Pumping up the innovation

Francis continues to work on the farm when he wants to, but decision making lies with Tom and Melanie.

From the age of 14, Francis worked on the farm with his mother, Flora, after his father, Jack, died at age 48.

At the time, the then 200-acre dairy farm was flood irrigated.

“We have a farm plan from 1939 showing where all the irrigation delvers would go,” Francis said.

“Jack did it all, a lot of it he did with just a basic level and a three-wheeled 14 horsepower tractor.

“And he got it pretty good. He had a good eye.”

Jack had taken over the farm from his father, Austin, who, in 1919, was the first chairman of directors at the local milk processing factory in Maffra.

Eventually, Francis married Elva and the two of them ran the farm together and raised a family.

Tom moved to Melbourne to university and followed a career as a sessional musician travelling the world.

In Sydney, Tom met Melanie and they married. Melanie was working in childcare.

“We came to each other during our honeymoon and both said we felt we needed to move to the farm,” Tom said.

“I felt like I was supposed to go back home and work beside my dad.

“We came back to help Mum and Dad out for a little bit, but then we realised we wanted to stay and have a family here.”

Tom worked alongside his father, Francis, while negotiating to take over the eventual ownership (and management) of the farm.

Then, about 10 years ago, Southern Rural Water flagged it was going to modernise the Tinamba irrigation scheme in 2019, replacing open ditches, gates and Dethridge wheels with pressurised underground pipes.

“We hadn’t made much change to how we irrigated the farm, until the news of the pipeline coming through,” Francis said.

“That was what started all the development,” Tom said.

“We did a lot of thinking and planning, and when we knew when the pipeline was coming through, we were ready to start changing and developing how we did things as a result.

“We had 200 acres we milked off — 120 acres here and 80 acres across the road.”

With two dairies and two herds, Francis and Tom decided to amalgamate the herd and run them through one dairy.

The eight double-up herringbone was converted to 10, then a 14 double-up, then a 27-a-side swingover herringbone dairy.

Two neighbouring blocks of 70 and 130 acres became available, so Tom and Melanie bought those and amalgamated them into the farm’s holdings. A few years later they bought the 100 acres that ensured all the land is joined.

“That meant we were able to put pivot irrigators on paddocks and do full turns with them,” Tom said.

“The level of automation now is very handy and so simple. I can program through Southern Rural Water to send five megalitres at 2am and to stop at 6am.

“Beforehand, we had to open the door manually.”

Six pivot irrigators circulate pressurised water across 90 per cent of the farm.

“The fall from Glenmaggie Weir to my farm enables me to get 20 to 35 PSI pressure from the pipeline,” Tom said.

“So when it comes out on my farm, it goes directly through my pivot, as if it’s being pumped.

“But I don’t have the cost of pumping.”

There is still a small amount of flood irrigation on the property using butterfly valves and pipe-and-riser system.

The irrigation now means Tom is able to harvest silage off genuine excess.

“Sometimes 15, 16 days after irrigation, you almost want to put the herd back into it, but you normally have to wait 21 days to re-graze pasture,” he said.

“The new rye-grass varieties on this red soil with the spray irrigation, it’s just phenomenal.

“We’re growing good feed and it’s a job keeping up with it.”

Tom’s next decision is to invest in bore water, to assist pasture growth through winter, when the SRW pipeline is closed to irrigators.

The solids from the effluent ponds are spread on a case-by-case decision.

“We’ve just spread it coming into spring, on some paddocks that we cut,” Tom said.

“We try to put it where the spray irrigated effluent doesn’t reach.”

Shandied effluent is pumped from a re-use dam and sprayed through the pivots.

A muck spray truck transports effluent to areas where the fertigation doesn’t reach.

Improvements from irrigating with more effluent through the pivot irrigator has created a seven to 10 per cent increase in milk production.

More pasture grown and additional silage produced means Tom and Melanie have substantially reduced the amount of fodder they buy.

“Before I might have bought four or five B-double loads of fodder,” Tom said.

“The additional silage makes up for not doing that. Producing 100 per cent of the silage we use makes a huge difference.”

Tom still buys cereal hay.

“We don’t get the sun energy to make good cereal hay. Northern Victoria has the heat and soil type to make good cereal hay,” he said.

The additional pasture growth has enabled Tom and Melanie to build their milking herd to 550 cows.

Their milking herd of Holstein cows is bred favouring Alta Genetics. Everything is joined using AI and Tom has favoured sexed semen.

“The Holstein cow that looks like a Jersey, that milks like a Jersey. We’re breeding for components and for lower stature,” Tom said.

“We join for spring and autumn calving, and we only join for six to seven weeks and we’ve got the in-calf rate up to 89 per cent.

“So having that shorter and more efficient cow, it’s well fed on the pasture we grow, because we make the time to focus on growing pasture. The cows are fully fed.”

Cows that don’t get in-calf are sold.

“That was something we changed,” Tom said.

“We were keeping cows that were inefficient, because she was a good cow.

“I realised the cost of not having cashflow to do things, because of avoiding the hardcore decision to get rid of those cows that were inefficient.”

Tom and Francis enjoy working with each other, and Francis is obviously proud of what his son and Melanie are achieving.

“Tom and Melanie do it totally themselves now. I’m the gofer,” Francis said.

With both sets of grandparents living on the property, childcare assistance is also guaranteed.