Taranaki's Shane Ardern spent more than 16 years as National’s Taranaki King Country MP before returning to farming in 2014.
Shane and his wife Cathy milk 612 Kiwicross cows on their 216 hectare (196ha effective) Opunake farm. Son Cameron is the farm manager.
The farm’s present day cow numbers have more than doubled since their 24-year old 40-bail rotary turnstile was built. It was taking three hours to milk through a shed that had become too small and slow for the size of their herd.
“Before building our 40-bail rotary Cathy and I had got to the stage where we doing three-hour milkings in our first shed, an 18-a side herringbone,” Ardern says.
“Those hours are completely anti-social. You couldn’t pay someone to stand there and put cups on for that amount of time. It becomes an unbearable existence. It really does kneecap the farm.
“You end up implementing a two-shift roster system, which is problematical to implement and sustain.
“It sounds very civilised and efficient but workers must arrive and leave at exactly the right time. Attracting people to that type of position isn’t easy, it’s challenging to manage and creates an environment that makes the business less profitable.”
They decided the time had come to investigate the feasibility of building a new cowshed to replace their rotary shed. Cameron was the driving force behind the project.
“Unless you’re fully engaged in the harvest you produce, milk, then planning often goes on the back foot and the entire business becomes less viable and less enjoyable. It becomes a chore rather than a nice place to be,” he says.
Cameron consulted all the major milking machine suppliers and the consensus was a 60-bail rotary platform in a greenfield location on the farm was the best solution.
Shane and Cameron visited some other 60-bail rotary sheds and Cameron milked in them to see how efficiently they operated.
They soon concluded dairy shed design hadn’t advanced in 30 years but had in fact gone backwards.
Shane says he was staggered by that and wondered what they might have been missing so kept returning to the original concept.
But the more often he went back the more frustrated he became.
He again concluded cowshed design had declined since the 1980s, the stock flow was worse and the cupping speed per teat was slower.
Merv Hicks invented the Turn-style Rotary Milking System in 1968 and in the following year Hotter Engineering founder Tom Hotter made the prototype, which was installed on Hicks’ farm in 1969. In 1980 the design was advanced enough a 60-bail rotary cowshed could milk 500 cows.
Shane and Cathy Ardern have been back farming since Shane left Parliament in 2014. Son Cameron is the farm manager on their 216 hectare farm at Opunake. Cameron, Shane, Cathy with son Jonathan and daughter-in-law Amy.
Shane and Cameron were perplexed how the Hicks shed could milk 500 cows an hour yet companies wanted to sell them a shed that could milk only 430 cows an hour.
“It really annoyed me that I’d spent 16 years in Parliament promoting our industry as world leaders in dairy technology systems only to find that it wasn’t true.
“We’ve gone backwards in that field. It was a big surprise and disappointment,” he says.
“I became frustrated with one industry expert and tried to think of a sensible analogy. When that shed was built the farm used a Massey Ferguson 165 tractor and the mower was a 165PZ that could mow 1-1.5ha of grass per hour. Today they harvest 4-6ha of pasture per hour with a big tractor with a mower on the front.”
He felt that effectively he would need to sell his hypothetical Massey Ferguson 165 and mower and buy a Massey Ferguson 35 and a sickle-bar mower to obtain the same percentage reduction in speed since 1980.
“It wouldn’t be accepted in any other industry.
“So how is it that we’ve been able to move to 21st century technology when harvesting our grass surplus? But when it comes to our main crop, milk, we’re still back in the Massey Ferguson 35 days?”
This state of affairs prompted Shane and Cameron to embark on three years of research looking further afield to central Europe, Britain, Ireland and the United States. Their research included a trip to the US to see how farms with large herds operate.
All the milking plant suppliers they talked to in NZ had come from small farms. None had spent time managing or milking on a 1000-cow farm. They felt that factor made it difficult for the suppliers to understand the requirements of a shed catering to a large herd.
Shane noticed a NZ perception that American dairy plants were backward and that they simply threw a great deal of cheap immigrant labour into their farms.
“There was a great deal of negative commentary concerning what we might see in the US. But if you’re looking for speed in terms of cows per hour, we couldn’t find anywhere faster than the US. It’s very different to a NZ dairy system,” he says.
“The cows are housed in barns and milk-harvest workers milk for three hours before knocking off. When we arrived we found many of the sheds were milking 000 cows an hour and are operating for 16 hours on end, yet the best we were being offered in NZ was 400 cows per hour.”
They then had the task of considering how they could practically and economically adopt some of the American technology they’d seen.
A number of people suggested they should simply build another 40-bail platform beside the original platform. They could then build the yard in a configuration that encompassed some of the US’s best stock flow speed technology.
That is exactly what occurred. The old platform was still in perfect order so they built a second 40-bail rotary beside it, which gave them a plant that could milk 600 cows an hour.
They were quoted $2 million to build a stand-alone 60-bail rotary and the associated infrastructure on a greenfield site. By building onto the existing shed they didn’t have the associated infrastructure costs. They ended up with a much faster shed and saved $500,000 on the build.
The major difference between the Arderns’ shed and other sheds is not the technology, it’s the yard’s special design and construction. It’s designed to provide a smooth flow into the shed, onto the dual platforms and to seamlessly exit the shed.
Watching the cows smoothly flow through the shed is a sight to behold. When the first herd arrives at the yard it takes only a push of a button at the yard entrance control panel to activate one of the two backing gates behind the herd.
It opens a V at the back of those gates in preparation for the next herd to enter. The cows flow directly into the platform and milking begins before the entire herd is in the yard.
The modern trend in every new shed is to have a single entry and more than a two-cow length bridge.
“It’s beyond my comprehension why you’d do that. What usually occurs is for a cow to stand at the end of the bridge and block the entire shed’s flow. We have a shorter and wider bridge but I’d do away with a bridge if I could. Ideally you want the edge of the yard on the edge of your platform.”
The new shed has a solid, pre-stressed concrete panel outer yard wall whereas most yards have a steel pipe outer wall that allows the cows to see the herd exiting the shed.
“Video analysis shows that the exiting cattle stop to look at the ones in the yard and hold up the exit flow. The cows in the yard then walk in the direction of the exiting cows, which is the opposite direction to where you want them to go to enter the cowshed.”
The cows enter the shed via an underpass and exit the shed on a bridge over the underpass, which eliminates any mixing of the herds. The cows can be remotely drafted in four directions by the cowshed computer system when exiting the shed and go in their respective destinations as the second herd enters the yard. There is no need to wait for the yard to clear before the second herd enters.
“You can’t mix both herds and expect the system to cope with the automatic drafting but if there are only a few cows left on the platform when the second mob enters the shed the system can distinguish from the ear tags which way they need to go when exiting.
“By the time the worker has got the second herd in, the first herd is finished or nearly finished milking. In a perfect world to get the maximum speed out of the shed you have two workers cupping while another fetches the cows. But you can cope quite easily with two workers.”
Rotary (turnstyle) gates are fitted in the yard. They are a health and safety feature allowing workers to rapidly exit the yards in an emergency and eliminate any chance of becoming hooked up in a squeeze gate or traditional gate.
There are five comfort platforms on either side of the two platform plus one large one in the centre of the two platforms, which is used for vet work. They are all able to be raised and lowered to suit the height and comfort of the individual operator. They can be raised right up to the milking platform height.
The hydraulically operated platforms were invented by Cameron and to the best of his knowledge are unique.
The shed features automated yard, platform and skirt washing, plant wash-cycle, teat spray and washing. Protrack Vantage herd management software keeps track of the herd’s data.
Shane feels American componentry is much better quality than what is available in NZ, where it is a great deal cheaper but poorer quality. For example, they use US-made silicone cups that weigh 50% less than standard stainless steel cups.
“You can go to any farm machinery company and ask to buy their best tractor. They’ve got the best equipment from throughout the world but that’s not the case with cowsheds.
“What you’re shown is what makes the most money for the milking machine company.
“It’s easier for them to sell you a stock plan that has gone backwards.
“I think it’s a case of farmers going to a milking machine company wanting to replace their shed and the company gives them a plan of a shiny construction that’ll cost them a couple of million bucks and everyone’s happy.
“But we shouldn’t be happy because it’s starting to hold our industry back.”
Shane feels certain the shorter the time the cows now spend standing in the yard might also extend their longevity. He has no evidence to back that up yet but has a gut feeling it’s correct.
“We can now milk 600 cows in an hour and could milk 800-900 cows without any problem. If a cow has been off her pasture for more than seven or eight hours a day there’s a substantial loss of milk production and more effluent to contend with too.
“We’ve been through one mating with the shed in operation and it’s already improved our in-calf rate from 91% to 94%, which is well above the industry standard.”
Improvements in conception rates and animal health issues were expected but they weren’t sure to what extent they would improve. However, their expectations have been either met or exceeded.
They now have people queuing up wanting to work in their shed. When they advertised a farm managerial position they received 48 applicants. That tells them people don’t want to be milking for three hours at a time.
“During spring we used to get up at 4.15am and at about 5.15am at this time of year. We now get up at 6am and the cups are on by 6.15am. That just changes your entire ability to be part of the wider community from a social point of view and vastly improves family life.
“While I’m often seen as the one who initiated and drove this project the reality is that Cameron was the driving force and innovative thinker who brought this project to such a successful fruition.”
