Gippsland

But we don’t get tornadoes in Gippsland

/ dairymilkmaid / 19 Comments

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
 – Wizard of Oz

Hayshed gets a makeover

Hayshed gets a makeover

Our dairy farm now boasts a hay shed roof that spans 20 acres. Bits of it, anyway.

We knew yesterday’s winds were coming, so had shifted the cows, heifers and calves to shelter.

The calves big enough to be weaned in the next couple of weeks were bunkered down in the hay shed when Mother Nature began her renovation work. Thankfully, none of them or the Maremmas who live with them were injured.

Nor were any of the yearlings who could have escaped through crushed fences Alex and I discovered during “border patrol” this morning. We count ourselves very lucky.

Alex aboard the lazy milk maid's chainsaw

Alex aboard the lazy milk maid’s chainsaw

Milk Maid in WCB wonderland as Saputo offers $8

/ dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

Well, I wonder what MG will do now? And where will it end? Judging by the email I just got from MG, the co-op’s going to sit on its hands and hope the FIRB undermines Saputo’s bid.

“Murray Goulburn (MG) notes the revised conditional offer by Saputo for Warrnambool Cheese and Butter (WCB) announced today.”

“MG notes that Saputo’s offer continues to be subject to substantial conditionality. MG believes that resolution of the future ownership of WCB will be a long process and that WCB shareholders should not act prematurely in relation to giving up control of their shareholdings.

“MG remains committed to acquiring WCB and to satisfying all conditions associated with its offer as quickly as possible. MG presently owns 17.7% of WCB.

“MG believes it to be reasonable and in the national interest that Saputo’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) application to acquire WCB is not resolved until the public benefits of MG’s proposed acquisition of WCB have been given full consideration – pursuant to MG’s application for authorisation to the Australian Competition Tribunal to acquire WCB.

“MG considers its offer will bring many benefits for WCB shareholders, WCB suppliers, the Warrnambool community and the Australian dairy industry.”

But if push comes to shove, will MG go higher than $8?

I do understand the reasoning behind the co-op’s drive to acquire WCB for all the reasons outlined by Gary Helou when interviewed by the Australian Financial Review the other day (the video is very, very interesting). The WCB bid is important because it allows MG to grow quickly and achieve efficiencies similar to that of its giant Kiwi rival, Fonterra. Those efficiencies should mean better margins, which the coop would pass back to farmers.

On the other hand, it does make me feel like Alice in Wonderland just a little. When MG last launched a takeover bid for WCB in 2010, the price was $4.35 and WCB hasn’t suddenly hit the jackpot – its profits have fallen.

On the farm, we are in recovery mode from a year when the average Gippsland dairy farmer lost a lot of money. As the Dairy Industry Farm Monitor results 2012-13 showed:

“In what was a difficult year for many Gippsland farmers, average return on assets fell to -0.2% with average whole farm earnings before interest and tax down 82% to $37,609.  The average return on equity for Gippsland farms was -6.2% with average net farm income across the region reported at -$58,784. This performance impacts on the decision making ability of farmers in 2013-14.” 

The difference, says Helou, is that demand for milk is growing by 6 per cent while supply is growing at 2 per cent. If this is more than just a blip and a long-term trend, why wasn’t this foreseen three years ago? Curiouser and curiouser. Please forgive me for being a little confused.

The silver lining to the big dry

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FloodJune14Std

I thought we’d “only” had 93mm but it was actually more like 144mm (that’s more than 5 and half inches) in three days. Normally, that would have been a massive disaster. Instead, it’s moderate flooding and, so long as the weather gods hold their tempers for a while, we’ll have dodged a bullet.

Such a relief.

I put our narrow escape down to the lingering effects of the exceptionally dry summer and autumn of 2012/13. While the pastures were green last week, you only had to dig down a few inches before the soil became very dry. The catchment sopped up most of this rain like a giant jade sponge before it got to the waterways.

The weather bureau is forecasting a warmer and wetter than average winter and although it has very little confidence in that seasonal rainfall outlook, the forecasters are actually very good at predicting temperatures. A warm winter would be welcome indeed. Fingers crossed!

A purple blister on the weather map is coming to get us

/ dairymilkmaid / 13 Comments
Holy cow

Holy cow

It’s not a good sign when the local weather forecaster gets a spot on ABC Radio’s National news. Our forecast is so shocking that, yes, it made headlines today.

A massive chunk of Victoria is about to go underwater and, with it, a massive chunk of our farm. We’ve had an inch of rain in the last two hours and the prediction is for between 51 and 102mm tomorrow, followed by another 20 or 30mm over another couple of days.

I’m thankful for the undulations at the southern end of the farm. The cows will at least be safe.

I’m also thankful for the Bureau of Meteorology’s timely warnings. It gave us time to:

  • Set up safer paddocks for the cows
  • Ask Scott, the grain merchant, to deliver more feed before we get flooded in
  • Remove the power units from the electric fences on the river flats
  • Bring all the eight new calves born during the last 48 hours into the warmth of the poddy shed
  • Stock up at the supermarket
  • Pile the verandah high with dry kindling and wood to keep the kids warm

As the flood sets in, we’ll be:

  • Offering extra TLC for newborns and freshly-calved cows
  • Feeding out more of our precious and rapidly dwindling stock of hay while hitting the phones looking for more ridiculously scarce fodder
  • Keeping an even keener eye out for mastitis
  • Walking the cows extra gently to the dairy to reduce the risk of lameness
  • Hoping like hell that the damage to the fences and tracks isn’t too bad
  • Monitoring the condition of paddocks to minimise pugging (mud, mud, mud)
  • Stocking the dairy snack bar with a bottomless supply of soup and raisin bread

It’s often said that good farmers only worry about what they can control. I’ll do my best!

What is a factory farm?

/ dairymilkmaid / 4 Comments
Zoe with a seed drill from the 50s

Zoe with a seed drill from the 50s

When I was a teenager in the early 1980s, we bought the next-door neighbour’s farm and the one across the road to milk around 180 cows. At the time, it was an impressive herd.

Today, that’s quite small. The average Gippsland dairy farm now milks 265 cows on 130 hectares.

Turns out our farm is almost perfectly statistically average! Like many of our neighbours, we have a full-time employee and engage relief milkers to manage the workload. We no longer cultivate our own paddocks or cut our own hay because the job has just got too big. Instead, a specialist contractor with specialised, ultra-efficient machinery does it for us. Our very average farm of today would have been considered huge back then. Maybe even a factory farm.

Even so, the well-being of our animals has not diminished over time. We care just as much as we ever did and love of the land, the outdoors and our cows is why we farm. And now, thanks to the work of researchers, we are better equipped to keep them fit and healthy.

I don’t know what you’d classify as a factory farm these days but the low price of milk certainly puts us all under pressure to get bigger (and therefore better able to gain more efficiencies). Here in Australia, where cows are “free range” rather than housed and feed-lotted, big farms can be just as animal and environmentally-friendly as average farms like ours on one condition: the people who operate them still care.

Gasp: the cows love fescue (and I do too)

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments
Cows grazing Advance Tall Fescue

The cows really seem to prefer the Advance tall fescue over ryegrass

I’m beginning a clandestine (well maybe I’m coming out of the closet with this blog) love affair with fescue and cocksfoot. Our Gippsland dairy farm has always relied on a combination of ryegrass and clover, although prairie grass loves to volunteer. Because the weather patterns have changed so much, I’ve started to experiment with other pasture types.

We sowed the aptly-named swamp paddock with Advance tall fescue last year. It doesn’t mind waterlogging and produces massive volumes of feed in summer – just when the swamp paddock can withstand grazing without getting pugged. I’d had the paddock sown to an annual ryegrass which reshot and seemed to overwhelm it, so had the whole lot sprayed out with glyphosate. To my delight, the ryegrass was knocked out and the fescue has come back in force.

The cows seem to love Advance. I had them in the adjacent paddock of gorgeous perennial ryegrass but when I lifted the fence to let them into the rear of the still partially inundated swamp paddock, they rushed in and stayed there to eat the fescue.