Manager’s role completes full rotation

Published by Business Rural, 2019

Becoming manager of Camden Group’s Willsden Farm was just a “hop across the fence” for Robin Hornblow. For Robin, who is nearing the end of his first season as manager of the Te Pirita unit, it was a matter of coming full circle.

“I used to work on this farm ten years ago when I was a student at Lincoln University. It felt a bit strange coming back as manager but it’s a good challenge and it has changed so much since I was here anyway,” he says.

Irrigation an essential tool for Canterbury farmers

Published on stuff.co.nz 7 Feb 2018

Robin Hornblow and fiancée Kirstie Austin are farm managers on Willsden Farm Ltd, a 306ha farm at Te Pirita – one of several owned by the Camden Group.

Renewal on the Plains

Published by Country-Wide Magazine, September 2017

Renewal of the pasture of a Canterbury business’ four farms inside four years was conducted like a military operation.

The Colours of your land

Published by John Deere, May 2017

Meet Leo Donkers, a proud dairy farmer operating a sustainable business on the Canterbury Plains at the foot hills of the Southern Alps of New Zealand.

This intensive farming operation is reliant on high quality pasture, produced using advanced and reliable equipment and machinery this makes them green and yellow. This farming legacy is built on hard work and dedicated to environmental sustainability. 

Career pathways an attraction

Published by Business Rural, Autumn 2016

All the advantages of scale and experience made Central Canterbury’s Camden Group an attractive career choice for Lincoln University Agricultural graduate Robin Hornblow.

Hororata farmers take expensive water option

Published by Stuff, October 2015
Dairy farmers say they took a long-term view when investing in the Central Plains Water scheme, even though they already had access to irrigation water from aquifers.

Water started flowing in early September in stage one of CPW covering 23,000 hectares at Te Pirita and Hororata. Sourced from the Rakaia River at high flows, water travels down a 17km headrace canal before flowing into 132km of underground pipe which delivers irrigation water to individual farms. Many farms in this area, particularly dairy units, were already irrigating from wells, but have chosen to switch to the community scheme, even though in some cases it is more costly. 

Top Three Dairy Pasture Tips for Spring – For Every Budget

Published by Agriseeds, 2015

Best economic benefits come from renewing underperforming pasture early in the season – simply because early sown pastures spend less time as ‘poor’ producers and more time as ‘good’ producers.

An example of this is from Willsden Farm, owned by the Camden Group at Te Pirita (presented at field day 21 October 2014) which showed Tabu Italian ryegrass spray/drilled a month earlier in spring to grow 0.8 t DM/ha more, with an extra value of $160/ha (assuming a $3.85/kgMS payout).

A more quantitative approach to pasture renewal

Published in Journal of New Zealand Grasslands January 2015 – GA Kerr, J Brown, T Kilday, DR Stevens

This paper presents a case study using a cost/benefit approach to pasture renewal for Willsden dairy farm in Canterbury, which has renewed 28% and 38% of the property in the last 2 seasons.

This case study shows there is a significant opportunity for dairy farmers to profit from better use of weekly pasture cover information to plan pasture renewal, to better assess the success of any renewal, and for pasture management software developers to provide automated analysis options to support a cost/benefit pasture renewal strategy.

Regrassing to the Max

Published by AgriHQ, October 2014

In the next four months Canterbury dairy farmer Leo Donkers will regrass 40% of the area across his three farms. Anne Lee takes a look at how that’s possible and what he’s learned from last season’s foray into this massive exercise.

Last season Leo Donkers and the team at his family-owned Camden Group embarked on an ambitious plan to regrass the entire 800ha of the milking platform across their three pivot- and spray-irrigated Te Pirita and Bankside dairy farms in just three years.