Moving and Managing our Dairy Business

NSW dairy farmer Brad Winzer shares his journey, moving their well-established family farm from Northern Victoria to the Mid Coast of New South Wales – the reasons why, the differences between farms and the challenges they faced. He outlines the key support people he uses in the business, how he manages and monitors the performance of the business, and the things he focusses on to drive a profitable farm performance.

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Transcript

The Business of Dairy 

Episode #40 Transcript – “Moving and Managing our Dairy Business”

Sheena Carter: Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast. I'm Sheena Carter. This month my colleague Blake Cheer interviews New South Wales dairy farmer Brad Winzer. Brad shares his journey moving their well-established family farm from northern Victoria to the mid-coast of New South Wales. He explains the reasons why, the differences between the farms, and the challenges they faced. He outlines the key support people he uses in the business, how he manages and monitors the performance of the business, and the things he focuses on to drive a profitable farm performance.

Blake Cheer: Welcome to the Business of Dairy podcast. I'm Blake Cheer. I'm a Dairy Development Officer for the New South Wales DPI. And today, joining me, we have Brad Winzer. Brad's a dairy farmer located on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. And previously, Brad was dairying down in Victoria but made the move up to New South Wales in the past few years. So, Brad, would you be able to tell the audience a little bit about your journey prior to New South Wales and whereabouts in Victoria you were farming?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, well, Blake, I grew up on the south coast at Jamberoo, and that's where my dairy career started. I started as an apprentice there at Jamberoo. After a little while I managed a small dairy, and then my parents came to me and said, "Would you like to move to Victoria and buy a farm?" So yeah, that's what happened. In 2004, Mum and Dad sold their house on an acre, and we bought 300 acres at Katunga, about 40 minutes north of Shepparton. After the first year, we bought the neighbouring property, 100 acres, and we just grew that business. We went from about 230 cows. When we finished up there in 2018, we were at just over 400 cows. I guess we developed that farm a fair bit when we were there. So by the time we'd left, we had new calf sheds, robotic calf feeders, a new rotary dairy which was only three years old, which was hard to leave, and a new house, and two brand-new centre pivots. So yeah, I guess my decision to want to move from Northern Victoria was to have a better lifestyle and chase higher milk prices, and get away from irrigation. I hated irrigation. I wanted to come back to something I was more familiar with. We couldn’t afford to buy back down on the south coast at Jamberoo because of land prices, so we looked elsewhere. We looked at a farm 12 months earlier before buying this one, at Dorrigo, it just… things didn't line up there. So we missed out on that one. 

We knew this farm here at Raleigh, where we are now, was coming up for sale. And yeah, I guess we were just lucky that, after two days Mum and I flew up from Melbourne to inspect the place, and two days after we looked at this, we had an offer on our farm. And yeah, I said no first off. And then they came back with another offer, and we said yes, which left us very little time really to be able to line our ducks up to be able to come to auction at this farm that was in receivership, and yeah, be able to come to auction and buy it. Yeah, so I ended up flying up, and I guess the auction went to plan. We had to pay a bit more than what we were hoping to, and we bought it at auction. Then we, obviously, we dispersed all our cows in Victoria. We were worried about moving here with Theileria and then bringing our cows here. And this property, the dairy wasn't functioning at all. I think there were 25 stalls out of the 48-stand rotary that were working. So yeah, we sold everything up there, all our Holstein herd, which was hard, and yeah, we packed up and moved here. 

My wife and my father actually hadn't been to this property, so the first time they'd stepped foot on the property was the day we took over. My father, it wouldn't really worry him anyway, but Ellie and I, we had a six-month-old and a two-year-old. So it was a pretty big deal. She was moving somewhere she’d never even looked at and didn't have a house to move into either. So we lived for the first couple of weeks in our caravan, and then we hired a container, as such, that you find out on a mining site and put it in the shed. It was, I think it was 12 metres by two and a half metres, and yeah, it was tiny. We started planning our house while we were in Victoria, and we were in the cabin, or in the container, for 12 months. Mum and Dad didn't have a house to move into either. They moved into a cabin that was the offices on this place. So they were in there for nearly three and a half, four years. And they’ve finally moved into their new house as well. So yeah, I guess it wasn't easy to start with, but that's the short version of how we got here. 

The other thing, I guess, was the farm was in receivership. So it was very well run down. The fences, the dairy as I've spoken about, there was no calf shed. So what we did when we got here, Dad and I spent two and a half days on angle grinders cutting the whole inside of the dairy out and set about, I think it took us six weeks, we revamped the whole rotary, all computerized it and yeah, just got it functioning. So yeah, that was done in 2019. I think we took over on the 19th of February. We were milking our first truckload of cows on the 17th of April. Pretty quick turnaround, and yeah, we swapped from Holsteins to Jerseys, which was something we planned on doing. I guess we thought they'd suit the environment here a lot better. So they handle the heat and the humidity, not as big a footprint on the ground in the wet weather. And we were always planning on supplying Norco, and the Jersey cow, we thought, would suit their pay structure a lot better. So that's why we went that way.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, well that's a massive journey. And I also understand, obviously, you've mentioned you didn't hit the ground running with a few things, but you also had to build the herd up over the few years to where we are now.

Brad Winzer: Yeah, and I mean, that wasn't easy either. We sold our Holstein herd in Victoria in, I think that was, yeah, February the 9th in 2019. So that was, that was a drought year, 2018-19 in Victoria. So people buying cattle in February, especially when they're mostly autumn and spring calvers down there, they didn't want to carry cows to March. No one had feed. They were all buying it. So the auction of our Holstein herd didn't go as well as I would have liked. I guess the hurry was to get the dairy up here up and running because I knew if I could sell and buy in the same market, we'd be right, which is what we were able to do. I think it was about six, seven months later, dairy cattle prices started to increase again. So it went to plan, but it wasn't what I was hoping for, I guess, when we did disperse our herd in Victoria.

Blake Cheer: And I suppose now that you've been here for a few years and got a few seasons under your belt, what have been some of the big changes or differences between the system you are running in New South Wales, or in Raleigh, compared to your Northern Victoria farm?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, quite different, I guess. In Northern Vic, in the first few years when we were down there, there was plenty of water. We had good allocations so we had permanent pasture. We moved there in 2004. It was about 2006 we had our first drought, so water prices went, I think back then it was like $300 or $400 a megalitre, so we were able to sell.

We made the choice, sorry, back then to sell our temporary water and bought in a heap of hay. And then after that we moved to a PMR system and then, virtually when we left down there in 2018, we were on a full TMR for, I guess, 80% of the year, and we were growing our own maize crops and whatnot. 

And then I guess the move to here was to… initially, I thought the best day of my life was when I turned the mixer wagon off, but that's probably changed a little bit today. So initially, it was to just be fully pasture-based and low cost, try not to buy in anything at all, which we did for the first couple of years. We grew all our own silage. The only thing we were buying in was grain, and we did quite well. So yeah, we were fully pasture based when we moved here. We've just recently, two months ago, built our new feed pad, and our cow numbers, I guess, when we moved here we started off at 300 cows, I think today, now we're milking 440, so we've plans to go around that 500. So yeah, we are moving to a more PMR system again. I guess what's driving that is milk price. I guess that's where we are, and yeah, just wanting to buy a bit more land around us and be able to pay for that. I've got to milk more cows because land here is pretty expensive.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, no, that's awesome. Now, I know you have a really strong business focus, constantly looking at numbers and reviewing your KPIs, both physical and financial, on the farm. Would you say this is a skill you've developed over time or you've had a bit of a mentor or trainer that's helped you with this work?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, a bit of both. I guess being a family farm, my mother did the accounts and that for a long time. So I just slowly progressed and took over her over the years. When we moved here, she stepped back a bit and yeah, I fully took over the management side of it. I guess my biggest driver is profit. I'm fully focused on being as profitable as I can be. That's what gets me going. So yeah, since I took over the accounts and managing the business, I've got the help of a bookkeeper, and I guess without her, I'd be lost. The information I get out of her is something I probably used to get once a year from my accountants, and now we're getting reports, you know, I get them once a month from her but I can view reports every day if I want and see what's happening, and yeah, so without my bookkeeper, I would be absolutely lost and hopefully she doesn't ever leave soon.

Blake Cheer: That's good to hear. It just shows the importance of having that support team around you outside of the farm to help you with all those different things so you can focus on the day-to-day running. Outside of your bookkeeper, is there any other resources or, yeah, news, whether that's national, international, that you use or are following for trends and those sorts of things?

Brad Winzer: No, not really. I have a nutritionist – he’s pretty low key. I guess, I don't get into feeding cows what I don't have to, and he suits what I want to do, and he's not attached to any feed companies. So I think he's a good fit for me. If I need to know something, or want to know something more, I'll go looking for things. And I guess that's how I found my bookkeeper, is I needed to learn more about Xero and how to use it, and so I signed up for a webinar, I guess, and that's how that came about. Yeah, so when I need help, I go looking for it or listen to things I need to learn more about.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, that's excellent. And you touched on profit, so what are some of the things that when you're looking at trying to be the most profitable that you can be, what are those key levers or numbers that you're looking at for your farming system anyway that, yeah, drive your decisions?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, I don't so much focus on litres. I focus more, well, two things: getting my cows in calf. That, in my eyes, is the biggest driver of profitability, so we focus on that and feed costs. So always looking at my feed costs. So I guess I just feed pretty basically in the dairy and I'm always trying to use short-term contracts for my feeds and things like that to try and drive profitability and buying things as cheap as I can all the time. But yeah, if I can keep my feed costs down as low as I can, in my eyes, I'm around or below 25% feed costs, I'm doing really well. Going back to Victoria, I would have been 50% feed costs.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, no, that's awesome. And you also spoke about your animal health. So what are some of the targets or maybe technology that you're using, say, for heifers or for early lactation cows to try and get them back into calf sooner?

Brad Winzer: So we've got Cow Scout in the dairy, so we do activity monitoring. We’ve had that for 10 years now, so I guess I couldn't farm without that either. That really helps. We don't have to go down and look what cows are on heat or use Kamars or anything like that. They're all automatically drafted every day. We just purely look off their graphs and mate cows off that. We're trying to mate cows at 50 to 60 days. If a cow's not mated by 80 days, we're going back in and looking to see why she hasn't been mated or hasn't cycled or whatnot. I don't know whether I should say this: the Jerseys definitely help with our conception rates, and I guess that was another reason probably why we switched to Jerseys as well. As far as our heifers go, we just mate them to bulls. We don't use any programs or anything on them. We just purely put two Jersey bulls in and join them. Some of those programs are just expensive and we calve all year round, so I suppose that's another thing, we aim to calve 40 or 50 cows a month, except for in December and January. We have six weeks off to just have a break, really, and it's a bit hot and humid here. Staff like to have a rest as well and have time, so yeah, we don't calve for that six-week period, yeah, it suits us as well.

Blake Cheer: Absolutely, and especially that time of year with heat stress, the impact that can have. What about your feed base, Brad? What are some of the crops or different feed bases that you have on farm for your cows?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, well, we've just moved into a more PMR system, so we've been here five years now. The first couple of years, we just grew our own ryegrass silage, and then last year we moved into buying some maize silage. Last summer we grew our first crop of maize silage here. I've grown maize silage in northern Victoria, which was easy. We put it in the ground, we'd water it, and then we'd harvest it. Being here, we've had a lot of bug pressure, fall armyworm, yeah, so it hasn't been as easy, and a bit of wet weather when we went to harvest it made it a bit difficult. But basically, today, we are feeding, growing our own maize silage. We may look next year into growing some soybeans for a bit extra protein to put into silage, and just ryegrass silage. We had a poor spring this year, so we didn't make any ryegrass silage. So currently, I'm having to buy expensive vetch hay, which I don't like, and yeah that's about it. And as much grass as we can grow, we do fertilise pretty heavily.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, no, perfect. The farm at the moment, what's your structure set up? I know Ellie is quite involved with the farm, you've got your parents there, but how many staff and how does that all work for your day-to-day running?

Brad Winzer: I guess I'm very lucky. I've still got my parents here, and without them I'd probably be buggered, although some days I don't like to admit that. But yeah, so Mum still does the calves and has no ambition, or Dad as well, has no ambition of retiring. They've made that quite clear to me, so they're happy to keep going along. So Mum does the calves every day still, until she wants to go somewhere or has something on. Dad just… he doesn't milk anymore, unless he's needed, he just pokes around and helps out, does what he wants to do. At the moment, we have three full-time staff and two casuals, and myself and Ellie as well. So Ellie doesn't do much farm work, but she helps me out with the bookwork and that at the moment. So, yeah, plenty of staff at the moment.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, excellent. That's always a good problem to have, especially in this day and age. And yeah, no, really good that you've still got the family structure there that can help out. What about for your farm business into the future? What do you see as some of the challenges, whether that be milk price, labour, pests, disease, et cetera? Is there anything that springs to mind or anything that's of concern to you?

Brad Winzer: I guess staff is our biggest concern going forward, like most dairy farmers. We're lucky at the moment we've got staff, yeah.

Blake Cheer: No, that's great. And you spoke about earlier you've just put the new feed pad in at your place. What are some other future business plans that you're hoping to do, and yeah, what's your three to five-year business plan, I suppose?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, as far as capital works, we're probably where we want to be now. I think we've got one more feed bunker to go in. Yeah, I'd like to think I could consolidate for a little bit, but yeah, if a farm next door came up for sale, I'd be wanting to buy it straight away. So yeah, we'd be looking at more land when it comes up, while it's still affordable, because I believe in the future in this area we may not be able to afford to buy it. So if there's more land, as soon as we can get it, we'd like to, if we can afford it, buy more.

Blake Cheer: No, that sounds awesome about hopefully being able to acquire some land in the near future. And what about succession? Obviously, your parents are heavily involved in the business. How's that progressing?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, my parents have been pretty open about what's going to happen, and I'm aware of what happens. I do have a sister, and I guess I'm fortunate enough that they've been open about it, and we can keep going ahead knowing that we've got security and what's going to happen. And I guess I'm lucky that they have been open and things will be passed on accordingly.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, awesome. That's great to hear. And I think that's awesome, like you said, that you've got a very open family situation about that all, and yeah, it's been done at the right time while everyone's still a part of the conversation, which is awesome. Just to wrap things up, any key messages that you've learned over the years or that you still follow today, especially around that business side of things, that you'd pass on to any dairy farmers listening? Yeah, what are some key principles that you follow?

Brad Winzer: I guess I've been lucky that, lucky or unlucky, that I have farmed in three different areas, and I guess the key focus would be cost of feed production. So if we can buy our feed or grow our feed as cheap as we can, we're going to be as profitable as we can, and that's what I focus on. I think budgeting is pretty important too. So at the start of every year we do a full budget with my bookkeeper, and we use a program now called Figured. So we can get data monthly out of Xero and look at that, and I'm constantly looking at where we're sitting all the time and waiting for the end of the month to see how we're coming up. That would be one of the biggest things I do. I wouldn't say on a weekly basis, but it'd be more than monthly I'd be looking at that.

Blake Cheer: Yeah, excellent. Well, thank you, Brad. I appreciate your time today, it's been really informative, and I'm sure the audience would have learned a lot about your business and your journey and hopefully taken away a couple of key messages. Any final thoughts that you can leave with us, and we'll wrap it up there?

Brad Winzer: Yeah, I guess there's one thing. I have used a lot of different consultants and things over the years, and I think it's really important that you find one that suits your business and does what you want them to do, not what they want to do. Because I guess a good consultant can make you a lot of money, a bad one can make you lose a lot of money. So I think it's very important to find someone that actually suits what you want to do.

Blake Cheer: No, that's excellent. Build that team around you. Thanks, Brad. Appreciate your time.

Brad Winzer: No worries. Thank you.

Sheena Carter: That's all for today's episode of The Business of Dairy. We hope you enjoyed diving into the fascinating world of dairy farming and industry insights. As we continue to expand and evolve, we greatly appreciate your support. Our show is thriving, attracting new listeners each week, but we believe there's always room to grow, and we need your help to make it happen. If you've found value in our discussions, we kindly ask you to take a moment to rate and leave a comment about the podcast on your preferred platform. Your feedback not only lets us know what you enjoy but also helps boost our visibility to others who might benefit from our content. I sincerely thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to bringing you more engaging episodes in the future with the continued funding and support of the Hunter Local Land Services. Until next time, stay curious and keep milking those opportunities.