SDState Australia 2024: May 10th

Entrance of The Midfield Group office where students are entering the building to learn about the company.

Today started out with a quick morning drive to The Midfield Group in Warrnambool. Upon arrival we had a briefing and discussion of what the company was about and what we would be learning about. Midfield Dairy started in 1975 butchering sheep and cattle. Now today, they have expanded to 64,000 acres with 52,000 being within 40 km of Warrnambool. They had $2.4 Billion dollars in turnover (gross income) last year. The company is family owned, composed of 8 farms, 10,000 dairy cattle, and sheep.

One of the slides from the beginning presentation. On this slide it shows the production numbers and weight.

The company emphasizes animal welfare and sustainable agriculture practices. Some highlights that we learned included composting, recycling water, animal waste products, automation, and biosecurity measures. CEO, Dean McKenna talked about how automation has greatly improved their practices, being hard to find good help, and wanting to run the most efficient in packing, labeling, cutting, and all the above. They have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into their company in the last few years and are making drastic improvements.

Students with their safety vests on waiting to tour the facilities.

After the overview we were split into two groups and toured the facilities. The first bit we looked at was the protein extraction site where they take offal and non-carcass parts and process it into a fine powder like product that can be fed to dogs, cats, poultry, and hogs. Then we headed to where the animals were penned before processing (slaughter) starts. Very uniquely, cattle are led into the facility by a miniature donkey, whereas the sheep are led by pet lambs and dogs that follow behind.

Donkey named Shrek which is used to lead the cattle into the plant.

Following this we went into the packaging facility. In this facility almost everything is automated. This includes robots, conveyers, computers, and other equipment that allows the process to be efficient and prove the highest quality. It was eye opening and showed true ingenuity. Following that we were led to one of the freezing rooms that was -22 degrees Fahrenheit. This is where all the meat is stored before being shipped off. Going in and out of the freezer room, there is always a constant conveyer feeding seven boxes out and another seven coming in after being packaged. After being packaged they are put into a plastic pallet and loaded into trucks and are taken for exporting to all over the world. The facility is so productive they could process, cut, freeze, and and produce lean ground beef boxed product in 52 minutes. Dean McKenna give us a great piece of advice to leave with and that was “Great communication and keep it simple”.

At Cooramook Farm in the calving barn was a fresh calf that had just been born.

After leaving the plant, we had the opportunity to visit one of the Midfield Dairy Farms; Cooramook Dairy. This had a 60 head rotating milk parlor. This dairy is set up to what a U.S dairy farm is set up like. The property had 2,500 head and featured a large open calving barn. The feeding system was also set up like the U.S as it is on concrete. How they clean the concrete after feeding was with a water pump connected to the sewage pond. This would wash the waste down the concreate at a slight angle back to a drain that goes back into the pond. Their paddocks are planted 80% rye and 20% vetch (clover). The paddocks have little topsoil and hard clay can be found around 1.5 feet down. Recently, drain tile was added to some paddocks, which was a costly investment. This helped with the issue of rain just sitting and bogging the paddocks because of the clay being so shallow. The other way they combated this is ripping the paddocks 4-6 inches deep and then replanting the rye/vetch mix. The drain tile is 650 millimeters deep and 15 meters wide spacing. This then wrapped up our adventure with the Midfield Group. We had a lunch when arriving to Hamilton.

Fresh compost that The Midfield Group produces and uses on their own ground. Fun fact: some of the compost is from mulch used in Melbourne. Midfield is actually paid to take this.

Following this we headed to Michael and Cathy Blake’s Bally Glunin Park, where super fine wool is produced. Bally Glunin Park is an award-winning place as they have been nominated for 22 awards and have won 15 of them. Throughout the evening, we got to learn about the wool and got to see world class wool up close. In addition, we were able to look at 3 rams, one of which was bought for $10,000 AU. Following this we had a on-farm dinner with the Blake Family. The meal consisted of spit roasted lamb and various side dishes.