The problem

Will I increase costs with a herd barn or feedpad?

“We had an old standoff area with post chip, and you used to tear your hair out by two months into the winter. It’d be all muddy and mucky with the cows up to their bellies.”

The Solution

One of the biggest wins is the labour saving and time, cos at the end of the day, time is money. Everything’s close to the shed, you’re not spending three or four hours a day feeding out. It’s only taking half an hour to feed out, it takes longer to load up than to feed out now. All feed is utilised which is important these days because of the cost of feed. The system that we have put in has not increased our workload, it’s decreased it.

“In the winter now when it rains because it’s covered in, you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and go ‘where the hell am I going to put the cows’. In the summer with the shading, it’s about 5-8 degrees coolers in the barn than outside and the cows are at the gate at 9am waiting to come in.” – PJ Williams, Waharoa