Top 5 KPIs: Craig Hickman

My goal is to turn over no more than one staff member every two seasons. I’m now into my twentieth season on this farm and have been through the process of hiring backpackers, changing staff mid-season, continually training staff and I find it far more efficient to just hold on to the staff you have.It helps that we are close to town, but I like to think that Woodlands is a place people like to work. That’s reflected in the fact I’ve got team members who have been here for ten and twelve years, one who has returned after leaving for cancer treatment and another who has returned after 7 years of working elsewhere.

Having the same team, or same core team, season after season makes the workplace extremely efficient. People know the systems and know what’s expected of them and training can be limited to new technologies. I pay a good salary, maintain the housing stock, run a roster that gives good time off and try to accommodate everyone’s leave requests. Fonterra’s Cooperative Difference was an opportunity to pay the staff for milk quality, they receive the full 3c per kilo of excellent quality milk which was a pool of around $12,000 last season.

Several years ago I engaged a farm consultant and we set about devising a simple plan to utilise my pasture better. 12 hour grazing, grazing to a residual of 1600kg and not grazing pasture over 3000kg all contributed to much higher intakes of better quality pasture.

We introduced palm kernel as a supplement to fill the gaps and tried to minimise our grass silage use. We experimented with maize silage and finally, last season, installed in-shed feeding.

The efficiency gains through less feed wastage and ensuring every cow had a chance at the supplementary feed, as opposed to feeding cows in paddock, was well worth the capital cost.

My supplements fed per cow were on a par with previous year, 700kg, while my feed bill was lower and production increased by 50kg per cow.

I was going to put this as my second KPI but it probably flows on from feed efficiency. My goal is to consistently have FWE less than $5/kgMS, and the simplest way to do that is by producing more from the same amount of inputs, by cutting wastage.

The in-shed feeding was a huge help last season, with FWE coming it at $4.66 per kgMS on the back of increased production and lowered supplement costs.

I do a full cashflow budget before the start of the season, with a revision in January.

Minimising FWE isn’t about doing without, it’s about being efficient with what you’ve got and only spending what’s necessary to achieve the outcomes you want.

Over the last two years we have spent a considerable amount of money on new technology; ACRs, in-bail teat spraying, collars, auto drafting and in-shed feeding.

The most obvious efficiency gain here was having a sinking cap on staff numbers, not replacing  a team member when they left. This took us from 165 cows per staff member to 200, without much increase in workload for those remaining.

If I’m spending the money, I want to see tangible benefits. ACRs and auto teat spraying has reduced our cell count by a third while freeing up a staff member from milking. In-shed feeding has drastically improved our supplementary feed utilisation, and the collars have streamlined our drafting and mating. All of the technology combined has massively reduced our animal health bill.

This isn’t to say I adopt all technology that takes my fancy, we still irrigate via Rotorainers instead of centre pivots because the benefits did not sufficiently offset the costs of that investment.

Nearly all New Zealand dairy farmers are guilty of breeding inefficient cows, and I am no exception. 40% of New Zealand’s dairy replacements come from the bottom third of our milking herd.

The fastest way to meet Fonterra’s scope 3 emission goals is to breed more efficient cows - animals that can produce more milk from the same amount of feed.

From this season I have undertaken to put beef breeds over the bottom third of my animals and sexed semen over the top third to accelerate the herd's genetic gain and unlock their potential.

The rule of thumb for dairy production has been 90% feeding, 10% breeding for a very long time. Compare that to the sheep sector where the ratio is 51/49, they’ve tapped out their genetic potential and we are 30 years behind. It’s time to start catching up.