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for this dairy farming family

His grandsons are the sixth gen-eration to live in the Mossburn area. “Being a grandparent is pretty neat. It adds a huge dimen-sion to your life to see another generation emerging. We have a lot of capital invested in the farms but what would we do with it? We’ve been lucky having a son who wanted to come home. It’s a great feeling to have helped build up something that is available for the next generations.”

Mike and Claire’s son Dennis returned home from Lincoln Uni-

versity full of ideas to try out. He went into a 50:50 partnership with them. Another son Tim will also be leaving Lincoln soon and is also keen to come home and try out his own ideas. Their daughter Sonya is home at the moment milking cows after working as a planner in the UK.

Mike is very relaxed about sharing control. “I know families where people haven’t got a go on

the farm until they’re 30 or 40. I can’t see the point of that. When a young fellow comes home he

Mike and Claire Heenan Have tHree

dairy farMs and a run-off bloCk

in soutHland. tHe farMs Milk 1750 Cows and

eMploy 11 people. but wHat is Most

iMportant to Mike is tHe people

involved.

its all about people

Three of The heenans’ nh TracTors including This T7040 have super-

sTeer, which Mike says Makes TheM

a big TracTor very Manoeuvrable.

The currenT Two generaTions of heenans

working The faMily’s souThland dairy

operaTion: (froM lefT) Mike, clair, sonia, dennis,

and TiM (aT back).

as seen in...rural contractor & large scale farmer groundbreaker 2009 issue 106

needs to be involved with all deci-sions. Young fellows make things happen. They’ve got heaps of energy; they can beat most things and make it work.”

The farm work is divided up among all members of the fam-ily. Mike doesn’t milk anymore but he does look after stock and some of the financial side. Claire and Amy (Dennis’s wife) also work on the books and manage-ment, and Dennis does most of the budgeting.

“The financial side is the most important part of farming. If that’s not right it just falls apart. There has been more and more paper work over the years. Some of that is growth of the business but most of it is the increase in bureaucracy.”

Mike is in full agreement with some of the things local govern-ment is doing. He thinks people who pollute should be held to account, for example.

“We are very meticulous about fencing off streams and water-ways on the converted farms. It’s easy to do and stock are better off out of waterways. Our kids have always liked to swim and fish in our rivers, and we hope that car-ries on for many generations.”

Mike’s father Bill is 100 and liv-ing in Christchurch. Bill had the same relaxed attitude when Mike came home to the farm. He never put any pressure on, saying Mike could go and do whatever he wanted. Mike went to Lincoln. In his summer holidays he came home and went contracting – making hay and fencing.

When Mike finished studying he worked on other farms before coming home when he was 24, to what was then a sheep and beef farm with Romneys and Her-efords. He was the youngest of nine children.

“I was lucky enough that when I came home I immediately went into a 50:50 partnership with my father. I also asked him if we could take over the financial accounts and he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. I’ve read since then that the earlier guys get financial control the better, but it’s also got to be tempered with experience.”

It was the 1970’s and they bought Barnhill, a 600ha block near Mossburn. Mike and Claire still live there.

The Heenans shifted into dairy at just the right time in 1996. “I

could see the potential. It was a bit sad seeing the sheep go; but you’ve got to keep an open mind and move on.

“It’s a satisfying feeling catching the wave. It’s been a really stimu-lating time. We worked hard and have been rewarded.”

Mike and Claire made up a herd of 300 Friesians and bought a farm at Morton Mains.

Since then they’ve sold that farm and bought and converted three others. Barnhill is used as a

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run-off. The other three farms are all around 200ha and 15km from Barnhill. Dennis, Amy, and all 11 farm staff live on the dairy blocks.

When Dennis came home four years ago he wanted to try a dif-ferent herd, so they’ve now got a Kiwi breed: the Friesian/Jersey cross.

“A young fellow wants to do his thing. He paid a lot of atten-tion to the Lincoln dairy farm and worked with Jerseys in the North Island. He’s had plenty of time to think about it and if that’s what he wants to run, it’s his choice. He’ll be in a lot longer than me. And I like them. I think they’re pretty neat.

“They’re built for hybrid vigour. They’re a smaller cow and fairly tough. They’re easier on the soil and stand the conditions better.

“It takes time to get to know the

climate. Because something works in one environment it doesn’t mean it will work where you are. You’ve got to find what works. Though the climate here does seem to be getting milder. It used to be if you didn’t re-grass by mid-March it was too late,” Mike says.

The Heenans used to do all their own ag work but the operation just got too big.

“You pick the jobs you can do reasonably okay yourself, and get contractors to do the ones that require machinery you haven’t got – like silage.”

Sometimes they do their own

hay, and when it comes to making baleage, they mow it and the con-tractor does the rest.

Mike and Dennis plant their own

winter crops and re-grass. They have over 300 acres of swedes over all the farms. They expect a dry period for six to eight weeks and plant summer turnips to cov-er that time. Each farm has about 12ha and that goes back into grass and as soon as it’s eaten off in the end of March.

They feed out about 2000 bales of baleage and 2000 tonnes of silage on DM basis. All that’s from their own farm and they also buy in a few hundred tonnes of silage to be sure they don’t go short.

Another change Dennis made was to make whole-crop barley for silage. Last year they had their first crop and this year they could potentially have 4000 bales. “Some was under-sown with grass and made into silage for autumn feed. It’s very high qual-ity and the cows milk well on it.”

Mike and Dennis have five New Holland tractors and an eclectic range of implements.

They wanted to cut down on ploughing as it takes so long, so two years ago invested in a set of Kverneland hydraulic discs.

“They’re European and the quality of steel is very high and we felt they would be ideal for doing a lot of the work, especially after swede or turnip crops, with-out having to plough. The plough is only eight foot wide the discs are 15 feet. Discs save time and money.”

Mike says the rocks do still knock

Mike’s wife Claire uses the 1970 50hp Ford 3000 to feed calves. It also pulls the ridger. A 100hp Ford 6610 Force three turbo is also on the payroll.

Nowadays the Heenans also have six New Hollands. Three are in the 100hp range. Along with the Ford 6610, there is one of these for each farm. Mike believes it is important to have a good tractor always avail-able so jobs don’t get put off.

The blue fleet includes a TS100, T6010, T6020, TS125, TS 125A, and a T7040. They do all the general farm jobs such as feeding out, or pulling a drill or light set of discs. Most of them have MX loaders to further increase their usefulness.

Mike and Dennis say the T6020 is the most recent purchase. At 112hp it is a bit more powerful and there-fore more useful. It reflects the trend toward larger tractors.

Mike says the three big tractors are gutsy with a good suspension cab and driver comfort. They are long-er, which gives a smoother ride.

“The three big tractors have super-steer. You can tell when you’re in a tractor with super-steer. It makes a big tractor very manoeuvrable,” Mike says.

“Before we buy a tractor we calculate how much use it will get and then we monitor it. If it doesn’t do 600 hours in a year, it isn’t worth having it.”

Sticking to the same brand of tractor means staff can drive any of them. And with some instruction any-one can drive a New Holland – computer degree not required.

the heenan family has generations of allegiance with new holland tractors via their ancestors, ford.

Mike heenan says his kverneland discs are

good on rougher ground such as eaTen-

off Tussock land.

The heenans run five new holland TracTors on Their dairy farMs, including This Ts125a and T6020.

PROFILE

the discs around and occasionally get jammed but they are sprung and cope pretty well. They fold up easily to get through gateways and for transporting.

They also have Hooper 12-foot tandem discs. “We use the Hoop-ers all the time but the Kverneland

is better for rougher ground. We used the Kvernelands on an eaten-off tussock block and it would have been hard to do with anything else. The scallop blades just bite in. And discs keep the fertility at the top as opposed to ploughing.”

They’ve also got 12-foot Cos-

grove discs. “They’re a lighter disc we use for finishing work, and are really good for that. We needed another set and they were cheaper and not as heavy. Plus smaller tractors pull them easily. The others are hydraulic whereas the Cosgroves are man-

ually adjusted. We can set them and know guys aren’t going to make a stuff-up in the paddock: they’re foolproof.

They’ve got two ridgers for planting and fertilising turnips and swedes. The old Willett does four rows and had to have some-one standing on the back to watch for seed blockages and keep it primed. The new Paddon ridger does six rows, and it’s hydraulic and electronically controlled.

The baler is a New Holland. ‘It’s an older one, but it’s good and it’s done a lot of work.” They’ve also got a Slam V-rake, a Kuhn condi-tioner and a couple of UFO mow-ers.

“They were all good deals at the time. We bought mowers we thought would cope with rocks: they have got wee blades, which are easy to change. Now it prob-ably doesn’t matter a damn what you bought: modern mowers are so much better. Also the farm’s a lot better: a lot less rocks on it.”

Previously they picked rocks up by hand, now they do it with a set of forks on the tractor. Anything left is dealt to with a 20-tonne roller after grassing.

When the Heenans bought the extra farms the amount of land they cultivate each year jumped from 300 acres to 1000 acres. That prompted the move into the bigger Kverneland discs and also into bigger tractors.

Mike sees a long-term trend for machinery to get bigger and more sophisticated but it still has to be affordable or no one will buy it. When he started, 30 acres a day was a big day now you need to do 100.

“Our new ridger is a classic case. It’s more sophisticated with up-to-date electronics and you get more work done. In simple terms, we’ve replace labour with capital. But every so often you get a wake up call and have to go back to doing without stuff. Then you replace capital with labour. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you employ more people. You just do less.”

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“I remember coming home from university and telling the old man about not having recession and depressions if it’s done right. He just laughed. And Dennis came home and said the same thing. He thinks experts can stop it all, and I laughed.

“There are always boom and bust cycles. Out of the bust new opportunities for another generation come along. If prices kept going up young people would never get a start. Farm prices have got to come-down. The pay out has fallen so people can’t finance it.”

Times have been tough before. Mike’s father Bill started with nothing. He left school at 12 and worked on the farm for a year driving the horses. He went back to high school then came home again so another brother could go. Bill worked on the farm for only his keep. When his farm work was over for the day he then went contracting. That was how he got his start.

There were times when he walked the 19 miles home from Five Rivers to save a gallon of petrol.Mike says that it was the hard work of Bill and his family who gave Mike’s generation opportunities. “It’s been a concerted family effort for many years, as each generation has done its thing. No one person

has built up what we’ve done. My father had such tremendous knowledge; but was prepared to stand back and let you make your mistakes - something you’ve got to do. Let it go. You can tell them but they don’t understand until they’ve had a go.”

To weather the recession they’ll be cutting fertiliser. “We’ve got no choice. We have to cut back on fer-tiliser and anything else we can. A couple of farms have got high P levels so we’ll be able to mine that for a few years and hope it doesn’t go on too long. In the 1980s that’s how we all survived – by cutting back. Production falls, but you survive.”

Another trick Mike learnt in the 1980s was to surround himself with positive people. “What you have to do is make your mind up to survive and cut your cloth accordingly. There will be opportunities but cash and equity will be king.”

Mike and Claire want to finish the development they’ve started when finances permit. They may convert some of the run-off block to dairy. They do hope to travel and will move back more from running the farm. If opportunities arise they may buy more land. That will give room for Tim when he comes home from Lincoln.

“Farmers have no control; we’re the biggest gamblers of all. We gamble with politicians, currency, mar-kets, weather, our health, price of everything you can think of. But we love it and do it and get on with it.”

mike is relaxed about the drop in payout. he’s been in farming long enough to have experienced busts and booms.

Mike and dennis re-grass Their own paddocks and planT Their own winTer crops, which includes More Than 300 acres of swedes.

PROFILE