Dairy Farming in New Zealand

On March 13 Bree and I attended the Federated Farmers of New Zealand’s “Out in the Paddock” Farm Day. Farm Day is an event that has been run for several years now and allows people in New Zealand to connect back to farming with the main target being the urban population. There are Farm Day events across the country and the one closest to use was at Stewart Dairylands just about a 15 minute drive outside of Palmerston North.

As is typical in New Zealand, the Stewart’s dairy operation is based on pasture grazing and milk production follows the pasture production cycle. That means that the entire dairy herd is bred to calve in the spring so that maximum milk production corresponds with maximum forage production. They stay on grass through the summer and fall and the herd is dried off (so out of milk production) usually for June and July which are the winter months. They do put up supplemental feed such as grass silage and corn silage and this can be fed out when grass regrowth is slower.

They also have a concrete feeding area which they can use for feeding of supplements in the winter or if the fields get too wet. If the fields are wet and the cattle are out on them they can cause “pugging” which means they create a very uneven surface. The concrete feeding area has no housing as the temperatures are never cold enough to require housing for the animals. There is also a manure collection system connected to the feeding area so that the material can be stored and then applied back onto the pastures during active plant growth.

The milking areas are called cow sheds here and from the road they look like a small open shed but when you get up close you realize that they can milk a lot of cows in these sheds. The farm we visited had a 38 sided herring bone parlour (so 38 cows per side) and they could milk the 38 on one side in 10 minutes (or less) and then move on to the next side. I have also seen several 50 stall rotary parlours. The systems are all automated and can usually be run by 1-2 milkers but individual production per cow is not recorded at many of the operations.

The Stewart’s farm is a family based operation and they currently milk 650 to 700 head of animals. It is common here for dairy farmers to have Holstein x Jersey cross animals so you will see a mix of dairy breeds out in the field. The advantage of the Holstein is large milk volumes while the Jersey’s are smaller animals (easier calving) and also higher milk fat production. The crossing results in increased hybrid vigour. Some people have on farm bulls but most use artificial insemination for the main herd.

New Zealand is a net exporter of their milk so the fact that production is not even year round does not matter as most of the milk is not being shipped as fluid milk but as dried milk products or processed milk products. To meet the countries demand for fluid milk there are some producers that fall calve so that they will be producing milk when the other farms have all their cows dried off. This demand is fairly low compared to the total volume of milk that New Zealand produces (I think 8% is the number that I have heard).

Overall the diary industry here is very interesting and the grass based production means that farmers can keep costs down. They have no subsidies and no quota so in times of feed short falls they can just dry cows off sooner or decide if it is economical to purchase feed in. This gives them greater flexibility as they are not trying to maintain a current volume of production year round like we are with our quota based system in Canada. The dairy industry is currently growing in New Zealand while both the sheep and beef industries are declining. I think the industry will continue to grow but it still faces challenges in terms of nutrient management and other environmental issues such as greenhouse gas emissions as it moves forward.