1 Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016. Hello, and welcome to Rural Delivery. The job of identifying cows coming into heat, to fix a herd's potential milk production or the timing of calving for a beef operation ` it's a time-consuming task for farm staff, and recently, there have been a number of tools developed to help out. This week we meet a developer of one such device designed to take the guesswork out of heat detection. Then we travel to Southland to catch up on the development and challenges of milking dairy sheep at Antara AG Farms. And we visit the home of Blue River Nutrition, producing infant formula and cheese from sheep's milk at its Invercargill factory. Fraser Smith and Matt Yallop are partners in their Hamilton-based company FarmShed Labs. Among their products, they have designed a heat-detection device named Flashmate, that agribusiness company Gallagher is marketing. Flashmate is a single-use electronic device. It was being trialled by Southland dairy farmer Geoff Clarke on his Winton property when we visited him in November 2015. Matt Yallop explains how it all came about. We'd spent 12 years around technology in and around NZ, and I was actually up in Iceland for a while, looking at how they were solving big problems in the fishing industry, and I noticed that they had a bit of a trend of using technology to solve those problems, so when I got back, I thought hard about what we might be able to do around NZ's big industry here, which is dairy and, uh, you know, some particularly valuable problems that we might solve. We looked at, uh, the falling rate of, uh, oestrus detection or heat detection, you know, the falling efficiency there, and it was driven by bigger farms and the challenge of attracting and retaining experienced and skilled staff. And we thought we'd have a crack at that, uh, try and make it easier for farm managers to get a really good heat result without cracking too much of a sweat at a pretty stressful time of year. This is a low-cost electronic solution, really. It's basically using a modified touch surface. It's got a little chip in there, and the smarts are baked in. Basically, it's looking for patterns in the mounting behaviour. And what we've found has been quite fascinating, actually. So, more than half the riding activity happens during the hours of darkness, when no one's really around to look. It was also found that, uh, as many as one in six won't stand to be ridden by the herdmates, so, you know, you can see there's quite a challenge there for picking those quiet cows. Um, what we've got in the end is a device that sits off the tail ridge, so we're not, sort of, trying to go against tail paint or anything. In fact, it was designed to work in with tail paint. We're down the side of the ridge a bit, away from the tail paint. Um, but the benefits are it's just simple and it's accurate. And it's sort of more at the diagnostic end. It's not needing highly skilled people to devote a huge amount of energy into interpreting the scratch surface or the tail-paint rubbing. It's basically as simple as the red light comes on, you breed the cow. The technology picks up on a range of things. It's first and foremost, obviously, the mounting behaviour, but we're also getting some of the other activity ` the chin resting, the nuzzling, so it's picking up a range of things where cows are interested in the other cows as they're coming on to heat. We're getting great feedback. In fact, uh, a lot of farmers have been saying, 'Look, if we're more sure around the heat detection, we probably use the beds more around the scanning. 'And certainly, if we're seeing cows that are just not coming into heat or they're having problems, 'we can make an intervention there.' The beautiful thing about this is it stays on the cow a lot longer, and these things will come back on again. If you've got a, uh, red flashing light, you inseminate it, uh, after a period of 26-odd days, you'll get a green non-return light, which, kind of, tells you you've done the job. Now, a lot of farmers would shrug and say, 'Yeah, that's nice,' but, of course, the benefit is if the cow slips and she comes back on again, gets ridden by her herdmates, it'll start alerting again, and you've got choices, you know where you stand, you can make your management decisions based on that. Fundamentally, at the end of the day, it's about more days of milk, it's about tighter calving periods, and it's about more artificially bred replacements. So you put all those things together, and you've got a good proposition. It's 535 hectares. We're farming 850 cows. Obviously, it's not all effective, but we do some wintering on as well. Yeah, heifers are off farm. We're just helping out with the trial and the R & D aspect. Um, once we have results on how effective it's been, we'll be able to work out, um, you know, whether it's financially viable and how much it has helped us. Historically, we always tail paint the cows, and we work primarily off that. Uh, there's been other times where we've utilised other heat-detection devices as well, but the tail paint is the main thing we use for identification. With the new device, our empty rates were low, and we were having good submission rates. So it was still working fine. We're around 7%, anywhere from 6.5% to 7.5%, so for 850 cows, we're pretty happy with that result, and, um, yeah, it's just about being able to try and consolidate that first round of mating. I think if there's a device out there that can help identify cows that we ordinarily haven't been able to identify with the tail paint and also give us the ability for other staff to pick cows that are cycling, that, sort of, helps us spread the workload as well. And if we can rely on a device that is quite accurate, then that helps us across the board. The key thing we're looking for is to be able to, um, pick cows that, um, ordinarily we wouldn't be able to identify. So therefore we get them in calf a cycle or 21 days before we ordinarily would. And at the end of the day, that means more milk in the vat, so, yeah. And if we can extrapolate that out over 40, 50 cows, it's gotta be good for us. So far, we're just, you know, making observations. Each cow, we're taking notes on. Interestingly, we are seeing cows that, uh, haven't had tail-paint rubbed, but the Flashmates are flashing, uh, so we won't know that result until, you know, a cycle down the track, but, um, yeah, they've been good. Geoff's basically our R & D chap down here at the moment. We've got probably two or three farms at the moment basically doing the same thing, but actually in full swing. They're all making notes. They're all taking wee, uh, suggestions and things like that for us as well that they feed back on quite a daily basis, so we're talking quite frequently to make sure that, you know, this is stuff we feed back for when we go full swing. I suppose the big teller is hey, you know, at the end of it all, what's our profit gonna be, and where's it gonna benefit? You know, and making sure, obviously, the dollars you spend are gonna be better than, uh, what they spent the year before. We'll be back soon in Southland at Antara AG, the farming offshoot of Blue River Dairy and pioneers of the NZ dairy sheep industry. 1 Welcome back. While the sheep-milking industry is relatively new to this country, its most progressive member has one of the largest dairy sheep flocks in the world. Antara AG is one of three farms in Southland supplying Blue River Dairy with sheep milk from around 14,000 milking ewes. So, Antara AG is really the farming offshoot of Blue River Dairy. We've got three platforms and a runoff, and we're supplying milk exclusively to Blue River Dairy. It's actually now quite a reasonably small operation, but we're focused on growth for the future. We've got about 14,000 milking ewes for this season. We've taken the bottom 3000 or 4000 off the season to, um, concentrate on lifting the performance. Uh, we'll go back to 14,000 next year, uh, and flat out, sort of, rearing as many lambs as possible to grow that. Our, sort of, short-term goal is to get to probably 100,000. It's an East Friesian Poll Dorset cross that's been developed over a number of years. And it's sort of developing a type. We're not looking to establish a breed per se, but the Dorset gives it some solids, the Friesians give it the quantity of milk. SHEEP BAA The research programme that we're involved with at the moment with AgResearch, one of the four, uh, key components of that is environmental impact. So there's a lot of monitoring going on and measuring the environmental impact. And it's certainly considered widely in the industry and those that are involved, that it does have a much lower environmental impact, so going about, sort of, proving that at the moment. We're probably at capacity for the properties we've got, and we're talking to people now. We've got a number that are interested in becoming suppliers. So what we'll do over the next, um, couple of years is get the excess numbers for them to start them off as suppliers, and they'll come through us and will supply the milk, uh, on to the factory. So there's a lot of interest out there for that to happen. It'll stack up to the old dairy prices, and, uh, it'll certainly be far superior to traditional sheep farming. So where we think a lot of that may come is some of your smaller-scale operations who perhaps don't wanna dairy, but they can still be involved with sheep. On a per-kilo basis, it's probably two to three times what cow dairy is. Um, but you gotta weigh that up against the relative production. Currently, we've got approximately 3500 ewes on the property, and we're milking between 2600 and 2700. We're currently lambing, so the rest are lambing. And, um, it's about 170 hectares. We're now on our third lot of lambing, and, um,... that's a constant roundabout. We also raise all the ewe lambs, so that's quite a mission as well. So it is quite different. Milking the sheep, though, is good compared with cows. It's a lot cleaner, the cups aren't as heavy, and, yeah, it's good. We've got two herringbone pits, which are side by side in there. We can get 60 sheep per side, so they're milking at 120 for those two pits,... which takes four staff. Unlike a dairy herringbone, where you take the cups from one side, and then cup up the other side, there are cups on each side of the pit, so you really need to have four people, one working each side of the herringbones. The ewes are all EID'd, and there are milk meters, so you can trace what each ewe is producing. A good ewe, you can get up to... 3 litres a day. We're averaging about 1.4, 1.5 across all of our ewes. Currently, we have six full-timers and... six casuals. That counts the two of us. We could probably do with some more, especially while we're lambing. Um, we measure grass; you need to tail your lambs; you need to wean your lambs; you need to dag the ewes, so it is extremely labour-intensive. The animals are actually in reasonable condition. Mastitis ` we get a small amount of mastitis. We don't treat anything with penicillin ` there's no penicillin on farm. With the lambs, we have the normal lamb problems, bloat and bits and pieces. I previously worked at a vet's, so we just work through all of those things as best we can. SHEEP BAA This morning we're doing a lambing beat. This is our third lambing. It's now early December, and, um, yeah, we've been lambing since early August. It's been fully constant all the way through. We had one week where it was pretty quiet, but, yeah, the rest of the time, it's been pretty full on, 30 to 40 a day and up to 90. The earlier ewes will dry off in, sort of, February, and, um, then there'll be another mob that'll carry on right through till May. As far as lambing for three months goes, we've got four paddocks that are completely out of the rotation, um, because of the lambing beat. We've gotta move on every day. It's not like a dairy farm, where you can strip graze, and then take the cows home each day. So we need three paddocks lined up ` two paddocks that have still got ewes and lambs in them and one to go into tomorrow. Yeah, this is the infant-lamb shed. I've got three sheds. They've been on Mum for three days, and then they come into here. We have automatic feeders. They are also given colostrum in handmade feeders,... and we feed lucerne and straw and also pellets. In the sheds, we've probably got around 800 lambs in here currently. I can wean them at... normally on weight at 10.5kg, 11kg. The future's potential's massive. Um, and there's a lot of interest, as I said. And we, sort of, see growing out the numbers as part of our role as, sort of, trying to lead the way there and get the sheep available. And we're looking at suppliers, looking, uh, at doing a type of a franchise sort of model, where we supply the stock and make sure that there's an outlet for it, so they're not, sort of, having to go and solve all those problems themselves. And our, sort of, short- to medium-term target's around about 100,000 ewes, um, and then, you know, continuing it from there. And as that grows, we see that the processing will grow with it. We'll return soon to visit Blue River Dairies' factory in Invercargill. 1 Hello again. NZ has a very new dairy sheep industry, mostly populated with small producers, with one exception. This pioneering sheep-milk company in Southland is producing infant-milk formula and artisan cheese from its factory in Invercargill for local and international markets. Blue River's a unique sheep-milking processing operation. Uh, we started in about 2003 on the banks of the Clutha River, hence the name Blue River. And, um, I guess the business has grown and moved to Invercargill, to our current processing facility. And we've grown from making cheeses into, I guess, higher-value products such as milk powders and infant formulas. Originally, Blue River was a small family, Turkish family, and they, um, saw an opportunity to, you know, milk some sheep for themselves, produce some cheese and give it to their family members, and so they, you know, really were boutique and giving it to, I guess, their direct family. You know, it reminded them of home. Um, and then, I guess, Keith Neylon, he, um, came along. And I guess he's our pioneering founder, and he's the one with the vision. He saw a, uh, opportunity to take sheep milk to the world and to scale it up in terms of, um, you know, the next big industry for NZ. So, uh, he's invested in the farming side of the business, and he's invested in the processing operation. And, you know, it's continued to grow from humble beginnings back in 2003 to a medium-sized business now. The focus right here and now is infant formula. So, I guess, if you look at the value chain of sheep milk, it's expensive to harvest, you know? So the farming side of the operation, the milk's not cheap. So we have to maximise the value, and we have to look at markets where the demand's high and we can extract that premium. So for us, naturally, um, you know, that exists in the infant formula. So in early 2015, Blue River was purchased by a Chinese interest, um, and they have taken over this business. And with those market connections, with that technical expertise and market insight, we've been able to gain our registration, um, to export formula into the China market. And as such, um, that's the absolute focus now and will continue to be into the future. We're always looking at opportunities in market. You know, we have intention of not only continuing with infant formula, but taking that to other markets. So we don't wanna rely on China as a market. Absolutely, it's key now to our launch and our growth, but we're looking at diversifying into other Asian countries. But we're also looking at things like butter. We're looking at things like ice cream again. Um, and we're also looking at, um, you know, the elderly population, that, you know, there is an aging population globally, so there's a potential for us to do nutritional powders, um, for, um, you know, the aging population that we have. Historically, sheep milk has been, you know, around for hundreds of thousands of years. So it's not something that's new, like it is in NZ. Nutritionally, it's far superior than other milk alternatives. A lot of the Asian population has a intolerance to processing or digesting cow milk, and, I guess, we offer a unique alternative that's very very healthy. Sheep milk has naturally got higher percentages of things like vitamin C,... iron and, you know, specialist infant-formula things like L-carnitine and opio, so, you know, when we are developing our products, we're not having to put those in and add those. We're creating something that's natural. The outlook's good. The investment that was brought in early 2015 has meant that, you know, we can secure the job, secure the processing plant here, but also grow it. So as we, um, are working with Antara Ag at the moment about, you know, growing the milk volume they're providing to us, you know, we're also looking at external farmers to, you know, supply into our processing plant as well. For 2016, we have a plan to produce 1000 tons of infant formula. So, you know, that's significant on the world stage, and we know that we have a demand for it, so it's just about us producing that. In terms of our cheese business, we call that our domestic market. You know, it's Australia and NZ, and we're making cheese about one week in every month, and then we're using the rest of the time to cut and pack and supply the orders into market. The protein's twice the protein as bovine milk, uh, plus twice the fat. Uh, we get a maturity at half the rate, so, you know, it takes three months to mature a product as to six months with bovine. We're making a halloumi, and we make a feta and a pecorino, probably a Sabato, uh, and also a sheep's-milk cheddar. We're looking at around about 25 tons, I suppose; we'd be looking at maybe 200,000 litres a year. We have been as high as 30 tons, which is 126,000 litres, so probably maybe a sixth of the milk total in general. Quality management is really critical for our operation. We make food for babies, so it is imperative that we get it right. So that starts from, you know, knowing where the milk's coming from from the farms, and then we have control from there all the way through to the finished product. So it's critical that each step of the process ` all the operators, the training, what we do to get it right, and then the testing we do to verify that it's correct ` um, is really imperative. Traceability is huge for us. In China, there is a huge concern about adulted products. So, one of the benefits we have is that we manufacture in NZ. NZ as a brand is as trusted as the Blue River Brand is in China. So, I guess, you know, when you put Blue River and 'made in NZ' together, or manufactured in NZ, it becomes pretty powerful. When someone asks me about NZ,... the first thing that comes to my mind, it's a beautiful and a well-protected environment and the lush pastures where numerous sheep are well taken care of. So we actually started looking into sheep in NZ a couple of years ago, and, uh, we realised that there is a great potential and value in it, cos it has less, very limited environmental, uh, impact compared with the cattle farms, and also it has a very high nutritional elements, so also, it will be even better if we are able to commercialise it. So that's why, and this, to us,... is a new and a very unique,... uh, area in this dairy industry and a area that we believe can bring benefits to both the farmers and also to us as investors. Before sheep milk enters the market, there are mainly bovine milk and the goat milk in the market. Uh, were started to see bovine milk has reached a sort of a bottleneck, but for goat milk, it's just, uh, started. And, uh, the annual growth rate for the, uh, goat milk is 50% on a yearly basis, so we've expected the growth rate of the sheep milk to be double within the goat milk, and, uh, we are a very pioneering company, and we have all the confidence that this can be a successful business. For more information on these and other stories as well as other useful primary sector information, visit our website. Get there via tvnz.co.nz And you can watch this and previous episodes on TVNZ On Demand. Next week ` we find out about the search for a productive solution to nutrient loss from Hawke's Bay farmland. We meet Paul Olsen, potato grower, Kellogg and Nuffield scholar, who's making the most of opportunities available to him in the horticulture sector. And we visit Mission Estate Winery to hear about their approach to good soil management and the early results from a move into organic wine production. Thanks for watching. We hope you'll join us again next time. Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016.