When his family farm needed a manager, Isaac Nattrass stepped up to the plate.
A year down the track, things are looking good and Isaac is settling into the job, with 750 cows being milked daily, improvements being made and six staff members reporting to him.
Isaac also turned 20 during the past year and had no previous experience in running a dairy farm.
It has been a steep learning curve for the young man, but Isaac has embraced the challenge.
“It wasn’t my first time milking a cow, but it was a jump in the deep end,” he said.
“But I had a lot of support from close friends and we’ve got everything back on track.”
Isaac comes from a farming family. His grandfather was involved in logging and then farming and his father Don started as a shearer, but soon moved into professional fishing and later beef and sheep farming.
The family was originally from near Dartmoor in far-west Victoria, but Isaac grew up on the coast at Port MacDonnell in South Australia.
He had worked on the family sheep farm since leaving school at 16, but had limited dairying experience.
The family took a new direction three years ago by investing in the dairy farm at Drumborg.
At the time, COVID-19 had hit Don’s crayfish exports, so he kept his licence but sold the boat and became a full-time farmer.
They now own three farms – one dedicated to dairy, one to sheep and one north of Drumborg that has sheep and also serves as a run-off block for the dairy.
All dry stock is sent off farm from weaning age and comes back three weeks before calving and all joining happens at the northern farm.
The existing manager stayed on for the first 12 months, but his replacement didn’t work out. In June last year, the new manager was let go.
“I said to Dad ‘do you reckon I can do it’ and he thought I could,” Isaac said.
Isaac was keen to take up the challenge.
The family had owned a dairy farm when he was very young, but it was operated by a sharefarmer.
“We hadn’t really milked ourselves back then. With the new farm, I did a lot of fencing, maintenance, sowing, but I had very little experience actually running a dairy farm.
“But I knew if I put my mind to it and talked to the right people, I’d be able to do it.”
Milking and staff management have been his greatest challenges.
“The day-to-day milking was the biggest learning curve at the start,” Isaac said.
“I’d looked after cows before and calved cows, and I knew about grazing and irrigation, but I didn’t know about milking cows and the day-to-day operations and things like mastitis prevention and management or treating sick cows.
“You don’t deal with things like that with beef and sheep.”
He consulted WestVic Dairy and was grateful for the help, particularly with advice about staff training and record keeping.
“General day-to-day stuff you pick up pretty quickly if you’re on the ball,” Isaac said.
“Running the dairy isn’t a hard task if you put your mind to it and I picked it up in a few weeks.”
The farm has a 50-bail rotary with automatic cup removers, retention bars, auto teat spray and auto draft, with the automation added after the Nattress family bought the property.
The farm covers 400 hectares, including 65 under irrigation, and is divided into about 100 paddocks.
The herd is 100 per cent Holstein.
“We bought some of the existing herd, but also bought in a lot of cows ourselves and we bring in 200 heifers a year.
“We correctively mate with Semex semen and genomic test every calf and select our breeders from there.
“That has been very helpful. The calves born next autumn will be the first Semex genomically-tested coming into the system.”
They have large cows and like to bring them as two-and-a-half- year-olds for a bit more competition in the herd.
“It’s a big herd with big cows and we find the heifers don’t get pushed around as much,” Isaac said.
“Luckily we have enough room on our run-off block to be able to do that and bring them in a bit bigger.”
The fertility rate is very high, and Isaac won’t cull a cow just because she missed getting in calf.
“You can’t expect a cow giving 35-40 litres at 100 days to get in calf every time. I’m not going to cull it because of that,” he said.
The farm could add more cows, but Isaac said that would require an expansion of the irrigation system, something that was on his bucket list.
“It’s hard to find groundwater here, but we think we’ve found some, so we have more irrigation in the pipeline,” he said.
He’s using all home-grown feed except for a base 7.5kg of grain and that is helping them to achieve targets.
“We have been working hard to get things right and there are definitely improvements,” he said.
“We’re getting the results we expected in production and reproduction, which is good.”
Isaac has joined the Young Dairy Network and went on a New Zealand study tour with support from DemoDAIRY Foundation.
“That was very beneficial, not so much in taking things straight home to implement, but to look at things in the future,” he said.
“Geo-fencing options, though not allowed at this stage in Victoria, would be good here.”
Isaac understands the importance of the farm manager’s role.
“It’s a role that can make or break your farm,” he said.
“I was worried about some things, but had reassurance from my father and other people around that I would be able to do it.
“I see my future here. The most beneficial thing is that my father is still around. If I have a problem with staff or staff have a problem with me, they can go to him.”