The Games have been through bushfires, droughts and milk price fluctuations, but their biggest gamble was to put their life savings into dairying, which is clear in their business name – Blackjack Holsteins.
“It’s so hard to get into farming when you don’t have that generational land, or money, and it was a roll of the dice as to whether we would succeed,” Kevin Game said.
Adding an extra layer of complexity to their business is that dairying is classified as food production in New South Wales, and farms are audited in the same way as cafes and restaurants.
Pivotal to accurate record keeping has been their life-changing investment in two John Deere utility tractors, a 6175R and 6110M, which provide seamless data exchange to and from the online management systems, John Deere Operations Center TM and JDLink.
“I used to have to rely on Kevin and the workers to write all the details, such as the batch numbers of chemicals used on crops and in the dairy, into a little notebook,” Brodie said.
“Now, I literally print the data off the Operations Center, and when our audit processor comes through, everything is ready to go.
“There’s no guessing, and it means Kev and I can plan things out.”
For Kevin, the initial drawcard for buying John Deere was JDLink, which provided connectivity and remote diagnostics in an area with unreliable service.
“But Ops Center also maps our whole farm, and Brodie can set jobs from the office. So a worker can drive into the paddock, the plan will come up on screen, and away he goes,” he said.
“There are so many ways that we can be more efficient, more productive, and more sustainable, and Operations Center is an important part of that.”
ENDS
Image Captions
Image One: John Deere’s Operations Center is an integral part of dairy farm management for the Game family’s Blackjack Holsteins operations.
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