My partner Clint and I lease our farm - Tipperary Holsteins in Alvie, we are both first generation dairy farmers and have been fortunate enough to establish an excellent relationship with our farm owners to ease our way through our journey.
We milk 400 high production registered Holstein cattle year-round. This is done through a single person operated 20 aside Herringbone which is integrated with Alta Cow Watch monitor collars as well as a Jantec management system. We calve three times a year, aiming for a third of the herd to calve in each round, with a mix of sexed and conventional semen as well as good quality speckle park beef semen being used on cattle that aren’t of desirable breeding quality.
Our milking platform (120 ha) is fully under centre pivot irrigation which is made up of six centre pivots, with our water being sourced from an underground bore aquifer with a water licence of 994 ML. Staffing consists of two permanent full-time staff as well as 2 full time backpackers. The backpackers are typically couples who stay with us for 6 months at a time, allowing me the luxury of spending time to raise our 2 young kids Scarlett & Rhett, while still overseeing and doing HR and admin, herd management as well as my off farm roles of RDP Board director and FASC councillor.
I am very passionate about breeding up our purebred Speckle Park herd which I have been working on for the past couple of years, with ETs and international genetics starting to come through in those. So this is usually something you’ll find me doing in my spare time as well venturing out with our caravan.