In coming years, they plan to shift the herd from its current Holstein focus to about 80 per cent Jersey.
Photo by
Rick Bayne
Anna Dickson and Angus Fraser have gone straight to the top in their first year of dairy share farming.
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In the April DataGene Australian Breeding Values (ABVs), Tesbury Dairies, owned by Anna and Angus, topped the Jersey herd list for BPI, HWI and SI.
Anna and Angus have put together a small but elite herd of Jerseys sourced from Anna’s Spring Banks herd and her parents’ Emu Banks herd.
But Anna admits the achievement might be short-lived and the high ABV ranking was “more to do with timing”.
“We were in the process of moving stock across from mum and dad’s farm so we got some of the better Jerseys, depending on how far they were into their lactation,” she said.
“They weren’t necessarily the top cows, but they were a group of the higher ones that were well into their lactation.”
They bought across 29 in-milk cows but had already transferred a lot of heifers to start settling them to their system.
In their first year of farming, Anna Dickson and Angus Fraser have topped the Jersey herd list for BPI, HWI and SI.
Photo by
Rick Bayne
The remainder of the Jersey herd is being moved from the Terang farm to Tesbury.
“All the Jerseys will come across to us so that will make a difference in our ranking,” Anna said.
“We probably won’t be able to keep the top spot once we move across all the animals but we’ll start breeding that way to tighten up the group and hopefully it might come back in the next few years.”
Including young stock, there will be around 200 Jerseys on the farm.
In coming years, they plan to shift the herd from its current Holstein focus to about 80 per cent Jersey.
Jerseys are a passion for Anna.
“We’ll try to let natural progression happen and reduce the number of Holsteins and introduce more Jerseys,” Angus says.
“We’ve always liked the Jerseys. They are a more moderate-framed animal and will suit the system of farming that we like.
“We’re trying to focus on simple things as primarily a grass-based operation with single calving.”
Anna and Angus are share farming for her parents Bryan and Jo who invested in the Tesbury farm last December, supplementing their existing business near Terang and following the sale of their second farm at Glenfyne about five years ago.
While settling in, they are making big changes with the support of Bryan and Jo.
They are now using a new feed pad and setting up a new disc mill.
“It’s going very well,” Anna said.
The White Star herd owned by Con and Michelle Glennen of Noorat was the number two BPI and HWI herd and the equal number one Sustainability Index herd.
Bryan and Jo Dickson retained top spot on the Holstein list with their Emu Banks herd scoring an average BPI of 438.
Emu Banks was also the top herd for the Sustainability Index (SI) at 528 and top herd for the Health Weighted Index (HWI) at 322.
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