Ellerby Dairy: Queensland’s biggest dairy

WHAT doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Just ask Queensland dairy farmer Rachael Parkes.

Moving ahead: Rachael Parkes, with her children Emily, 7, and Jack, 5, runs Queensland’s biggest dairy at Ellangowan.

2017 DAIRY FARMER OF THE YEAR FINALIST

ELLERBY DAIRY

Rachael Parkes and Ged Mullins

ELLANGOWAN, QLD

WHAT doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Just ask Queensland dairy farmer Rachael Parkes.

When she’s not home on her family’s farm, the 33-year-old can be found traversing the nation and world giving back to the industry she is so passionate about.

Rachael and her husband, Ged Mullins, run Queensland’s biggest dairy, Ellerby Dairy, at Ellangowan, on the highly fertile Darling Downs south of Toowoomba.

Established in 2009, Ellerby Dairy milks 850 Holstein and Brown Swiss cows producing seven million litres of milk a year for Lion’s Dairy Farmers label.

Dairy farming in Queensland is a different kettle of fish to the rest of the country with the heat, an inability to produce homegrown feed and disease threats bringing even the hardest of supporters unstuck.

Despite this, through a fair dose of innovation and determination, Ellerby Dairy has not just survived but thrived.

Rachael and Ged have dealt with the heat by building three shade sheds and are toying with the idea of investing in low-tech air conditioning in the dairy.

With no pasture on which to graze their cows, Ellerby Dairy relies on a total mixed ration feed system, with about 22kg of dry matter fed to each cow daily.

Given these high inputs, the herd is milked three times a day, a strenuous task that doesn’t faze Rachael and Ged, who plan to increase herd numbers to 1000.

If that’s not enough, Rachael works just as hard off farm as a director of industry research and development group the Subtropical Dairy Board, as well as being a member of the Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise, an economic development group supporting other businesses.

It’s an effort well worth saluting with a glass of icy cold milk.