THE FARM
GLENDHU DAIRIES
Our Dairy Operation
We have 1,500 dairy cows, divided into three herds which are farmed on 550ha, with an additional 200ha of grassed sileage support blocks. With 8 employees, including two fulltime tractor drivers the volume is easily managed with the workload shared across the team. We operate on a 4 on 2 day off roster with no one doing more than one milking a day.
The Milking Shed
Milking occurs twice a day, at 4am and 2.30pm taking approximately 3hours with two people doing the milking while others draft the cows into the rotary shed. The dairy shed is an 80bale rotary that is well equipped with cup removers, Protrack auto-draft, auto teat spray, a heat detection system, as well as a meal and molasses feeding system.
Our Wintering Barns
Our state-of-the-art wintering barns are in their second season this year and our girls have never been happier. They get to relax in comfort over the winter months, while the land rejuvenates to host them when the weather clears.
During winter (2months), our cows will be in the barns 24hours a day, enjoying the cubical latex mattress system, with access to rotating back scratches and an abundance of feed. There are automated scrapers for cleaning, and feed is distributed to the cows via a mixer wagon.
In spring cows will use the barns for half a day and other times of the year for an hour a day for buffer feeding. Happy cows produce more milk!
Technology
Working smarter, not harder is our motto. With technology we're able to manage our time more efficiently while ensuring smooth running across the farm. We use payroll and harvest apps, and to-do-lists for taskings are all available from an app accessible by smartphones.
Allflex Collars
Our herd all wear Allflex Collars that collect and analyse data for each individual cow’s reproduction cycle, rumination patterns, and health status. This enables us to be proactive with animal health. The need to use bulls over our cows has been eliminated with a total move to AI, improving accuarcy and calving results.
There is a large feed pad that can house 500 cows comfortably. This is used during calving, as well as times when supplementary feeding is required such as dry summers.
Glendhu Dairies own a modern fleet of New Holland tractors with various cultivation gear as well as triple mowers.
A recent addition to our fleet is a mixer wagon which is used to distribute stock feed such as straw, soya, grass silage, PKE, and molasses with the addition of milking minerals, to cows in the wintering barns, feedpad and occasionally the paddocks.
Our Molasses tank fills at an incredible speed making it fast and efficient to load.
With the two new run-off blocks, we also produce all the sileage that we need for the farm in house.
