By Nikita B. Damsgaard.
https://youtu.be/STHHxggo9pQ?si=jO4K4mTQEwAQtVqZ
Tim Drysdale has been working his way up in the dairy industry ever since he left school. He started off working on his family’s farm alongside his dad, moving into sharemilking and now he owns his family farm and works alongside his son Josh in the outskirts of Tokoroa, the Waikato. They have a herd of 285 cows on 85 hectares.
Josh is employed as a contract milker on farm, and their goal on farm is to milk 140,000 milk solids a year, they do 500 milk solids per cow at the moment. Josh is proud to be the third generation of dairy farmers in his family, and Tim is just as proud of him. Having Josh as an employee is very important for Tim, he enjoys working with him and he likes to see the way his son takes on more jobs on farm and gains more responsibility.
Photo: Josh Drysdale, contract milker.
With Josh and other staff taking care of the milking, Tim can focus on what his true passion; feed for the cows. Historically Tim’s focus has always been milk solids per hectare and maximising the herds usage of the pasture available. One challenge of farming in southern Waikato is that large amounts of clover grows here, and this can lead to bloat in the cows. Having reached their maximum potential from pasture utilisation, the Drysdales shifted from a system one up to a system four. This shift has seen the clover from their pastures diluted and mitigated much of the bloating in the cows.
Tim first found out about Sollus when friends of his reached out to Sollus to discuss changing the way they feed their herd. Reaching out to their local representative and friend in the area Bruce Hemmingway they quickly found what they were looking for.
“We wanted to give the cows everything they needed to perform their best” explained Tim. After speaking with the Sollus team, they felt reassured and confident in the decisions they had made.
The Drysdales use the full suite of Sollus products to ensure their cows have everything they need throughout the year. Tranzsol ensures they have minimal metabolic issues and Lactisol keeps the herd in tip-top shape year-round ensuring they have all the nutrients and minerals for them to obtain the calcium needed for the whole milking season. Using Lactisol Z from in the key season will help prevent potential breakouts of Facial Eczema.
By moving from, a pasture-only system to adding additional feed with the help of Sollus they have also seen a change in production. They have gone from 1000 milk solids per hectare to now milking 1650 milk solids per hectare. Tim uses a feeding system where they don’t use a feed pad, they instead use in-shed feeding and feeding maize on the ground out on their paddocks. They have a utilisation percentage of around 90% with their feed system and it is returning them around 30% which is over and above what they were getting from their pasture-only system.
Photo: Tim Drysdales farm.
The Drysdales use Tranzsol 14 days before the cows are calving to ensure they don’t get any metabolic problems. Lactasol Z is used in summer and autumn to combat Facial Eczema. Throughout the rest of the year, Lactisol is used ensuring the cows have the calcium and everything else they need to perform.
With the balance the Drysdales have found here on farm, it is safe to say that they will use the Sollus team for many years to come. The cows are getting everything they need, their family has a great work/life balance with a low-maintenance herd that produces well and delivers everything they need.
As a trusted partner, Tim explained that the Sollus product line may be slightly more expensive than other products out there, however, he not only gets the results he is looking for from the cows, he gets so much more from the partnership that just isn’t quantifiable. “Their experts are always available to me when I am looking for information, the cows not only look incredible, but we experience almost no metabolic issues and feeding the correct levels of the right minerals is simple”.