After three years of battling for business survival, Eastern Southland dairy farmers Andrew and Catherine McGregor are preparing for a record season.
The couple milk 450 cows in Otaraia, on the road between Clinton and Mataura, near Jeff Farm.
They were in their ninth season on the property and milk production was "miles ahead" of any previous season, Mr McGregor said.
Their herd produced nearly 200,000kg of milksolids last season and were on track to produce 234,000kgMS this season.
"It will be a record for us by quite a margin," he said.
The couple have spent the past three seasons rebuilding cow numbers after an outbreak of "super aggressive" bug, Staphylococcus aureus mastitis.
One factor for the lift in production was increasing the milking herd by 40 cows.
"The past three years have been survival mode for us," he told a recent DairyNZ on-farm field day.
"We have been through the wringer."
The bug spread between cows and those infected had a high somatic cell count. About 50 of their 400 cows were infected and all those infected cows were culled.
To rebuild the herd, he bought cows with the lowest cell counts available.
At the time, he was being paid $650 for a cull cow and paying $2200 for a replacement.
In hindsight, he could have managed the outbreak differently, such as putting the cows in a separate herd and drying them off in the hope some could return to the milking herd the following season.
He decided on culling instead because he wanted to sort the outbreak as soon as possible as he was also dealing with a stray voltage issue.
An electrical supply in the milking shed was not earthed correctly and the cows were being shocked on entry.
A new staff member was due to start and he did not want to "throw them under the bus" by having ongoing issues.
He estimated the two issues cost their business about $500,000, including a drop in milk production and electrical repairs in the shed.
The cost was put on the overdraft and he hoped the account would "get back on scratch" by the end of this season.
"It will wipe out some of the negatives we’ve had in the past three years," he said.
He discovered the bug entered his herd from buying 20 in-milk cows the previous winter and he was now very conservative about buying cows.
To rebuild numbers as quickly as possible, he introduced sexed semen to the breeding programme in the hope of producing fewer bobby calves.
The switch resulted in a lift in the six-week in-calf rate and fewer empty cows.
Up to 230 heifer calves produced by sexed semen were expected this spring.
The top 60% of his cows were inseminated with sexed semen and the rest would get a short gestation semen of a beef breed, usually Belgian Blue or Hereford.
A farmer at the field day said the benefit of using semen from the Belgian Blue breed was calves being easy to identify and to birth.
"They just slide out, we haven’t calved one yet," the farmer said.
Belgian Blue cross calves also "sold like hotcakes" to beef farmers.
The McGregors had progressed in the dairy industry on their own, without assistance from family in the sector.
They sold property they owned in Auckland, Tauranga and the Waikato in 2006 to buy 80ha near Invercargill.
Mr McGregor was working for a bank and they leased the land to a dairy farmer for three years.
"It was the worst dairy farm in Southland — it flooded, the house smelt like smoke, it was disgusting," Mr McGregor said.
They improved the property in the next three years and sold it to a neighbour, allowing them to buy their current property and convert it to dairy about 10 years ago.
They now employ two fulltime staff and Mr McGregor works part-time, helping at calving and relief milking.
The fulltime staff work five days on and two days off, a roster which relies on one person milking the cows.
Now the herd was being milked twice a day and the frequency was expected to switch to every 16 hours in early April and then once a day in mid May.
To make the most of a high milk payout, the milking herd was being given more supplementary feed per day, 4kg in-shed, a mix of distiller’s dried grains, palm kernel and oat hulls and 1kg of turnips in the paddock.
A plan for the next three years was to grow the business and lift production up to 300,000kgMS a season, and structure it so they could spend more time with their four children, Mr McGregor said.
"The oldest one is going to leave home next year and I want to spend as much time as I can with them before they disappear."
The figures
The 2024-25 season targets of dairy farmers Andrew and Catherine McGregor in Eastern Southland.
Effective area: 148ha
Peak cows: 450 Kiwicross
Milksolid production: 520kgMS per cow
Production per hectare: 1581kgMS/ha
Calving date: Early August
