Geth and Glesni Evans are 50/50 sharemilking 340 kiwi cross cows at Auroa, a 34-bail herringbone in South Taranaki. Ten minutes away at Te Kiri, another property, they run another 50/50 contract with 250 cows through a 24-bail rotary.
The two farms keep them busy especially during mating. The couple do their own AB. Geth AB-ing on the platform while Glesni milks. They would fire the Kiri shed up at 3a.m., get out of that shed by half five and Geth would be in the next shed quarter to six. “Over AB it was pretty intense. I was knackered by the end of the day.” Three years ago, Geth and Glesni employed staff on the Auroa farm. For the first week or two of mating, Geth had the crew mark the cows on heat and draft them. Then he would take anything extra.
“I saw their skills weren’t really up to the job. One guy was pretty good but if he was away the farm would go downhill fast. So, I kept doing AB, from one shed to the other, for two years. We would do just four weeks of AB then put the bulls in for eight weeks, but we still needed a way to make life easier for us and not have the same requirement of skill.” The idea was to simplify mating. Datamars Livestock’s Tru-Test Active Collars went on in June 2022. Geth and Glesni added an Autodrafter and cup removers in the herringbone. Since having the Active Collars, they start milking at a sensible time and Geth turns up to the Auroa farm at about 7a.m. to cows waiting in the pen. “Now it doesn’t matter who’s milked in the Auroa shed, the collars pick out the right cows.” Because of that extra confidence, Geth and Glesni have gone with AB over the entire herd — the first three weeks of sexed short gestation, followed by three weeks of beef straws and the rest have been short gestation dairy.
Geth says the reliable heat detection using the Active Collars has removed having bulls running about causing havoc. They’ve reduced health and safety risks, ditched the hassle of tail paint, started doing pre-making heats and are able to tighten up calving. “In theory, we should finish up calving two weeks earlier than we have done in the past.” “Before putting in the Active Collars, we would no way have thought of doing AB right through.
We would be looking forward to it being finished. This year we just kept going. We were about six weeks in, and it felt like we had only been doing it for 10 days. It has made a huge difference.”
Another change for the Evans is pregnancy testing. With all AB, they have accurate dates so there’ll be no scanning. They plan to confirm regnancies through a milk test. “It is saving us money, saving stress on the animals and saving stress on us from not having to do something that is a pain of a job that nobody really wants to do in the first place.” A real surprise for Geth and Glesni has been the health alerts picking up some issues before they spot them by eye. “One day last Spring, a group of heifers were looking quite rough. We drafted them out and they were the ones that were on the health alert a few days before. It turned out to be acidosis from the way we were feeding molasses. Basically, the collars were telling us what was causing the problem. Next year, we won’t be feeding out the same way.” That was a real eye-opener and has changed the way Geth now approaches animal health. “We have the auto drafting system set up so if there is a health alert it will automatically draft the cow and health issues are picked up regardless of who is milking. If a cow is in the pen, then there is obviously a reason for it.
We check her, see what she looks like, check if she’s eating, any rumination issues, and there are several things we like to look through on the graphs. If we can’t spot anything, we will mark her up and check her through the shed next milking. There’s been a few times we’ve picked up mastitis that way.” The collars have been pretty useful over calving as well. Geth recalls one particular incident when the farm manager followed up on a health alert. “Zeno phoned me up and said he didn’t think the cow looked right. We brought the cow in and there was a set of twins twisted up. It was straightforward enough to get them out, but even Zeno said he wouldn’t have pulled that cow out of the paddock without the health alert. It would have been unlikely that she could have calved them herself the way there were presented. So, the collars have saved a few cows and have more value than just the heat detection.” Another unexpected advantage of the Active Collars has been identifying missing cows. The second farm is not the easiest contoured land and difficult to run. In the past Geth has had staff miss cows in paddocks and that’s caused problems. “The staff we have had this year haven’t been missing cows – but last year that cost us a bit. We had 10 cows left in a paddock and another group left over the other side of the farm for a good week. We ended up with a bunch of cull cows and others that had got mastitis quite bad.” “With this system, it monitors the herd for us and gives us extra peace of mind. It is another way of seeing what’s happening because we are not on farm all the time to see ourselves. In addition to heat detection, and proactive health management Geth says the system has brought them valuable time. “I wouldn’t want to go back to tail painting in the herringbone after having this system in place.”