Innovation in managing wet weather
Robert Miller of Narrawilly fame is a fifth-generation dairy farmer from Milton, New South Wales. His family history is in dairy farming in the Milton area of New South Wales since 1859.
The Milton property has been a dairy farm for more than 160 years and was damaged after decades of agriculture. In the past 30 years, Rob has been regenerating the land by planting more than 1000 trees each year, rehabilitating rainforests and creating wetland areas. Being custodians of the land Rob focuses on protecting the habitat and conservation of the land he grazes his cows on. Rob is a true conservationist.
Rob has become a real innovator when it comes to wet weather where 1000mm has fallen in the last 10 weeks. He has applied 3000 tonnes of coal dust waste sourced from the Wollongong steel works (at no cost), to build a temporary feed pad. The coal dust is machine spread and compacted on farm to the size necessary for a feed pad to feed 600 odd cows. The feed pad is 200 meters long x 50 meters wide to help with feed times when other areas on the farm are too wet to graze. The waste is also used as a temporary measure to repair laneways.
Bark chip and ‘clean renovators delight’ (bricks and concrete that would have otherwise gone to landfill) has been utilised on the farm to fill holes created by constant rain. Once compacted and filled with bark chip, this method has become a long term and cost-effective solution to repairing laneways.
Waste from sawmills is used to erect loafing areas which is a cheap way of building loafing areas on the ground for cows to rest. Importantly, loafing areas are built up and are not only on high ground but ground that doesn’t have leaking acquirer and has a rock base. Coarse waste that allows water to drain freely rather than compact is essential. It’s also important for Rob to maintain his feed pads by regularly topping up with sawmill waste.
Rob has come up with a cheap solution to be able to feed while keeping the low-cost pasture grazing system (land generally not suitable to cropping) for his farm to avoid the significant problems of extreme wet. He has shown that spending millions of dollars on infrastructure is not required for those farms that are trying to avoid disaster from extreme wet. All pasture farmers should look at what Rob has done and find ways to cheaply avoid disaster from future normal and extreme wet events.
By Lynelle Rogers, EastAUSmilk and Rob Miller, Milton
Unfathomable – devastated by bushfire again
Imagine how you would feel if you were facing the same fate as you did in 2019-2020 devasted by bushfire.
It is unfathomable to think about but that is what happened to one dairy farmer in the NSW south coast in the Bega Valley region. From Coolagolite Road, Coolagolite (Bega Valley LGA) in the north right through to Cuttagee, Barragga Bay, Murrah, Bunga and as far south to Goalen Head is where the bushfire burned or become far too close to three dairy farms. The bushfire affected area was 6,700 ha in size.
After the fires in 2019-2020 the family were able to rebuild and return to their farm to be caught off guard this time around and have it burned to the ground 3 years later. It is not the fact that the grassed areas and established trees are burned as fire does not discriminate. Livestock, water infrastructure, fences and the list goes on of farm losses that cost millions of dollars to repair and rebuild. Let alone the enormous mental and emotional toll that a disaster such as this can have on a family and community.
The Bega Valley is a dairy farming region, are a close community and it is understood that the fires came close to destroying surrounding farms. One of which was also devastated by fire in February 2020 in the aftermath of the Black Summer fires, however was fortunate to be spared this time.
Farmers, especially dairy farmers work tirelessly to build their property as a sustainable model for years to come and to hopefully one day hand over to their children, to have it destroyed in an instant places enormous pressure on them and their family. If devastation of this magnitude keeps happening to our agricultural communities there will be a shortage of farmers in the future, hence a supply shortage of dairy products which is not something we want to occur.
It is easy to say ‘keep on going’ as farmers always do, but with the forecast of a horror summer for bushfires it is hard to stay so positive. One thing is for certain farmers will always look out for their neighbour!
Lynelle Rogers, eastAUSmilk Executive Officer
Lismore floods - a farmer’s perspective
Peter Graham of Rich River Farms, Coraki in New South Wales knew this flood was going to be a significant one due to prior rainfall on the Thursday, Friday (300ml), Saturday (500ml) which came down from the three catchment areas, that were already full, into the Wilsons River.
Sunday night at 5 minutes to 10 Peter received a text from a friend to say there is a lot of water coming your way mate, so be prepared. The three catchments upstream were at record levels of 15.4 meters.
Never has this level of water been seen before.
On the home front internet was intermittent so Peter couldn’t even check the BOM, but when he finally did it hit home for him and his family.
Living on a flood plain and experiencing the levels of previous floods, Peter had some idea what he and his family were in for, but not to the magnitude of what did happen, such was the amount of water and speed in which it was travelling.
‘Compare this flood to other floods it would normally take 12 hours to fill our basin, this flood took 4 hours’.
When Peter arose on the Monday morning, across the gully he saw 100 odd cows stranded, which didn’t want to move and to get to the cows was going to be a mammoth task. Experiencing a moment of anxiety after seeing the cows he had no answers as to how to get to them – only hope that they would be safe in the long term.
What goes through your mind at that moment?
Peter feels very fortunate today as he reflects on the past weeks, he knows he has lost a few cattle where he leases property but can’t get to that property at the moment to see the aftermath.
On the Sunday night after the storm Peter had no power for 9 days due to a generator malfunction and not being able to source another one immediately. He has been milking once a day for the past week and his first load of milk was picked up on Saturday morning.
With the ongoing issue of dealing with mud, mastistis, machinery issues and the list goes on this flood will go down in history for all the wrong reasons.
The enormity of the situation becomes apparent and raises some very valid questions as to ‘why am doing this’? Because I love being a dairy farmer and I love my cows!
Lynelle Rogers – Executive Assistant eastAUSmilk