People often tell Kevin Jones that there’s money in mud when it comes to farming – but he’s never seen it.
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Kevin and his wife Helen have been farming at Foster in Victoria’s southern Gippsland region since 2002, now along with their son Mitchell, and needed to find ways to cope with their 1200mm annual rainfall.
“We get that wet and muddy here that even the ducks leave,” Kevin jokes.
While regular rainfall is handy, the resulting mud and damaged paddocks in winter have been a hindrance.
A five-span clear-roofed, deep litter shelter from Dairy Shelters Australia is helping to solve the dilemma.
“Land is expensive so we wanted to make sure what we have is more efficient,” Kevin said.
The farm has been on a huge growth curve over the past two decades and has expended to 302 hectares and up to 892 cows last year.
They also have land 40 minutes away at Yarram to run young cattle and grow fodder in a different environment with only about 800mm average rainfall.
Earlier they had been sending cows away on agistment to avoid the boggy winters.
“We worked out that with what we were paying on agistment we could pay the interest bill on the land and could get all the spring fodder and graze cattle on it as well,” he said.
The new shelters are further easing the burden on the home farm, even though Kevin says it has been the toughest season he’s endured.
The usual stockpile of fodder is nearly wiped out and for the first time they have had to pump water from the river running through the property.
Their Cypress Grove Holsteins is a registered stud. Kevin has been registering cattle since his early days of share farming, seeing it as a way of value-adding to their asset.
The Jones family now runs two herds because they don’t all fit in the cow yard or the feed pad, with top cows and average cows in each herd divided along age lines.
Kevin is as much looking after their welfare as his paddocks with the introduction of the shelters this year and an earlier feed pad.
“The shelters are the add-on to the feed pad,” he said. “The feed pad is good, but we still had to let cows go to the paddocks after we fed them. We found they would walk 10 metres wide all the way up the paddock; 200 cows do enough damage let alone 800.”
“With the feed pad we increased milk solids per cow from around 580-600 kg/Ms and this year we went over 700.
“I hope the extra benefit we get from the shelter with them saving energy from less walking and being warmer will lead to another increase in production on top of that.”
They have a high stocking rate, well over four cows per hectare on the milking area, which puts pressure on the farm, even with the other land providing top-up feed.
“We usually sell 150 to export but that market died last year so we’ve had to cull some that we didn’t want to lose and we still have too many with a lot of young cattle coming through,” he said.
The feed pad built five years ago was the first part of addressing the problem, the shelters the second part.
“We grow a lot of grass but we get so wet in winter, we couldn’t put tractors on the paddocks and you waste a lot of feed. People say there’s money in mud but I say the mud’s too deep to find the money.”
The shelters have been installed to use over winter, allowing the cows protection after using the feed pad.
“The paddocks are a bit firm at the moment so we’re not making much mess but this is highly unusual. That will change fairly quickly because the drains are starting to trickle.
“If it starts to come in wet, we’ll house them there at night so they only have to walk once.
“They’ll stay there until the run-off water has gone and then they’ll be back out grazing.”
Kevin investigated the option of a solid barn but found the clear-roofed shelter could achieve his goals at a tenth of the price.
He also looked at adding a roof over the feed pad but didn’t want the cows standing too long on concrete.
“We were looking for something that would work in our environment so went to Western Victoria to look at shelters in action and sourced a lot of information,” he said.
“Even before we came home, we knew this was what we wanted to do. We could see it working for us. They are successful in like-for-like areas so they tick all the boxes.
“If we can protect the paddocks, it makes it easier to manage the cows. There’s nothing worse than sending a herd of cows out into the mud.”
The shelters will help the farm to rebound after a tough year.
“We always carry a year’s silage ahead of us. Now it’s gone but we’ll build up and having the shelters will help us to prepare the farm with as much fodder as we can for the next season.”
The shelters were finished in July and have already been successfully used for calving cows.
Kevin has built a five-span shelter, two for each herd and one for calving.
“The calving shed hasn’t grown at all but the herd has, so this can help to ease that pressure and it’s good to have airflow for the calves,” he said.
The farm recently hosted an open day that attracted strong interest.
“Everyone inside commented how it was warmer when the rain stopped and the sun came out,” Kevin said.
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