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<P>Morning Vaughan and others</P>
<P>It appears as though most ex Kiwi's are working too hard to have time to reply to your message earlier about how Victorian Dairy's compare to the old country.</P>
<P>We have been farming in southern NSW for nearly ten years. The advantage of the NSW irrigation farms over the Victorian ones are size and much lower cost irrigation water. We are all having some difficulty with the on going drought but you can by water here. Can't in some Irrigation systems in Victoria.</P>
<P>Land is not the restriction here water is. You need about three megaliters of water per milker. It is possible to buy water sepparatly from land but most 200/230 hectare blocks have 734 megs of water with them. Many of the better performing farms have two or more blocks or 400 to 700 hectares. Average herd size is over 300 cows. Current sales depending on development are around $12 to $15 per kilogram of milk solids walk in walk out. Production per cow in our discussion group ranges from 5000 liters to about 10,000 liters per cow and up to 650 kg of milk solids per cow. Most farmers feed grain mix's average about 1.5 tonnes per cow some feed up to 2.8 tonnes per cow. </P>
<P>The most profitable are returning over ten percent on assetts.</P>
<P>Payout supplying Murray Goulburn for ten months of the year about $Au4.35 plus dividend on shares of about $7000. At $NZ1.17 per $Au1.00 exchange rate we don't have much trouble blowing even your Cheese company out of the water. MG is a sixty percent plus exporter so shows up Fonterra's under perfromance. Twelve months of the year supply contracts will earn much more.</P>
<P>One of the biggest extra costs is in the area of herd health and breeding. AI bulls have shallow proofs with little information on daughter fertility. We have been using NZ semen with good Daughter fertility data to get the herd fertility that we consider acceptable. Drugs are also expensive. With so many Governing systems the red tape is massive but I understand that NZ is catching up fast.</P>
<P>We do need to run our own harvesting machinery as there is a huge surplus of grass in the spring that local contractors don't seem to be able to handle.</P>
<P>Sumary with $1m cash you can buy into a good 250 cow farm, $2m cash 500 plus cows that with a capable owner operator can be very profitable.</P><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV>Ken Frost <BR>knfrost@hotmail.com <BR>Kelly's Road <BR>Finley Australia</DIV>
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From: <I>leon <leon@grazinginfo.com></I><BR>Reply-To: <I>vicdairy-l@unimelb.edu.au</I><BR>To: <I>vicdairy-l@unimelb.edu.au</I><BR>Subject: <I>Dairy farming in Victoria.</I><BR>Date: <I>Fri, 01 Sep 2006 22:10:04 +1200</I><BR>>Australian real estate agents have been promoting the benefits of New<BR>>Zealanders buying dairy farms in Victoria and I was wondering about how New<BR>>Zealanders are doing there.<BR>><BR>>I know there are some onVicDairy, but comments from all would be appreciated<BR>>please.<BR>><BR>>A few specific questions for APPROXIMATE answers are -<BR>><BR>>Average dairy herd size?<BR>><BR>>Average dairy farm size?<BR>><BR>>Average cost for an average size dairy farm?<BR>><BR>>Average production of milk solids per hectare?<BR>><BR>>How common and profitable is irrigation?<BR>><BR>>We know that your payout is
higher than Fonterrašs but not higher than the<BR>>NZ$4.50/kg MS odd (allowing for no shares) of Open Country Cheese.<BR>><BR>>How do other costs compare.<BR>><BR>>Best wishes,<BR>><BR>>Vaughan Jones<BR>>Hamilton<BR>>Waikato<BR>>New Zealand<BR>><BR>><BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Check out the latest video at <a href="http://g.msn.com/8HMBENNZ/2734??PS=47575" target="_top">Xtra Broadband </a> </html>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 24 2006 - 02:38:12 EST