Dairy Herd Manager

Matt Dawson: Hi, my name's Matt. I'm 21 and I'm married to my beautiful wife Taylor. I'm currently 2IC for Henri Pennings on NZ Dairy lease, and together with his son Isaac we run this 620 cow operation in Hawton Downs, Hamilton.

It began across the road on my dad's 350 cow farm. When I was little I learnt how to rear calves, drive tractors and drive motorbikes. When I turned 13, I began relief milking and I was often found on the weekends in the local sheds.

I look up to my dad a lot and ever since a young age I always wanted to be like him. So when I was 16 I left school to begin my career in the dairy industry.

I have five years' experience – three years as a farm assistant, one year as a herd manager, and one year as a 2IC. Next season my wife and I are returning to my dad's farm to start our first lower order sharemilking job.

From the day I left school, I enrolled with Primary ITO and I've completed all of their courses up to Level 5 production management, which I completed last year. At the moment I'm currently working my way through the Level 5 agribusiness diploma and I aim to have it completed in the next three years.

Over the next five years I plan to build my equity by purchasing empty cows, winter milking them, getting them in calf, and then selling them on for a profit. After five years of lower order sharemilking, we would like to move onto a larger scale contract milking job with the end goal in 10 years to be able to enter an equity partnership.

One of the things that I love the most about farming is that everyday is different. I get the opportunity to use so many different skills – ranging from practical skills to management skills to budgeting skills.

I'm very passionate about growing grass and I always do my best when it comes to pasture management. The reason I love pasture management so much is because I like seeing fully fed, high-producing cows. The key things I look for is always grazing at the third leaf stage and hitting that 1500-1600 residual. I love working for Henri because we both share the same passion for farming and for cows.

Another area that I'm passionate about is effluent and nutrient management – which goes hand and hand with growing grass. I believe we, as an industry, need to be using best practice procedures to ensure that we can be sustainable for future generations. I always ensure that my application rates and my application timings are correct to make sure that I'm utilising my nutrients wisely.

When I'm not busy farming you can often find me out and about. I play indoor netball socially with a group of friends and I'm a leader at my local youth group. I enjoy camping and fishing with my wife, and if I'm lucky in winter I like to get down to Mt Ruapehu to do some snowboarding.

My ultimate goal is to become the best dairy farmer in the country – providing benchmarking and proving that sustainability and best practice is able to be achieved on every farm in New Zealand.