The couple milk 280 cows on a 100ha farm near Te Awamutu. The couple moved to the Waipa District to be nearer to family and enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle. Previously Brent had been in charge at a large-scale farming operation with 2600 cows near Manawatu - and a slower pace of life was calling to enable the couple to spend more quality time with their young family.
"When we moved up here and we bought the herd, we had the option to reject any cows with high cell counts - but by the time we had taken out the empties and cows with other issues, we didn't have the luxury of removing more from the herd," he says. "We found an amazing herd and we still had a cell count that was below Fonterra thresholds, but for us we wanted to see if we can bring that lower to take advantage of the benefits that you gain from the Co-op if you had even lower counts."
And tackle it they did - what started with cell counts into high 200,000s and even mid-300,000s were soon tracking down thanks to ensuring a strict herd-testing regime and vigilance over the herd.
"From the moment we started the season and took over the herd, we got to work. As the season went on, we kept testing and identified early that we had our share of clinical mastitis and sub-clinical mastitis throughout that spring period," he says. "From there, we did a milk sample of the mastitis so we knew what the pathogen clearly was, so we knew what we were dealing with and what action to take."
Heading into their second season, the cell counts had dropped dramatically, and they have continued this trend.
"Now we are averaging the 80,000-90,000 mark, at worst hitting 100,000. We headed into this season with a lot of information from testing so we knew what to expect moving forward," Brent says. "For the 21/22 season, we had 26% replacements that were in calf and 7.2% empty rate for the mixed stage cows. For the 22/23 season we had 23% replacements and a 5.1% empty rate. This gave us numbers to play with and enabled us to make the hard decisions going forward."
Taking action and getting positive results was really encouraging - but was also just utilising all the tools available to them, Brent says.
"I really don't think we have done anything different to anyone else - it just comes down to good animal husbandry and ensuring we had plenty of data to help us make those decisions. It was about us making those choices rather than the cows making them for us."
Taking on a new herd means inheriting their current traits and working to make changes, he says.
"Going into the second season, we had more control of our destiny. When we went to dry-off last time, we purposely did it over two days to avoid them standing around too long in the shed. And we had also postponed out dry-off twice to make sure we had good weather, so we weren't sending them off with wet udders, on a muddy race. We also teat-sealed for the past season, which made a big difference too. We made sure we had an expert vet team on hand for dry-off too. All these factors worked together really well."
For more information on how to lower your somatic cell counts, talk to your local Farm Source Team or your TSR.