NZ Dairy Exporter

Across the country, most calves will have reached, or will shortly be reaching, their target weaning weights off milk, and you will be shifting them to meal and grass. The importance of caring for young calves is regularly emphasised, however, continuing rearing heifers with extra care will help pay dividends throughout a cow’s milking life, since well-grown heifers are known to be more successful milking cows. Read the full article online - Link in comments.

💰 Financial Literacy: The Key to Unlocking Your Farm’s Potential! 📊 Becoming fluent in the language of finance is essential for taking control of your farming business. Whether you're managing budgets, analyzing cashflows, or making big decisions, understanding financial KPIs can help you make smarter choices and set your farm up for success. It’s not just about numbers – it’s about gaining confidence to navigate your financial future with clarity. 💡 🔑 Want to learn the power of compound interest, practical budgeting tips, and more strategies to boost your farm’s financial health? 📊 Discover More in Our Special Report on Financial Literacy For more in-depth information, strategies, and expert advice on managing finances in your farming business, read the Special Report on Financial Literacy in the Dairy Exporter Summer Issue – out now!

🌍 LIC's Global Partnership LIC is joining forces with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Acceligen to explore gene-editing technologies for cattle in Sub-Saharan Africa. The goal? To develop gene-edited animals that improve productivity and resilience, starting with the Slick gene, which confers heat tolerance. 🌿 Read more online:

Veterinarian Winston Mason has just attended the International Symposium and International Conference on Lameness in Ruminants in Venice, where it highlighted to him how New Zealand farms are significant strides ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to low lameness cases. Want to know how to detect lameness? Read online - link in comments.

🎄 Merry Christmas from all of us at Dairy Exporter Magazine! 🎄 Wishing all our readers, farmers, and rural professionals a joyful and restful Christmas. 🌟 May your holidays be filled with good company, great food, and enough rain to keep the grass green for the new year! 🌱 Here's to celebrating all the hard work and dedication that makes our rural communities so special. Thank you for your continued support – we’re excited for what’s to come in 2025! 🎉 Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎅🎁

💡 Managing farm finances doesn’t have to feel overwhelming! Not a numbers person? That’s okay. The key is to be honest about your skills and surround yourself with the right support. ✔️ Love numbers? Dive into the details and challenge your strategies. ✔️ Need clarity? Work with advisors who simplify financial data for smarter decisions. ✔️ Hate the admin? Outsource GST, budgeting, and reporting to trusted professionals. 💻 With modern tools like AI and remote software, managing cashflow, budgets, and stock reconciliations has never been easier. Focus on what you’re great at and let a team of experts handle the rest—your farm’s success depends on it! 👉 The right support transforms challenges into opportunities. Read more in Dairy Exporter Summer Issue - Link in comments.

A study monitoring heifer growth rates on winter crops has shown the importance of testing all winter feeds for nutritive value and formulating winter diets to ensure nutrient requirements are being met, rather than just allocating feed on a drymatter basis. Read online (Link in comments)

What you measure you can manage right? But how do you know if you have the right farm management tool to guide you and your team towards recording and reporting success? This month In Residence: Russell MacKay - FarmIQ Systems Ltd Paul Ruddenklau - Resolution Annie Cates - Farm Focus Limited Scott Townshend - Trev Hear from our four farm management softwares on a panel over lunch as they explain how they are different and the best option for you. Or if you are already familiar with their software, ask them about what updates maybe coming in the future. WATCH LIVE ON LINKEDIN or https://lnkd.in/gD6dFd4j In Residence is your monthly livestream hosted by award-winning journalist, Sarah Perriam-Lampp, as she brings you experts in their field for you to connect with and find out more about how to farm for the future. Livestream will be made available to watch on-demand for free as well as on the podcast ‘In Residence with Sarah Perriam-Lampp’.

Two significant pieces of government-funded and internal policy work this year have created a groundswell of interest in the potential emergence of a biodiversity credits system to help address the degradation of New Zealand’s natural environment. Both suggest farmers could be financial beneficiaries from such a system. But there’s plenty of fish hooks in the way, not least the new coalition Government’s unknown commitment to the idea. ‘Ideally, farmers would be able to stop producing beef on land that’s been adapted from a wetland, turn it back into its original state, and make a living from doing so,' says Sean Weaver, CEO of Ekos. 'If a biodiversity market is functioning properly, it will pay the true cost of conservation.’ Read more about the proposed biodiversity credits system in our Autumn issue, on sale now. Subscribe online for only $59 a year which includes digital access! https://lnkd.in/guiT5sbe By Phil Edmonds

Pāmu™ is working to reduce its gender pay gap, with fairer remuneration and building internal development programmes to get women into higher leadership roles, while providing more support around parental care leave to retain women. The number of female staff at Pāmu has been growing over the last few years, yet when women were leaving to start a family, they were typically not returning, chief people, safety and reputation officer for Pāmu, Bernadette Kelly says. In response, Pāmu changed its parental care leave policy two years ago to focus on supporting those women to return to work and ensuring they weren’t penalised financially during their leave. Pāmu now tops up paid parental care leave to 80% of the person’s salary for the 26-week paid period. Staff are also offered the option to stay in the farm accommodation during their parental care leave, which Bernadette acknowledges is an easier perk for Pāmu to offer. “If you take parental care leave you can stay in the farm accommodation, and we meet the cost of the housing for that period so they can stay in that house with their family. “That encourages them to return to work rather than if they had to get out of that house and then we are trying to get them back on the farm. It’s obvious when you think about it. “We are lucky we are a big farmer and we have some spare houses. We have farms that are contiguous with other farms, so we understand all our advantages. “If we can’t do it at Pāmu, then nobody can do it. We have to be seen as a leader.” Read more online here: https://lnkd.in/gZjzhZNb #pamu #pamunewzealand #genderpaygap #womenindairy