May 19, 2025 • 20 mins
Recorded on the Rural Roadie, tune in as Matt and Wade sit down in the caravan with Canterbury farmer, Will Bailey, to discuss the impact of a newly built feed pad infrastructure on his dairy farm operation.
The team delve into Will’s feeding strategy and how targeted investments can deliver valuable returns. The 300-metre feeding face accommodates up to 400 cows whilst eliminating wastage. Beyond these efficiencies, the system has delivered additional benefits such as reduced lane damage, cleaner equipment, and the ability to feed in any weather conditions.
Having found their "sweet spot" for cow numbers and feed efficiency, Will's experience offers valuable insights and considerations on feed pad infrastructure investments.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
G'day and welcome to Feed for Thought, a regular
podcast from Pioneer coveringeverything from farm systems to
crops and products and much,much more.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome back to Feed for Thought.
My name's Matt Daly and we'reback in the caravan on the rural
roadie, so I've got Wade withme, Wade, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We're very good mate.
We're getting used to thesedoing podcasts in tight spaces.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, and today we're doing it from Canterbury, we
made it all the way down south.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, it was a hell of a trip down here earlier and
actually I'm getting my daysmixed up Late last week now to
make our way down here, but it'sgood to be here and getting out
on some Cantery farms.
It's epic.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, and literally we've pulled up, and I can see
the cows actually walking downthe feed pad as we crack into
this podcast with Will Bailey.
So, will, thanks for having uson your tanker track.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
No, thank you, literally parked in the middle
of the tanker track.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, I bet you, when you woke up this morning, you
weren't thinking there's goingto be a couple of blokes parked
up in the caravan.
No, I gotta be doing a podcast,but no, no, I never thought of
that yeah, good man for uh, forputting yourself out there,
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, thanks, mate.
And we've just come off freshoff a a field day, just down the
road talking about new hybridsand talking about maize and farm
systems and and we caught up.
I'm trying to think was it 18months ago?
Maybe now would have been,roughly probably.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you'restarting to look at well, you'd
had the idea of Feedpad andstarting to look at a few
numbers around, it Just tryingto finalise numbers and, yeah,
(01:31):
hearing where it looked and whatit looked like in the place,
yeah, so you know like if onlythe listeners could see.
But yeah, literally these cowsare coming down.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
You're into the first .
This is the first full seasonof it.
Yeah, we're on there for halfthe winter, so we're on there
for sort of the first week ofjuly we made managed to get on
there.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So nice bit of a game changer, yeah yeah, so we're
going to get into that in a bit,but if we could just start with
a few basic farm details aroundthe heat gears and the system
that you run yeah, so we'reprobably um, we're here in
swanana milking about 640, 650cows, holstein Frusions.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
We went to milk 300 odd cows, 225 hectares,
effective sort of milk off 185,treat sort of the other 30 to 40
hectares as a bit of a runoff,grow kale for wintering and try
and well.
This is the second time I'vegrown maize on the platform.
It's normally all bought in butthat seems to be working quite
well in the re-grassing rotation.
(02:30):
Obviously, yeah, milking Holcim.
Frasians are sort of mygranddad's ex-herd so there's
sort of 65-odd years of breedingthere.
So big cows, big production,high ash input.
I wouldn't say we're over thetop but we're, we're getting up
there now, but we're now we'relooking at the other window and
(02:51):
actually the herd's on the otherside of the caravan.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So, uh, yeah, so what are we?
What are you calling sort?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
of 600 kilos.
Yeah, we work on 600 um, it's apretty pretty close average.
So, yeah, try and do.
Try and do their body weight,which is pretty good.
But now we've got the feed pad.
There's probably a wee bit moreroom there to get a bit more
efficient on feed.
It's obviously our biggest,probably our biggest cost and
there's our biggest thing thatwe can improve on was obviously
with this feed pad is to getmore efficient on our feed.
Yeah, yeah, utilizing it moreyeah, so what was the?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
so there's two kind of interesting elements to your
system.
One is your autumn carving andthe other one is is that the
feed pad's a reasonably recentthing.
So what?
What were the drivers behindkind of both those decisions?
Matt's going to claim hisadvice around the feedpad,
obviously, but I think that's astretch yeah, a very long
stretch actually
Speaker 3 (03:34):
yeah, no, I love whole scene free jeans, but they
do the milk.
They are harder to get in calf,which we all know that with our
system.
Obviously they get it.
They're harder to get in calves.
You can give them another shot.
Whatever doesn't get in calvesin the spring, they'll go
through to winter.
We've obviously got a winterpremium, which helps too.
All your culls or your latecalvers you can play with and
keep milking if you need to, tomake up numbers and hence why
(03:57):
we're on stony ground here too,but hence the winter milking
with supplement use over winter.
It's quite high and obviouslythe amount of feed, the cost of
it these days and the quality ofit is just trying to utilize
every bit of it and we're justwasting too much in the paddock.
It's just some wet days thatmake you bloody cry In the time
(04:18):
you're trapping out and aroundthose paddocks, bloody five or
six times in that paddock withthe wagon.
Then you're back there 30-odlater doing the same.
Just takes your toll like pastyour damage with sort of you're
drilling up to 30 odd hectares ayear.
Yeah right, yeah, obviouslywe're in t on your tractor.
Matt told me when we did thecalculator he would drop me a
tractor hours in half and Ididn't believe him.
But I'd 100 agree to hear fromyou now?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
oh yes recorded.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, no, I said yeah , you're taking soilage way down
the back of the farm andtrapping down the back and going
to load up and go to the nextherd way down the farm.
It took a lot of time andtrapping around the mud, but now
on the feed pad, you load upand you only have to drive 50
metres and you're there and it'sa two-minute job.
Now.
Yeah, anybody can do it.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
So how long have you been autumn carving for?
And it always just seems to me,it strikes me as a bold move in
an area where I kind oftraditionally have in my mind
that winter growth rates are low.
In terms of the making thatdecision to go autumn carving
and you didn't have theinfrastructure at that stage, I
(05:21):
was obviously, definitely havingthe winter contract makes it
more worthwhile doing and we hadthe feed to do it.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
more worthwhile doing , and if we had the feed to do
it.
But I guess we always had thefeed pad in the back of our mind
to do at some stage, but it wasjust a matter of time, the
right timing to do it it wasstill worthwhile.
You know it's still worthwhilefeeding in the paddock, but you
just had to be cautious of howyou around fence lines and your
localisation wasn't there.
Yeah, so that's probably a mainreason of winter milking.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And a dry cow's an expensive cow, so might as well
feed them a bit more and get abit of milk out of them.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, keep your dry period to a minimum.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, and we milk our late milkers through too, so
they sort of get their six ofthose dry and that's their time
off.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Just going back to the feed so we've got obviously
the maize growing on farm andbrought in.
We've got some grass silagebeing brought into the system.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And then you mentioned lucerne as well.
This is the last couple ofyears we sort of started with.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, three years ago now we bought a little bit of
lucerne to try and loved that.
So we got more last year thanwe got even more this year.
So a big fan of that.
We're sort of paying a similaramount to grass silage to
getting lucens.
To me for winter milking, itwas sort of a no-brainer, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Why we can get it locally and handy.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's a pretty close cart, so increased protein for
that winter period and intofirst round.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Into first round yeah , we had enough this year we
actually fed into the first wellinto spring, which, yeah, was
really worthwhile.
Hence we got more this year tofeed it longer, probably into
the season, depending on how thespring was but, and probably to
minimise feeding a little bitthrough the shed.
Now we've got through the threwit onto the feed pad.
But different if we didn't havethe feed pad you'd do more
through the shed, but now we'vegot the feed pad, might as well
(06:59):
utilise that as well.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, yeah, so how are you using that or how much
you're putting through in shed?
Now You're just bringing thatright back to sort of fine
tuning the last bit of the diet.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, we're still sort of that on average,
probably four to five kilosthrough the shed, yeah, through
winter time.
It's made up of wheat and a bitof soy hulls and a bit of
soybean meal, collagen, a littlebit of maize through winter and
then top out of lucerne with alucerne diet in there, yeah,
yeah.
So no big fan of lucerne, whywe can get it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yep, and approximately how many tons of
feed a cow?
Yeah, it's a little bit of amix of growing on or within your
own boundaries and imported,isn't it?
But just broadly, what are thetons of cow?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
There's a fair bit brought in.
Well, in total we sort of workon a good ton of dry matter of
cow for the season of Maysoilage.
It'll be very similar to thatbetween grass soilage and
lucerne soilage.
There's still about a ton ofcow wheat a year or two, so it's
a fair bit still goes throughthe cow shed.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, so it's three.
So you say, sort of what's that?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
maybe 40% of the diet , 40% probably pretty safe to
say 40% of the diet, yeah, butthese cows don't milk on grass,
like they've got to have abalanced diet, hence the
varieties of feed that we'refeeding and through the shed.
You don't get 600 kilos on justa grass-fed diet.
I'm a big believer on maizeevery day of the year, pretty
(08:22):
much.
That's what we sort of 300, agood 300 days of the year that
we'll work on Having maizesilage in their diet.
It's definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
What's your average pasture growth around here
annually?
Where would you sit, because I?
Mean that's the last piece ofthe puzzle we're sort of at 18,
19 tonne probably here, pushing.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Maybe on a good year it might be that 19 tonne.
Yeah, we're pretty lucky in ourclimate.
Where we are here, we stillgrow some grass in winter Some
days we probably on average wemight get to 15 to 20, might
even grow 20 days some days.
Definitely helps coming intospring.
You don't have that long wintergrowth sitting there ready to
so, like when the grass isgrowing in spring you're fresh
(08:59):
and you're ready to go.
Just keep nipping it off overwinter.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
do one round through the winter really yep, so
essentially you're just tryingto stay an optimum pre and post
grazing all the way through.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
We're not trying to build a feed wedge we don't have
to fight that quality at theother end of winter into your
spring trying to get thatcleaned up.
Yeah, yeah, which is the ideaYep Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I'm sure listeners will be curious about you.
Know the cost to set this kindof infrastructure up, yeah, and
you've obviously done itrecently.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So, ballpark, you know, without sort of giving
away necessarily the exactnumber, but does it cost you a
cow, or Probably something abouta grand a cow maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Give or take exact number.
But does it cost you a cow orthey're probably something about
a grand a cow maybe.
Yeah, yeah, give it, give atake.
Yeah, we went quite basic.
I mean, you could probably blowthat out to double that if you
did it different ways.
But yeah each their own.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
We just build a simple feed feed pad just for
feeding cows and yeah, so cowsare only on there for an hour or
two a day if we explain it forthe, for the listener, we've got
basically two feed lanesoutside and you've got it's 100,
so the cow area is 150 long by7 metres the cow area, and they
go in the middle and then youfeed around the outside.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Basically you can also sort of avoid troughs in
the middle of the feed pads soyou can top up or feed if it's
raining, You're not amongst cowsor feeding out.
Before cows get there you canshoot around and top them up if
you have to.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Cows on the inside.
You feed around the outside.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you've got 300 metres of feeding length around
the outside Feeding face is 300metres.
Yeah, yeah, and you think youcan feed 380, 400 cows.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Budget on 380, but we've had over 400 on there.
But yeah, 400's a but 400,.
420 is a pretty comfortablenumber without them pushing too
much and they can all got roomto eat pretty comfortably.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, so we're well and truly got the room for them
now.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And did you have to do much by way of upgrading
effluent systems in addition tothat whole project?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
No, we're lucky.
We had a pretty big effluentponds.
We had enough storage alreadyfor that, so it was just a
matter of building a feed pad,and I don't think there's any
answer to feed pad effluent.
We're still trying to workthrough that and fine tune that.
That'll be just an ongoingtweaking.
A few things here, but no,we're very lucky on that respect
.
We already had a big pond andit was pretty simple really.
(11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And so that respect, we already had a big pond and,
yeah, it was pretty simplereally, yeah, yeah.
And so, with that effluent isthat that's now targeted towards
your maize ground.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That will be on platform and elsewhere yeah, or
or the kale ground crops yeahwent on, um, we went on the kale
, um kale ground before wedirect drilled it, which is so a
bit on fertilizer, I suppose.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, which is the idea, yeah, any assumptions on
where we'd sit with some of thatreduction in fert costs?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh well, we didn't worry about putting a starter
fert on the kale paddock thisyear, we just solidly went on to
feed paddy for a little muckout of the stone track there, so
haven't exactly worked it out.
But yeah, just the starter fertcost has gone from that,
basically, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Just to get my own head around it.
So that area that's kind ofinside the farm boundary but
it's not I think you said it'snot part of the milking platform
.
Is that like a dedicated kindof cropping, wintering type
block?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Oh, we've got 40 hectares over the road we sort
of treat roughly as our runoffbut we sort of do milk off there
and do grow crops on both sidesof the road just for more
pasture renewal program.
Really it was solidly forrunoff, but now we've just mixed
and mingled a little bit Milkoff it as well and grow silage
and a bit of kale here just toextend that.
(12:29):
Otherwise we're going into.
Well, kale was probably gettingtoo quick into our round.
We're back there too fast, sothat was probably our driver for
that reason, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What's something that you didn't like, a benefit
that's come out of it that youdidn't expect that you'd see, or
was something that surprisedyou with having the pad I?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
don't know.
There's lots of little thingsthat we probably didn't realise.
Well, obviously, care conditionProbably had the odd few more
lanes, but that was probablyexpected.
Being on new concrete, it'sjust part of the package.
But yeah, it's probably the themost is probably the pastures.
The pasture damage we don't,we're not seeing, you don't have
feed outlines everywheregateways, and we don't have a
tractor and we can go down thelanes now.
So the lanes, I guess willreduction.
(13:11):
Reduction of lanes of r and mand stuff getting.
There's only cows walking inthere.
Yeah, um, tractor wagon sayscleaner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, nah.
So there's there cleaner.
So there's probably lots oflittle hidden things that we're
finding along the way.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And you kind of touched earlier on the labour
efficiency, the loading up andfeeding out.
What do you reckon that'sactually?
I know Matt would have donesome dodgy calculation.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm sure when he first had that.
But what's it in farmer terms?
Let's get the good oil here.
Calculation I'm sure when hefirst had the lactobacillus.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, but what's it in farmer terms?
Let's get the good oil here.
In terms of what do you thinkit's going to do?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Ours on the tractor would be.
Feeding out on the peak of theseason would be probably in half
easy.
Wow, it's only a five-minutejob to go feed out an ounce out
of an hour.
Yeah, you just load up andstraight around the feed pad and
you're done.
Yeah, yeah anybody can do it.
It was quite surprising howmuch time you wasted driving
down the other end of the farmand down the furthest end of the
paddock to go feed a load ofsoil, a jet, yeah, and obviously
feeding your own cows and stufftoo, and that was way, way
(14:08):
easier way less tractor hours.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I also put some lights on.
I'm just looking at as well.
Yeah, yeah, purpose I mean justlate if we get a weather event
you're banging off.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
You know dairy farmers work in the dark.
Sometimes we start early, theystart early.
I know you get up in the lightand finish in the light.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I'm opening myself up for this one, but just staying
there, obviously.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
And the wow, and the big.
We didn't even.
It was actually the feed padbuilder who sort of talked us
into it.
We thought, oh, why are you onthe job?
Your mother will chuck him in.
I said it later on like I meanthe overall cost of chucking
some lots in or nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Fries with that from the.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Uh, yeah, yeah, oh, I mean it's not that's, that's
probably not necessary, but it'sa nice thing to have a nice to
have while you're on the job,because it probably would have
never been added onto later on.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So if you're gonna do it, you might as well do it
properly, if you know what Imean yeah, yeah, yeah yeah uh,
and and you've touched on it alittle bit um, so the feed
manager on the pad and yourwasted rates.
Now you know we've, we went outthere, I think my first comment
to you there's no nib, uh,there, but you, you know you've
got, yeah, not a lot of wastage.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
No, like on the peak we're feeding out.
He beside we've got a wee um, apush that goes on the silage,
grab a wee toy.
I think we shoot around thereonce a day and it takes probably
a minute or two and it doesn'tadjust it back in.
But we feed maze out thereprobably for six weeks at the
moment and we haven't had toclean the sides up.
So there's nothing, nothinggetting at the moment wasted,
just a minute this is no,there's nothing, nothing wasted,
(15:39):
yeah.
Yeah, in the rain you always gotto be careful of hair and when
you feed it, yeah, it's a beautyof being able to feed around
the outside you can just puthalf a light around and then
shoot back around 10, 15 minuteslater, yeah, and top it back up
again to save that feed gettingwet and wasted, spoiled.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And so part of those probably promises I was giving
you was around that conservedfeed Do you think you're going
to?
I mean, is it a reduction ofsome of that bought-in feed or
are you just being able tobetter position some of that
feed now?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
It's probably better position, but we well, the first
day we went on the feed pad.
We feed the same amount on thefeed pad as we were feeding in
the paddock and we saved four,four wheat ton a day, just like
that over on the first day.
Um, so yeah, it was a big guy.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I'm not actually realized to see it for wheat ton
.
Did you just add a curiosity asa percentage what that was?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
yeah, I don't know what that works out to be, but
it's significant, regardless ofair it's four tonne a day now
it's probably one and a halftonne of dry milk.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
We probably milk.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We probably have this ability to milk more cows.
We probably.
We still feed the same amountof soilage, but we feed more.
We feed it to more cows yeahwhich is productions up, yeah,
feed more chaos.
So in the long run it is yeah,it's saving you yeah, yeah, yeah
yeah yeah why don't we budgeton one of those pits out?
there is what you see in wastageevery year normally.
Yeah, wow, yeah, your picture.
(17:04):
Yeah, one of those stacks thatworked out to be what we were
wasting a year so, and to ourlisteners, those stacks are very
large, given that no one canactually see those.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
It's quite an incentive to go by the looks.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, so it was a big item to actually just
physically see the soil that'sgetting sowed on the pad where
we were just bogging into themud.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
So here's the system now.
So it's all quite new, and Ithink you might have stated but
have you done?
Is the season going to be onefull round with it, or was it
July last?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
year, oh, july.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
so yeah, almost a full season, almost a full
season, yeah and so you know,probably linking back to Matt's
kind of point about surpriseslike, how much more do you think
you've kind of got most of thebenefits out of it, or do you
think, hey, shit, I've got somemore gains to be?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, no, I'm pretty happy with where we are with it.
I think there might be a fewthings to tweak with it, but no,
I'm pretty happy with how it'sgone and where we're sitting in
the position we're in here.
I don't think too much needs tobe changed here on that happy
medium spot.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I guess Yep yeah, other than finding the solution
to your effluent, yeah, That'llbe just a, we'll get there yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, and sort ofgoing ahead a little bit further
, so in the next sort of two,three years.
You know, it sounds like you'vemade quite a few changes
already.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Efficiency gains.
What potential?
Yeah, a lot pretty, I think.
Yeah, obviously the fever is amassive one.
Obviously, that feed efficiencywas probably a main one.
We've sort of got that prettyall tidied up now, but no, we're
pretty happy where we are.
I think we've found the sweetspot of the care numbers and
care production.
Obviously, production isprobably always an ongoing.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You can always do better.
The score is the limit.
They say so.
Other than that, we're prettyhappy of what we're doing and
where we are now.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, sounds like you've got the genetics.
Well, not in the paddock behindus anymore, but the genetics,
yeah, no, I'm pretty happy withthem.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
That's just an ongoing fine-tuning, with those
cows too, of where we are andwhere we're going.
Yeah nice, try and breed themto do a bit more milk.
Yep, yeah nice, that's alwaysthe goal.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
That.
So where's the girl?
Yeah, oh well, this has been,uh, this has been a great
impromptu little podcast, um, sothanks, uh, thanks for joining
us, thanks for having us on theon the tinker track this is uh
one for the books for us.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
So yeah, I don't think anybody's part got to try.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
No, no, no actually I'm starting to recognize that
there might have been a bit of astitch up here, that matt knew
that he might have had a littlepet on the back about his feed
pad, that he calculated thathe'd worked through.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, makes him feel good though.
Yeah, it does make him feelgood.
He's pretty chuffed Small wins.
I've got to take them wherethey are.
He doesn't get them from histeam.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
It's great to get a compliment from the farmer.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Well, before I get beaten up anymore, thanks again,
will.
It's been a pleasure having youon and for those that have
liked this yarn from the caravanfrom the Royal Roadie, make
sure you like and subscribe andtune in next time where we'll be
talking all things ways again.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Very good Thanks, man Cool Cheers.
G'day and welcome to Feed for Thought, a regular
podcast from Pioneer coveringeverything from farm systems to
crops and products and much,much more.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome back to Feed for Thought.
My name's Matt Daly and we'reback in the caravan on the rural
roadie, so I've got Wade withme, Wade, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We're very good mate.
We're getting used to thesedoing podcasts in tight spaces.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, and today we're doing it from Canterbury, we
made it all the way down south.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, it was a hell of a trip down here earlier and
actually I'm getting my daysmixed up Late last week now to
make our way down here, but it'sgood to be here and getting out
on some Cantery farms.
It's epic.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, and literally we've pulled up, and I can see
the cows actually walking downthe feed pad as we crack into
this podcast with Will Bailey.
So, will, thanks for having uson your tanker track.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
No, thank you, literally parked in the middle
of the tanker track.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, I bet you, when you woke up this morning, you
weren't thinking there's goingto be a couple of blokes parked
up in the caravan.
No, I gotta be doing a podcast,but no, no, I never thought of
that yeah, good man for uh, forputting yourself out there,
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, thanks, mate.
And we've just come off freshoff a a field day, just down the
road talking about new hybridsand talking about maize and farm
systems and and we caught up.
I'm trying to think was it 18months ago?
Maybe now would have been,roughly probably.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you'restarting to look at well, you'd
had the idea of Feedpad andstarting to look at a few
numbers around, it Just tryingto finalise numbers and, yeah,
(01:31):
hearing where it looked and whatit looked like in the place,
yeah, so you know like if onlythe listeners could see.
But yeah, literally these cowsare coming down.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
You're into the first .
This is the first full seasonof it.
Yeah, we're on there for halfthe winter, so we're on there
for sort of the first week ofjuly we made managed to get on
there.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
So nice bit of a game changer, yeah yeah, so we're
going to get into that in a bit,but if we could just start with
a few basic farm details aroundthe heat gears and the system
that you run yeah, so we'reprobably um, we're here in
swanana milking about 640, 650cows, holstein Frusions.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
We went to milk 300 odd cows, 225 hectares,
effective sort of milk off 185,treat sort of the other 30 to 40
hectares as a bit of a runoff,grow kale for wintering and try
and well.
This is the second time I'vegrown maize on the platform.
It's normally all bought in butthat seems to be working quite
well in the re-grassing rotation.
(02:30):
Obviously, yeah, milking Holcim.
Frasians are sort of mygranddad's ex-herd so there's
sort of 65-odd years of breedingthere.
So big cows, big production,high ash input.
I wouldn't say we're over thetop but we're, we're getting up
there now, but we're now we'relooking at the other window and
(02:51):
actually the herd's on the otherside of the caravan.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So, uh, yeah, so what are we?
What are you calling sort?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
of 600 kilos.
Yeah, we work on 600 um, it's apretty pretty close average.
So, yeah, try and do.
Try and do their body weight,which is pretty good.
But now we've got the feed pad.
There's probably a wee bit moreroom there to get a bit more
efficient on feed.
It's obviously our biggest,probably our biggest cost and
there's our biggest thing thatwe can improve on was obviously
with this feed pad is to getmore efficient on our feed.
Yeah, yeah, utilizing it moreyeah, so what was the?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
so there's two kind of interesting elements to your
system.
One is your autumn carving andthe other one is is that the
feed pad's a reasonably recentthing.
So what?
What were the drivers behindkind of both those decisions?
Matt's going to claim hisadvice around the feedpad,
obviously, but I think that's astretch yeah, a very long
stretch actually
Speaker 3 (03:34):
yeah, no, I love whole scene free jeans, but they
do the milk.
They are harder to get in calf,which we all know that with our
system.
Obviously they get it.
They're harder to get in calves.
You can give them another shot.
Whatever doesn't get in calvesin the spring, they'll go
through to winter.
We've obviously got a winterpremium, which helps too.
All your culls or your latecalvers you can play with and
keep milking if you need to, tomake up numbers and hence why
(03:57):
we're on stony ground here too,but hence the winter milking
with supplement use over winter.
It's quite high and obviouslythe amount of feed, the cost of
it these days and the quality ofit is just trying to utilize
every bit of it and we're justwasting too much in the paddock.
It's just some wet days thatmake you bloody cry In the time
(04:18):
you're trapping out and aroundthose paddocks, bloody five or
six times in that paddock withthe wagon.
Then you're back there 30-odlater doing the same.
Just takes your toll like pastyour damage with sort of you're
drilling up to 30 odd hectares ayear.
Yeah right, yeah, obviouslywe're in t on your tractor.
Matt told me when we did thecalculator he would drop me a
tractor hours in half and Ididn't believe him.
But I'd 100 agree to hear fromyou now?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
oh yes recorded.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, no, I said yeah , you're taking soilage way down
the back of the farm andtrapping down the back and going
to load up and go to the nextherd way down the farm.
It took a lot of time andtrapping around the mud, but now
on the feed pad, you load upand you only have to drive 50
metres and you're there and it'sa two-minute job.
Now.
Yeah, anybody can do it.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
So how long have you been autumn carving for?
And it always just seems to me,it strikes me as a bold move in
an area where I kind oftraditionally have in my mind
that winter growth rates are low.
In terms of the making thatdecision to go autumn carving
and you didn't have theinfrastructure at that stage, I
(05:21):
was obviously, definitely havingthe winter contract makes it
more worthwhile doing and we hadthe feed to do it.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
more worthwhile doing , and if we had the feed to do
it.
But I guess we always had thefeed pad in the back of our mind
to do at some stage, but it wasjust a matter of time, the
right timing to do it it wasstill worthwhile.
You know it's still worthwhilefeeding in the paddock, but you
just had to be cautious of howyou around fence lines and your
localisation wasn't there.
Yeah, so that's probably a mainreason of winter milking.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And a dry cow's an expensive cow, so might as well
feed them a bit more and get abit of milk out of them.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, keep your dry period to a minimum.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, and we milk our late milkers through too, so
they sort of get their six ofthose dry and that's their time
off.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Just going back to the feed so we've got obviously
the maize growing on farm andbrought in.
We've got some grass silagebeing brought into the system.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And then you mentioned lucerne as well.
This is the last couple ofyears we sort of started with.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, three years ago now we bought a little bit of
lucerne to try and loved that.
So we got more last year thanwe got even more this year.
So a big fan of that.
We're sort of paying a similaramount to grass silage to
getting lucens.
To me for winter milking, itwas sort of a no-brainer, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Why we can get it locally and handy.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
It's a pretty close cart, so increased protein for
that winter period and intofirst round.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Into first round yeah , we had enough this year we
actually fed into the first wellinto spring, which, yeah, was
really worthwhile.
Hence we got more this year tofeed it longer, probably into
the season, depending on how thespring was but, and probably to
minimise feeding a little bitthrough the shed.
Now we've got through the threwit onto the feed pad.
But different if we didn't havethe feed pad you'd do more
through the shed, but now we'vegot the feed pad, might as well
(06:59):
utilise that as well.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, yeah, so how are you using that or how much
you're putting through in shed?
Now You're just bringing thatright back to sort of fine
tuning the last bit of the diet.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Yeah, we're still sort of that on average,
probably four to five kilosthrough the shed, yeah, through
winter time.
It's made up of wheat and a bitof soy hulls and a bit of
soybean meal, collagen, a littlebit of maize through winter and
then top out of lucerne with alucerne diet in there, yeah,
yeah.
So no big fan of lucerne, whywe can get it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yep, and approximately how many tons of
feed a cow?
Yeah, it's a little bit of amix of growing on or within your
own boundaries and imported,isn't it?
But just broadly, what are thetons of cow?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
There's a fair bit brought in.
Well, in total we sort of workon a good ton of dry matter of
cow for the season of Maysoilage.
It'll be very similar to thatbetween grass soilage and
lucerne soilage.
There's still about a ton ofcow wheat a year or two, so it's
a fair bit still goes throughthe cow shed.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, so it's three.
So you say, sort of what's that?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
maybe 40% of the diet , 40% probably pretty safe to
say 40% of the diet, yeah, butthese cows don't milk on grass,
like they've got to have abalanced diet, hence the
varieties of feed that we'refeeding and through the shed.
You don't get 600 kilos on justa grass-fed diet.
I'm a big believer on maizeevery day of the year, pretty
(08:22):
much.
That's what we sort of 300, agood 300 days of the year that
we'll work on Having maizesilage in their diet.
It's definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
What's your average pasture growth around here
annually?
Where would you sit, because I?
Mean that's the last piece ofthe puzzle we're sort of at 18,
19 tonne probably here, pushing.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Maybe on a good year it might be that 19 tonne.
Yeah, we're pretty lucky in ourclimate.
Where we are here, we stillgrow some grass in winter Some
days we probably on average wemight get to 15 to 20, might
even grow 20 days some days.
Definitely helps coming intospring.
You don't have that long wintergrowth sitting there ready to
so, like when the grass isgrowing in spring you're fresh
(08:59):
and you're ready to go.
Just keep nipping it off overwinter.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
do one round through the winter really yep, so
essentially you're just tryingto stay an optimum pre and post
grazing all the way through.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
We're not trying to build a feed wedge we don't have
to fight that quality at theother end of winter into your
spring trying to get thatcleaned up.
Yeah, yeah, which is the ideaYep Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I'm sure listeners will be curious about you.
Know the cost to set this kindof infrastructure up, yeah, and
you've obviously done itrecently.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So, ballpark, you know, without sort of giving
away necessarily the exactnumber, but does it cost you a
cow, or Probably something abouta grand a cow maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Give or take exact number.
But does it cost you a cow orthey're probably something about
a grand a cow maybe.
Yeah, yeah, give it, give atake.
Yeah, we went quite basic.
I mean, you could probably blowthat out to double that if you
did it different ways.
But yeah each their own.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
We just build a simple feed feed pad just for
feeding cows and yeah, so cowsare only on there for an hour or
two a day if we explain it forthe, for the listener, we've got
basically two feed lanesoutside and you've got it's 100,
so the cow area is 150 long by7 metres the cow area, and they
go in the middle and then youfeed around the outside.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Basically you can also sort of avoid troughs in
the middle of the feed pads soyou can top up or feed if it's
raining, You're not amongst cowsor feeding out.
Before cows get there you canshoot around and top them up if
you have to.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Cows on the inside.
You feed around the outside.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you've got 300 metres of feeding length around
the outside Feeding face is 300metres.
Yeah, yeah, and you think youcan feed 380, 400 cows.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Budget on 380, but we've had over 400 on there.
But yeah, 400's a but 400,.
420 is a pretty comfortablenumber without them pushing too
much and they can all got roomto eat pretty comfortably.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, so we're well and truly got the room for them
now.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And did you have to do much by way of upgrading
effluent systems in addition tothat whole project?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
No, we're lucky.
We had a pretty big effluentponds.
We had enough storage alreadyfor that, so it was just a
matter of building a feed pad,and I don't think there's any
answer to feed pad effluent.
We're still trying to workthrough that and fine tune that.
That'll be just an ongoingtweaking.
A few things here, but no,we're very lucky on that respect
.
We already had a big pond andit was pretty simple really.
(11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And so that respect, we already had a big pond and,
yeah, it was pretty simplereally, yeah, yeah.
And so, with that effluent isthat that's now targeted towards
your maize ground.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That will be on platform and elsewhere yeah, or
or the kale ground crops yeahwent on, um, we went on the kale
, um kale ground before wedirect drilled it, which is so a
bit on fertilizer, I suppose.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, which is the idea, yeah, any assumptions on
where we'd sit with some of thatreduction in fert costs?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Oh well, we didn't worry about putting a starter
fert on the kale paddock thisyear, we just solidly went on to
feed paddy for a little muckout of the stone track there, so
haven't exactly worked it out.
But yeah, just the starter fertcost has gone from that,
basically, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Just to get my own head around it.
So that area that's kind ofinside the farm boundary but
it's not I think you said it'snot part of the milking platform
.
Is that like a dedicated kindof cropping, wintering type
block?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Oh, we've got 40 hectares over the road we sort
of treat roughly as our runoffbut we sort of do milk off there
and do grow crops on both sidesof the road just for more
pasture renewal program.
Really it was solidly forrunoff, but now we've just mixed
and mingled a little bit Milkoff it as well and grow silage
and a bit of kale here just toextend that.
(12:29):
Otherwise we're going into.
Well, kale was probably gettingtoo quick into our round.
We're back there too fast, sothat was probably our driver for
that reason, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What's something that you didn't like, a benefit
that's come out of it that youdidn't expect that you'd see, or
was something that surprisedyou with having the pad I?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
don't know.
There's lots of little thingsthat we probably didn't realise.
Well, obviously, care conditionProbably had the odd few more
lanes, but that was probablyexpected.
Being on new concrete, it'sjust part of the package.
But yeah, it's probably the themost is probably the pastures.
The pasture damage we don't,we're not seeing, you don't have
feed outlines everywheregateways, and we don't have a
tractor and we can go down thelanes now.
So the lanes, I guess willreduction.
(13:11):
Reduction of lanes of r and mand stuff getting.
There's only cows walking inthere.
Yeah, um, tractor wagon sayscleaner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, nah.
So there's there cleaner.
So there's probably lots oflittle hidden things that we're
finding along the way.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And you kind of touched earlier on the labour
efficiency, the loading up andfeeding out.
What do you reckon that'sactually?
I know Matt would have donesome dodgy calculation.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm sure when he first had that.
But what's it in farmer terms?
Let's get the good oil here.
Calculation I'm sure when hefirst had the lactobacillus.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, but what's it in farmer terms?
Let's get the good oil here.
In terms of what do you thinkit's going to do?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Ours on the tractor would be.
Feeding out on the peak of theseason would be probably in half
easy.
Wow, it's only a five-minutejob to go feed out an ounce out
of an hour.
Yeah, you just load up andstraight around the feed pad and
you're done.
Yeah, yeah anybody can do it.
It was quite surprising howmuch time you wasted driving
down the other end of the farmand down the furthest end of the
paddock to go feed a load ofsoil, a jet, yeah, and obviously
feeding your own cows and stufftoo, and that was way, way
(14:08):
easier way less tractor hours.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I also put some lights on.
I'm just looking at as well.
Yeah, yeah, purpose I mean justlate if we get a weather event
you're banging off.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
You know dairy farmers work in the dark.
Sometimes we start early, theystart early.
I know you get up in the lightand finish in the light.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I'm opening myself up for this one, but just staying
there, obviously.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
And the wow, and the big.
We didn't even.
It was actually the feed padbuilder who sort of talked us
into it.
We thought, oh, why are you onthe job?
Your mother will chuck him in.
I said it later on like I meanthe overall cost of chucking
some lots in or nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Fries with that from the.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Uh, yeah, yeah, oh, I mean it's not that's, that's
probably not necessary, but it'sa nice thing to have a nice to
have while you're on the job,because it probably would have
never been added onto later on.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So if you're gonna do it, you might as well do it
properly, if you know what Imean yeah, yeah, yeah yeah uh,
and and you've touched on it alittle bit um, so the feed
manager on the pad and yourwasted rates.
Now you know we've, we went outthere, I think my first comment
to you there's no nib, uh,there, but you, you know you've
got, yeah, not a lot of wastage.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
No, like on the peak we're feeding out.
He beside we've got a wee um, apush that goes on the silage,
grab a wee toy.
I think we shoot around thereonce a day and it takes probably
a minute or two and it doesn'tadjust it back in.
But we feed maze out thereprobably for six weeks at the
moment and we haven't had toclean the sides up.
So there's nothing, nothinggetting at the moment wasted,
just a minute this is no,there's nothing, nothing wasted,
(15:39):
yeah.
Yeah, in the rain you always gotto be careful of hair and when
you feed it, yeah, it's a beautyof being able to feed around
the outside you can just puthalf a light around and then
shoot back around 10, 15 minuteslater, yeah, and top it back up
again to save that feed gettingwet and wasted, spoiled.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And so part of those probably promises I was giving
you was around that conservedfeed Do you think you're going
to?
I mean, is it a reduction ofsome of that bought-in feed or
are you just being able tobetter position some of that
feed now?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
It's probably better position, but we well, the first
day we went on the feed pad.
We feed the same amount on thefeed pad as we were feeding in
the paddock and we saved four,four wheat ton a day, just like
that over on the first day.
Um, so yeah, it was a big guy.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I'm not actually realized to see it for wheat ton
.
Did you just add a curiosity asa percentage what that was?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
yeah, I don't know what that works out to be, but
it's significant, regardless ofair it's four tonne a day now
it's probably one and a halftonne of dry milk.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
We probably milk.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We probably have this ability to milk more cows.
We probably.
We still feed the same amountof soilage, but we feed more.
We feed it to more cows yeahwhich is productions up, yeah,
feed more chaos.
So in the long run it is yeah,it's saving you yeah, yeah, yeah
yeah yeah why don't we budgeton one of those pits out?
there is what you see in wastageevery year normally.
Yeah, wow, yeah, your picture.
(17:04):
Yeah, one of those stacks thatworked out to be what we were
wasting a year so, and to ourlisteners, those stacks are very
large, given that no one canactually see those.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
It's quite an incentive to go by the looks.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, so it was a big item to actually just
physically see the soil that'sgetting sowed on the pad where
we were just bogging into themud.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
So here's the system now.
So it's all quite new, and Ithink you might have stated but
have you done?
Is the season going to be onefull round with it, or was it
July last?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
year, oh, july.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
so yeah, almost a full season, almost a full
season, yeah and so you know,probably linking back to Matt's
kind of point about surpriseslike, how much more do you think
you've kind of got most of thebenefits out of it, or do you
think, hey, shit, I've got somemore gains to be?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, no, I'm pretty happy with where we are with it.
I think there might be a fewthings to tweak with it, but no,
I'm pretty happy with how it'sgone and where we're sitting in
the position we're in here.
I don't think too much needs tobe changed here on that happy
medium spot.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I guess Yep yeah, other than finding the solution
to your effluent, yeah, That'llbe just a, we'll get there yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, and sort ofgoing ahead a little bit further
, so in the next sort of two,three years.
You know, it sounds like you'vemade quite a few changes
already.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Efficiency gains.
What potential?
Yeah, a lot pretty, I think.
Yeah, obviously the fever is amassive one.
Obviously, that feed efficiencywas probably a main one.
We've sort of got that prettyall tidied up now, but no, we're
pretty happy where we are.
I think we've found the sweetspot of the care numbers and
care production.
Obviously, production isprobably always an ongoing.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You can always do better.
The score is the limit.
They say so.
Other than that, we're prettyhappy of what we're doing and
where we are now.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, sounds like you've got the genetics.
Well, not in the paddock behindus anymore, but the genetics,
yeah, no, I'm pretty happy withthem.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
That's just an ongoing fine-tuning, with those
cows too, of where we are andwhere we're going.
Yeah nice, try and breed themto do a bit more milk.
Yep, yeah nice, that's alwaysthe goal.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
That.
So where's the girl?
Yeah, oh well, this has been,uh, this has been a great
impromptu little podcast, um, sothanks, uh, thanks for joining
us, thanks for having us on theon the tinker track this is uh
one for the books for us.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
So yeah, I don't think anybody's part got to try.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
No, no, no actually I'm starting to recognize that
there might have been a bit of astitch up here, that matt knew
that he might have had a littlepet on the back about his feed
pad, that he calculated thathe'd worked through.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, makes him feel good though.
Yeah, it does make him feelgood.
He's pretty chuffed Small wins.
I've got to take them wherethey are.
He doesn't get them from histeam.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
It's great to get a compliment from the farmer.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Well, before I get beaten up anymore, thanks again,
will.
It's been a pleasure having youon and for those that have
liked this yarn from the caravanfrom the Royal Roadie, make
sure you like and subscribe andtune in next time where we'll be
talking all things ways again.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Very good Thanks, man Cool Cheers.
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