Awarua Trust

Brian Gordon – a director of the farming LP, ultimately owned by Awarua Trust – milks about five hundred and sixty cows. He has a two-tier soil type, with a very heavy marine clay down below, which is prone to flooding, and Waihou sandy loam on top.

Brian is in a designated flooding zone. If the water does come over his stop banks, he has to receive the water and manage it after that, which is a pretty tough task at times.

He has had one devastating flood in 2017. When he was recovering from the flood, he started to think about using Smart Shelter composting barns as a way of future-proofing his farm and the dairy industry.

Brian does all the feeding out in the composting barns and the cows stay there longer if it’s wet.

In the summertime, the Smart Shelter composting barns gives Brian quite an advantage over other barns in reducing heat stress, which is pretty successful and beneficial for the farm.

Paddy Casey, who too worked on the farm, saw the Smart Shelter barns as a new investment.

Paddy, originally from Ireland, was quick to discover that the New Zealand summer gets very hot and is very draining on an animal. He brought the cows into the barns every day and they stayed in there for most of the day. He noticed the unbelievable difference in their body condition, and could obviously see how healthy their body condition was. He believes a lot of it has to do with the Smart Shelter.

In the busy season, when Paddy had the cows in the Smart Shelter for most of the day, he runs the aerator through. It takes him about 15 minutes to do both sheds and the soil from the Smart Shelter barns is good and dry. That really makes a big difference to the animal when they come into the shelter.