Dairy farming duo still ahead of the herd
Had his boilermaker father not decided on a career change, dairy farmer Alex Robertson might have had a very different career after growing up in Melbourne city.
Alex Robertson (middle left) and brother Robert (middle right) with their latest acquisition – a Strautmann VM4501 mixer wagon.
With his father Ian’s own childhood spent on a dairy farm in Thomastown, after years in the trade he’d had a hankering to get out of the city and return to rural life.
This had seen the house in suburbia sold and the hunt for a farm further west. Weekends regularly spent with his cousins came to an end as the family moved a two-hour drive away, to a farm in the Colac area.
It was a big adjustment for the entire family, especially his mother Bev who had always lived in the city. The change of pace out in the countryside and lack of other family around were initially a bit daunting for the then nine-year-old Alex.
“I found it a bit of a challenge, but eventually it sort of grew on me,” he reckons.
After five years or so, a “blank canvas” farm of 400 acres came up for tender at Simpson and the family moved again. With just a house and a shed on it, and a single fence running up the middle of it, the farm became a work in progress for some years. Getting a dairy shed up and running was the first priority, but that was just the start.
“We had to break it in. The dairy, a 14-unit herringbone, went up and then we had to put fences on, track it, and laneway it. Basically, start from scratch,” Alex says.
A future on the land
By the time he left school, Alex was fully immersed in agriculture and rural living, with few thoughts of a return to the city. While his brother Robert worked on the farm with his father, Alex moved more into agricultural contracting.
An interest in all things mechanical saw him thrive in that business for around 12 years. But when his father died 23 years ago, he had to rethink the long irregular hours involved with contracting. Plagued by an injury for years, this also made the change easier.
“I had a back injury that just wasn't getting any better, so pretty much had to get out of it,” he says. “So, I ended up taking over the farm with Robert. I still like tractors and farm equipment – it’s pretty much my forte. Whereas my brother, he's breeding the [Holstein] cows.”
The partnership between the brothers has been a successful one with more land added to the dairy farm over the years, now covering 850 acres. Another farm, about 50kms away, has also been added. At a couple of thousand acres and considered the main farm, its role is to back up the dairy operation.
“We rear heifers and feed the cows when they get dried off. They go out there for around six weeks and then come back to the home farm. During the summer months we grow a lot of silage out there and irrigate maize as well.”
With calving in January, May and September and a peak of around 1,200 milking cows, the operation is too big for Alex and Robert to handle by themselves, which requires six or seven other staff members on site.
New kit
These days other contractors do the maize and silage work on the property, but Alex keeps up with what’s going on through friends still involved with the industry. His love of machinery and engineering has also shifted sideways to the mechanics and technical side of milking.
“I went over to Mystery Creek [Fieldays – New Zealand agricultural show] recently with some contracting friends. I wanted to have a look at the dairy side of things as I’m into building dairies and it’s always good to look at new innovations.”
Doing his homework a couple of years ago had been behind the decision to replace the older 44-bail rotary dairy they’d been using for 20 years with a new 80-bail Waikato rotary dairy. When his father died, the original herringbone shed was demolished with the 44-bail rotary taking its place. At the time, they were only milking around 300 cows and it was ample. But as time went by and their operation increased in size, they found they could be spending up to 10 hours a day in the milking shed. The long hours were becoming untenable.
So, the new two-hour milking sessions in the morning and again in the evening that the new shed provides have been more than welcomed. The new shed has also seen a digital upgrade for the farm. This sees the multiple digital components of the operation connected, with the various computers “talking” to each other.
“We have the JanTec monitoring system with reading and identification, and then we have the Allflex collars also linked into that setup, and the Waikato platform.”
Alex felt an integrated system, favoured by some brands, could restrict another brand’s tech being added into it further down the track. This ability to add and adapt as newer tech becomes available into the future should give the overall system more longevity, he reckons.
The ease and simplicity of the Waikato system really appealed to him as it would be easier to understand and operate by new staff including short-term backpackers.
“Instead of guys touching numbers and stuff on the table codes and getting confused, they've just got colours. Sometimes the colours flash different colours or they don't flash.”
Along with recording fat, litres, protein and cell count, the system picks up information including if they’re on meds/antibiotics and if their milk needs to be separated. Data conveyed from the collars can see different coloured lights flashing depending on what the data is telling the computer.
“With the drafting gates also connected to the computer, if the collar detects something, it will talk to the computer and that animal can be drafted off. If she’s in heat so that she can be AI'd, or if she's got any diets, or if she's not well.”
If a cow doesn’t milk out to its average, the computer will automatically send the cow around again. One feature Alex particularly likes is when the cow has finished and has been logged off by the computer, a worker can’t then accidentally put her back on again as the table won’t allow her on.
“It’s quite efficient, quite simple, and quite easy to train people to use. If something needs to be changed about the track, it's not going to be a hard thing to recognize.”
The shed also sports new solar panels paid for with a grant from the supermarket chain he supplies.
“They have programs that will give you a subsidy if you want to increase the safety of your farm or you want to do something environmentally that improves your environmental footprint,” says Alex. “And then the government kicked in with another grant for it.”
Alex estimates the panels have cut his power bill in half in the six months he’s had them.
Feed mixer
This push for both efficiency and simplicity on-farm, as the operation has grown, also extends to a new feed mixer. Although there have been a few headaches finding the one that could handle the amount of silage they feed out each day. Increasing stock numbers saw them outgrow an initial twin screw mixer after a few years. A triple screw replacement also became too small after another four years. This mixer has remained on site.
Originally planned as Plan B—a backup—it has been called upon more than anticipated. A move to a different brand didn’t increase the feed volume as expected and another change saw another machine that ejected feed onto the ground while mixing.
So, it was with some relief when Alex and Robert took charge of their new Strautmann triple auger VM4501 mixer wagon six months ago—the largest available and the first one of its kind in Australia.
Holding 20 tonnes of silage, this is an increase of three tonnes on the last mixer they owned, and sees them feeding out with it usually twice a day—although this creeps up to three times a day when there isn’t much feed about.
“It seems to work really well and does a really good job. We don't have feed spilling all over the ground like we used to. The dealer is also in close proximity to us and has a good reputation,” says Alex.
An added bonus has been that despite the extra capacity they haven’t had to upgrade their Massey Ferguson 8470 tractor which has a 260HP motor. The augers are also stepped along the spiral which lifts and loosens the fodder without over-processing and uses less power. With the gap between these steps now reduced to every 60 degrees of angle, this sees a further reduction in power required to drive it.
Alex reckons it still takes more power than the smaller wagons they’ve used. “If you're putting up to 20 ton in it, you'll use pretty much all that power. If you're doing light loads, you won't use as much,” Alex reckons.
Drought
The Colac area in Victoria has a reputation for being fairly wet, with the many lakes in the area testament to the ample rainfall. The farm has had a lot of subsurface drainage put in to help deal with that abundance.
But there hasn’t been much need of drainage recently as Alex and Robert have had to adjust to one of the worst dry spells they have experienced. The last 16 months have been tough going for large parts of southeastern Australia, which has experienced the lowest rainfall on record.
This, coupled with some of the highest recorded summer and autumn temperatures, has seen many farms struggling. While there has been some rain, it has often come at the wrong time, and rain over winter came too late to provide the usual autumn flush. Autumn rains would normally have seen solid pasture growth before the cold of winter, which largely sees the end of grass growth.
“It’s been very different I can tell you. I've never seen anything like it. Cattle just dropping for no reason and dying.”
Water has been tight at times though, with most water coming from bores they have managed. Even so, as the grass hasn’t been growing, they are going through the silage and other feed more quickly. Alex is hoping for rain and a mild spring to warm the soil for grass growth as he expects they will run out of silage, with off-farm feed getting harder to buy.
He recalls another drought back in 2006 which saw lake levels in the area dropping to very low levels and revealed the intact wreckage of a World War II RAAF Wirraway in Lake Corangamite. After skimming the water’s surface as it came down and with enough time for the pilot to escape, the plane then sank and rested submerged on the lake bottom for over 50 years. The two-seat planes were used as trainers for hundreds of pilots during the war at the Flying Training Schools in Uranquinty and Deniliquin. With the plane finally recovered in 2021 for restoration, it’s no longer a gauge of how severe this drought is in comparison to the 2006 one.
Though the lack of rain is hitting the southern region hard, Alex is philosophical about the drought which he reckons is just part of the highs and lows of farming. How long this dry spell is likely to last is uncertain.
“Well, everyone's an expert. Everyone's blaming climate change.”
Regardless, droughts have always been part of the mix for agriculture in Australia, he says.
“I think it probably will come good, but it will take a little while, as it always does in farming,” he says.