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The Hauraki Plains Focus Farm is owned by Angus and Karen MacInnes. It is an 116ha effective dairy farm situated at Waitakaruru on shallow peat over marine clay. The property currently milks 310 Friesian cows, producing 325kg MS/cow and 870kg MS/ha. Click here for farm map. It is a true family farm – son Matthew is a contract milker. The farm was originally owned by Karen’s family before it was purchased by the couple in 1989. Angus and Karen had previously sharemilked on the property from 1982-1986. |
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The farm system changes that have been agreed to by the MacInneses have the following commonalities:
- Increase home-grown feed through efficient fertiliser use and summer cropping
- Reduce costs of supplementary feed inputs
- Improve herd reproductive performance
- Reduce cow liveweight per hectare (either through reducing stocking rate and/or cow size).
These changes will act to achieve not only the project governance committee’s goals, but those of the MacInnes family as well.
Goals
After 3 years, Angus and Karen want to achieve the following:
- Increased milk production to 127,000kg MS (26% increase)
- Increased farm profitability to fund debt repayments and capital development. They also want to provide for Matt to consider 50:50 sharemilking or equity partnership options
In the longer term they want to build a house on a runoff block and step back more from the day-to-day operations
Matt, wants to increase his knowledge in staff management and supplement utilisation, and improve his financial literacy and management skills.
Values
The MacInnes family’s values are as follows:
- Value staff – having empathy with staff is important
- Give back to the community – the farm needs to provide free cash and time to do so
- Enjoyment – comes from the lifestyle provided by the farm, while not being tied to milking, and also the sense of achievement that comes with farming
- Working as a team
- Family involvement – working for family, on the family farm, and continuation with the next generation
Click here to enlarge the farm map.
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