GUEST SPEAKER - Mark & Kate Walpole

• Mark grew up locally and played football
• The family has now been on the new site for 3 years
• 1st milking 400 cows and now built up to 3,350 cows
• Currently milking 3 times per day
• Milking start times 03:00 am, 11:00 am and 07:00 pm
• Each milking takes approx 6 hours
• 1,000 cows/barn x 3 barns
• The original plan was for 4 barns but have realised that a bigger dairy would be needed
• The dairy runs for 21 hours per day
• 80 stand rotary dairy plant
• The cows are dried off and then transported to the old farm to calve down
• Hospital cows are also milked at the old site
• Calves are also reared at the original property
• The Walpole's have 6 children, of which 4 work across the family farms with their partners
• They currently employ 48 staff
• There are 6 staff on the milking crews
• Plus 2 x staff feeding cows and 2 x staff cleaning each day
• The cows are currently doing 36L/day on average
• Corn silage and corn grain make up a bulk dieatry ration
• 480 Ha corn is planted for silage
• Aim for 2T/cow/year
• 25,000 dry tonne silage per year
• Fonterra milk company picks up the milk 3 x times per day = 120,000L/day
• Calving all year round, which means cows are joined every day
• Aim for 305-day lactation
• Farm is computerised with cows having electronic collars or eartags to monitor health
• Staff are mostly international on sponsored visas