Pursuit of breeding better dairy cattle

• Published date: 15 September 2022

Aparima River winds through their dairy farm in Otautau, inspiring them to name their pedigree stud Meander Holsteins

Since emigrating to New Zealand from Holland in 1989, the couple have worked their way up to owning four farms and 2800 cows in Southland.

They run the stud on their home farm, Ringway Ridges, which features two category 1 historic buildings — their home and a horse stable.

Contract milkers run the other three farms owned by the Bruins in Southland.

On Ringway Ridges, the Bruins milk 630 cows in a 54-bale rotary milkshed.

The cows were run across about 200ha, producing about 350,000kg of milk solids annually.

Of those cows, 232 were registered pedigree Holstein Friesians.

Young stock graze on another 100ha block and silage was produced on another 90ha.

Cows and calves ate the silage on a feed pad during the shoulders of the season and during winter.

Mr Bruin said they began dabbling in supplying eggs from their contracted mated heifers to artificial insemination companies LIC and CRV about 15 years ago.

The relationship with the companies started ‘‘taking off’’ about five years ago and had gone from strength-to-strength since.

This year, the companies had 120 contract matings on their farms, and 100 cows in Hamilton were pregnant with embryos created from eggs taken from their heifers.

About this time of year, Animal Breeding Services technicians from Hamilton visit the farm to harvest eggs from about 30 heifers, for a fee.

‘‘We have an enormous pool — that’s why every now and then we hit the jackpot,’’ Mr Bruin said.

An example of hitting the jackpot was the top performance of ‘‘super cow’’ Meander FMI April SIF, which was born in 2012.

Milking cows twice a day was physical and repetitive work and breeding cattle kept them motivated, he said.

‘‘It gives an extra dimension to our dairy farming — if I’m just putting cups on every day it gets boring. We aren’t getting any younger and this gives us motivation to keep going and enjoy it.’’

One of the ‘‘biggest kicks’’ of the job was milking his herd and seeing how the breeding was translating to herd performance, he said.

Mrs Bruin agreed.

‘‘Dairy farming is hard and there was a point where I thought I’d had enough and then the bulls started to come through.’’

Seeing bulls in catalogues that were created using eggs from their heifers, was reward for all the hard work, she said.

It was ‘‘special’’ to know semen from your bulls was being used to improve the national herd, she said.

‘‘We are...