By Chris McCullough
Having spent most of his time travelling the world shearing sheep, UK-born Will Hinton has changed farming direction now milking cows on a share farming basis in New Zealand.
Together with his partner Kali Rangiawha, the duo run K&W Hinton Farms, the business they formed over four years ago.
Will hails from Wiltshire, England, where he grew up following the sheep shearing trail before travelling ‘down under’ to perfect his craft.
It was while on this quest in 2017 he met New Zealander Kali, who had accrued a wealth of dairy experience, and before long, kids were born and roots settled.
From sheep shearing to share milking
For the past 17 months the couple have been contract milking 350 cows on a 280ac farm located near Fielding, in the Manawatu District on the North Island.
The couple have three children – Rylan (aged 6), Billy (aged 3), and Blake (1 year-old), and won the 2024 New Zealand sharefarmer of the year award.
Will said: “With several years of dairy experience, Kali was the key driver behind our contract milking business that we started four years ago.
“The farm we are on now is owned by Tim and Victoria Gorton. This is their first year owning a dairy farm so they have employed us to run it for them, whilst leaning on us for our experience.
“We milk 350 crossbred cows twice a day through a Waikato Milking System 54 unit rotary parlour. Milking takes 1.5 hours in the morning and one hour in the afternoon.
“This past year we achieved a record production for the farm of 443kg milk solids per cow,” Will added.
Kali also works as an artificial insemination (AI) technician for LIC and likes to run a tight spring calving system to match the grass growth on the farm.
She said: “Compact calving is very popular over here, run to match grass growth. We calve the cows from mid-July through to the end of September, with the majority calving in the first six weeks.
“Three major breeding traits that we are concentrating on include breeding worth, the genetic potential for profitable offspring, as well as feed efficiency.
“Also, production worth [PW], which is the cow’s lifelong profit-making ability. Our top PW cows receive sexed semen and the bottom tier receives beef semen.
“And lastly, lactation worth, which reflects on how profitable and efficient a cow has been within the current lactation,” she said.
New Zealand dairy herd
Will and Kali run the cows as a single herd grazing outdoors all year long. The mating season is kept at around 10 weeks, six weeks for AI and four weeks using a bull.
Operating a share farming model means costs have to be monitored carefully, and this includes labour use.
Will said: “We run the farm ourselves but this season we are employing someone so we can start training them up before we take our next step up in the industry of owning a herd.
“Our milk goes to Open Country and the price is around $8.40/kg of milk solids. We receive just under 20% of the milk income but have to pay fuel, power, labour, etc.”
Will achieves 14t of grass per hectare, a total of 1,580t dry matter, which accounts for 81% of the cows’ diet.
He also feeds a straight PKE (palm kernel extract) blend through the shed’s feeding system and uses 100t of maize as a transitioning tool in early spring, and as a condition builder in late lactation.
Will added: “We also grow summer crops, such as chicory, to complement the drop in ME [metabolisable energy] and CP [crude protein] in pasture, which helps us hold production levels.
“I am very passionate about feeding and the transition phase is crucial. It is very challenging here as pasture is a huge part of the cows’ diet and therefore it is hard to achieve a low Dietary Cation-Anion Difference (DCAD).
“The DCAD is a particularly important measure used when formulating diets for dry, transition, and lactating dairy cows.
“In the future I’d like some technology that tells me how well each cow is transitioning, as it would let me pick up sub-clinical cows a lot quicker,” he said.
Future
Will and Kali’s five year goal was to own 200 cows themselves, a target that could have been reached this year, but was pushed forward to ensure a good work/life balance with three young kids in the family.
Will said: “Our target has now changed to around 600 cows which we hope to purchase this year. In the next five years we would like to increase this to 1,000 cows and own a farm by 2034.
“It was amazing that we won the national share farmers of the year award, which is the top tier of the New Zealand dairy awards.
“This is a lifetime achievement for us and will definitely help us with some amazing opportunities going forward,” Will added.
Looking to the future Will said there will be some tough challenges ahead.
“I think the progression ladder is getting a lot harder in New Zealand. Farm ownership used to have a clear trajectory but with inflation of farm working expenses, high interest rates, and average milk prices, these all seem to be moving the goal posts further away,” he explained.
“I think global environmental regulations will be more challenging, but I feel this is an exciting challenge. We need to reduce our carbon footprint per kg of milk solids.
“We are at the forefront of the lowest carbon footprint per litre of milk in the world but we need to maintain this.
“By improving the bottom 25% of our herds, and breeding more resilient cows we can then slowly reduce our stocking rate,” Will concluded.
