South Gippsland farmer Rowen Foote with his new calf shelter.
South Gippsland farmer Rowen Foote likes his dairy shelter so much that he’s built a second one and is planning a third.
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Rowen, who farms with his brother Chris and family near Fish Creek, built a small Dairy Shelters Australia structure in 2019 for rearing calves on automatic milking feeders.
Last year, the brothers added a second, larger shelter for their calving cows, and now they’re planning a third to provide protection for growing calves.
The Foote family milks 900 Holstein cows on 688 hectares, rearing their own calves and Friesian and Angus bulls.
The herd produces an average 10,000 litres for 720kg MS.
The family has been farming in South Gippsland for the past 120 years, moving from the hills of Korumburra to Fish Creek about 20 years ago.
“The Korumburra farm was quite steep and it was hard to expand,” Rowen said.
“Chris and I both wanted to come back to the farm and we took the opportunity to sell up and move down to Fish Creek where it’s a lot flatter and with more room to expand.”
Since moving further south, the farm has grown from 600 to 900 milkers as more land was acquired.
The family has also been through succession planning with Rowen and Chris taking over management from their parents John and Maryan.
Rowen said the Fish Creek area was good for dairy farming, with fertile and relatively flat land and a reliable rainfall averaging 950mm a year.
“We’ve been very fortunate,” Rowen said.
“The past 18 months have been really good here. Other parts of the state have been really dry, but we’ve been lucky to keep getting rain.”
But that rain can also cause problems.
“Before the shelter, our biggest challenge calving in steel sheds in winter was that they stayed very wet. The farm can get incredibly wet,” Rowen said.
The first Dairy Shelters Australia structure helped to address that.
“The shelter doubled our capacity to house the cows and the pens stayed dry,” he said.
“It was a lot easier because it stays so warm and dry and the calves thrived in that environment. It was noticeable that they were growing better and stronger.
“We were attracted to the shelters because we liked the idea of the sun being able to come through and dry the pens out.”
“The calves have been a lot stronger and healthier and the cows a lot happier because they’re not out in the elements,” Rowen Foote says.
They built a second shelter in 2023 for calving, freeing up paddocks and avoiding muddy births in bad weather.
“We used to calve them in a sacrifice paddock and you’d end up with three sacrifice paddocks and cows up to their bellies in mud walking into the hay feeders and around the troughs,” Rowen said.
“You’d be out there at midnight picking up calves so they weren’t lying in mud and exposed to the elements.”
The stock and the farmers embraced the new shelter. “The calves have been a lot stronger and healthier and the cows a lot happier because they’re not out in the elements.”
The family has a split calving system in February-March and June-August.
For the summer calving, cows are given the choice of grazing in the paddocks or coming in to the shelter.
“Typically, when we’d pick them up in the morning, all the un-calved cows would be waiting at the gate and the cows that had calved would be in the shelter,” Rowen said.
“When they calve, they prefer to be in the shelter. That proves the point for us.”
Over winter, the cows have access to the paddock, but when it’s really wet, Rowen and Chris just shut the gates and keep them in the shelters.
“They’re happy with that. We’ve got hay rings and they come to the dairy every day to get grain and lead feed,” Rowen said.
The second dairy shelter is 2200 square metres, double the size of the first shelter and triple the previous calf shed.
“It has a deep woodchip base and we run scarifier rippers through every day for cleaning. It’s pretty quick and easy and it’s incredible how dry it is.”
Rowen and Chris are planning a third shelter within the next few years.
“We’re happy with the investment because it makes it so much easier. We’d like to put in a third one for calves that are outside to give them some more shelter,” Rowen said.
“From a cow health and cow management perspective, it’s certainly good. We’re very happy with it. We don’t know how we coped before.”
Dairy Shelters Australia shelters are manufactured in Bendigo using a unique and patented clear roof, deep litter design.
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