The excitement of landing a big fish when out fishing is how Emma Poole describes the reward of landing a healthy calf on the ground from an embryo transfer.
This is her third season operating an embryo recipient business, where high genetic value embryos are implanted into cows with lower breeding worth.
She said it is a risky, stressful business but it can be really rewarding. The idea came about after buying 150 high genetic merit cows. Some had contracts with LIC and some became part of the Generate programme.
“We are testing the waters and getting to know the cows and processes,” she said.
“It is tricky to manage and there is a lot of money involved, and it requires intense skills but between my husband Chris and I we seem to be covering the bases well.
“Our priority is the welfare of the surrogate cow and the embryo transfer calf. We wouldn’t be doing it if we couldn’t assure that.”
They rear the calves to 100kg and then send them to their owners. The concept is popular and they are at capacity this year. It is also contributing to minimising the number of bobby calves in the system.
“We rear about 1000 calves each year, mostly beef along with the replacement calves and the embryo transfer calves too,” Emma said.
“The home farm is split calving so we start rearing calves in March and keep going till October, November.”
Emma and Chris are in equity partnership with his parents, John and Anne Poole, on their family farm 10 minutes from Te Awamutu in Pirongia.
They have reduced cow numbers in recent years, from 750 to 620. They focused on reducing the amount of imported feed, growing more maize on the platform and growing crops in the back paddocks to reduce how far the cows have to walk.
They also purchased another farm last year that milks 400 spring calving cows.
Chris oversees both farms with his brother-in-law, Ben Shilt, working on the new block and his father running the support block where all the young stock go. Emma manages the embryo business and they have two young boys, Beau, who is two and a half, and Sullivan, who is three months old.
Emma is a veterinarian by trade, having asked her father so many questions on the farm growing up that he suggested she go find out the how and why of things – so she did.
She didn’t make it into vet school on her first attempt at Massey’s Albany campus, so she moved to Palmerston North to pursue an agricultural degree, which was where she met Chris.
He coaxed her into joining Massey Young Farmers in 2014. She had heard about the organisation and her brother, Tim Dangen, was involved in the Lincoln club.
She entered her first FMG Young Farmer of the Year district final by default; the region had organised one specifically before exams to suit the Massey club, but nobody entered. Emma was on the club committee at the time and had to step up.
“I remember being super scared on my way there. I was putting myself out there in front of all these people I had just made friends with.”
She soon realised everyone was in the same boat, and enjoyed giving it a crack.
In her final year of university she made it to a regional final, which was a whole new level of competition. She underestimated her workload during the weeks leading into the contest so didn’t prepare as much as she wanted, but still placed second overall.
And she knew she wanted to give it a better shot the following year.
“It was my first year of work after uni so I knew it would be tough, but I also knew I would soon lose a lot of the general knowledge we gained at vet school.”
By this point she had moved to the home farm with Chris and was working for VetOra in Te Awamutu. She won the Waikato Bay of Plenty Young Farmers regional final and competed in the national final in Hawke’s Bay.
She then went on to compete again in 2023 and won the national final title, making her the first woman in contest history to win.
“Being the first female winner bought a lot of media attention, it was quite overwhelming to start with.”
This year, she and Chris, who has also been a grand finalist, have been involved with organising the contest, which was held in Hamilton in July.
“Chris and I have both got a lot out of the contest ourselves so we wanted to give back.”
She has also recently been awarded the Young Veterinarian Award for 2024 by the New Zealand Veterinary Association.
Between having the boys Emma did some veterinary consulting work with Fonterra. Part of her work involved travelling around New Zealand to deliver some emissions roadshows, largely to a veterinary audience.
“It was really insightful as a Fonterra shareholder to work for them.
“I enjoyed being on the inside and it built my confidence around the direction of the business.”
She was able to demonstrate first hand some of the challenges dairy farmers face trying to juggle so many things, and got a lot out of it herself.
“It’s been cool to practice what we preach and show that reprioritising can have an impact and it is achievable.”
Going forward, the focus is driving efficiency within the farming business, spending time together as a family and supporting other young farmers to give the contest a crack.
