Challenge
The value of having accurate water storage information was clear when a leak occurred recently at Lloyd Morgan’s dairy farm, avoiding a major issue of cows being put into part of the farm with no stock water.
Lloyd and Jo Morgan’s farm has a challenging landscape for dairy farming in Taranaki. There is over 100m fall from top to bottom, a lot of hills and valleys, and a lot of lahar (volcanic) mounds. They bought the land from the family in 1990 and converted it from runoff/support/sheep grazing to dairy farming. This involved a lot of flattening out to enable effluent spread. 175 effective hectare dairy farming with 400 cows.
They have a contract milker plus one FTE who doesn't engage well with tech - hence ease of use and meaningful notifications are important. They note it is hard to get quality staff and hence technology needs to be as easy and quick and simple as possible.
Solution
All water is river sourced. There are three pumps, one of which feeds the milking shed (2 tanks), the other two feeding tanks (3) for troughs. For the trough tanks, there are three corresponding check valves to ensure one way flow. Water is pumped past the check valves to the tanks, then gravity fed to troughs. There are 4 branch lines that would need to have water use monitored to identify and address leaks.
A major leak occurred in November 2024 emptied the top tank, which is located 1 kilometer from the dairy shed. Lloyd found out immediately from looking at the app. Lloyds set out to identify the source of the leak through a process of elimination, starting at the most likely source, shutting off isolation valves and then checking the flow meter to see if the excess flow stopped. It took 3 attempts until he found the correct area. It was an area that stock had not been located in and so it was unexpected to find the leak in that paddock. So the system worked and prevented stock from being shifted to an area of the farm with no water which would have had a major impact on both production and animal welfare.
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