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AN entrepreneurial south Canterbury family-owned operation, Dalmore Farms, is making a high-tech entry into dairy farming that could ultimately create one of the highest producing dairy operations in New Zealand The Collins family - Peter  and Bonny, Hamish and Sharleen, and Brent and Melanie - have operated large-scale beef, blackcurrant and potato enterprises on their irrigated 900 hectare aggregation at Pareora, south of Timaru, for many years.

Already milking 1000 cows in a state-of-the-art 60-bale rotary dairy, the Collins are mid-way through construction of what is believed to be the second largest dairy shed in New Zealand. Due for completion in March 2015, the massive 120 x 70 metre galvanised steel structure will house 1138 cows on a 24/7 basis, with cows fed a 'total mixed ration' of grass, maize and lucerne silage.

Come spring, the family will commence construction of their own on-farm steam palletisation plant to provide cows with a supplementary source of protein, minerals and feed medications. According to Peter Collins, the $6 million investment - developed in extensive consultation with large herd operators, nutritionists, agronomists, breeding consultants and engineers - will provide a more sustainable grazing enterprise.

"Milk prices go up and down like everything in agriculture - but at least you have cash flow," Peter says. With beef, it might be 12 months or more between when you start and when you get paid." The Collins' herd is already producing a respectable average of 500 kg milk solids in only its second year of milking.After that, Peter says the sky is the limit. "Similar production systems in the U.S. are achieving up to 1000 kg a year and we think our goal of 800 kg is realistic," he says. The herd is currently being managed by a sharemilker, while we concentrate on the development of the shed, silage and the breeding programs.

"Initially, we will house the cows in the shed overnight and they'll graze during the day. Once we get our silage production back up to speed, they will be housed in the shed permanently. "High input production systems like this are expensive to run but they are more efficient because cows are not wasting that energy walking and grazing. Production aside, our goal is to achieve a premium for our milk based on consistency of supply and quality."Our somatic cell count is less than 100,000 units, which is less than half of the national average, so we don't think we're pushing our cows too hard."

About 12,000 tonnes of silage will be produced from 300 ha of ryegrass, 40 ha of lucerne and 35 ha of maize each year. "Once we get going, each cow will consume about 40 kg of wet feed a day and 2 kg of pellets in the dairy," Hamish Collins, who manages the farm's cropping operations, says. "It's going to be a challenge, but we have been producing quality silage for our beef rearing operation for years so it's not completely foreign to us."

Pastures are mown with nine-metre front and rear mounted mower-conditioner groupings and then chopped using two CLAAS CARGOS 9600 dual-purpose forage loader/transport wagons. The tri-axle wagons have a loading capacity of 50 cubic meters and can safely transport up to 34 tonnes of wet forage. "We decided to swap from fine-chop forage harvesters to long-chop forage wagons because of logistics," Hamish says. "Our farm is fairly compact, so using a forage wagon is a more practical solution for us. We can do the same job with about half the staff and process our grass when we want. Our cows love the long-chop - they eat absolutely everything."

Besides offering top-level performance, the machines have the added benefit of being able to be quickly converted to transport wagons by removing the loading unit. "We also use the CARGOS to transport the maize, which is cut using a CLAAS JAGUAR owned by a contractor, which is ironic given we used to have two!"

Unmarketable potatoes are added to the silage and 'cooked' in the fermentation process. "Cows love them - who doesn't like baked potatoes?" Hamish quips.

In addition to their CLAAS fodder harvesting equipment, their yard includes an AMAZONE ZG-B 8200 trailed fertiliser spreader, an AMAZONE UX4200 sprayer with 24 metre boom, an AMAZONE Centaur 4001-2 combination disc/tine cultivator, an AMAZONE CIRRUS 6001 combination disc/drill and an AMAZONE KE303-170 power harrow.

"We have just about everything we need because we don't want to rely on anyone else," Hamish says. "We've been running German machinery for years, going back to GRIMME potato planters, destoners and harvesters. Nearly all of our machinery is German, simply because it's good quality and because of the service we get from CLAAS Harvest Centre.

"We've had a long relationship with Steve Scoles and his technicians know what they are talking about. If it breaks, we know how to fix it and if we don't, we know that they do." 

The Collins have spared no expense in managing the other half of the nutrition equation. Effluent from the dairy - and soon the shed - is captured in a three-stage 14 ML effluent pond. Each week, a Fliegl slurry wagon is used to draw off 18,000 litres of nutrient-rich 'green water', which is then applied onto pastures via an integrated dribble bar. Slurry is pumped along two km of 150 mm pipe and spread over 200 ha of pastures using a tractor fitted with an 9 m boom and an 'umbilical' pipe connected to the main line."When we were running beef cattle, the nutrient flow was one-way," Hamish says. We were carting everything to the cattle but nothing was going back to the pasture.

"Under this system, we are still taking the cows off the pasture to get the production but we are delivering everything back to support pasture growth." Pastures are also regularly sprayed with a biodynamic treatment to stimulate microflora, mineral availability, aeration and electrical conductivity in the soil. "We want to get away from using urea as a nitrogen source," Hamish says. "Our effluent recycling program has cost a lot of money but we believe it will pay for the interest on our entire investment in the dairy by reducing our fertiliser costs. "Ultimately, it's about pasture quality. A mouthful of pasture that has a brix score of 10 is worth 10 mouthfuls of pasture that has a brix score of one."

With the shed nearing completion, the Collins are now focused on installing a steam palletisation plant sourced from China. The complex will comprise a 16 m high tower set on a 12 x 12 metre footprint, as well as four 50-tonne silos.

Grain - predominantly barley - will be grown on farm and supplemented with molasses, a mineral premix and various registered feed medications to optimise herd health and production."By pelletising the barley, we will save 2 or 3 kg a head a day that would otherwise goes straight through them," Brent Collins says. "This saving will add up to about 300 or 400 tonnes of grain a year. The mill is going to cost about $1 million by the time it's commissioned but it would cost us $1800 a tonne if we bought pellets down the road, so it's going to pay for itself very quickly. "Plus, we'll have the flexibility to change the formulation during the season or to produce different pellets for our heifers and steers. We might even do away with the maize component in the ration and replace it with a protein supplement in the pellet instead." Once completed, the plant will have a capacity of 5 t/hour. "We're only going to need about 1000 tonnes a year for ourselves so the plan is to utilise capacity by producing pellets for other farmers," Brent says.

Besides the six members of the Collins family, Dalmore Farms employs 12 full-time staff and up to 26 seasonal workers."Our passion is farming and technology," Hamish says."Having good staff is absolutely essential and we are fortunate in that regard. "That said and done, we want to keep our staff numbers to a minimum via the use of automation and technology wherever possible.Down the track we are looking at a robotic dairy very seriously." The dairy features automatic cup removers, teat sprayers, milk monitors, heat detection, livestock identification and drafting systems, while the shed will include automatic bunk cleaners, effluent scrapers, 'scratching stations' and climate control.

Three years ago, Brent supervised the installation of the only blackcurrant processing and freezing plant in New Zealand using second-hand components sourced from North America. His pride in having painstaking reconfigured, assembled and commissioned the plant, which is capable of 'quick freezing' up to five tonnes of produce an hour, is obvious. The plant currently processes up to 200 tonnes a year, adding a high value base to the farm's annual production of 800 to 1600 tonnes of blackcurrants a year.