Northern Southland organic dairy farmer Adrian Frei’s pursuit of happiness differs from others in the industry at his stage of life.
"I’m at the peak of my career, 53 years of age and still have my wife and I’m passionate-as about farming — I call it, the gentleman’s farming system."
His pursuit of happiness helps him maintain job satisfaction, he said, while hosting a DairyNZ field day on his farm in Riversdale last week.
By the age of 50, many dairy farmers had got bored with their jobs, worn down by a continual chase of increasing their herd size and milk production and running a monoculture system.
"They want to get out — they’re sick of it."
To stay interested in the industry, he changed to organic dairy farming, running a smaller herd across more land in a system featuring pasture of diverse species, and cattle which did not need to be sent away to a grazier.
"It’s hard to beat a self-contained system."
The smaller herd and lower milk production targets had removed stress from the job.
"I hate mud and running short of feed and putting yourself under pressure, so you want to have plenty of everything to keep relaxed."
To stay motivated, he launched projects to create a system making its own feed, fertiliser and barn bedding.
The projects allowed him to buy new machinery, which kept the work interesting and "good fun".
"That gives me job satisfaction."
The new machinery also made it easier to convince his children to help on the farm.
Modern machinery on farm includes a German mower with a 9m-wide single bar.
The mower used about 1.2 litres of diesel to mow a hectare of pasture.
A Canadian bale loader picked up 23 bales in eight minutes, he said.
"It’s highly efficient."
He used GPS technology and a French muck spreader to distribute compost from his winter barns.
"We haven’t bought any fertiliser for three years."
However, he bought tonnes of waste from a fish factory every year to spread on the paddocks.
He did not consider the fish waste to be fertiliser — more an "activator" for the microbes in the soil.
In the past three years, he had spent about $1.3million on new machinery and infrastructure.
The first winter barn was built on his farm in 2001.
Each cow in the barn had an average of about 2.5sq m of area covered in straw to loaf on.
Cows calved on straw in the barns.
The first composting barn was built about three years ago, and another composting barn extension had been built since.
In the composting barns, each cow had up to 10sq m to loaf on.
The original barn sparked a lot of interest, but many people questioned if he would have been better spending the $200,000 on buying land to increase the size of the farm and make more money from the capital gain on the land.
A winter barn was a better investment than buying more land because it solved a problem, he said.
"I hate farming outside in winter. The South is not made for outdoor farming — you pug the soil, you leach nutrients and you give the cows a s..... day — brassicas are crap for dry cows."
With the barns, he had the potential to milk the cows through winter and make more money, but it did not interest him because that type of intensification shifted away from the basic principles of farming.
"Follow the grass curve and the lactation curve of the cow — one we get away from that we’re f....."
Staff on a farm milking all-year round got burnt out, he said.
The sawdust in the barns was sourced from Ngahere Sawmilling Company in Mataura for $22 a cubic metre delivered.
He bought nearly 10% of the sawdust produced at the mill, he said.
In a trial, he put about 2000 miscanthus grass plants in the ground a few years ago.
"It’s a cousin of sugar cane."
The grass was grown to be used as bedding material during calving in the barns, and had good results so far, he said.
Despite the grass growing above his head this season, the yield was "a bit disappointing".
His cows were dried off on May 24 this year, putting a stop to their twice-a-day milking, and the move was made to the winter barns.
Although the cows could have been easily been milked from the barns for another fortnight, the decision to dry them off early was motivated by his wife Isabelle’s looming departure for a holiday in Switzerland.
The couple ran the farm by themselves and she was an integral part of the teat sealing process, which they wanted to have sorted before she headed to Europe.
Another reason for stopping milking early was that they had hit their target of producing 120,000kg of milksolid on May 19.
Mr Frei left Southland last week to join his wife on holiday in Switzerland.
Moving the cows to the winter sheds early had allowed pasture more time to grow, which would set them up better in spring.
An aim of the farm was to rear all of their calves, and they were breeding a "dual-purpose" cow for its milk and beef.
The cattle on the farm had a diet of nearly all grass — a mix of pasture, silage and hay, all produced on farm.
The farm used to grow crops for feed including broad beans, oats and summer turnip.
"We’ve gone away from all that."
About seven years ago they moved to establishing pasture that included 17 plant species, including brome, burr medics, chicory, cocksfoot, red clovers, ryegrasses, Persian clover, timothy and tonic plantain.
No-one wanted to talk about regenerative farming but it played a part in a gentleman’s farming system, he said.
The aim was to keep the mixed pasture for up to 40 years and avoid turning any soil on the farm.
"No cultivation, no tillage and leave it in grass."
The only feed brought in was up to four tons of molasses, which got mixed in some hay in spring.
After calving, each cow was given 200g of the molasses for energy.
The aim was to feed the cows only pasture and hay from the three weeks before calving to them being dried off.
In winter, when the cows were dry, they were fed silage in the barns in June and July to put weight on them.
They made silage because it was easy to do from the first cut in spring, when there was a surplus of pasture available to make feed.
In need of another project, he imported German machinery to dry 60 hay bales at a time by blowing hot air in them.
Making the hay this way, did not require him to buy any baleage wrap, which covered the cost of the electricity to run the drier.
A goal was to fill his sheds to capacity of about 1300 bales because he preferred feeding out hay to silage.
Efficiencies had been gained by moving from cropping to mixed pasture.
When running a smaller herd and having a target of producing 100,000 milksolids per labour unit, efficiency gains were key.
He and his wife were the only staff in the business, so it needed to be "efficient and streamlined".
"We decided to have no added labour units, just whatever hours we can get out of the kids."
Two of their sons, Jinluca (22) and Andrin (18), were looking after the farm while they were in Europe.
At the field day, the two sons could be seen driving between jobs in an electric side-by-side utility vehicle.
New technology had allowed the family to run the farm by themselves.
A favourite piece of machinery was a telehandler, a piece of machinery which combines aspects of a crane and a forklift, which they used to load hay in their mixer wagon.
"That goes hand-in-hand with gentleman’s farming — I’d stop farming tomorrow if you took the telehandler off me."
He put Halter smart collars on his cows at the end of September last year.
The collars saved him about 25 hours of work a week, including not having to get cows to the milking shed by reducing tasks such as heat detection and moving fences, he said.
However, he believed the cows learning how to react to the sounds from the collars had been stressful for them and caused a "high empty rate".
For the previous six seasons, fewer than 7% of the cows in his herd failed to get pregnant.
The cows were wearing the collars at mating this season, and he had ditched detecting the cows on heat by eye and applying a strip of paint to the top of their tails to identify them.
Despite this season being good in every way, 16% of his cows failed to get pregnant.
If it was not from the stress of wearing the new collars, then he was stumped as to what the reason for the percentage rise could be.
He was not willing to accept an annual empty rate of 16%.
The collars would be kept on next mating, but he would return to tail-painting the cows.
His tip for farmers thinking of investing in the technology was to put the collars on the cows in January or February, because it was a better time for them to learn to live with the technology and lose some of their herd behaviour.
The Freis moved from Switzerland to the Waikato in 1995.
Neither of them had any farming experience, but the dairy farming lifestyle in New Zealand appealed, he said.
"It was love at first sight."
The couple moved to the South to sharemilk 500 cows in Balfour in 1999.
When a new farm owner wanted to increase the herd size to 1000 cows, he found an investor to buy a sheep and beef farm in Riversdale and allow him to convert it to dairy and sharemilk on.
"A passion of mine is having projects."
He made changes to the farm system in 2009, including halting the use of superphosphate and urea.
When they thought about making a move to producing organic milk, they were supplying Fonterra.
"Fonterra didn’t want to know anything about it."
When Open Country Dairy launched a programme seeking organic milk suppliers, they switched processors.
The farm had been certified organic for four years.
They have been supplying organic milk with the A2 beta-casein protein type to Open Country for about two years.
Last season was "the best ever financially" for the farm, making $830,000 before tax and depreciation, he said.
The average payout for their organic A2 milk was $11.39/kg last season.
This season the payout would be about a dollar less, but production was up about 8% and they had fewer input costs, so overall he expected to be on par with last season.
"I don’t know if it’s luck — it might not last for long — but at the moment we are going financially the strongest we ever had and we feel quite happy with our system."
If his 10-year contract to supply A2 organic milk did not get renewed, he would continue farming the same way, he said.
"I’ll build my own factory then," he laughed.
Frei Dairy
Where: Riversdale.
Farm size: About 335ha.
Cows: 310 wintered this year.
Milking shed: 40-bale rotary.
Calving starts: August 10.
SHAWN.MCAVINUE@alliedpress.co.nz
