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