A rose by any other name

Balclutha dairy farmer Renae Martin remembers the moment she fell in love with cows.

“I grew up as a townie in Wanganui, and I visited a dairy farm aged 16 with a friend of mine,” she says. “I saw the cows and they reminded me of horses, which I loved. I fell in love.”

After finishing school, Renae went straight into dairy farming. She changed course for five years, working with racehorses while continuing to relief milk, before going into farming fulltime in the 2010/2011 season.

Her first full-time role back farming was as a farm assistant for Jason Halford, who re-sparked her passion for dairy farming and led her to chase her dream of becoming a 50:50 sharemilker.

She then took a job in Taranaki for one year as a junior 2IC, before returning to the Manawatu in a 2IC role. After a few years she then took a manager’s role on a sole-charge farm for a few years; on this farm she won the Manawatu Dairy Manager of the Year at the Dairy Industry Awards.

Renae then went contract milking for six years on her own, milking Ayrshires, before taking one year off to have her son William, born in 2022. She took on a relief milking job for Amy Baker (Fusion Genetics).

In February 2023 she, husband James and William made the big move to South Otago to 50/50 sharemilk.

“The first six months were crazy: coming down to South Otago’s worst drought in 60 years, settling in and learning a new farm and cows – and made more challenging by the fact that James was away working, driving stock trucks in the North Island,” she says.

James works on the farm during spring, and for the rest of the year works off farm doing industry-related work such as driving stock trucks and tractor driving.

“It’s another income source for us,” Renae says. “The farm is mostly a one-person farm once the busy period is over and the crop are all in.”

Currently they milk 250 cows on 100ha at Balclutha for Hamish Anderson. They milk predominantly Holstein Friesians, with some Ayrshires.

In the 2023/24 season, they produced 380kgMS per cow, a season Renae is happy to put behind her.

“We came into the most terrible year, with the worst drought – we had just over 500ml of rain in 12 months, which meant limited grass growth and a farm spending a year under too much pressure,” she says. “We get everything down here, from drought to snow.”

The farm had had limited re-grassing, so they hit the farm hard with re-grassing and over-sowing this season.

“The farm is turning around slowly,” Renae says proudly. “We are getting a lot of comments from local farmers saying that when they drive past, they can see a huge improvement in how the farm looks, which means we are tracking in the right direction.”

Last season, Renae set a production target of 100,000kgMS – around 400kgMS/cow -on a system 2, predominantly grass-based system. They surpassed that target, achieving 109,000kgMS, or 430kgMS /cow.

Renae says she is surprised the herd did so well, considering the fact that in early October 2024, they lost 70% of the farm underwater in the floods that hit South Otago.

“We got 160ml of rain in 24hours,” she says. “We got warning the rain was coming, so we had plenty of supplementary feed to get through and I thought I was as prepared as possible – but I just wasn’t prepared for how much of the farm went underwater.”

Renae says having a sacrifice paddock to feed out on, and the extra supplement, meant the cows got through the stressful situation relatively unaffected – or so she thought, until the following months when the lame and sick cows kept coming.

“It was a very stressful few months, but we are now on the other side of the situation and we didn’t lose any cows through the ordeal, thankfully – the Friesians are tough girls,” she says.

Renae said she’s hoping the ordeal hasn’t affected mating results.

“Realistically, going through that has possibly had some effect, but nothing major I’ve seen so far,” she says.

The herd’s calving start date was originally August 15, but this season Renae pulled it forward to July 29.

“We found our worst weather months were late September/October, so it’s easier to have all the cows calved before the weather hits, and to be able to manage them better during those times,” she says.

Renae says with a drier July and August the grass grows slowly, so as long as she stays at a slower round length the farm can handle the early calving more easily.

“We don’t have a herd home or anything like that, so we need to work around the weather to ensure the cows don’t suffer from weather impacts during the crucial time of the year,” she says.

They keep 65 replacement heifers and 30 beef cattle on the property.

“We are surrounded by river, so we keep beefies to keep the flood bank pasture down and maintained,” Renae says.

Mating starts October 24, which involves six weeks of AI and five weeks of Hereford bulls.

Renae says they brought 50 cows down with them from the North Island, consisting of Holstein Friesians and Ayrshires, and then bought the majority of the herd that was already on farm, which was comprised fully of LIC Holstein Friesian cows – the commercial herd, Renee calls them.

“We’re looking for a happy medium between the large and small Holsteins Friesians,” she says. “The big, tall Holstein Friesians struggle a bit on low input systems.

“We are looking for our udders to go a lot higher and wider at the top, and fertility is a massive focus as we feel there is a small fertility issue within the herd,” she says. “We’d also like to up the components in the milk by using fat and protein bulls.

“Longevity and somatic cell count are important considerations for us. The herd we had was all young; there was no longevity. We love having cows for as long as we can.”

Renae’s favourite calves this season were by Westcoast Almamater.

“They were standout calves and a good cross over some of the commercial cows,” she says. “One of them was so nice it made my show team this season, and won Junior Champion Holstein at her first show, the South Otago A&P Show.”

In the 2024/25 season, they used some Samen, Semex and World Wide Sires genetics, including Madtime-ET, Busybrook Icarus Major, Ladys-manor Overdo-ET, Abs Crimson-ET, Denovo Veejay-Pp-ET and Viva-Pp-ET, Winstar Elixir Pp-ET, Bomaz Monument-P-ET, Progenesis Dawning, Tronnoco I Shaqullie, Busybrook Graizano Empire S2F and Progenesis Echo P.

“I do use a good selection of bulls, as they each have different traits to go over different cows,” Renae says. “Each day during mating, I pick bulls to go with the certain cows that are up to best suit the traits I want to improve with that certain cow.

“Generally, all are fertility focused with good udders, good components and for the commercial herd have a higher BW. I’m excited to see what calves are born this coming season.”

Renae says a big focus of theirs is getting cow families established in the herd.

“We managed to track down some descendants of James’ family’s herd, the original Rosedene stud, which was dispersed 15 years ago,” she says. “We bought six embryos from Katy Button, who still owned one of the original cows from James’ parents’ herd, and we managed to get one heifer from the embryos. Logan Kelly also gifted us a calf this season that is a descendant of the herd.”

Renae and James now have the Rosedene stud name, carrying on from James’ Family.

“We are trying to build cow families,” Renae says. “To get the stud going we are focusing on buying in the odd good cow and getting sexed semen into them and our good cows.”

Renae says there have been a few sires that have produced stand-out cows with top production in the herd, both commercial and type cows: these include

San Ray FM Beamer, Greenwell Sb Foray-et S3F, Claynook Barolo Sg, Walnutlawn Sidekick, Galatea Mgh Regiment S1F, Duckett Crush Tatoo-ET and Westedge Vhr Sweet As S2F.

The couple like to compete in local shows with calves and cows when they can, and Renae is a talented photographer, with a passion for agricultural photography.

“Being able to run a Photography Module at the WWS All Dairy Breed Youth Camp was a highlight,” she says. “I love being able to share my passion of cows, and photographing cows, and all things farm related.

“I would like to get into professional cattle photography, like Dean Malcolm/Brad Cullen, as we just don’t have anyone down here that does those sorts of photos.”

Renae says thankfully, William is into tractors and bikes and also loves the cows, too. 

“Which is lucky, because he gets dragged all over it in the weekend,” she says. “The life of a farm kid.”

Renae says she’s extremely inspired by fellow women in the farming industry.

“I’ve met so many fellow women farmers over the years I look up to and go to for advice, and I do follow a lot of women farmers via social media and women involved within breed society groups,” she says. “It’s positive seeing and hearing what they are achieving, how they are improving their herds, reading and hearing about their breeding successes and failures; it all helps each of us grow and succeed within our own businesses.

“Also reading, hearing and knowing that you’re not alone with the challenges of farming pressures, business pressures and trying to a look after and grow your family has been a big help for me. There is so many successful women within our industry that work so hard behind the scenes doing incredible things.”