With 17,000 dairy cows across 15 farms under their Just Milk banner, South African farmers Edgar and Lynda Brotherton are looking to Australia to boost the quality of their herd.
With one of the largest herds in South Africa, Mr Brotherton wants to stabilise numbers but increase milk production through genomic testing and selective breeding.
Mr Brotherton was hosted by Genetics Australia to join the World Jersey Conference tour presented by Jersey Australia from April 6-21, and addressed a sponsors’ breakfast in Warrnambool. He was joined by Roy Dixon from CRV Xseed Genetics, the exclusive distributor of Genetics Australia’s Jersey semen in South Africa.
“The main purpose of our visit to Australia is to visit breeders of the bulls we’ve used,” he said. “It is our intention to use more Australian genetics and it has been fantastic to meet the breeders and put faces and names to the bulls we use.”
Just Milk is a management company based in the Eastern Cape that manages dairies. The milking herd comprises 17,000 cows and the total herd size including calves is 25,500. Just Milk also has cheese processing facilities, partnerships with piggeries and runs a small beef operation.
Just Milk is a unifying brand, not a single corporate entity. It operates on farms with various land ownership and profit-sharing structures. “We personally own some of the properties, 50 per cent share in some and 25 per cent share farmers in others,” Mr Brotherton said. “This model allowed land investors an opportunity to gain exposure to dairy farming.”
Very few animals have been brought into the herds from outside, resulting in selective breeding and an optimal animal suited to the Eastern Cape conditions.
Mr Brotherton says his interest in Australian genetics stems from the similarities between the two countries’ farming conditions.
“We’ve got low rainfall areas with irrigation that can have temperatures up to 40 degrees for 5-6 days in a row, and we’ve got coastal farms like Gippsland with rolling hills and dryland farming.
During their growth phase, Just Milk reared about 1000 surplus heifers every year to be on standby for new projects.
“At that stage due to growth, we weren’t able to be too selective with the heifers we put into the system,” Mr Brotherton said. “That’s changing now because we’ve decided we’ve reached our cap.
“Although I enjoy building new dairies, at my age I don’t think we will do any more and will probably cap numbers and look to process more of the milk we produce.
“We’re looking at the option of genomic testing our heifers and being more selective. The aim will be to get more milk out of the same number of cows, rather than add more and more cows.”
The Just Milk cow originated from a black and white herd crossed to Jersey after Mr Brotherton toured New Zealand in 1995.
“We started using New Zealand bred Jersey bulls like Manhattan, Maunga, Murmer, Presley, Nucleus and Kingpin, especially Manhattan,” he said.
“One of the reasons we chose the New Zealand bulls was that the black and whites we had been milking were too big. We figured the smaller New Zealand Jersey would bring them down quickly and they certainly did that and they bred us a very good cow.”
They then moved to Genetics Australia through supplier CRV. “Some of the older bulls that worked very well for us included Badger, Tahbilk, Aussiegold and more recently Stark, Ventura, Goldband, Bedford and other genomic bulls.
“It has been very nice here in Australia to see some of the mothers and daughters of the bulls we’re using and we were very impressed with what we’ve seen.”
“Now we will settle into more Australian genetics,” Mr Brotherton said. “What we’ve found is that the Australian system is about as close to our system as we can get. It is largely grass-based with supplement and concentrate in times of shortages.”
The Just Milk farms have a 12-week calving period in spring, eight weeks in autumn. Heifers calve down at 24 months, mostly using sexed semen.
They sell some heifers because of a lack of space and also lease surplus heifers for a monthly rental.
The South African dairy industry has changed significantly since Mr Brotherton began farming in 1986. In 1997 there were 7000 dairy farmers, that has been reduced to 882, though farms are bigger and production has increased.
The total herd population is 30 per cent Holstein, 27 per cent Jersey, combined herds running both Holstein and Jersey 23 per cent, cross-breds 16 per cent and Ayrshire 4 per cent.
Most of the 3.65 million litres of milk – 86.1 per cent – is produced around coastal regions and long-life UHT milk and cheese are the main markets, with the fresh milk market decreasing.
Genetics Australia was the premium sponsor of the World Jersey Conference.
