Dairy Farming
The Van Leeuwen Dairy Group is a large scale, high performance dairy business in the South Island of New Zealand. This dairy business is based in a region that is known for its abundance of natural resource (water) for irrigation, along with flat to rolling topography and strong soils, these factors drive the business towards high productivity.
The organisation is located at Morven, South Canterbury milking 12,550 cows through 9 dairy sheds and four freestall robotic milking barns with the last robotic freestall milking barn commissioned end of September 2014. The operation has its own support land and harvesting equipment, mitigating risk from factors that can affect performance.
Leading into the 2016/17 season there are 4133 dairy hectares which will milk 12,550 dairy cows complimented with 3,757 hectares of dairy support land. The support land is a combination of owned and leased land by the Crop and Grass division of the business whose primary purpose is to winter cows, carry replacement stock, rear finishing bulls and harvest silage to carry to the dairy platforms when additional feed is required in the shoulders of the season.
We also self contract all of our silage with a Claas chopper and new series Schuitemaker loader wagons chopping the harvesting platforms 4 to 5 times a year which equates to around 8,000 to 10,000ha annually depending on the season for growth. Crops harvested are grass silage, lucerne silage, whole crop and maize silage. The harvesting season begins October and continues right through to May each year.
The Van Leeuwen Dairy Group is a large scale, high performance dairy business in the South Island of New Zealand. This dairy business is based in a region that is known for its abundance of natural resource (water) for irrigation, along with flat to rolling topography and strong soils, these factors drive the business towards high productivity.
The organisation is located at Morven, South Canterbury milking 12,550 cows through 9 dairy sheds and four freestall robotic milking barns with the last robotic freestall milking barn commissioned end of September 2014. The operation has its own support land and harvesting equipment, mitigating risk from factors that can affect performance.
Leading into the 2016/17 season there are 4133 dairy hectares which will milk 12,550 dairy cows complimented with 3,757 hectares of dairy support land. The support land is a combination of owned and leased land by the Crop and Grass division of the business whose primary purpose is to winter cows, carry replacement stock, rear finishing bulls and harvest silage to carry to the dairy platforms when additional feed is required in the shoulders of the season.
We also self contract all of our silage with a Claas chopper and new series Schuitemaker loader wagons chopping the harvesting platforms 4 to 5 times a year which equates to around 8,000 to 10,000ha annually depending on the season for growth. Crops harvested are grass silage, lucerne silage, whole crop and maize silage. The harvesting season begins October and continues right through to May each year.
