Glink Farm has been in the Antonio family since 1884 when Tim’s great grandfather arrived from Germany. A beautiful farm overlooking Ripiro Beach and Glink’s Gully near Dargaville in Northland.
Tim’s Grandfather took over the farm in 1926 and his father in 1952. Tim has lived on the farm for 71 years, 45 years milking himself along with his beautiful wife Rosemary and his son Todd.
Throughout this time there have been lots of changes.
The home block was originally 240 acres and they have added two blocks to make the farm nearly 800 acres now. The milking platform is around 450 acres.
When I first started working with Tim in 2018, they were milking up to 500 cows with a split calving at both autumn and springtime. As all stock was carried on the farm, the pressure was always on, never any down time for any of them. Add to this the Northland west coast droughts compounded the pressure and they all felt like they were treading water. It was time for change.
They knew they wanted to make changes and started by sending some of the spring R1 heifers off grazing with us, the NZ Grazing Company. This is when I started working with the Antonio family. They decided to further streamline their dairy farming system and made the decision to go to once-a-year calving. The cow shed needing a new roof determined the new once a year start calving date as the 1 st of June.
This was a big change for the farm. The cows in their first year didn’t go quite as planned with a poor conception rate, due to the compaction of mating from spring and autumn. This became a driver for even more change, and they made the decision to also go to once-a-day milking and milk less cows. They have been once
a day now for two years and are milking around 400 cows.
This is when the resulting change occurred. The whole team started to have the time to breathe. The grass grew; the cows blossomed; less animal health issues all round; only productive time on farm for everyone, and more time for family. The work-life balance was falling into place.
I had the pleasure of spending the morning with Tim last week helping him with some of his morning chores. I can honestly say to see a man enjoying his work as much as Tim did was a true pleasure. In the sunshine, the cows were wandering out of thick grass paddocks with large udders dripping milk. The beautiful R2s that were grazed by NZ Grazing were in amongst them. Their udders and stature were equal to the cows. They were hard to pick in the mob with only their blue tags to show their age.
Knowing I have been only a small part of this change by managing the heifer grazing or this family is truly rewarding. To get to see the outcome of the heifers looking so
good is why I love my job.
Ruth Kitchen
Northland Service Manager
NZ Grazing Company
