Focus Farm brings growth

PASTURE management has been a big talking point during the past year on Graeme, Jenny and Shaun Cope’s Fish Creek Focus Farm.
With advice from joint facilitators John Mulvany and Karen Romano, as well as a support group of local farmers and service providers, the Copes have made significant improvement to the way they grow grass.
Just how they have gone about making these changes is sure to be one of the hot topics at the upcoming Focus Farm Open Day.
“Pasture management has been something that has been pushed by Karen Romano,” Graeme said.
“From the autumn through until now, we’ve had more grass in front of us than in previous years. She’s been pushing us to get it to at least the two and a half leaf stage on the ryegrass plant before we graze the paddocks. It’s let us milk a few more cows.”
The open day is an opportunity to explore their farm business operations, discuss the issues they have been tackling and catch up for a cuppa and chat with local farmers.
The program also includes:
• a short introduction to the farm, people, system and infrastructure;
• a review of the farm’s progress towards goals of: areas of management control for their son Shaun. In particular his role in controlling grazing management and allocation of feed; and Shaun and his wife Sharna’s transition of cow ownership;
• integration of farm safety into the business;
• a review of the 2016-2017 season (physical and financial); and
• outlook for 2017-2018.
GippsDairy regional extension officer Karen Romano said this was a great opportunity for local farmers to learn from the Focus Farm experience.
“Graeme, Jenny and Shaun have been working hard over the past year to not only improve their pasture and herd management, but have also tackled issues like transition planning to allow Shaun to take over down the track and farm safety, where Jenny has really led the way,” she said.
The Focus Farm program is jointly supported by GippsDairy and Dairy Australia. The program gives farmers and agribusiness professionals the opportunity to participate in the decision-making processes of a dairy farm business.
Each focus farm provides an ongoing demonstration of the value of goal setting within a dairy business and the processes required to achieve these goals.
Presented by Focus Farm facilitator Karen Romano, the open day will be held on Tuesday, September 26 from 10.15am to 2.30pm at 195 Kerrs Road, Fish Creek.
Lunch is provided, so please register with GippsDairy on 5624 3900 or [email protected]

Sharing knowledge: Graeme and Jenny Cope will be hosting a Focus Farm Open Day at their Fish Creek farm later this month.

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Posted by Sarah Vella on Sep 5 2017. Filed under Rural News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry