Post by John King

19th May 2026, Canterbury Curious Cockies, Culverden, Canterbury Visited a couple of larger dairies today. One is moving from pivots to pole irrigators to reduce risk from wind storms.  They graze fodder crops in autumn to build a pasture feed bank to all-grass winter with bales because lifting conception rates required more time than just transitioning rumens from beet. Wearables dropped labour by 1000 hours over mating and allowed later starting times for morning milking giving staff more flexibility. The other business ran several primary production enterprises to ensure the original family property remained intact for the next generation. It also leveraged the home business to help staff set up on their own dairy properties. Staff owned a percentage of any new property they managed and took charge of budgeting accounts with the plan they’d eventually purchase the whole property. Moving from working in the business to working on the business has a trade-off. As scale increases, being one or two degrees of separation from the coalface can delay addressing issues that owner/operators don’t have capacity to carry.