Tom and Kathy Pow
After 24 land transactions over a period of 30 years, the Auckland-born and bred Pows now have five properties: two dairy farms at Mata, south of Whangarei, and two dairy farms and a dry stock unit at Ruawai. In all these farms carry 1200 cows, along with dairy beef and heifer grazing on the dry stock property.
Home base is the 86ha Wiremu Farm at Mata, bought in 1989, which carries 240 cows adjacent to State Highway 1 near Marsden Point. It has split calving herds, lower-order sharemilkers and has been the launching pad for Herd Homes and Calf Homes. It has significant native bush associations, including one of the last Kahikatea low land stands in the district. Low lying and winter wet on a clay base, the farm is prone to pugging, which was the impetus behind Herd Homes.
The Pows take great satisfaction in the fact that nine of their former employees have gone on to farm ownership. This is an impressive achievement from among 20 herd managers and sharemilkers during two decades of employing.
Regular meetings with those who work in the team, including social occasions for families, are designed to expand business skills and networks of advisors while planning seasonal requirements and machinery needs.
They have also raised a family of five children, and the oldest is sharemilking on one of the Mata farms. Toms forte is practical work with farm and business development, while Kathy looks after the accounts, ordering and legal transactions.
After Toms farm cadetship, the Pows took a sharemilking job at Te Aroha, for three years, and then bought their first farm at Taipuha, in Northland, with only 80 cows. Three separate periods of property expansion in the same region, helped in the middle for a brief time with an equity partner, have brought the Pows to their present land holdings.
Tom is cautious about any further dairy farm purchases, saying that $30/kg MS production being asked and paid does not constitute a long-term prospect with Northland costs.
With commercial experience importing heavy machinery and pleasure boats from Japan, Tom and Kathy Pow have now developed and marketed two dairy-related businesses. They are Herd Homes and Calf Homes.
In Northland waterlogged paddocks and severe pugging are a curse of dairy farmers.
Tom and Kathy Pow say they tried all the conventional management options for alleviating the distress of cows and loss of production: sacrifice paddocks, wintering barns, standoff areas and feed pads with concrete, metal, chip or sawdust. These facilities had overcome pugging problems but they were dissatisfied with them all as answers to the problems of dirty dairying on low lying, heavy clay soils with buckets of rainfall. In particular we started to discover major reason for under performance of cows is exposure and lack of shelter.
A major portion of the herd was moved to autumn calving to beat the summer dry and this exacerbated the lack of shelter problem. So Tom came up with the Herd Homes approach now billed as the finest way to handle a wet day. Cows are contained on pre-cast concrete slats positioned over 1m deep concrete nutrient-recycling bunkers bedded with 50mm of soil or wood shavings and the whole shed roofed to keep out the rain. Effluent builds up on the slats and falls through but, remarkably, very little odour results. When the whole complex is kept dry, evaporation leaves a semisolid effluent and dirt mix which can be removed in the summer, and spread back on the pastures.
With multiples of Herd Homes (up to 60m x 10.5m) the whole herd can stand on the dry and munch on supplementary feeds, or return to the warm shelter after grazing.
The cost of $1000/cow capacity will no doubt scare many farmers, but those who are intending to build a big hard surface or feed pad anyway may well consider the upgrade.
Farmers changing from feed pad systems and offering Herd Home Shelters are experiencing large gains in productions with the effect of providing a warm area for animals.
The concept is not new, as anyone who has bagged dry sheep manure from under the woolshed grating will attest, but the construction and effluent treatment issues for 1000kg cows presented plenty of challenges.
Buscks in Whangarei have tooled up to produce the 3 x 1m concrete slats, which can all be removed with the standard farm front-end loader. Shade and shelter for grazing stock has been difficult or impractical to provide, now with Herd Home Shelters it is easily accomplished. As farmers experience the gains from Herd Homes demand has quickly grown.
Herd Homes are being installed on dairy farms throughout the country by contractors working under licence from the Pows. They have been built in Southland, Westland, Manawatu, Hauraki Plans, Waikato, Auckland and Northland.
The second on-farm commercial venture is Calf Homes, which are portable, robust calf shelters which accelerate liveweight gain and provide many benefits to calves in the paddock. In a joint venture with McInnes Manufacturing, the Milk Bar company at nearby Waipu, Tom and Kathy Pow plan to have limited numbers of the new homes available for spring calving this year, with full commercial availability for the 2006 autumn calving. They will be manufactured in Whangarei and sent out in kitset form, at a cost of under $5000 each. The 6m by 2.3m module was designed as an extension of the farm calf-rearing facility, which is often converted covered yards or woolshed. It will house 10 calves through from birth to weaning, with space for a hanging Milk Bar calf feeder on the gate and a bird-proof Meal Bar.
But Tom says the Calf Home really pays its way when used as a mother ship and shelter for up to 40 paddock calves from two weeks of age, in association with a towed Milk Bar calfetaria. He says calves learn to treat the Calf Home as their mother and will never stray too far from the shelter, reducing damaged fences and calves.
In fact calves get so attached to their Calf Homes that whenever it is moved to a fresh paddock, the calves will immediately make that paddock their home. he said.
The Calf Home effects of shelter, good ventilation and increased temperature, particularly at night, result in up to two weeks saving on growing time to 100kg, Tom claims on the basis of his trials.
Calf Homes have a galvanised steel framework and the timber floor is H3 treated and replaceable. It comes with risers to contain the sawdust litter when the gate is open and the calves are free to come and go. The gate height is 900mm, which is the correct height to hang a Milk Bar feeder to ensure the neck of the calf is at the right angle. The sides and roof are made from durable Solarweave which lets the sun through to keep calves warm and bedding dry. It can be replaced if damaged or worn.
However Calf Homes are built to withstand the worst weather conditions. They are fitted with ventilation panels, set high enough that the calves wont feel drafts. Ventilation panels are essential to prevent the build up of any ammonia.
The establishment of these two businesses has absorbed a great deal of time in the past year or two. Tom and Kathy are looking further ahead to an ongoing research role rather than day-to-day business management and promotion.
Tom believes the next phase will be a complete farm parlour and covered yard on concrete grates over bunkers rather than just the stand-alone feeding barns which the herds utilise in wet weather to save pasture damage. The farm dairy approach requires a change in regulations governing the construction of milking parlours and yards, which Tom is hoping to get. It will also take a substantial amount of development money.
Home base is the 86ha Wiremu Farm at Mata, bought in 1989, which carries 240 cows adjacent to State Highway 1 near Marsden Point. It has split calving herds, lower-order sharemilkers and has been the launching pad for Herd Homes and Calf Homes. It has significant native bush associations, including one of the last Kahikatea low land stands in the district. Low lying and winter wet on a clay base, the farm is prone to pugging, which was the impetus behind Herd Homes.
The Pows take great satisfaction in the fact that nine of their former employees have gone on to farm ownership. This is an impressive achievement from among 20 herd managers and sharemilkers during two decades of employing.
Regular meetings with those who work in the team, including social occasions for families, are designed to expand business skills and networks of advisors while planning seasonal requirements and machinery needs.
They have also raised a family of five children, and the oldest is sharemilking on one of the Mata farms. Toms forte is practical work with farm and business development, while Kathy looks after the accounts, ordering and legal transactions.
After Toms farm cadetship, the Pows took a sharemilking job at Te Aroha, for three years, and then bought their first farm at Taipuha, in Northland, with only 80 cows. Three separate periods of property expansion in the same region, helped in the middle for a brief time with an equity partner, have brought the Pows to their present land holdings.
Tom is cautious about any further dairy farm purchases, saying that $30/kg MS production being asked and paid does not constitute a long-term prospect with Northland costs.
With commercial experience importing heavy machinery and pleasure boats from Japan, Tom and Kathy Pow have now developed and marketed two dairy-related businesses. They are Herd Homes and Calf Homes.
In Northland waterlogged paddocks and severe pugging are a curse of dairy farmers.
Tom and Kathy Pow say they tried all the conventional management options for alleviating the distress of cows and loss of production: sacrifice paddocks, wintering barns, standoff areas and feed pads with concrete, metal, chip or sawdust. These facilities had overcome pugging problems but they were dissatisfied with them all as answers to the problems of dirty dairying on low lying, heavy clay soils with buckets of rainfall. In particular we started to discover major reason for under performance of cows is exposure and lack of shelter.
A major portion of the herd was moved to autumn calving to beat the summer dry and this exacerbated the lack of shelter problem. So Tom came up with the Herd Homes approach now billed as the finest way to handle a wet day. Cows are contained on pre-cast concrete slats positioned over 1m deep concrete nutrient-recycling bunkers bedded with 50mm of soil or wood shavings and the whole shed roofed to keep out the rain. Effluent builds up on the slats and falls through but, remarkably, very little odour results. When the whole complex is kept dry, evaporation leaves a semisolid effluent and dirt mix which can be removed in the summer, and spread back on the pastures.
With multiples of Herd Homes (up to 60m x 10.5m) the whole herd can stand on the dry and munch on supplementary feeds, or return to the warm shelter after grazing.
The cost of $1000/cow capacity will no doubt scare many farmers, but those who are intending to build a big hard surface or feed pad anyway may well consider the upgrade.
Farmers changing from feed pad systems and offering Herd Home Shelters are experiencing large gains in productions with the effect of providing a warm area for animals.
The concept is not new, as anyone who has bagged dry sheep manure from under the woolshed grating will attest, but the construction and effluent treatment issues for 1000kg cows presented plenty of challenges.
Buscks in Whangarei have tooled up to produce the 3 x 1m concrete slats, which can all be removed with the standard farm front-end loader. Shade and shelter for grazing stock has been difficult or impractical to provide, now with Herd Home Shelters it is easily accomplished. As farmers experience the gains from Herd Homes demand has quickly grown.
Herd Homes are being installed on dairy farms throughout the country by contractors working under licence from the Pows. They have been built in Southland, Westland, Manawatu, Hauraki Plans, Waikato, Auckland and Northland.
The second on-farm commercial venture is Calf Homes, which are portable, robust calf shelters which accelerate liveweight gain and provide many benefits to calves in the paddock. In a joint venture with McInnes Manufacturing, the Milk Bar company at nearby Waipu, Tom and Kathy Pow plan to have limited numbers of the new homes available for spring calving this year, with full commercial availability for the 2006 autumn calving. They will be manufactured in Whangarei and sent out in kitset form, at a cost of under $5000 each. The 6m by 2.3m module was designed as an extension of the farm calf-rearing facility, which is often converted covered yards or woolshed. It will house 10 calves through from birth to weaning, with space for a hanging Milk Bar calf feeder on the gate and a bird-proof Meal Bar.
But Tom says the Calf Home really pays its way when used as a mother ship and shelter for up to 40 paddock calves from two weeks of age, in association with a towed Milk Bar calfetaria. He says calves learn to treat the Calf Home as their mother and will never stray too far from the shelter, reducing damaged fences and calves.
In fact calves get so attached to their Calf Homes that whenever it is moved to a fresh paddock, the calves will immediately make that paddock their home. he said.
The Calf Home effects of shelter, good ventilation and increased temperature, particularly at night, result in up to two weeks saving on growing time to 100kg, Tom claims on the basis of his trials.
Calf Homes have a galvanised steel framework and the timber floor is H3 treated and replaceable. It comes with risers to contain the sawdust litter when the gate is open and the calves are free to come and go. The gate height is 900mm, which is the correct height to hang a Milk Bar feeder to ensure the neck of the calf is at the right angle. The sides and roof are made from durable Solarweave which lets the sun through to keep calves warm and bedding dry. It can be replaced if damaged or worn.
However Calf Homes are built to withstand the worst weather conditions. They are fitted with ventilation panels, set high enough that the calves wont feel drafts. Ventilation panels are essential to prevent the build up of any ammonia.
The establishment of these two businesses has absorbed a great deal of time in the past year or two. Tom and Kathy are looking further ahead to an ongoing research role rather than day-to-day business management and promotion.
Tom believes the next phase will be a complete farm parlour and covered yard on concrete grates over bunkers rather than just the stand-alone feeding barns which the herds utilise in wet weather to save pasture damage. The farm dairy approach requires a change in regulations governing the construction of milking parlours and yards, which Tom is hoping to get. It will also take a substantial amount of development money.