Dairy Farming

The Trust's journey into scalable dairy farming really only began in the early 2000's.

While sheep and beef cattle trading remained the core of the Trust's farming activities since the introduction of the first small scale dairy operation in the early 90's, the Board recognised the importance of balancing the Trust's farming exposure particularly when income from sheep and cattle trading was limited to a short few months during each farming season.

​

After thoughtful consideration and robust modelling, the Trust entered into the first of its large scale dairy conversions. This commenced in 2007, with the core of the Marae Manuka Dairy Unit being converted from part of Waipapa Station and a neighbouring farm block that the Trust had acquired earlier. The Marae Manuka Dairy Unit officially being commissioned for supply in 2008.

​

Once the completion of Marae Manuka had occurred, stage two of the dairy development commenced at Takapau Station, where 780 hectares of the historic Takapau Station was converted into dairy. While the intention was to operate two dairy units across this block, circumstances at the time saw only one diary shed being built with the intention to revisit the second shed when time and resources allowed. Therefore, the Takapau Dairy Unit was commissioned in 2009, milking over 2,000 cows through a 60 bail rotary shed.

​

Concurrently, further work was being undertaken on the Okuhaerenga Dairy Unit  to increase it's size, which up until then had not had any significant work done on it since the original conversion in the early 90's.

​

By 2010, a significant amount of capital land development had been undertaken on the block to increase its size as well as a heavy stumping and contouring programme and therefore it was time for a new shed to be constructed to cater for the increase in cows. In 2012 the new 60 bail rotary shed was commissioned on Okuhaerenga, with the core of the redundant herringbone cowshed and plant being decommissioned and sold.

​

Our dairy operations as a whole went through a number of changes from 2012 to 2020 and we continued to develop and increase nutrient levels across the dairy units  to promote suitable pastures for dairy and milk production.

​

In 2020, almost 12 years since the original conversion, the decision was made to re-commence the final stage of the Takapau development to build the second dairy shed and bring the block under a more manageable size. Therefore in 2021, ground work commenced to bring the project to a start.

The project took longer than expected, with COVID and supply related delays, however the new shed was commissioned for supply in July 2022. The new shed and 40% of the Takapau block being named Wereta Dairy Farm, with the remainder or land and existing dairy shed retaining the name of Takapau Dairy Unit.