('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - The best of New Zealand's rural heartland... - A Southland farmer who feeds his dairy cows almost nothing but grass year round... - Cows are designed to convert grass into milk. - ...and that means make hay while the sun shines. - We want to get the top quality into the hay bales. Just do it once, do it right. (COWS MOO) Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - Summer at Riversdale in Northern Southland is hay-making time. Most farmers around here are cutting hay, but few make as much as Adrian Frei. He milks 300 cows, and when winter comes, they'll be very hungry. Most Southland dairy farmers also grow crops as winter feed, but not Adrian. In the Swiss tradition, he likes to feed his cows year round on an all-grass diet. - I think it's an undervalued feed for cows. It's very healthy. I think if you look at the big picture, the cow is designed to convert the grass into highly valuable protein and energy, where grain is probably more efficient going directly into human consumption. - Because his stock will eat mainly hay all winter, they need very high-quality feed, so he's imported this top-of-the-line mower from Germany. It has a massive 9m-wide span, but it uses very little fuel, and it cuts the grass higher up than most mowers do. - That keeps the insect life and, especially bees, intact. They can carry on flying and doing their thing, so it's environmentally friendly as well. - Adrian says cows are just like people ` to stay healthy, they need variety in their diet. - A mixture of grass, clovers and herbs, Yep, that's the recipe for success. The more they get off all the different elements, then the healthier the stock is, the less you need to feed the extra minerals. If everything is in balance, the system works 95% trouble-free for you. - His high-tech mower needs very sharp blades, but his robot-driven sharpener makes short work of the job. - It's reasonably expensive, but it's worth it. We've got two sets of blades, so we make sure we always have a sharp one. - When it comes to improving the quality of his hay, he spares no expense to get things just right. His son Fabrice is putting a tedder through the cut grass to speed up the drying process. Adrian reckons as well as being the perfect feed for cows, grass is also good for the environment. - It covers the ground the best, no erosion. There is no tillage, so the less soil you turn, the less carbon you get out of the soil, and it just keeps sequestering carbon rather than losing it, and the soil structure stays intact. - Because Adrian is happy to spend money on the right equipment, the farm work gets done quickly and efficiently. So, unlike many dairy farmers, Adrian and his wife, Isabelle, don't employ any staff. Most of the year, they run the farm by themselves. But in the busy times, some of their five adult children come to help. Isabelle thinks it works well. - I really like when they come home and we can be all together and have meals together. I still got plenty to do, like with the garden, and I go and help on the farm if they need me for whatever they need me for, and I'll milk. I'm happy to milk. - OK, boys, we'll get on with the day. - In summer, family life revolves around hay-making. - Rocco! - Adrian is raking the cut grass into rows so it can be baled. He's using a special rake, also from Germany. He believes many farmers let their hand dry too long in the paddock, so by the time they bale it, a lot of the goodness is gone. - We want it not to be too dry so that it gets brittle. We want to have all the flowers and leaves on it, that we get the top quality into the bale. With that raking system we've got, that machine being at the front, we're not driving over the feed for a start. So we have less leaves and flowers breaking off. And with the way the tines work, they just leave dirt and stones behind, and that makes it a very gentle but still efficient machine. - Finally, the hay is ready to be baled, and Adrian's son Fabrice is taking over. Over summer, they'll make at least 800 big bales. That's 400 tons of hay. It's a massive job, and there's plenty of other work to do as well. While Fabrice bales the hay, Adrian needs to move his cows to the milking shed, but he doesn't need to go and get them. It's all done with collars and a phone app called Halter. It guides the cows to their destination and monitors their progress. - I can move the cows whenever I want and from wherever I am. The collar works with sound and vibration ` so it's got two speakers on each side for each ear. When the cows have to come home for milking, the sound goes off in both ears ` and cows are a creatures of habit. They just know at that time, 'Oh well, milking time.' So they get up and start walking automatically to the right direction towards the dairy shed. - But the Halter virtual fencing system is only one of many high-tech things on this farm. This loader can race around a paddock picking up a big bale every 20 seconds. (EASY-GOING MUSIC) - It's milking time at Adrian Frei's Farm at Riversdale in Southland. The cows go into the shed all by themselves, thanks to the collars they wear that guide them from a phone app. It's been developed by a New Zealand company called Halter, which is a world pioneer in fenceless farming. As well as moving the cows, the system tells Adrian which ones are on heat and ready for mating. It saves a lot of time. - All in all, we save about 20 to 25 hours a week with not having to get the cows home to the dairy shed twice a day, with not having to set up fences and then the saving time with heat detection as well. - All his life, Adrian wanted to go dairy farming, but back home in Switzerland, it was an impossible dream, so they decided to try their luck here. He became a dairy farm worker in Waikato, then a share-milker. Finally, they bought this land and converted it to dairying. - If you're not born on a dairy farm in Switzerland, it's very hard to get into dairying, because it just goes from generation to generation smaller, uh, family farms. And New Zealand was the opportunity for me. - Adrian likes to figure out his own way to do things. He planned the farm conversion down to the last detail. - I think the main attraction in our career was to create everything ourselves out of just a piece of land. I'm a bit of a hobby designer, so I wanted to draw everything up myself and be the leading man for the projects. - Cleaning down after milking here is easy. The yards are sloping, and he has a tank of grey water from the settling pond to wash everything down. - It's all, uh, wireless. So as soon as we empty the tank down to below 3%... it gives it a signal to the pump to pump it up, and the tank gets refilled between milkings. - It saves nearly 30,000 litres of fresh water a day. - It only takes us two to three minutes to clean the yard morning and night at the end of each milking. If you compare it with just hosing down that 400m2, it could take a good half an hour to just wash it down by hose. And, uh, right from day one, that was time wasting to me. (RELAXING MUSIC) - Adrian Frei is an independent thinker. He does a lot of things differently, and what drives him most is seeking out new ways to achieve his goals. - That was the first thing I've noticed coming from Switzerland to New Zealand ` I just could see efficiency all over, you know. You can run a lot of area. You can run big herds. That's what fascinated me in the whole thing, that efficient way of converting grass into milk. - And he embraces new technology. This loader picks up three big hay bales every minute. Adrian first saw it in Canada. - There was nothing available in New Zealand at the time, so I just got in contact with that company in Quebec and ordered one from there. We really wanted the whole chain to be efficient. What they promised was that we can load 23 bales in eight minutes, drive home and unload in under a minute, and that appealed to me quite a bit. We're always looking for new techniques. And, uh, I thought, well, just do it once, do it right, get the whole chain, from mowing till the drying, get the whole thing set up as good as we can. - But the next stage in the process is even more of a game-changer. The hay is still too damp, and if the bales heat up in storage and develop mildew, it could poison the cows. To solve that problem, Adrian has imported a huge hairdryer from Germany. Every bale goes into its own drying slot till the moisture content drops below 10%. - We probably have to have them on for about 24, 30 hours. We started off with about 20%, so we just have to do the last 10% of moisture, getting it out of the bale and getting them stable so they don't reheat and it just stays crunchy until we use them next winter. - Making more than 800 big bales of top-quality hay takes months of work. - It usually starts at the beginning of December, and then quite often we have a nice window between Christmas and New Year. That means family holidays could get cut short a bit or are non-existent. We'll just have to take our time either before or after, and, uh, I'll call it family bonding or family holiday while we're making the hay. - The dryer uses waste engine oil, which he gets for free from local garages. The furnace burns a clean flame with no smoke, and fans blow the heat underneath the hay bales, then upwards through the drying slots and through the hay. Adrian's wife, Isabelle, loves her greenhouse and garden. When the children were younger, she was feeding seven people every day, so her garden was essential ` and she still grows most of their own veges. - You know where the food comes from, and it's great, and it's always there. And I love when I go out with a bowl and pick lettuce, cucumbers or tomatoes and it's fresh. So we just basically eat what what's in season, and I think that's what nature does anyway, you know. Yeah, so it is good. - They also run a couple of milking goats. They started out as a hobby for one of their sons, but for Adrian, they're now a valuable food source. Ironically, although he's a dairy farmer, he can no longer drink cow's milk. - I slowly developed a lactose intolerance for dairy, and that's what I basically drink now, is goat's milk. I can handle that a lot better than cow's milk. It's a bit of a joke, but it is a reality and you have to live with that and adapt, and that's what I've done. - He finds milking by hand is a nice contrast after working in the cowshed. - I do enjoy it. It's like meditation. After the efficient milking time of the 300 cows in a fully automated rotary parlour, it brings you down to Earth. - And Adrian isn't the only one in the household to enjoy goat's milk ` so does Rocco. - Breakfast. - Good food is important for everyone ` man and beast. And winter is coming, when the cows will tuck into the hay that was made all summer. Um, where's my phone? It's right there, son. No. I'm certain that's your phone. No. This is my phone. The one with the googly camera, no scratches. This is not my phone day Santa. This is mine boy frog. Not true gnome king. Is so Man-Witch. Elf lord. Elf lord. Mince and cheese. Mince and cheese. Not-ting. Yes it is. You could ditch that old dunger. There's a few ways I can get you a new one. Yes! this is your... Shhh... VOICEOVER: We've made it easy to get you a new phone, whenever you want. One New Zealand, let's get connected. (RAIN PATTERS) (SOFT, RESONANT MUSIC) - It's winter near Riversdale in Southland. It's a miserable day, but Adrian Frei's dairy cows aren't troubled by rain or mud, because they spend the whole season under cover. - In weather like this, the wintering barn really comes into its best. You don't do any pugging outside. The feed you feed to the cows gets utilised, no wastage, and the cows can just go back into a covered area, the loafing area and relax. The cows don't mind the rain, but for their resting period, it's definitely an advantage if they can be undercover and have a warm, dry surface to lie down on. - And on a day like this, working is also more pleasant for Adrian and his family. - We'll calf them all under cover on a nice, clean straw bed, and that way we've got minimum losses, and it saves us a lot of time collecting the calves and put them into the calf shed. But it's very short distance, so it's quite efficient that way. - Adrian's wife, Isabelle, is in charge of calf feeding. - I've been doing it for many, many years now, but I still love it. The system we have, like, the milk gets pumped in a drum here. I can use the hose. I only have to lift buckets for the new ones, so it's not too hard on the old body. (CHUCKLES) - For calves with digestion problems, she has her own cure. - I feed them camomile tea with a little bit of baking soda in it, and that seems to work. So that's my recipe. - But 300 dairy cows need more than a cup of tea to keep them going all winter. They need a huge amount of feed, almost all of which comes from grass grown on the farm. In early winter, they eat it as silage. Then they're fed hay. - If you add water, the hay gets heavier and goes through the knives a lot faster, so that reduces the mixing time. - At calving time, Adrian gives the cows the only supplementary feed that comes from off the farm. - Through August, September, we feed roughly 200g per cow of molasses... and then the molasses sticks on the feed as well. - And Adrian's cows thrive on the mix. - The majority is used in the second half of winter, and basically, after four weeks of silage, we move onto a hay diet to get them ready for calving. And once the cows are calved, they go back out on to grass and just get supplemented with 1kg, 2kg, 3kg of hay with a little bit of molasses. That's the only supplement we're buying in. The rest is all home-grown grass silage or hay bales. - Adrian was one of the first farmers in Southland to build a wintering barn. That was in 2002. He put straw bedding in it, and when it starts to break down, he scrapes the straw and manure out of the barn and sets it aside till it decomposes and is ready to be recycled back on to the land. But his new barn has a deep layer of sawdust that he aerates every day to keep fresh. By spring, it's already turned into compost. - It was always a dream to have a composting barn as well, so we added this new building here and filled that with sawdust and started that composting system, and I really love it. Every morning once the cows come on to the feed pad to have a feed, it's clear to do my daily run aerating, bring some air into that dung and urine and sawdust mix, and slowly compost during the winter season and create organic matter to put on to the pasture. And once we're finished wintering, in spring, where we take the silage off, that material can go straight on to it, and that closes the circle from where we take feed off, and nutrients go back on to the land. - Keeping all those cows and their calves under cover for three months creates a huge amount of waste, but to Adrian, it's valuable. The manure is the farm's only source of fertiliser. - Scraping is every second day ` Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and that's just to get rid of the liquid stuff on the concreted areas. And we can store effluent from end the May till beginning of September. - Then as it starts to break down, they'll put it back on to the land to encourage new grass growth, and the cycle will begin again. - When I came to New Zealand, it was all clear to me straight away that this is the most efficient way in the world to produce milk, and thought, 'Yeah, no, we'll make a career out of that, 'and here we're going to get our own farm one day.' A lot of people at my age would probably quit milking cows by now, and, uh, I just keep myself interested with new projects. I need new things all the time to keep me interested. - I would say when we shifted from the North Island to the South Island, friends and family said, 'Oh, it's like immigrating again, you know. Why do you shift that far away?' But we saw opportunities down here in Southland, um... and we took the chance, and it was a big move, yeah, but Southland, it's been good to us. We love it down here and no regrets at all. (COWS MOO) - Next time ` they're farming in the clouds of Canterbury's hill country... - Whatever animal it is, you might as well have the best ones you possibly can. - ...and they producing a top line of Angus bulls. - One of the first times we meet, you told me that you thought we would breed well together. (LAUGHS) - Yeah, um, and as it turns out, I think I was right. - (LAUGHS) - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.