Plan wipe-out blessing in disguise

• Published date: 24 April 2024
• Publication title: Central Rural Life

The Canterbury/North Otago sharemilker of the year told visiting farmers at a field day at Dairy Holdings’ Oakdale Farm about the team benefits of Google Drive for keeping track of a herd of 1000 cows

‘‘We used to use a white board for the grazing plan and I went away for a few days and somebody wiped it off ... and I came back and knew it was something I had to sort out.’’

The unknown whiteboard wiper ended up doing them a favour with the resulting, much-improved system. Mr Veiga started working on a spreadsheet and today the Google Drive has work rosters, time off, financial details, calves at weaning and many other details in the farm plan over the season.

‘‘Everything is on Google Drive so we can see something like lame cows and sick cows — all of them on Google Drive. It is there in one thing that everybody can have.’’

He said this had saved farm travel as staff could check details on cellphones and it was easy to update them on changes.

Next season he plans to put financial updates among more information on the file-sharing platform.

Other technology included WhatsApp for communicating, CropX for soil moisture monitoring and helping to make irrigation decisions, Hawkeye for fertiliser, Minda for herd records and On Farm Fonterra and Dairy Diary apps.

Software is also used for milk refrigeration, weather updates, water use, calf transfers, purchase orders and checklists for animal movements, and farm visitors.

Oakdale’s team of four staff led by Mr Da Veiga is on target to better last season’s results with a target of 339,000kg of milk solids from 290,000kg last season and so far harvesting 13.2 tonnes of pasture a hectare (15.2t/ha).

The six-week in-calf rate of 73% is already up on last season and the herd had only 8% empties after mating.

The team includes his half-brothers, second-in-charge Alex Carvalho and herd manager Davi Carvalho, as well as staff from the Czech Republic and France.

Cash surpluses from the business are invested by Mr da Veiga in rearing his own calves and leasing cows back to Dairy Holdings.

The brothers have a growth plan to help each other make the end goal of owning their own farm.

Mr da Veiga said Davi came from Brazil to learn for a season so he could become his ‘‘right-hand man’’ when Alex stepped up to a contract milking job.

‘‘They are helping me out now and then...