How Peters Farms Utilise EID
Peters Farms: Adopt new technology
Ag Journalist Ken Strugnell talks to the Peters family in Central Otago.
Peters Farms Ltd is the company owned and run in partnership by Trevor Peters his wife Karen, their two sons Clayton and Morgan and wives Jeannette and Megan. It is a huge family operation with over 60,000 stock units spread over 6 farms and a 3000 acre run off block high above the eastern banks of the Clutha River near Roxburgh. Stocking sheep, cattle and some deer the farms are run independently though share capital equipment. Trevor proudly described their 480HP Hino truck and trailer that carts everything from fertilizer to livestock and wool bales to machinery. With a dedicated driver Gwilym it covers over 100,000km annually, servicing the needs of their diverse farming operation. He also drove me high above the river to the run off to meet Scotty, the driver of their massive MAN fertilizer spreader truck. {See Picture} With its tractor tyres, it operates on the very steep hill country that is being improved from bare tussock to clover rich pastures, for the cattle to graze through the autumn and winter, before they are brought in to calve in the spring. Trevor is slowly raising the pasture quality and carrying capacity of the rough hill run off. This year he tells me he’s trying a new approach utilizing burning the tussock followed by fertilizing and reseeding. It is a calculated risk that if successful he will repeat. In the past the land has been sprayed, cultivated by a wheeled tractor then reseeded and fertilized. The MAN truck works over the sometimes very rough hill country, as well as the easier rolling and flat paddocks non stop for nine months a year on the seven properties.
Three 150hp tractors are shared by all farms and do the heavy work, often all together, to minimise the time needed. Each farm also has its own 90-110hp tractor. When it comes to vehicles, mostly the stations are loyal to Toyota and run Hi Lux’s though Trevor has a special, very robust and capable Ute made from a Landcruiser 70 series station wagon cut down with a 1.4m deck and dog box on the back. This was done by specialist conversion company Peter Munro Commercials in Christchurch a couple of years ago. In a departure from Toyota and favouring the newer bigger Ford Utes, both Peter’s sons drive the new Ranger.
Fifteen fulltime permanent staff are employed across the farms. Wife Karen Peters and Brigette Morrison, take care of the office, carrying out the administration of the farming enterprise.
"Everyone knows their job, we discuss what’s needed then I leave them to get on with it. Good communication keeps us all on the same page. I trust my staff and they reward that with performance and real loyalty" says Trevor. "We seldom advertise a vacancy, word of mouth brings really good people to Wairere" he goes on to say
It’s this kind of attention to detail and doing the research that brought Peters farms to the technology that Te Pari Products have to offer.
Allied to the Racewell sheep handlers we discussed earlier Peters Farms Ltd have recently seen the introduction of the Archer FastEID. As early adopters of this new technology, they are only now finding out just how versatile and groundbreaking it is for several areas of their operations.
While traceability for cattle finally becomes mandatory this year Trevor Peters and his sons and Farm Managers have been quick to see the benefits of the system for their three sheep studs.
Sons Clayton and Morgan both run the Wairere South Romney fully recorded breeding flock in conjunction with their commercial flocks. Along with Wairere South Station Farm Manager, Shane Carter who also manages the 500 Suffolk Texel sheep stud and the Peters Angus Cattle Stud with 280 stud breeding cows and a further 1000 in the commercial herds.
Clayton and Jeannette have 2500 Wairere Romney recorded ewes and 6500 commercial flock ewes.
Morgan and Megan farm 800 Wairere Romney recorded ewes alongside their 5800 commercial flock ewes.
Trevor and his sons employ Farm Managers to take charge of the three other farms in their Peters Farms company.
I met with them all early one morning at the end of February 2012, to discuss the latest edition to the stud recording of the Wairere South Station and Peters Farms Ltd.
From Te Pari they have purchased the NAIT ear tag recording system to work with the Racewell handlers along with three Donald’s FastEID "Archer" brand Personal Digital Assistants PDA’s for short. Essentially they are rugged and versatile hand held computers the size of a modern though elongated Cellphone encased in bright orange rubber. "It’s very tough and is totally water mud and shock proof", says Shane.
Electronic ID (EID) or visual data is able to be captured in the yards out in the field or by using a wand over the ear tagged animals. Shane goes on to say "The great thing is that we can just download the info straight into the computer or e-mail it wherever it’s needed".
"We’ve had these three units now for less than a year and we’re still learning just how versatile they are". "We keep learning and adapting it to tasks that had the opportunity for human error. By eliminating those errors we are both more efficient and can offer our Stud clients much more information and be confident that it’s not only extremely accurate, but also relevant and up to date." "If a client wants information about a single ram or bull, or even an entire line, all we have to do is wave the magic wand over the animal and instantly the entire history is there on the screen or we can e-mail it direct to their computer or phone. It really is that good!!" he says.
"At present we’re only using them on the stud flocks and the Angus Stud, due to the cost of tags which vary from $1.95 to $3.00 each". "They are a single use tag so for now we will continue only using them in the sheep studs". "As the price of them comes down we see there are some classes of stock in the commercial farms that we could gain greater effiencies by utilizing them on the bigger numbers of animals to get more data."