A lack of reliable workers has caused a young couple to exit the dairy industry — at least for a while — and they have sold their property and the milking herd they co-owned with his parents.
Until recently, Shaun and Sharna Cope were sharefarming for his parents, Graeme and Jenny Cope.
Graeme and Jenny developed a 408-hectare beef farm into a thriving dairy farm at Fish Creek, with a 50-stand rotary dairy, undercover treatment areas, calf and machinery sheds and, most recently, investing in an undercover calving platform with feedpads.
Dams with a cumulative 25 megalitres were installed with the aim of ensuring three years of drought-proofing water on the dryland farm.
A whole farm plan enabled them to identify the lay of the land and create 10km of laneways throughout the farm to enable easy access for vehicles and fence 60 paddocks for grazing their cattle.
All fodder is produced on the farm from perennial pastures — harvesting 1500 to 2000 tonnes of silage stored in pits, 1000 round bales of hay and 300 to 400 round bales of silage.
The predominantly Friesian herd of 840 mid-sized cows is split-calving and production averages 30 litres/cow.
Graeme and Jenny were investors in technology, installing integrated software management programs that record every cow, with automatic drafting and cups on/cups off, and utilising a joining and veterinary treatment history specific to each cow that can be accessed at any time and anywhere on the farm.
Graeme was brought up on a dairy farm and followed his father, uncle and brothers into the industry. Shaun attended Dookie Agricultural College and — after several years building equity in the herd, purchasing a neighbouring title and building a house for their young family — he and Sharna became 35:65 sharefarmers in 2020.
The farm’s capacity was always reliant on the family members and a reliable workforce. Graeme and Jenny decided they wanted to retire and needed to step back from farming.
Unfortunately, their decision coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, and workers became hard to retain.
The two couples decided to put the farm, including Shaun and Sharna’s title, on the market in May this year.
After interest from local farmers in the considerable asset, it was sold for just over $13 million to a neighbour, Mark Bland, who is continuing to run the dairy farm and purchased the bulk of the milking herd (650 cows).
Mark consolidated the Fish Creek farm into his other dairy holdings in early October.
A selection of cows and heifers were sold by the Cope family at Koonwarra VLE on October 3. The remaining 50 chopper cows were sold a few days later through the saleyards.
While Shaun and Sharna are taking a break from dairy farming, and have bought a house locally, they have retained the 2022 and 2021 autumn-drop calves and are raising them to sell.
“We’ve got 120 autumn-drop heifers from this year that are nearly ready to sell to the export market,” Shaun said.
“Last year’s autumn calves are in-calf and we’ll sell them early next year, before they calve.”
The heifers from both drops are still owned 35:65 by Shaun and Sharna with Graeme and Jenny.
Shaun and Sharna said the decision to sell was influenced by workforce shortages.
“We can’t get enough workers who are reliable to keep the farm going,” Sharna said.
“In the last eight months before selling the farm, we really struggled to find staff who wanted to commit and would turn up for their milking shifts,” Shaun said.
He said workers also wanted accommodation on the farm, an asset they could not offer. Because of the isolation of the farm, without public transport locally, he understood that people wanted to work close to their homes.
Shaun also said the dairy industry was competing for workers against industries with better paying jobs, and against a constantly rising cost of living.
Shaun and Sharna are enjoying spending time with their young family. Graeme and Jenny are travelling.
Sale details, see page 8.