Drought a turning point for Nanneella dairy farmers
A switch to a2 milk has paid the bills for Bruce Gledhill at Nanneella in northern Victoria — but in dairying there’s still no room to relax.
JUDITH and Brett Gledhill are a slice of disappearing Australia.
For almost 40 years they’ve milked cows day and night seven days a week, an enterprise that’s allowed them to raise three children, pay down debt, build equity in their farm, enjoy holidays and buy a small holiday shack at Mathoura just an hour or so north from their home at Nanneella in northern Victoria.
Now on 170ha where they graze and feed (mostly their own homegrown fodder) 180 milking cows plus 130 young stock, the couple, aged 57 and 58, are in the run home to impending retirement.
“One day soon, I’ll just say that’s it, I’m not milking cows any more,” said Brett, who left school at 15 to go dairy- farming with his parents Graeme and Anne, at Nanneella, south of Echuca.
Judith isn’t holding her breath. “He said that last year.”
Their farming story — how drought hit them and became a turning point to a better. more manageable business — is instructive. So, too, is their work ethic of staying at it over a long period, doing the work themselves rather than employing others and ultimately planning succession and retirement.
JUDITH AND BRETT GLEDHILL
NANNEELLA
DAIRY farmers for almost 40 years
NOW milk 180 cows on 170ha
PRODUCE about 1.3 million litres of a2 milk annually
RECEIVE about $7/kg of milk solids plus bonuses and incentives
The Gledhills annually produce about 1.3 million litres of A2 milk, a milk from cows with a genetic distinction that produces a beta casein protein called A2, for the trademarked a2 brand. A2 milk is said to be easier to digest than milk from most cows, which produce an A1 beta casein protein. They are paid $7/kg of milk solids they deliver, plus incentives for quality and a bonus of up to 5c/litre for consistent year-round production.
Each year they forecast how much milk they plan to produce in the year ahead, advise their processor what they’re likely to supply and on September 1 their milk price for the year is set. Income is constant as long as the milk is delivered. “We know what we are going to receive money-wise,” Brett said. “There are no ups and downs or high and low income periods. This helps with our cash flow and helps us budget and manage our business better.”
GO FIGURE
THEIR processor, Ky Valley Dairies, a largely family-owned, registered a2 milk processor at Kyabram, 25 minutes away, provides templates to help them do the maths.
Wayne Mulcahy, who with his brothers David and Peter and a 10 per cent investor own Ky Valley Dairies, says they have 17 a2 milk suppliers and that demand for it is growing at 10 per cent a year.
KVD is Australia’s second-largest supplier of the trademarked and branded milk, turning out 30 million litres annually.
Judith, the farm’s bookkeeper and close monitor of water, fodder and financial budgets, says they like setting their annual milk production targets rather than having their processor tell them what’s expected.
“We work out our production based on the number of cows we’ll have calving at different times, how many cows we’ll be milking each month and estimate how many litres each they’ll produce.
“We put all that in the template that Ky Valley Dairies provides and it brings up an end estimate.”
About 60 cows at a time are impregnated via AI over three weeks, meaning about 40 cows calve a time.
There are four calvings throughout the year. This ensures production stays fairly constant year-round.
Judith says smaller calvings are easier to manage.
To maximise milk quality and reduce disease risk, no cows over six years old are impregnated.
“You get better cell counts,” Judith says. “The older the cow the higher the chance of her having a high cell count and once they get to seven years old their reproductive systems slow down and they’re harder to get back in calf so we just keep them milking until they go dry and then we sell them.”
THIRST FOR SUCCESS
THE Gledhills didn’t always do this or produce A2 milk.
Nor were they always as sanguine about their business.
The turning point came between 2005 and 2010 when drought struck.
“We had one year of zero water allocation, another when it was 20 per cent and another when it was 30 per cent and to go from being able to irrigate the whole farm every 12 days and not think about it to not being able to irrigate at all was a massive hurdle psychologically to get over,” Judith says.
Their three children were teenagers. “They were talking about going to university and it was very stressful,” says Brett.
“Brett got to the point where he was very disillusioned with dairying,” Judith says. “We were finding it difficult to drag ourselves out of bed to milk cows. He’d never worked off- farm.”
Judith found herself challenged to write a resume for him although he’d never had a job.
By happenstance one came up at Ky Valley Dairies.
Judith milked the cows in their 18-a side herringbone dairy (which takes 2½ hours from leaving to returning home morning and night) while Brett worked two shifts a week and as he learned more about a2 milk, his mojo returned.
A year later he left the job and the Gledhills became a2 milk suppliers, necessitating a complete conversion of their herd to genetically verified A2 cows.
They sold and bought, verifying each cow purchase with a DNA test. Their herd is now two-thirds Holstein and a third Jersey.
“All our animals are registered with the a2 company (The a2 Milk Company Limited) and are on their database.
“Each year we send a hair sample from our calves when they’re eight to 10 weeks old to make sure they’re a2 cows.
“Twice a year the a2 company audits our herd and compares it to what’s in their database to make sure we have the cows we say we have.”
The milk is tested monthly to check it’s a2 milk.
RIVERINA MURRAY COD FARM A DAM GOOD IDEA
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
THE Gledhills aim to grow all their own fodder on farm, feeding their cows on
gravity-fed irrigated
pastures and stored fodder supplemented by a nutritionist-recommended grain mix of wheat, canola meal, maize and various salts, oils and minerals.
All but 30 hectares of the farm, which is on clay sandy loam soils, can be irrigated.
This year, with just 208mm of rain to date against a yearly average of 450mm, they’ve still cut about half their annual 400-tonne silage supply on farm, thanks to rain falling at the right times.
In response to less rainfall, they’ve culled milking cow numbers from 200 to 180 and work to maximise forage and pasture production.
“We make sure every megalitre of water goes on to a crop that we can water efficiently and produce as much milk out of it as we can.”
About 20ha is sown to perennial pastures, 30ha to lucerne, 35ha to cereals and about 85ha to annuals.
“We mainly grow annuals — shaftals, Italian rye grasses — and like to be self-sufficient,” says Brett.
“We were always taught that a hayshed full of hay is money in the bank and we like to have two years’ fodder supply stored away.
“Because we get such good results with annuals (9-10 tonnes of dry matter per hectare), we can give them two to three waterings in the autumn.
“We resow each year and will carry them right through until Christmas, maybe giving one to two waterings in the spring.”
Forage cereals — oats, wheat and barley — are watered in spring, producing 8-10 tonnes of dry matter per hectare.
The Gledhills have worked through big changes in the irrigation industry.
They like their improved irrigation water delivery systems, piped instead of open channels, and its response immediacy.
But they missed out during an amnesty period on negotiating to reduce the delivery share allocation which has lumbered their farm with a higher long-term water supply systems maintenance charge known as a delivery share.
It’s payable regardless of whether water is available or not.
“You can’t offload it unless you pay it out for the 10 years ahead,” says Judith.
“Ours is twice as big as we need and would cost $80,000-$90,000 to pay out.”
WATER WORKS
CURRENTLY their high-security water allocation is at 48 per cent, and they’ll buy some temporary water in price lapses if needed, but at $500 a megalitre compared with $30 a megalitre a few years ago, they’re sitting it out.
“We have enough to get by,” says Judith.
The Gledhills’ biggest costs are grain ($20,000-$30,000 a month) and water ($40,000-$45,000 annually).
“At the moment, grain costs are high,” says Judith, “but if you started looking at a price per tonne you’d send yourself silly. I just look at the bottom line.”
She says that while some years are profitable and others are not, farming requires long-term perspective and that they’re always planning five years ahead. Currently that includes discussing succession with their kids and a likely move out of dairying.
“We have always talked about it with our kids,” Judith says. “The expectation always was they if they want the farm they have to buy it.”
“You can’t say is it profitable by looking at a single year. This year? No. “Last year? Probably. The year before? Yes. Next year? Possibly.
“You have to be in it for the long haul and be prepared to ride the good with the bad.
“When we look back over the past 20 to 30 years and look at what we’ve acquired and what we’ve done, we have done OK.”
Undoubtedly the drought taught the Gledhills a lot — to plan more, to be more business minded, and have alternatives.
“It made us more able to accept change,” says Brett.
Which is good because the biggest change is just ahead.
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