbone looks like a sharp, bumpy ridge is under-conditioned and any that are com-pletely flat between hip and pin are too fat.

It is hard to visu-

ally assess weights, but you will be able to tell if your heifers appear short, which may be a result of insufficient protein for frame growth.

Girth tapes are a handy and inexpensive way to estimate weights if you don’t have scales. How-ever, many people find that once they have gone to the effort of bring-ing heifers in, it is easier to weigh them and they appreciate the greater accuracy.

Hip height is a useful way to monitor growth, and can be very simple. Once you have figured out your target heights (search ‘wither height table’ at www.dairyaustralia.com.au), you can fix a measur-ing stick to the side of your crush or race and easily identify those animals that are too small.

Weighing is the best way to monitor heifers, as it allows you to accurately determine whether they are reaching their target weights.

Dairy Australia has produced target weight charts which are easy to print and keep on hand as a reference (search ‘heifer growth’ at www.dairyaus-tralia.com.au).

They also have customisable charts and calculators, which make it easy to tailor targets to your individual farm situation.

Before you start weigh-ing, it is a good idea to work out your target weight and the weight below which you will take action.

The InCalf program recommends that you assess heifer growth every 3 months. At the very least you should aim to assess your heifers at 5 months, 10 months and at joining (based on a 15 month join-ing).

Finally, act on your findings. If you do have some heifers that are underweight, then some-thing needs to be done.

Preferential feeding is the most logical way of correcting poor growth.

This extra cost will pay dividends when it comes to milk production and reproductive perfor-mance.• Ee Cheng Ooi is a member of the DEPI dairy team at Ellinbank, Victoria.This article was first pub-lished in How Now Gippy Cow.

accOrding tO Dr Kiro Petro-vski, University of Adelaide, pain relief in cattle is not always given the priority it deserves.

Dr Petrovski, spoke at the Aus-tralian Veterinary Association’s Annual Conference in Perth last month and said that livestock prac-titioners should be more proactive in pain relief.

“There’s a widespread belief that cattle are relatively insensi-tive to pain. This is because they’re prey animals and will mask signs of pain as part of a survival strategy to divert the attention of predators away from the sick and injured.

“So identification of pain often goes unnoticed until a disorder is quite advanced.

“Pain in cattle is an animal welfare issue and increasingly a

consumer concern affecting mar-ketability of dairy and red meats. For these two reasons, increased attention towards the relief of suf-fering in production animals is so important.”

Dr Petrovski said that it takes a whole-of-industry approach to improve animal welfare with respect to pain in cattle.

“Public perception of what is painful for livestock is continually changing. It’s strongly influenced by the environment in which the society operates. In Australia, soci-etal pressure for pain relief in pro-duction animals is increasing.

“It’s a matter of educating farm-ers and the community regarding the physiology of pain and its relief in cattle patients. Some painful hus-bandry procedures are carried out

to reduce aggression and improve identification, handler safety and meat quality. But livestock practi-tioners also have a duty to educate their clients on all available options to prevent and manage pain in cattle.”

Pain relief should also address livestock comfort including access to food and water and nursing care. It also includes:

* Provision of soft bedding and a non-slippery surface to make pain more bearable

* Reduced walking distances to food and water to avoid excessive movement.

“Timely recognition of pain, the use of pain relief and providing ade-quate levels of comfort will improve animal welfare and productivity and improve the image of the industry.”

Watch for pain signals

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24 // animaL HeaLtH

Protocols can save calf losses

aNimaL heaLThrob boNaNNo

tHe successfuL rearing of calves is an area where your veterinarian should be one of the key members of your team, yet often we are called in, like the fire engine, to put out blazing problems when the losses reach some crit-ical (yet often entirely random) threshold.

The fact is that your

veterinarian could have used his or her skills to help to prevent many of the calf rearing problems from occurring in the first place.

Calf rearing success is all about having a strategy and system that identi-fies areas where problems can occur, and how we can prevent or treat those

problems. I have written before,

and will continue to do so, that a calf induction pro-tocol is a very worthwhile thing, especially on farms where multiple people may be responsible for aspects of that calf ’s care.

A good calf induc-tion protocol will include aspects of colostrum man-

agement, umbilical care, timely removal from the mother and attachment of a permanent ID and also some record of the ease of calving etc.

Identifying the calf is critical for the integrity of the pedigree informa-tion, but also allows a calf health record to begin for the animal.

A calf can have its colostrum volume, qual-ity and time of feeding recorded so that a writ-ten record exists that con-firms that the colostrum feeding protocol was fol-lowed.

In addition to this, if any quantitative test-ing (like blood protein or IgG levels) is being done to actually measure whether the passive trans-fer of immunity has been successful, it can also be recorded on the calf health card.

Treatments or signs of illness can also be recorded for each calf in the pen which can help other workers to know whether there is any rele-vant health issues to mon-itor and also to maintain compliance with treat-ment plans and withhold-ing periods which will reduce the risk of antibi-otic or other residues.

Rearing healthy calves is all about ensuring that their basic needs are being met.

It is essential that after managing the transfer of antibodies to the calf via the colostrum, that the other critical require-ments are also met.

Calf housing is a huge variable that can influence the success or otherwise of your calf rearing enter-prise.

Broadly generalising, the aim should be to pro-vide a warm, dry, draft free environment, with suf-ficient bedding to main-tain cleanliness and allow for normal behaviours. Air quality issues must be addressed to prevent respiratory disease

But having good (or bad) facilities alone is not always the most signifi-cant factor. I have seen farms that have spectacu-larly good results in what I would consider quite poor facilities and others with good facilities that have poor calf rearing out-comes.

The critical difference is often the “care factor”.

This includes things like hygiene, feeding consis-tency, feed quality, atten-tion to detail and early recognition of illness, making a thorough diag-nosis and following up with the appropriate treat-ment or prevention strat-egy.

As I write this, one particular client of mine springs to mind. She is absolutely fastidious with her calf rearing and is extremely invested in the outcome of every calf. She monitors the health of the calves very closely and reports and reacts quickly to any calves that skip a meal or look unwell.

For that reason, she often worries that she has more calf diseases than “other” farmers. What I pointed out to her is that she might treat more calves than some others, we might diagnose some pretty out there issues in her calves, but guess what? They lose about one calf per year.

Some farms have losses that exceed 10% and yet if you asked them if they have a calf rearing prob-lem they would probably say no!

Keeping your calf rear-ing in perspective, and monitoring the morbidity (sickness) and mortality (deaths) and benchmark-ing that against your pre-vious results and those of other farms of similar size is a very useful exercise.

Developing proto-cols that ensure vaccina-tions are given at the right time, weaning is done in a smooth and consis-tent manner and heifers are monitored to ensure that they are hitting all their targets are all things that your local dairy vet-erinarian can help you to develop to ensure the best results with your calf rear-ing.• Rob Bonanno is a former president of the Australian Cattle Veterinarians Asso-ciation and is a director of the Shepparton Veterinary Clinic.

Hello? Anybody out there to Care for me?

Don’t worry little fella…. we’re coming.

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dianna fergu-sOn describes her cows as “elite athletes”, and like any elite athlete, they need the right diet.

Dianna and her part-ner Steve Shipton milk 180-200 Friesians on their 263ha farm at Coolagalite, near Cobargo, in NSW supplying Bega Cheese.

They have been involved in dairying full time since 2000 and remain passionate and committed to the indus-try.

“Steve loves grow-ing grass, I love seeing the cows kept in good order,” Ms Ferguson said.

Her great grandpar-ents started milking on the farm about 70 years ago. She and Mr Shipton started working on the farm in 2000 and bought into the property in 2004, firstly through purchas-ing cows, plant and equip-ment and then buying the property in 2010.

They milk off less than half the dryland farm, the rest is used for dry cows and heifers and some cropping.

Ms Ferguson grew up on the coast at Tathra and studied and worked in Canberra for six years before meeting Mr Ship-ton, who was a diesel mechanic and had come off a beef farm.

From age eight most of her school holidays were spent at the Cobargo farm. “Some of my fond-est memories are there,” she said.

In 2000, the couple was returning to the farm to help out which solidi-fied their passion.

“That became our number one. We both love the cows and the land and work well together,” she said.

“Whether it’s the cows and their genetics or a passion for working with the soils, there is a lot of reward in what we do on the dairy. It gives you a lot

of fulfilment.”Since taking over the

farm they have concen-trated on increasing pro-duction.

The farm today has a strong in-calf rate and a peak of 33 litres per cow in spring and averages of 28-29 litres across the year. “When you work hard and get cows in calf and produce milk like that, that is one of our proud-est moments,” Ms Fergu-son said.

“We like to maintain their condition and have good feed throughout their lactation,” she said. The farm uses some pur-chased high quality tested concentrate and fodder feed, but aims to make as much home-grown feed and silage as possible depending on conditions.

She admits the inten-sity has been challeng-ing but at the same time rewarding.

Dairying remains the predominant farming practice in the region, with about 80 local farms sup-plying Bega, and Ms Fer-guson is confident about the future. She represents her area on the Far South Coast Dairy Development Group which likewise has gained momentum in recent years as optimism grows in the industry.

Their farm has been involved in succession planning and an environ-mental program with Bega Cheese that has led to new laneways, biodiversity areas, creek crossings and


animaL HeaLtH // 25

Maintaining diet of ‘elite athletes’

who: Dianna Ferguson and Steve Shipton where: Cobargo whaT: Herd improvement

revegetation works.“When it rains and

you’ve got grass and cows

in good order, it is very rewarding. That’s what keeps you going,” she said. Dianna Ferguson

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Ben McKenzie – Cobden, VICTORIA “Since using this product I have almost totally eliminated mastitis at calving and effectively removed mastitis issues from my herd… I have more than saved the cost of the Teatseal, antibiotic dry cow therapy and associated application labour by the massive reduction in lost milk, medical costs, time and culls.”

Mark Williams – Toolamba West, VICTORIA “The use of Teatseal is now an integral part of my herd

management. The initial cost is far outweighed by the time and money saved treating clinical mastitis. Less stress on

cows, staff and in particular management.”

Peter & Jeanette Clark – Korrine, VICTORIA “250 cows treated with Teatseal costs approximately $4,000. Milk from each cow saved - 7,000L at 35cents/L equals $2,450. So in our case, two cows saved [from being culled] more than pays for the Teatseal.”

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PAL0846_DN_260x187_v02.indd 1 3/05/13 9:51 AM


26 // caLf rearing

Jess fLeming likens her calves to babies and like any proud mum she is determined to give them the best possible

upbringing.The Flemings’ Gorae

West farm in south-west Victoria already had a low sickness and death rate but Jess wanted to strive for even better results.

With husband Geoff

and his parents Peter and Gloria Thomas, Jess called on Gemma Chuck from The Vet Group to tighten their routine and intro-duce an accelerated calf rearing program.

The changes included

Simple, low-cost changes accelerate calf growth

who: Fleming family where: Gorae West whaT: Accelerated calf rearing

rick baYne

a stronger cleaning and hygiene protocol, new flooring in the shed, vents in the back walls and plans to add whirly gigs in the roof for increased venti-lation and more natural light.

There has been partic-ular focus on feeding and although the program was introduced only this calv-ing season, the benefits are already clear.

“The calves are big and strong,” Jess said. “We’ve got one-month-old calves that look like they’re two months’ old. They drink their feed and then it’s straight into the hay. We’re topping up the hay and grain at a record rate which is brilliant because they are developing this lovely healthy rumen which is what we want.”

Overall calf health is better and the Flem-ings expect to see more improvements as further changes are implemented.

“We weren’t finan-cially able to build a new calf shed and do a com-

plete change; we had to work within our financial restraints and make small changes. We were doing things the right way but just not 100%,” Jess said.

The changes were designed to improve calf health and growth, intro-duce labour efficiencies and reduce the wean-ing time. “The average weaning age was about 16 weeks, based on weight. We had calves still in the shed when we had the next lot calving. It was get-ting messy and drawing out,” Jess said.

“We had heifers on milk for a long time and were weaning at big weights, 120-160 kgs. We were looking for ways to tighten that up and to reduce the time we spent lugging buckets,” Jess said.

The accelerated calf rearing program of putting powder into whole milk is labour intensive but having good results.

They are also using Per-fect Udder colostrum stor-age bags imported from America and they test the colostrum with a refractor meter to ensure it is top quality.

“With the nozzle at the top, all you have to do is connect the tube feeder and feed directly from the bag, preventing cross con-tamination and handling. It’s reducing the risks.”

Jess is a strong advo-cate of refractor meters – even going as far as buying two as birthday presents for friends and

family. “If I can encourage better colostrum manage-ment and healthy calves not only on my farm but others, that’s great,” she said.

“It is very affordable and takes about 20 sec-onds to test colostrum to know that it’s good. People say it looks like good colostrum but you can’t tell by looking at it.

“Geoff and I make a game out of it - we have a go at judging it ourselves before getting the scien-tific data from the refrac-tor meter.

“All anecdotal claims are out the window when you have the results in front of you.”

Apart from one calf with a random e-coli dis-ease that survived and is healthy, the only illness this season was identified in three calves that acci-dentally didn’t receive their colostrum.

“There are 50 calves in the shed and the only ones that got sick didn’t get colostrum – that’s good enough for me,” Jess said.

Jess describes good colostrum feeding as “calf care 101”.

“A lot of people think they don’t have the time but studies show heif-ers that receive adequate amounts of colostrum grow better and we all know the old adage that big heifers excel…50kg extra weight at calving is 800 litres more milk over a lactation. It all ties in.”

The farm has adopted a new cleaning and hygiene

protocol and used a mini digger to remove the pre-vious floor and install a new bed of scoria, shade-cloth and woodchips, along with vents in the back wall.

“Straight away the calves seem to be happier,” Jess said.

“Calves are born with no immune systems and giving your feeders a good scrub once a week isn’t enough. You wouldn’t feed your baby out of a bottle that was only cleaned once a week. They are valuable and you have to look at them like little babies and be very spot-on in steril-ising and being clean and doing what you can, espe-cially with the value of them at the moment.

“At the end of the day we’re doing this because we want big happy healthy heifers that are going to milk well, get back in calf and put milk in the vat. That’s what every farmer wants.”

The farm milks 300 cows and this year will have a full complement of about 100 heifers coming in. The Flemings also do some embryo transfer work, increasing the value of the heifers.

“We go above and beyond to make sure even a calf from a pet gets its colostrum straight away. It feels really good to walk from giving that calf after giving the tested colostrum knowing that I’ve done the best I can to give that heifer a healthy life.”

Jess Fleming

Geoff Fleming at calving.

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caLf rearing // 27

Water pLaYs a vital role in calf health in several ways.

The first is its effect on rumen development. Rumen bacteria are responsible for the fermentation of grain and the development of the lining of the rumen. These bacteria must live in a water environment. Without sufficient water, the bacteria cannot grow and rumen development is slowed. Ready access to water improves a calf ’s grain intake and allows for earlier weaning.

The second benefit of water is for calves that are sick and/or have the potential to become dehydrated (such as scouring calves, calves with pneumonia and recently transported calves).

Let’s look at a 40kg calf that is scouring. Its daily fluid requirement consists of:

■ Maintenance requirements (ie the amount needed to live) of 2-4L per day.

■ The amount lost in the scour of 2–6L per day.This gives us a minimum of 6L of

fluid required each day. In most cases this requirement will not be met by milk feeding alone and the calf will become dehydrated. If given free access to water, calves will drink it – for example at 15°C they will drink almost 2L each day, while at 30°C they will drink more than 3L each day.

Offering water is easy to do and can have an immediate impact on calf health. If you’re not already offering your calves free access to clean water from day one of age, during all seasons

of the year, it’s time to do so. How to provide water?There are many different options

for providing water to calves. What suits best will depend on the housing system but examples include water bowls, buckets and nipple drinkers. The key thing is to choose a system that allows for:

■ Water to be changed every day (not just refilled).

■ Easy cleaning .Why is regular

changing and cleaning so important? Viruses shed by sick calves can survive in water for weeks, while bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella can survive for months, infecting other calves in the same pen or – if using communal troughs – calves in other pens.

Water feeders should ideally be located at the front of the pen where milk is fed, away from the dry resting area at the back of the pen. Water

feeders should be at the right height to allow easy access and protection from contamination by faeces (of both calves and birds). If possible provide warm water in cold weather. If using buckets it is worthwhile to have extras that are rotated so that all the water buckets can be scrubbed and dried thoroughly every week or so.

Can we improve water absorption?Yes! When calves are sick water

absorption can be improved by adding oral electrolytes. These are a mixture of salts and glucose that help draw water into the bloodstream and also address the electrolyte imbalances present in sick calves. Your local veterinarian will be able to help you choose the best product.

An individual sick calf will need at least 2L of oral electrolytes daily in addition to its normal milk diet and free water access. This can be given in between normal milk feeds with an interval of 2–4 hours. A calf with a

watery scour that disappears into the bedding will need two 2L feeds each day.

In some situations it will be worth supplying the whole pen with

oral electrolytes pre-emptively. These situations include:

■ When you have a scour or pneumonia outbreak.

■ As the first feed to bought in calves after the stress of travel.

■ In hot weather.Oral electrolytes should be mixed as

per label instructions with clean, warm water.

For calves that won’t willingly suck oral electrolytes or if there are many to treat, tube feeding oral electrolytes can help make the task more efficient. It is essential that you have training in how to tube feed calves as the outcome can be fatal if it is not done properly. If you are inexperienced or worried about this procedure your veterinarian will be able to help you.

Clean water and oral electrolytes are readily available and cost effective.

Together they can make such a difference in calf health: increased starter intake, earlier weaning and reduced mortality. Every calf needs water – plain and simple.• Zoe Vogels is a dairy veterinarian at The Vet Group in Timboon with a special interest in calf health and management. She will be talking on water and oral electrolytes for calves at the World Buiatrics Conference in Cairns later this year.

Fresh water crucial to early calf developmentZOe VOgeLs

“Water must be changed every day - not just refilled.”

– Dr Zoe Vogels

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28 // caLf rearing

UV makes calf feeding more efficient“tHe caLVes are doing well and it’s nice to know that the nasty bugs are being eliminated”, says Hayley Menzies of Nowra, NSW, about the innovative milk purification system that she and her husband, Stewart, installed at the dairy in August last year.

Stewart and Hayley run Cairnsdale Holsteins and

Rivendell Jerseys, with their 580 cow milking herd comprising 50% Holsteins and 50% Jerseys with year-round calving.

The calves are fed on milk that has been pro-cessed through their WestfaliaSurge UV Pure ultraviolet calf milk puri-fier, and so far, says Mrs Menzies, they have

used the unit for feed-ing between 200 and 300 calves.

The UV Pure is a modu-lar unit built around stain-less steel UV turbulators. The UV lamp is inserted into a quartz tube allow-ing the light to penetrate the milk as it passes over the tube and into a sepa-rate 500 litre calf milk vat.

A hot water circuit allows cold milk to be brought up to feeding temperature.

Waste milk from masti-tis cows is often discarded, but if treated properly to lower bacterial or patho-gen levels it can replace milk sources that calf-rear-ers would otherwise need to purchase. The ultravio-let light in the Westfalia-

Surge UV Pure system penetrates bacterial cells in the milk, destroying their DNA bonds, killing the bacteria and eliminat-ing their ability to repro-duce and grow.

It kills the bacte-ria without affecting the nutrient value of the milk, and the immune fac-tors and proteins remain

unchanged. Vitamins A, B6, B12 and C remain intact and there is even an increase in Vitamin D, which does not occur with traditional heat pasteuri-sation. The milk is never heated above feeding tem-perature, helping to pre-serve the milk’s beneficial immunoglobulins.

Mrs Menzies oversees a couple of workers who look after the calf feeding. “The UV Pure keeps the milk warm, which is a big bonus; it’s the same tem-perature every day. Pre-viously our calves were getting cold milk. The way our dairy is set up, often the plate cooler was cool-ing down the bucket milk by the time we fed the calves.

“So now we are utilis-ing more of our milk, we know the calves are get-ting good quality milk and we are not really dumping any milk at all.

“We hadn’t really expe-rienced problems with the calves, but we saw this as a

way to utilise more of our high cell count fresh milk and to keep it at a set tem-perature.”

The WestfaliaSurge UV Pure is fully-automated with minimal training required for operators.

It will start automati-cally at pre-set times and calculates the required process time for the amount of milk, reducing time and energy.

It incorporates a fully automatic ‘clean-in-place’ wash process after every batch with the correct wash solutions to ensure proper cleaning.

“We find it really simple and easy to use”, Mrs Menzies said.

“We needed to be able to feed the calves after the morning milking, because our staff have kids that they need to drop off to school.

“We add a probiotic to the milk which works really well. It’s a nice blend of the good bugs to help the calves.

Stewart and Hayley Menzies.

A typical installation of a WestfaliaSurge UV Pure calf milk purifying system.

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caLf rearing // 29

it is WIDELY known that feeding good quality colostrum to calves as soon as possible after birth helps pro-vide immunity to disease in the first 4-6 weeks of life.

However, colostrum can also be a source of some major infectious dis-eases to calves such as E. coli, Sal-monella, Bovine Johne’s Disease and Mycoplasma.

These pathogens can be shed directly into colostrum from an infected cow or can be a result of faecal contam-ination during the collection and storage process.

Along with the direct disease-caus-ing effects of these pathogens, their presence interferes with the absorption of colostral antibodies by the calf, thus reducing their immunity to disease.

The hygienic collection, storage and subsequent feeding of colostrum to newborn calves is a multi-step process.

This process is time-consuming and allows many opportunities for contam-ination of colostrum.

Typically on farm, colostrum is col-lected from freshly calved cows and stored in buckets.

But there may be many more steps before this colostrum is actually fed to the calf such as the transfer to other buckets, smaller containers, tube feed-ers and teat feeders.

Research has shown that very little bacteria is present in colostrum taken directly from the udder.

In one study, there was nearly four times the bacteria present in colostrum from the dairy-floor bucket compared

to that taken directly from the udder. Possible sources of contamination

include the teat skin, milking cup liners, hoses or the bucket itself. Sub-optimal cleaning of collection buckets will exac-erbate this problem.

When collecting colostrum, the first milk produced in the udder, it is essen-tial that cups are put on clean dry teats.

Stainless steel collection buckets are preferable to plastic ones as they are easier to clean and do not become scratched.

Daily washing of all collection (and feeding equipment) is vital to prevent the accumulation of pathogens.

Colostrum and milk residues should be washed off with lukewarm water first.

Then add 60ml household bleach per 20 litres of hot water and a ‘squirt’ of detergent and thoroughly scrub all sur-faces. Allow buckets and feeding equip-ment to dry upside down.

Over the past decade, colostrum and waste milk have been the topic of much research looking to reduce bac-terial content and improve transfer of immunity to calves.

Various processes have been described from traditional pasteurisa-tion to treatment with UV light.

In the early days of this research, traditional pasteurisation produced a product that was thick in consistency and too difficult to feed. In addition, the pasteurisation process destroyed anti-bodies to unacceptable levels.

However, researchers continued to develop and refine the heat-treatment process and have established a method that kills the major pathogens in colos-trum but also maintains antibody levels.

It is important to emphasise that this process is referred to as ‘heat-treat-ment’ as opposed to ‘pasteurisation’ because the temperature and duration of treatment do not meet the specifica-tions of traditional heat pasteurisation.

Independent research has shown that compared to other processes,

such as UV treatment, heat-treatment of colos-trum offers superior killing ability of E. coli, Salmonella, E. coli, Bovine Johne’s Disease

and Mycoplasma and has significantly less impact on antibody levels.

A study in the USA showed that calves fed heat-treated colostrum had better transfer of immunity at 24 hours of age compared to calves fed fresh, raw colostrum. The same calves had a sig-nificantly reduced risk of scours or any other illness in the pre-weaning period.

A shortfall of fresh colostrum may arise at the beginning of calving.

Storage of colostrum, either in the refrigerator or freezer, allows conve-nient availability at all times but is not without its challenges.

Dairy farmers commonly say that the collection of colostrum, transfer-ring into a container, freezing, defrost-ing and then transferring into a tube feeder, is a slow and inefficient process. All these steps increase the risk of con-tamination.

The Perfect Udder colostrum man-agement system allows colostrum to be transferred directly into one bag,

which can then be refrigerated, frozen, thawed, reheated or even heat-treated before being fed directly to the calf.

There is no need to transfer colos-trum between containers, improving efficiency and biosecurity. The Perfect Udder bags are single-use and come in two sizes: 3 litre and 4 litre allowing colostrum to be delivered in a single feed for larger calves. Smaller calves may need this volume split between two feeds.

Heat-treatment of colostrum can be done as a batch prior to filling the bags or within the bags themselves. The design of the bags allows rapid and efficient thawing after freezing.

All Dairy Tech pasteurisers are pro-grammed with a “Thaw cycle” to further accelerate this process. Attachable teats and tube feeders are provided and these are the only part of the system that is re-used.

Heat-treatment of colostrum and the Perfect Udder colostrum manage-ment system are innovative ways to improve colostrum cleanliness and therefore enhance transfer of immu-nity to calves.

• Gemma Chuck is a veterinarian with The Vet Group, based in western Victoria. Contact the Vet Group for more informa-tion on the Perfect Udder range and heat-treatment of colostrum.

Poor colostrum collection increases infection risk

Gorae West farmer Geoff Fleming uses the Perfect Udder bag to feed colostrum.

gemma cHuck

Colostrum collection can be time-consuming and allows many opportunities for contamination.

innovation

innovation


30 // caLf rearing

Feed your calves in half the timecHaLLenged in 2011 to come up with a means of easily transferring, mixing anad pumping milk or milk powder, Stallion Plastics staff conceived a system that went through

seven versions and onfarm trials.

The company’s MTF was born out of that pro-cess, says CEO Grant Allen, who owns a dairy farm in Manawatu, NZ.

“Everything we manu-facture is tested onfarm for ease of use and dura-bility.

“The best ideas are borne from need.”

Its 4-stroke Honda

motor can pump 600L/m, it has a stainless steel mixing system inside the tank, and it can mix 800L of milk powder in just three minutes, Allen says.

“When it’s 3oC in the morning, milk powder floats on top of cold water. We designed the MTF to force milk powder under the water and into the pump, similar to a giant milkshake mixer. You can mix anything you need to in three minutes.”

If you’re using whole milk, this can easily be pumped into the feeder direct from the silo. It takes two minutes to fill the tanker ready for trans-port.

Set it up and let it fill while you do something else, Allen says.

Once at the calf sheds all you need to do is start the motor and run it on low revs.

The 5m hose with dispensing gun is long

enough to reach to the back pens so does away with 20L buckets and back-breaking work.

“We can feed the calves in half the time it was taking us before and no wastage.”

After feeding, park the feeder in the shade to reduce the risk of the milk spoiling. The tank is made of food-grade white plastic to reflect the sun.

The MTF60 system allows feeding in the pad-dock or at the shed and in the paddock.

Cleaning is simple: half fill the MTF with clean water and turn on the pump. It self-cleans the tank first and then the mixing system. Switch the small ball valve on the manifold and it will clean the manifold and teats in no more than three min-utes. Contact Australian dis-tributor, Daviesway, on 1800 666 269.

MTF is about feeding your calves in half the time.

tHe WOrk of rearing a healthy calf starts before birth, according to Dr Gemma Chuck of The Vet Group.

“Accurate pregnancy testing is essential so that all cows have an adequate dry period prior to calving. Shorter dry periods can compromise colostrum quality.

“Strategic vaccination can be also be used to boost antibodies in colostrum if expected calving dates have been calculated. If vaccines are given too early, the peak antibody response will decline before the calf is born and if given too late, the antibody response won’t occur in time.

“New calves should be collected from the calving area at least twice daily and fed colostrum immediately. An appropriate volume may need to be split over two feeds.

“The calf trailer, used to transport calves from the calving area to the calf shed, should also be washed daily and have appropriate non-slip flooring such as rubber or straw. A dirty calf trailer can be the source of infection for new born calves.”

Other recommendations: ■ Solid partitions of a non-porous material, such as

corrugated iron or tin, between pens. ■ Bedding such as woodchips with adequate drainage

to prevent accumulation of wet, soiled bedding. ■ A passive ventilation system to allow fresh air to

circulate at the calf level without direct draught. ■ Fresh water at the front of each pen. ■ An individual milk-feeding system for each calf to

avoid competition from other calves. ■ Raised grain troughs to help prevent contamina-

tion with manure. ■ Thorough cleaning of calf pens between groups of

calves.

Calf rearing tips


caLf rearing // 31

autOmatiOn, tecHnOLOgY and the KISS (keep it simple sir?) philosophy are the guiding principles for Stephen Sinclair in growing his dairy operation in Stony Creek, in Victoria’s South Gippsland region.

The main farm, which has been in the family since 1916, covers 78 hectares, 66 of which are used for production, and they have a second property of 38 hectares.

Mr Sinclair said that they always get a spring there.

“Sometimes it’s short, other times it’s long but we also get something which means we can always make silage,” he said.

“This season we made 1000 bales from the two locations.

“Our cows are smaller-framed Friesian, Jersey and Friesian/Jersey cross; we aim to have our cows weigh

between 450 and 500 kilograms. Smaller cows are easier to manage, more efficient.”

Mr Sinclair explained they have recently installed automatic calf feeders and two new silos, one for the calf shed and one for feeding dairy cattle during milking.

“It makes life so much easier. I can get so much more done. The feeding system is so reliable. The feeders’ computers monitor the situation ensuring each calf is receiving their allotted daily feed. At the moment we are feeding powdered milk and Super P Pellets from Castlegate James. The Super P pellets have a great taste and the calves love them.”

Super P is a high-protein pelleted stock feed specifically designed to supplement dairy cattle during times when pasture quality is poor due to dry

conditions. It is very palatable with a protein level of 15% and a high energy formulation (M.E. 12.5 MJ/kg).

Castlegate James says the high fibre content (NDF%) of Super P aids in reducing acidosis and improves animal health when compared with traditional pellets.

“We also use Super P pellets in the dairy,” Mr Sinclair said. “It is high in protein, so Super P pellets are fed during milking. The cows lick the feeders clean every milking. Our cows receive 6 Kg per day and could not be happier.”

Mr Sinclair has a very pragmatic approach to feeding.

“It’s got to be simple and cost effective. This season we started feeding pellets at a rate of four kilograms per cow per day and then our milk price increased so we went to five kilograms, and again the milk price increased some

more so now we are at six kilograms per cow.

“Even at six kilograms the cows clean up; they leave nothing in the feed bin. The cows also receive pasture, hay and silage.

“Feeding Super P Pellets from Castlegate James means we can focus on growing the farm operation without having to spend time mixing feeds.”

Tel. Castlegate James Australasia (03) 8311 2200.

High protein pellets keep calf feeding simple

caLVing cOWs adds extra work and stress in any dairy operation.

The demands are intense in seasonal or split calving systems where large numbers of cows calve over brief periods. In year round calving systems, it’s an on-going chore.

Dr Cameron Clark, from the FutureDairy team, will give a sneak preview of some technologies that could take the sting out of calving at this year’s Dairy Research Foundation’s symposium.

One example is the use of a rumination monitor to

predict the day of calving by comparing day-to-day rumination levels.

The monitors are commercially available for heat detection; FutureDairy’s work could add in a calving prediction mode, which would make them multifunctional.

Another example is the use of an accelerometer to monitor cow activity. The FutureDairy team is investigating ways of monitoring activity levels to alert farmers to cows with calving difficulty or post calving health issues.

The team has also investigated the use of

weatherproof CCTV cameras in the maternity paddock for remote monitoring of cows close to calving.

A small number of Australian farmers are already using CCTV cameras in maternity sheds or calving pads to monitor calving progress from a home PC or mobile phone.

The FutureDairy team is looking at their

application for paddock calvings and the potential to use a process called ‘machine learning’ to enable the cameras to send an alert if a cow is having difficulty calving.

To hear more about advances in technology for application on dairy farms, register for the Dairy Research Foundation

Symposium, to be held in the Hunter Valley on June 19-20, at www.drfsymposium.com or at 1800 177 636.

Calving cows on camera

Technology such as weatherproof CCTV cameras (pictured) and collars to monitor rumination and cow activity could be used to monitor calving.


32 // macHinerY & prOducts

case iH has unveiled a new generation of hay balers, with the Australian release of the RB5 Series round baler.

Redesigned for the toughest crops and conditions, the RB5 Series features a superior bale shape and density.

With modern best-in-class styling, the RB455 and RB465 offer advanced features compared to their RB-4 Series predecessors.

Geoff Rendell, Case IH product manager for hay and harvest, said the variable chamber round

balers are the result of three years’ rigorous worldwide field testing.

“We tested the balers worldwide in a variety of conditions, and found that the RB5 Series has an increased capacity of up to 20% and a bale density improvement of up to 5%

over the previous RB4 series,” Mr Rendell said.

The RB455 and RB465 produce bales of up to 1.5m and 1.8m in diameter respectively.

Both models also feature a new dual cylinder hydraulic density system.

Case IH’s new rB5 Series round baler offers greater capacity and durability with superior bale shape and density.

New Case IH baler tackles the toughest crop conditions

“The two cylinders have 2000 psi, providing more force than a single cylinder at 2600 psi – increasing bale density,” Mr Rendell said.

The enhanced five-bar pickup reels feature bigger, stronger components.

“By boosting the number of pickup reel bars from four to five, farmers get more consistent feeding, a more efficient movement of crop from the pickup to the feeder, and more tynes to get all of the crop picked – especially short crops.”

There’s also a new two-metre wide overshot rotor pickup, for more aggressive feeding.

“This eliminates crop hesitation, resulting in a more consistent crop mat fed into the bale chamber, giving an even bale formation. Plus, the in-line augers handle heavy thick windrows, dramatically reducing the chance of plugging.”

Case IH has repositioned the baler augers so the crop is fed into the centre line, increasing capacity. Since the pickup guards are the same height, there’s

a better transfer of the crop from the augers to the rotor, Mr Rendell said.

The balers include: ■ A new enhanced net

wrap system, with easy tractor hook-up.

■ New optional twine wrap system for greater accuracy .

■ More durable endless bale chamber belts.

■ New in-cab controlled drop floor for rotor unplugging.

■ Rubber mounted tynes for optimal performance.

■ New endless belt with a true spliceless design.

■ Rotor feed and rotor cut configurations to choose from.

Both RB455 and RB465 balers feature a new ISOBUS electrical system, granting greater control.

They come standard with the AFS Pro 300

touch screen, offering better graphics, easier navigation and a touch screen. Or you can use the new baler with an existing virtual terminal on any ISOBUS-equipped tractor.

There’s also a new CAN-based electrical system, with an H-Bridge used to control power to the electric motors. The solid-state design is more durable than mechanical relays used previously.

Farmers get more consistent feeding, a more efficient movement of crop from the pickup to the feeder, and more tynes to get all of the crop picked – especially short crops.

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Find out how ADF Milking could help youVisit ADFmilking.com or call 1800 233 283Healthy cows, healthy profit


macHinerY & prOducts // 33

tWentY-One Years after purchasing his first Whoppa Choppa, Darryl Light from Drouin South, near Warragul, in South Gippsland, has just upgraded to the latest model.

Mr Light milks 120 Jerseys on a couple of Lely A4 Astronaut robots at Jadell Jersey Stud and he told us that he even bought his first Whoppa Choppa second-hand, to cut and feed out fodder effec-tively and efficiently. He was so impressed with its performance and longevity that when it had tired out he ordered another one through Graham Wood’s Machin-ery at Grantville, about 50kms away in South Gippsland. The old model now sits forlornly in a paddock near the dairy.

Mr Wood said in the early 1990s he saw a need for farm-ers to be able to more efficiently feed out round-bale silage. So he designed a machine that could quickly and easily feed fodder without having to constantly leave the tractor. This led to the devel-opment of the Whoppa Choppa. It has a patented chopping action which results in a variable chop size of 25mm to 125mm, the opti-mum length for maximum rumen intake and digestibility, with-

out pulverizing the leaf. Regular farmer-driven upgrades have pro-duced the latest advanced models.

When we visited at the end of April, Mr Light’s new model Whoppa Choppa had been on the property for a fortnight. He is put-ting two round bales through a day – 30 bales in the fortnight. They take 10 minutes each to chop up. One round bale will usually stretch to form a 50 to 150 metre long neat windrow after being processed through the machine.

“It chops everything, so cows get the most out of it. We get 25% extra from each bale,” Mr Light told us. “If the cows don’t need to chomp it up, they get into it quicker. It cuts it up nicely and makes it more palatable.

“I put mostly pasture silage through. It does all types of bales.

We’ve had canola hay and at one stage corn stalks.”

The Whoppa Choppa has height adjustable telescopic control to enable it to suit all types of trac-tors from 40 to 55 kW. It utilises a PTO-driven drum with rigid knife section blades for high speed posi-tive cutting action, which means a lower power requirement.

Hydraulically-operated forks lift and load a large square bale and also transport a second bale. The self-cleaning feed rollers move the bale onto the cutting drum knives which cut the fodder and discharge it in a neat narrow windrow onto the ground.

Mr Light said that mainte-nance is relatively low, mainly greasing the machine at regular intervals and occasionally sharp-ening the cutting knives.

There is a side elevator on the new one that wasn’t part of the old one. “There are lots more operating options,” Mr Light explained. “It’s gone from one lever to three levers to operate.”

The machine has three feed rollers with the bottom two oper-ated by a variable speed hydrau-lic motor. Hydraulically operated

rear loading forks and table door can handle round and square bales. There is a separate circuit for the top feed roller to operate indepen-dently of the bottom feed roller and an over-run clutch on the PTO shaft is standard.

Mr Light chose to take the optional full width hydraulically-operated elevator to distribute the feed into a feed pad or trough.

He operates the Whoppa Choppa behind his 83 horsepower David Brown 1490 which is a one of a number of collectible David Brown tractors which Mr Light has on the property, either completed or in a state of restoration.

Whoppa Choppa attacks silage bales with zest

workiNg cLoTheschris DiNgLe

who: Darryl Light where: Drouin South whaT: Whoppa Choppa

Darryl Light with his new Whoppa Choppa.

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DairyNewsOzBale-Up Hayfeeders [email protected]

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New from Bale Up HayfeedersOur modular feed pad model, the next level in feed pads, comes in 4 metre units. Buy 2 ‘bookend’ units and add as many open ended centre units as you need. No more feed on the ground and extremely low waste, and like all our feeders comes with our rolled corrugated floor.

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Standard cow feeder

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$2420 incl GST per unit


34 // macHinerY & prOducts

Backhoe the backbone of a dairy farmit’s been said at various times that I have a single-minded obsession with tractors. That’s not true. Amongst other things, I’m a big fan of the humble backhoe. While even the best front-end loader is ultimately still an grUNT

johN DropperT

appendage bolted onto your tractor, a backhoe is built around its loader and hoe. They’re designed to shift things, and they do it well.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that every serious farm should have one. Big call? Maybe, but in the early days of my parents’ dairy farm the backhoe was the first machinery purchase for the new venture. Granted there was a lot more development work to be done back then, but the usage it got never slowed. For every occasion where we thought we’d soon run out of things for it to do, there’d be a swag of new jobs pop up. So much so that the first one is long gone now, and a newer model has taken its place.

The original was a 1987 JCB 3CX, bought well past its prime but with plenty of life left. It had a pretty basic Perkins engine, four-speed manual gearbox with an electric forward-reverse shuttle, and four tyres of which no two had the same tread. It was 2wd, had none of the fancy 4-in-1 bucket, extenda-hoe or quick-hitch features that are now virtually standard, and the air conditioner was ambitiously named at best. Turned out a working air-con would have been a waste anyway, since somebody didn’t lock the cab door properly for the trip from the dealer’s yard. At some point on the truck along the freeway, the door blew open and slammed into the window behind it, destroying the glass in

both. Nobody accepted responsibility, and the glass was never replaced.

The old JCBs are a ripper of a machine. Ours dug, filled, backfilled, pushed, levelled, loaded gravel, unloaded hay, leaked oil and blew a lot of smoke. I jump started it more times than I care to remember. The fuel gauge didn’t work, but it never used much diesel anyway. Every so often a bearing would go and a front wheel would fall off; an hour later you were back up and running. Got bogged? No problem – you could dig yourself out. Got something else bogged? If you didn’t go for the backhoe straight away, you usually ended up wondering why you hadn’t. One day it just caught fire in the shed. We saw the smoke, chained it up to the tractor and dragged it out into the rain. The auto electrician came out later that week for a look and had the old Perkins motor re-wired in a couple of hours. Once a new air cleaner was fitted, it was back to work – scorch marks and all.

The old 3CXs are unbelievably strong machines. You have trouble finding things they won’t lift. They’re simple, ugly, cheap and tough, though since they’re pushing 30 now, if everything works it’s almost cause for suspicion. These days you can pick them up for less than $20,000. Ours ended up getting swapped for a load of cereal hay. JCB make them a lot prettier now, but given how long the line has been around, they haven’t really had to change much. Not even the name. • John Droppert has no mechanical qualifications whatsoever, but has been passionate about tractors since before he could talk and has operated many different makes and models in a variety of roles for both profit and fun.

This 1987 JCB 3CX backhoe gave good service, but ended up getting swapped for a load of cereal hay.

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