About our farm

This is my first blog ,so I thought I might back ground our farm.
Our family farm is 220 hectare (550 acres) located at Vacy NSW. We milk just over 300 mostly jersey cows producing 2million litres per year. Milked in a 15 aside herringbone dairy this takes 1 person about 2hrs to milk .Cow are grazed on 14o hectares of irrigated pasture. Cows also receive about 6Kg of grain each day. We milk twice a day 365 days a year! All cows are artificially inseminated as we have not had a bull for 30years.
In 1978 we milked about 60 cows averaging 4500L per year in 2009 330 cows averaged 6200L
This years was the first time we exceeded the price we received 10 years ago!
The farm is divided into 36 paddocks which the cows are rotationally grazed each paddock has a water trough so cows don't have to drink from the river. The Paterson river runs along the farm giving us about 3kms of river frontage. We have excluded cows from the river bank & now have about 20 hectares that is being allowed to regenerate.
All pastures are sown using a machine called a direct drill. This allows us to sow pasture directly in a paddock sprayed with roundup. Some may be upset by the use of roundup but this method allows pasture to be sown with out disturbing the soil which in turns reduces soil erosion & leaching of fertilizers into water ways. There is also a huge drop in fuel useage as sowing is a 1 pass operation.
I will leave my blog at this & see how it goes.