Pouarua Farms - passionate about Jersey!

Pouarua Farms is 2,200ha platform made up of eight dairy farms, one drystock unit, an arable block, and a newly established blueberry block. It’s the largest dairy operation in the Hauraki region with 4,700 cows milked across 1,775 ha and producing approximately 1.65M kgMS.  The farms jointly owned by Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Paoa, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Tara Tokanui and Te Patukirikiri with the land being purchased by the five iwi in 2013. The farms were initially in a 50/50 sharemilking agreement with Landcorp from 2013 – 2019 and are now fully owned and operated by the iwi.  Jenna Smith is the CEO and she sat down with Jersey Advantage to talk about her love of Jersey cows and why Pouarua is driving an aggressive strategy to shift herd genetics toward a J12+ Jersey dominant animal.

‘The land we farm on the Plains is both drought prone and susceptible to extreme wet periods and Jersey genetics offers a lighter animal with a lighter environmental footprint, a greater feed conversion efficiency, more profitable, better fertility, and better animal health overall. The Jersey cow is the best choice of animal for our land and our iwi’s farming values’ says Smith.

Pouarua Farms inherited a F/FX herd and has used Jersey semen over all herds from the beginning.  ‘We are about profitability not productivity so Jersey animals are a no-brainer for us and if I could swap our FX herds for Jersey tomorrow and farm all 4700 animals as J12 plus, I would.’

Pouarua’s strategy is to have more of its milk and meat supplying NZ’s domestic market, ‘the provenance story of NZ food producers feeding kiwi families is important to us’ says Smith.

In 2021, Pouarua was approached by Lewis Road Creamery to provide milk from Jersey cows for their A2 and Jersey Milk brands. ‘There were some clear requirements we needed from the herd to satisfy the supply contract, we needed to be able to supply milk 365 days of the year from animals J12 or better and they all needed to be A2A2’.  All herds were DNA tested and an initial group of 200 were split out to make up the foundation of a Jersey herd with the right credentials.

Supplying milk for 365 days also meant the herd had to be split into spring and autumn calving, which has been a challenge as we ended up missing two peaks instead of hitting one.

At the same time, Goodman Fielder approached Pouarua to provide A2A2 milk for the Meadow Fresh brand and many of the Jersey herd were A2A2 animals so the same group were able to supply Goodman Fielder as well.

‘Probably the biggest challenge has been finding the Jersey animals with the right metrics and interpreting some of the herd data from breeding companies, we needed clear attributes to identify their value like herd test data, BW and PW.  We’ve been lucky to be able to purchase whole lines of well recorded animals through a couple of dispersal sales’ says Smith.

Lewis Road’s Jersey Milk brand has been growing and in 2023 Lewis Road wanted to sure up their supply contracts.  In response Pouarua has been able to more than double the Jersey herd to 450 spring calvers and 430 autumn calvers.  Pouarua is now the sole supplier of Jersey milk to the brand.  ‘We have just purchased two more Jersey herds this year from dispersal sales.

Performance in the Jersey herd has been outstanding with animal health costs $20/head less than the FX herds.  The mating KPIs tell a similar story with a 6-week in calf rate of 77% in the Jersey herd vs 69% in the FX.  The 11% Jersey MT rate is also well below the district average of 17%.  These performance statistics are no surprise to Smith who says ‘this is exactly what we expected to see from the Jersey’s and why we are passionate about Jersey genetics. This performance advantage in turn drives our farm profitability.’

For replacements and young stock Pouarua is using a combination of sexed and dairy beef semen along with Angus and Murray Grey bulls as well as rearing all the Jersey bull calves each year. 
The Jersey bull calves are reared to 100kg weaners and sold to a local rearer.  

‘We are using sexed semen to target a 28% heifer replacement rate to continue to grow the Jersey herd as well as Angus and Murray Grey genetics for dairy beef.  We don’t have the luxury of a non-replacement calf collection during autumn so have to find other avenues for our calves.’  There has been a reasonably good, sustained market for Jersey/Angus and Jersey/Murray Grey cross feeder calves at local sales.  Pouarua is realistic about non-replacement calves and is committed to reducing the number of non-replacements each year where possible, whilst also supporting the value delivered by the non-replacement calf industry.

‘Producing the best quality food for the domestic consumer, ensuring we are profitable, taking care of our animals and enhancing our environment are key focuses for Pouarua and the Jersey cow fits beautifully into all of these areas.’