Factory Farming Begins At Tai Tapu

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 8

Factory Farming Begins At Tai Tapu

Push-button factory-type farming has begun on the Ahuriri property of Mr D. P. Graham, near Tai Tapu. Mr Graham understands that his cattle fattening unit, which will have an output of about 1200 cattle a year, is the only one in the country in which the beasts are totally enclosed and will be fattened all the year round.

“Virtually nothing is touched by hand from the time the seed is put in the drill until the beasts are hit on the rump to persuade them to go out of the shed to be trucked away to the butchers,” said Mr Graham last week-end. In effect the cattle could be fed by a man in his good clothes. Under this system, using his English-type air-tight silos, he said it would be possible to fatten the 1200 odd young cattle off the produce—in herbage and grain—of only about 100 acres. One hundred and twentyeight cattle—ls two-and-a-half year olds and the balance 20 months old—were driven into Mr Graham’s spacious 12,000 ■square feet feeding shed at I the end of last week. They were put into five welded I pipe pens measuring 30ft by J 38ft on one side of the shed. 'Thirty-one cattle went into I each of two pens but the pens will normally hold 40 cattle each and in the 10 pens in the shed there can be up to 400 cattle at a time. By the end of this week Mr Graham said there were likely to be some 300 head in the shed.

Mr Graham said that the older cattle which he put in last Friday (May 27) would be in for about six weeks before they would be marketed at about 6501 b to 7001 b dressed weight, and the younger cattle for about two and a half to three months before being slaughtered at about 5501 b to 6001 b dressed weight. The cattle quickly settled down in their comfortable new surroundings. A wooden feed trough which runs down the length of the pens on either side of the building was already full when the cattle came in and within five minutes they were feeding although a tractor was working only a few feet away. By Saturday morning the trough was empty.

The automatic auger feeding system was not in operation at the week-end and the trough was replenished using the tractor-drawn selfunloading trailer, which unloaded directly into it. but normally the feed will be augered from the base of the air-tight silos, of which there are three on the property, and then dropped down into a hopper and augered along the full length of the shed. The auger runs in a tube and the feed drops through specially designed apertures into the feed trough, being spread evenly and quickly along the whole length of the trough.

A diverting board under the auger can be used to guide the feed into the troughs serving the Pens on either side of the shed.

Mr Graham plans to keep the feed up to the cattle and expects to feed them in the morning and to possibly give them a further small feed at the end of the day. Last week-end one of the two 450-ton English silos was three-quarters full and the other half full. Oats, grass, clover, lucerne and sorghum grass have gone into these. It has been harvested in the paddock with an Americantype chopper which chops it into half to three-quarter inch lengths and then blows it into an American-type self unloading trailer. From the trailer this material is then unloaded automatically into a blower unit which blows it into the top of the silo, where it falls onto an electrically driven spreader unit which evenly distributes it in the silo. Altogether 15 electric motors are used in Mr Graham’s installation. The material matures a little in the silo and then maintains that condition until it is taken out. Ideally the green material goes into the silo at 50 per cent moisture content, and because some of it has been higher than that when harvested Mr Graham has added some 1500 bales of chopped hay to the mixture to bring the moisture content down and he has another 5000 bales which he plans to reconstitute for use in the silos adding molasses and water to bring it up to the desired moisture content.

An American unloading unit, suspended from the roof, operates inside the silos, drawing the material into the centre and then blowing it out through a series of doors in the side of the silo which

are enclosed in a chute. The material falls to the bottom of the silo to be angered out into the feeding shed and so into the troughs. A third smaller silo is capable of holding 150 tons of grain. This is at present holding about 30 tons of barley. An auger and crusher for crushing the grain are now under construction in Christchurch. Mr Graham plans to start feeding crushed grain this winter, using up to lib per 1001 b liveweight of the cattle mixed with the “haylage” from the other silos. The big feeding shed, measuring 150 ft by 80ft, has a concrete floor and concrete block walls up to about Bft. Above the block walls there is a 2ft 6in ventilation space extending up to the eaves, which is covered with birdproof netting. The roof is carried on a portal frame and is

sheathed in corrugated aluminium sheeting, vented so that ra in does not get in but so that condensation is prevented. It is understood that this is the first time that this sort °f roofing has been used in New Zealand. To further facilitate ventilation in the summer, four extractor fans have been installed in the roof. These are thermostatically controlled to draw off the hot air if the temperature rises above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. An unloading ramp at one end of the shed allows cattle

to be trucked out and into the shed. The pens, in which cattle eat and live, have a sleeping area at the rear which extends 23 feet out from the back wall, and it then drops down six inches on to a feeding area. Straw has been puit down as bedding material and this will be added to from time to time until the material is about 2ft 6in high, when it will be cleaned out and replaced—Mr Graham thinks that this will be about every six months. Cleaning out of

the feeding area, which is 30ft x 15ft, will be done as necessary—possibly about twice a week. Metal gates swing back to hold the cattle on the bedding area while a tractor with grader blade and front-end loader does this job.

To facilitate the natural movement of liquid wastes, the floor of the shed slopes down five inches from one end of the shed to the other and nine inches from the back of the pens to the front including the six inch step down to the feeding area, and this material finds its way to a 5000-gallon sump at one end of the shed.

This will, from time to time, be pumped out into a 600-gal-lon tank on a trailer, with a vacuum-acting self-filling pump driven off the power take-off of the tractor. This Nelson-made unit will be used to distribute the liquid manure over the paddocks on the farm. An English manure distributor will be used to distribute solid material after it has been loaded with a frontend loader. In this way all wastes will be evenly returned to the pastures.

Feeding Troughs The wooden feeding troughs which run the length of the pens down the centre of the shed sit 12 inches off the floor on a concrete platform and they are another 12 inches high and are 2ft 6in wide. A cat-walk above the auger system and also extending down the length of the shed allows the cattle to be quickly and easily inspected. Mr Graham said the type of cattle fattening system that he would be using was on the English pattern in contrast to the American systerr where cattle were provided with shelter for sleeping, but had to go out in the open to feed with only the feed auger being under cover. He said he had seen cattle feeding under this system in the United States and they had been reluctant to go out to feed in heavy rain. This had been in summer and he wondered what it would be like in the winter. He had therefore decided to proceed on the English pattern providing plenty of ventilation, especially for summer. With his silos Mr Graham anticipates that he will probably not have to make any hay again—that is unless his silos are full or there is some mechanical breakdown in the system.

Mr Graham says that the beef he will produce in his shed should be amongst the highest quality in the country and should be worth a premium. He has no definite plans for the marketing of it yet—he says he does not mind whether it is used locally or in the export trade. He would however, be very interested in seeing it used as fresh meat in the air-export trade for hotels and restaurants in the Pacific and South-east Asia areas.

"I am confident that I will be able to fatten 12(10 cattle a year and with that turnover I cannot see that it can be anything but a financial success.” said Mr Graham, discussing the economics of the project. However, to achieve this objective, he says that management will naturally play an important part.

He favours the use of young; cattle for fattening in the! shed—that is cattle between 15 months and 24 months of! age. He may try calves experimentally and after sheep proofing some of the pens he i may attempt indoor feeding; of hoggets for the local mar-! ket he said he had seen i sheep being fed in this way: overseas and doing very well on the “haylage” which comes l out of the silos.

Great interest has been shown in Mr Graham’s pro-! ject and among visitors have, been people from England! and Scotland as well as from! all parts of the country. I