ALEX McArthur ventured into dairy farming nine years ago, in a three-way partnership with his parents, Andrew and Louise, with a goal to achieve considerable and quick growth.
Challenges along the way have led him to acknowledge that people management is the biggest challenge in farming, followed by herd health, and managing peoples' influences on herd health.
Alex started with a 180 predominantly Friesian-Holstein milking herd on 101 hectares at Maffra, working with one other person.
He has grown the herd to 700 milkers, producing 470 kilograms of milk solids per cow annually, grazing 220ha. He runs two dairies and employs seven people.
The herd was now at a size where it is approaching self-replacing status and was 80 per cent Holstein.
A lease block at Stratford and his parents' farm at Meerlieu were to grow out heifers, graze dry cows and harvest silage and hay – one roll of silage and one roll of hay for each cow in 2015.
"We try to keep everything on the Maffra farm for milk production," Alex said.
One dairy ran all year round, milking a 400-cow split-calving herd; the second dairy milks 300 spring-calving cows.
The second dairy was a 25 swing-over with stall gates and cup removers – designed as a one-person operation.
The larger dairy was slated for replacement with the same infrastructure and one-person operation status.
"We're all looking at less labour intensive practices," Alex said.
"Since I started on August 8, 2006, I haven't stopped. There's always ongoing development work, whether it's the herd, pasture, buildings, irrigation system or upgrading the troughs."
Alex recognised his staff were an important aspect of how and at what pace, the farm developed. Integral to that was herd health and management.
He said he felt lucky his workers were well skilled and experienced in animal management, or were willing to learn. It was his own philosophy reflected back.
"Managing such a large crew it is about the skills they have," Alex said.
"If you're farming you need to manage people. If you want to grow you need to delegate.
"We have different people for different positions – and people are given the opportunity to grow.
"If I can't train somebody to take my place in the system, I can't grow."
He has also been willing to seek advice, being mentored by Maffra veterinarian and dairy farmer, Dr Jakob Malmo and swapping experiences with Matthew Gault, a dairy farmer at Stratford.
Alex's relationship with vets and his staff was very important last year, when heifers contracted pneumonia.
"We'd put 180 of them through a drench program and all was well at Stratford," he said.
"Then six heifers died. We didn't know if it was a random thing or something more serious.
"We had two vets involved to treat the pneumonia and considered different options."
In the end, the treatment program required visiting the farm twice daily, checking the herd and isolating sick heifers.
"We think the outbreak was caused by a stressful event. We lost a dozen in all," he said.
Ongoing monitoring meant only two heifers died during a recurrence four months later.
Part of his ongoing strategy included selling some of the heifers to offset ongoing risk to production values.
"At the end of the day our objective is to put milk in the vat," Alex said.
"We ended up selling them because I was worried about their production capacity.
"In the back of my mind was the risk factor of holding onto them, and selling them gave me money to buy replacement cows in the future if I need to."
