Ian Hooker loves his hilly farm at Loch in Victoria’s Gippsland region, but it has its drawbacks.

Seven years ago, Ian broke his back in a tractor rollover accident, laying him up for nearly two years.

“It just about knocked me off, but I got going again,” he says.

“I couldn’t do anything for 12 months and it took me two years before I got back on deck. It was hard, I couldn’t even dress myself – my wife Pam had to dress me.”

Today, Ian can’t lift a lot, or spend long hours standing on concrete, or even sit for too long in the tractor.

The hills aren’t just difficult for the tractors, they’re also difficult for cows and have prompted Ian to build a three-span Dairy Shelters Australia clear-roofed, deep-litter shelter.

The shelter is just one of the changes made at the farm. Now aged 67, Ian and his wife Pam have employed a share farmer and Ian’s health has improved dramatically since he stopped milking.

The shelters are part of his plan to make things easier – and less messy.

“Only a third of the farm is flat enough for a tractor where you won’t make a mess as you’re driving across it,” Ian says.

“I hate mess, and I hate hay being walked into the ground out in the paddock,” he explains.

“That’s why I like feed pads and the shelters – you don’t waste the feed and you don’t have deep tracks across the paddocks.

“I just like it that way.”

The shelter was erected last year, and Ian says it has been better for cow health and saved on feed during a tough year.

“They’re not consuming as much as they normally would because they’re not cold and not walking as much,” he says.

Ian has been running the farm for nearly 50 years since he was 19, following the death of his father.

He now has about 400 registered Holstein cows on a 540-acre home farm with a 60-acre out block.

He downsized the farm in recent years to pay off debt, added a share farmer and built the shelter, which he sees as a long-term investment in improving productivity and protecting the land.

“As we cut back the land, we planned to sell some cows to China but that fell through, so it’s meant we’ve pushed up the stocking rate,” he says.

“Because the stocking rates are so high, in winter the Holstein cows have become too big for the hills, they just wreck the paddocks. If I can keep them off the paddocks in winter, especially the dry herd, it’s better for everything.

“The big feed pad was part of addressing that. Everything gets fed there but there were a lot out on the paddocks at night, that’s why we needed the shelter.

“We’ve had heifers stuck in mud and you renovate a paddock and next year you have to do it again because it’s all mudded up.”

Because of the hilly nature of the farm, some parts are off limits to tractors for feeding out, adding pressure to the rest of the land.

But Ian has always been a bit of an innovator.

Twenty-five years ago he was one of the first in Australia to build a feed pad, and was an early adapter of robotic feed systems and pellet loading machines and computers in the dairy.

“We like to be up there if we can and just think of things which will make it easier.”

Ian also has cow health and comfort in mind and says the herd is looking better this year thanks to the shelters – plus the popular scratch brushes in the shelters, feed pad and calf shed.

He used the shelters for the first time late last winter and has learnt to improve nutrition for the cows this year.

“It’s working out really well this year because there’s not a lot of hay around. It has been a tough year, and we’ve had to buy a few loads of hay, so you don’t want to waste it,” Ian says.

“It has been used non-stop since autumn to keep them under shelter at night, and for calving,” he says.

“It has been a terrible season so we’re trying to keep costs down, but the July rain has made the paddocks jump a bit. We’ve never bought hay to the extent we have this year.”

They are also using the shelters as an extra calving facility this year, with the clear roof providing shelter from inclement weather.

Ian and Pam’s three-span shelter is built not far from the feed pad and the soft flooring is regularly changed.

Although production has dipped a bit due to the tough season, Ian expects the farm will return to its peak of 8500 litres at the factory, which he describes as pretty good for a hill farm.

Ian is also enjoying the transition to a share farming arrangement.

“I can’t spend too many hours on the tractor anymore, but I rock up about 8-9 o’clock and do the repairs and maintenance, which is full on in itself.

“I’m happy to keep ticking along but I try to make life as easy as I can.”

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Wednesday, 3rd November 2027

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