This article first appeared in our sister publication, Dairy Farmer.
Converting 40 hectares of their 250ha dairy farm to sheep milking has enabled all of the family to get involved in the business.
Having their three children involved was the main motivation for Waikato farmers Gordon and Linda Kirkham who will milk 750 ewes with around 250 hoggets in the 2022-2023 season on the farm at Pukeatua.
Son Scotty left a job at Fonterra to come back and manage the farm, while daughter Emma comes down from the Coromandel to oversee rearing the lambs and tend to her flower farm on neighbouring land. Daughter Holly is a teacher and helps out with the lamb rearing when she is not at work.
The Kirkhams began looking into the possibility of moving some of their farm into the sheep dairying industry when a good friend who was associated with Spring Sheep Milk Co. planted the seed that it was something worth looking into.
After a discussion with their three children, the consensus was that they would take a leap into this growing industry as a family.
“It was a family decision with the main supporting principles being diversification and succession which ultimately supports and complements the overarching business and family. The sheep conversion has brought the family together, especially during covid where we all were involved.
“Having an alternative form of dairy means we don’t have to make huge changes and risks to the main business as in simple terms all we are changing is the stock class we are dealing with. This works well as it increases utilisation and makes it more fluid across the dairy cow platform and dry stock blocks,” Gordon Kirkham says.
The Kirkhams were primarily a bovine dairy business before diversifying, with 900 cows, as well as some beef cattle.
One section of the farm was a long walk for the cows to the milking shed, and this is the area they converted. They built a new dairying shed specifically for sheep milking, and the old cow milking shed is used as a nursery for the lambs.
In their first season, they produced nearly 200,000 litres. Kirkham says it went well, especially as they were totally new to it.
“The biggest challenges were around the start of the conversion making sure what we built and developed was done once and done right which can put the pressure on when we were running against time.”
Looking back on the first season, he says that rearing lambs is definitely more intense than calves, but milking sheep is far easier.
“I would happily go and milk sheep any day. We’re true converts now – sheep milk is the only milk we have in the house. It’s surprising how many people like it when they come over for a cuppa.”
They decided to supply Spring Sheep Milk Co. as a partner because of the support framework – something they say has been unbelievably helpful.
“The support they give you, I cannot speak more highly of it. We got into a business that we had absolutely nothing to do with before, our experience with sheep was chops and roast dinners and the only rearing of lambs we’d done was for pet days.
“While we were able to apply the same principles as a dairy farm – which worked for us – we still very much felt like we were in the deep end. It was a steep learning curve but the support from the Spring Sheep team meant we never felt like we were doing it on our own.
“If I called and said we needed help, there would be a person on the farm almost immediately to help us find a solution. We couldn’t have asked for a better scenario.”
The intergenerational operation proved to be an invaluable model during the covid-19 lockdowns, when Holly and Scotty’s wife Alex – who were unable to be in the classroom – were able to step in and help on the farm when they lost workers due to restrictions and border closures.
Looking ahead, Kirkham wants to slowly grow their sheep numbers over the next few years. He says the beauty of having both sheep and milk is that it is utilising their land more effectively, and the sheep dairy side of things is gentler on the environment.
“Expanding into sheep dairy has bought the whole farm together – all factions of the farm now work more coherently since introducing sheep dairying.”
