When Calivil dairy farmer Dehne Vinnicombe was 19, he can remember travelling to the United States with his dad to look at the dairy industry and check out a few dairy farms.
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His take-home message from that particular trip was he would never, ever buy a mixer wagon or build a free-stall barn.
A few decades later he is now eating his words.
The mixer wagon came in the millennium drought and in January this year Dehne and his wife Sarah, with his parents Ron and Marree, completed stage one of what they envisage to be a three-stage process — completion of their first free-stall barn.
It's 190m long and 36m wide, with an additional 60m by 20m sick pen.
Stage one took around 12 months to complete and Dehne said the build was relatively smooth despite the inconvenience of COVID-19 adding an extra month to construction.
The transition to the barn came with its own set of teething problems, including some mastitis, but nine months later things are up and running fairly well.
“It’s been a pretty big development but eventually I hope to build three sheds like this and one day milk around 2500 cows," Dehne said.
"Next up will be the dairy and we are currently looking at options for that, including robots."
With cows calving every day of the year, the free-stall system has allowed Dehne to streamline drying-off cows while supporting calving cows.
At any one time he can have about 40 cows drying-off and the same coming in.
“Over the last two days we had 22 cows calve and on a yearly average we have 2.5 calves born every day.”
The cows are divided into different pens depending on their age and stage of lactation, including springing heifers, springing cows, dry cows, sick cows and calved cows.
The general milking herd is split across three pens of 180 cows and all milkers (including heifers) have recently been fitted with All Flex dairy collars for rumination information and heat detection.
The cows are fed either a silage mix for milking or a lead feed mix pre-calving.
The barn is only one of two in the country which recycles the green manure and uses it for bedding.
“There is only us and Moxie Farms in NSW who use this type of bedding and they have been really supportive and helpful,” Dehne said.
"We have been able to share our ideas and they have even given me access to their head engineer for any major problems I have come across.”
As with most new things, there has been a bit of trial and error sorting out the bedding process — but Dehne is pretty confident they are close to getting it right.
“We are 100km away from the nearest sand delivery so sand bedding wasn’t an option, and it made sense for us to look at a renewable source and of course there is plenty of shit here,” he laughed.
The flood wash system washes the manure into a four-metre deep effluent pit where it is screened and separated. A screw press at the bottom of the effluent shed squeezes the moisture out of the slurry and the dried manure runs along a conveyor belt and is dropped into one of three bays in the shed. Once a bay is filled the dried manure is heated up to a temperature of around 70 degrees to kill the pathogens.
The dry manure sits for three days and then it is moved to the barn and used as bedding for the cows.
"Initially we were raking the bedding daily but now we just roll it and I think that is working much better,” Dehne said.
The nutrient-rich slurry water heads straight into the two-pond effluent system, where it is stored and then dropped into the irrigation channel when needed.
The family is currently in the process of constructing a 20-megalitre storage dam for fresh water to the dairy and barn, and a 100kW solar system will be installed in the near future.
Stage one has been quite a significant financial investment at around $4.5 million, but Dehne said having a three-year fixed price contract under a growth program with Freedom Foods has given him confidence in his business model.
“We are 10 per cent above budget already this season and compared to this time last year our production is up 50 per cent; something we attribute to the comfort of the barn system and milking a few extra cows,” he said.
The cows are happy and content and their body weight has increased from about 620kg up to 750kg.
“The cows don’t have to do anything other than a short walk to the dairy twice a day. They are really thriving in this type of system.”
Dehne said taking grazing out of the rotation had allowed him to grow extra feed and had taken a lot of stress out of management.
“If water is cheap we can put in extra crop or corn, which gives us flexibility to farm according to seasonal conditions and water price.
"We can capitalise when things are good and have feed in reserve for when they are not so good.”
This year Dehne has grown about 120ha of rye and shaftal, 100ha vetch and 250ha of cereal. He is expecting to start cutting about 2500 tonne of silage in October.
He is aiming to have two to three years worth of feed in reserve at any given time, and is well on his way to achieving that goal.
“Per cow we feed around three to four tonne of silage annually along with vetch and three tonne of grain.
"Our feed wastage has dropped from around 25 per cent in the grazing system to around two per cent in the barn and that alone is huge.
“I know this system isn’t for everyone but it is working well for our business and gives us real confidence in our future.”
Dehne’s dad Ron has always been a huge part of the dairy business. He died in March, but not before he saw completion of stage one and was blown away by the development.
“Dad was right there amongst it all and he did get to see it finished and he absolutely loved every part of it,” Dehne said.
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