Thanks Ken.
On 9/9/06 11:54 AM, "Ken Frost" <knfrost@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Morning Vaughan and others
> 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.
That makes the farms expensive per cow.
In the Waikato 120 ha can milk 300 cows without irrigation costs.
>Current sales depending on development are around $12
> to $15 per kilogram of milk solids walk in walk out.
Here it is about double that.
>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.
Many top Holstein/Friesian cows in New Zealand fully fed on pasture and a
bit of maize silage as required, but no bought feed, produce 8,700 litres of
milk and 690 kg of milk solids in about 300 days.
> The most profitable are returning over ten percent on assetts.
Is that on cost or on current sale value?
> 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.
So 40% is liquid which returns a lot more then exported.
Fonterra gets virtually nothing from liquid milk.
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
How do your capital gains and land transfer taxes work? We have neither.
Since 1955 wešve bought, improved and sold over 20 properties at high
profits.
Does anyone know how many New Zealand dairy farmers are in Victoria now?
> Ken Frost
> knfrost@hotmail.com
> Kelly's Road
> Finley Australia
Best wishes,
Vaughan Jones
Hamilton
Waikato
New Zealand
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