Positive correlation between accurate heat detection and farm growth

At a glance

Thomas and Andrea Scheres
Location: Putaruru, Waikato 
420 cow dairy farm on 100 hectares

Challenges

• Heat detection was getting harder and harder.
• Spilt calving means they don’t wont to dry off empty cows as they carry these through to autumn.

Benefits

• Considerably reduced the number of straws used while maintaining good in-calf rate.
• Detect optimum time to inseminate.
• Early health detection ay the subclinical stage reduced recovery and therefore more days in milk. 
• No more tail paint.
• Lifestyle – more time with the family. 

Background

Thomas and Andrea Scheres are equity partners on one of the Scheres family’s Putaruru farms. The third-generation to take on this South Waikato farming operation, the family has been early adopters of the Allflex system and, after eight years down the track, they’re still big fans. The Scheres’ Putaruru farm was keen to increase production and expand the farm. To achieve this, the team built a feed pad and started buying in feed.

However, to meet the increased demand they were placing on themselves, there came a need for better heat detection. Tail paint and scratch pads were far too time-consuming and inaccurate. Allflex seemed the obvious choice.

With the feed pad increasing milk production by 50% and the winter milk price premium increasing, the operation has changed a lot over the 7 years that Thomas and Andrea have been on the farm. They now milk all year round. “Originally it was a 50/50 split between autumn and spring calving but now we calve 80% of our herd in autumn and 20% in spring.