The dairy shed is a peaceful escape from the bustle of an urgent care clinic for Megan Moore, who regularly changes between overalls and scrubs. She has a hybrid career of caring for cows and caring for people as a nurse for 24 years and a fourth-generation farmer.
“Sometimes I feel like I care more about the cows than human patients,” Moore laughed.
“But I guess I am more emotionally invested in the animals, and the worst they will do is poop on me.”
The farm is on the outskirts of Pironga, between Te Awamutu and Hamilton, and has been in the Lorimer family for a century. This season Moore and husband Gary have gone into partnership with her brother, Scott Lorimer, making it a real family affair.
“Scott used to work at Yashilli at the dairy factory in Pōkeno, but they had some changes last year and he decided to come give farming a crack,” Moore said.
“We are schooling him up to grow into a herd manager role so between him and our other manager, Blake Craw, the day-to-day will be covered and I can step back into more of an overseer role.”
They run two herds as the farm splits nicely from the dairy shed. One herd has the heifers and older cows and the mixed age cows are on the other side with slightly longer walking distances and a few more hills. But the farm is generally flat to rolling.
Typically, the year is split into six-month blocks for Moore. She is dedicated to the farm during the busy period and spends less time nursing; when it quietens down on the farm, she picks up more shifts nursing.
Nurses are in high demand, which allows Moore that flexibility to be involved across both. She has been involved with setting up a new GP clinic in Horotiu, near Hamilton, for a good chunk of the past year, and is also working casually at Angelsea Clinic in Hamilton.
“There is a shortage of nurses so anything is better than nothing when it comes to sharing my time across both.
“Sometimes I’ll even milk in the morning then head into the clinic for a shift.”
Growing up, she loved being on the farm and would come back every summer during her nursing studies in Auckland. Not long after she graduated she went to England where she did a bit of nursing and dabbled in farming.
She also met her Englishman husband Gary who was a builder. After seven years in England she managed to convince him to come back to New Zealand with her in 2009 and get involved in the family farm.
There was a sharemilker on the farm until 2011 and other contract milkers until June 2021, when Megan and Gary took up contract milking the farm themselves.
“Mum and Dad had their herd 30 years before they sold it to the sharemilker, so we had to start again by buying a herd when the sharemilker’s contract finished.”
They are milking 430 cows that are a mix of Jersey and Jersey cross and Moore puts a big emphasis on breeding for quality. She is heading towards more Jersey content but aims for slightly bigger stature and capacity.
“I spend a lot of time picking bulls for AI.
“We even have a couple of contract matings now, we are starting to get the rewards we are aiming for.”
She concentrates on health, getting rid of anything with any issues. They maintain a low bulk tank somatic cell count, between 77 and 115,000, and have a low rate of mastitis.
The farm had issues with lameness in the past, but she has been focused on reducing problems and her parents invested in significant race maintenance last year to help.
They are also becoming A2A2 and DNA test the calves every year to understand their status.
They operate a System 2 to 3, depending on the season. They have a feed pad but it is only used for certain times of the season.
Moore’s parents bought a support block part way up Mount Pirongia in Te Pahu about four years ago that her dad manages.
“We run quite a closed herd after the Mycoplasma bovis scare and we had concerns around youngstock management.”
Silage comes back from the support block and they grow maize on the home farm.
Between the farm and nursing, Moore is relatively busy, but she still has time for their children, 11-year-old Nathan and five-year-old Chelsea, who also enjoy the farming lifestyle.
Moore plays a bit of tennis in her spare time, and she, Gary and Nathan are into table tennis. She is involved with the local sports complex in Pirongia, making sure her schedule is never quiet.
Into the future, they will continue to evolve their business dynamic, giving Lorimer a good chance to submerge himself into farming. And Moore looks forward to continuing to improve the herd’s, and her patients’, health and wellbeing.
In Focus Podcast | A new strategy for advocacy
AGMARDT and KPMG have released a report that offers a new way of organising our advocacy networks. Common Ground assesses the positives and negatives of the advocacy groups we have now and sets out a strategy that could improve the collaboration and messaging emanating from the farming world. AGMARDT general manager Lee-Ann Marsh joins Bryan to discuss the report.
