Ross Anderson is happy to be continuing the tradition to farm sustainably, which is in the DNA of the family who farm in the State's dairy hearltand in Gippsland.
Ross has been back on the Denison farm for 15 years, and together with his partner Jenny, are taking over management from his parents Graeme and Chris.
Located in the Macalister Irrigation District, the Andersons milk 500 crossbreed cows and have introduced changes to farm sustainably and more profitably.
"Mum and Dad always had a big focus on being early adopters and trying to create efficiencies," Mr Anderson said.
Innovations over the past decade have included installation of 60kW solar power for the dairy and three on-farm houses, automated irrigation, three-way cross-breeding with the addition of VikingRed, a monitoring system and an upcoming spray rig.
"Water is limited so we've always been conscious of being smart with its use and not wasting it," he said.
"We have a lot of catchments and no water now leaves the farm; we catch it and re-use it."
Irrigation has been automated to improve labour and water-use efficiency.
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The farm has been crossbreeding for decades, originally with Jersey and Friesian and more recently with Brown Swiss and for the past two years VikingRed.
"We weren't getting the quality and availability of Brown Swiss so we looked into VikingRed and found they are robust and would make a really good cross," Mr Anderson said.
"The third cross gives a great opportunity to really develop the animal and improve on fertility and health."
The addition of VikingRed has helped with fertility.
"We are mating autumn calvers now and this is our second go with the sexed semen," he said.
"We're trying to do the right thing and go away from bobby calves.
"We're using sexed and beef semen which helps our sustainability and it's going well financially while there's demand for beef calves."
When considering ways to reduce their environmental footprint while saving money, the Andersons invested $120,000 in a 60kW solar system on the dairy and farm houses.
"At full tilt when the dairy is running, we use all 60kW," he said.
"Depending on what time we milk and the weather conditions, we can cover a fair bit of the power for that milking."
Solar also runs pumps, crushers and other equipment during the day, allowing a shift from night-time off-peak work, leading to more efficiencies.
Installed five years ago, the solar system has already paid for itself.
Collars were added to the cows five years ago for heat detection and health alerts, creating efficiencies in labour and contributing to improvements in herd health and fertility.
A pit silage was introduced this year to reduce the amount of disposable plastic.
"The year before we did 2000 bales and wrapped every one individually," he said.
"This last season we did about the same number and put them in three pit stacks.
"We used reusable gravel bags of tyres and tarps, which means a lot less plastic."
A new $20,000 system monitors grain levels in silos, water in tanks for the farm and hot water for the plant. The system makes sure the right levels of chemicals were being dispensed for the washes.
The next investment is a Tow and Fert spray rig which would be in use from September, using agitators that turn urea into liquid so it can be sprayed instead of spreading granules.
"It will reduce the amount of nitrogen that we use while getting a greater impact on growth," he said.
"We hope it will pay for itself by growing more feed for less cost."
Apart from 2.5-3 tonnes of grain fed in the dairy, all feed was home grown.
"We have milk meters and each cow is fed based on their production," Mr Anderson said.
"We want them to hit their peak and hopefully maintain for as long as possible."
They run a high stocking rate across the 120-hectare home farm, which was supported by a 180-hectare block for young stock.
A new dairy was built in 2009 including automatic teat spray and cup removers making it a one-person operation to improve labour efficiency.
Mr Anderson said he was focused on being sustainable, both through environmental improvements and better profitability.
A tool supporting this was the use of VikingGenetics' data and innovation.
"The way technology has developed and the world has become smaller, it's great to be able to access webinars out of Europe and see what is happening," he said.
"VikingGenetics is doing a great job in collecting data about bulls and heifers."
