Seven years ago, Ian broke his back in a tractor rollover accident, laying him up for nearly two years.
“It just about knocked me off but I got going again,” Ian said.
“I couldn’t do anything for 12 months and it took me two years before I got back on deck.”
Today, Ian can’t lift a lot or spend long hours standing on concrete or even sit for too long in the tractor.
The hills aren’t just difficult for the tractors, they’re also difficult for cows and prompted Ian to build a three-span Dairy Shelters Australia clear-roofed, deep-litter shelter.
The shelter is just one of the changes made at the farm.
Now aged 67, Ian and his wife Pam have employed a sharefarmer and Ian’s health has improved dramatically since he’s stopped milking.
The shelters are part of his plan to make things easier — and less messy.
“Only a third of the farm is flat enough for a tractor where you won’t make a mess as you’re driving across it,” Ian said.
“I hate mess and I hate hay being walked into the ground out in the paddock. That’s why I like feedpads and the shelters.”
The shelter was built last year and Ian says it has been better for cow health and saved on feed during a tough year.
“They’re not consuming as much as they normally would because they’re not cold and not walking as much,” he said.
Ian has been running the farm for nearly 50 years since the death of his father when he was just 19. He now has about 400 registered Holstein cows on a 218ha home farm with a 24ha outblock.
He downsized the farm in recent years to pay off debt, add a sharefarmer and build the shelter, which he sees as a long-term investment in improving productivity and protecting the land.
“As we cut back the land, we planned to sell some cows to China but that fell through, so it’s meant we’ve pushed up the stocking rate,” he said.
“Because the stocking rates are so high, in winter the Holstein cows have become too big for the hills. They just wreck the paddocks. If I can keep them off the paddocks in winter, especially the dry herd, it’s better for everything.
“The big feedpad was part of addressing that. Everything gets fed there but there were a lot out on the paddocks at night, that’s why we needed the shelter.”
Because of the hilly nature of the farm, some parts are off limits to tractors for feeding out, adding pressure to the rest of the land.
Ian has always been a bit of an innovator. He was one of the first in Australia to build a feedpad 25 years ago, and was an earlier adapter of robotic feed systems and pellet loading machines and computers in the dairy.
He also has cow health and comfort in mind and says the herd is looking better this year thanks to the shelters, which he used for the first time late last winter.
“It’s working out really well this year because there’s not a lot of hay around. It has been a tough year and we’ve had to buy a few loads of hay, so you don’t want to waste it.
“It has been used non-stop since autumn to keep them under shelter at night, and for calving. It has been a terrible season so we’re trying to keep costs down but the July rain has made the paddocks jump a bit. We’ve never bought hay to the extent we have this year.”
They are also using the shelters as an extra calving facility this year, with the clear roof providing shelter from inclement weather.
Ian and Pam’s three-span shelter is built not far from the feedpad and the soft flooring is regularly changed.
Although production has dipped to the tough season, Ian expects the farm will return to its peak of 8500 litres at the factory, which he says is pretty good for a hill farm.
Ian is enjoying the transition to a sharefarming arrangement.
“I’m happy to keep ticking along but I try to make life as easy as I can.”
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