2025 Hay Quality Award Winners – Part 2 with Michael Pfitzner and Wayne Williams

Speaker 1 0:00
Hello, it’s Steve Page here again, and I’m standing out in a field of vetch hay with Michael and Drew Pfitzner. They are the award winners, Visual Award winners again this year for their vetch hay. This is the second year in a row. Last year Michael was the national award winner, and this year he got the State Award for New South Wales. And good morning, Michael, just wanted to have a chat to you about how the season went for you and how the crop actually came into the bale and everything for you.

Michael Pfitzner 00:57

Yeah. Thanks, Steve. There was, I guess, last year had its had its challenges, like every every year does, obviously, trying to get it cured before the before any rain comes on it. Yeah, the contractor that we use, Wayne Williams, he does a great job for us, and we’ve used him for a number of years now. And he’s very, very particular about how he goes about getting the job done. So probably a lot of the credit to this probably goes to him, really, because he nearly, nearly sleeps with it and cuddles it and puts it into the bale at the right, right time.

Michael Pfitzner 01:23

So we had a couple lots of vetch that we turned into vetch hay last year. Obviously, there was bit of demand for vetch hay. And there was a couple paddocks that we perhaps weren’t going to to make hay out of, but the season sort of lent itself to to producing some vetch hay. And yeah, I think on those paddocks here, averaged three and four tons, so they’re reasonably well yielding, cut slightly different times. So there was slightly different curing times that, yeah, one one lot we shedded and one lot we put under hay caps in the paddock. So the here, the one that actually won this award, was one that we actually put on hay caps in the paddock. And, yeah, I guess timing wise, it was, it just managed to, I guess, miss a shower and get bailed before another, another shower, rain was coming. So, little bit fortunate there, I guess.

Steve Page 02:30

And you’re a family operation here, we’re standing next to Drew your son. Can you tell me a little bit about the operation and how you how it all comes together for you?

Steve Page 02:40

Yeah. So we got, well, 3400 hectares, or eight and a half thousand acres, all cropping. And predominantly, it’s just at the moment myself and Drew that run the operation. And then, yeah, at harvest time, we get in extra, extra labor. But yeah, we’ve got, I guess, reasonable scale to to keep us pretty busy for most of the year. So seems to work pretty well.

Steve Page 03:05

And as you say, you bring in Wayne Williams, your contractor, to do the baling side of things and take a little bit of pressure off that side of things. Yeah. And can you tell me, how does vetch fit into your rotation? Why are you growing vets Is there any particular reason

Michael Pfitzner 03:19

We’ve grown vetch, probably for, gee, I’d hate to think probably 30 years, maybe in different shapes and forms, primarily originally as a brown manure, and then when the opportunities arise to to make vetch hay. So there’s not every year that we’ve made vetch hay. The last last few we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do that. So, yeah, it’s a legume. It fits into our rotation, obviously, for for that fact, and different herbicides that we’re able to use on that as well as different management for controlling weeds. So it does fit into our rotation. Yeah, pretty well. We grow other legumes as well, lupins, lentils, peas, so it’s not our only, only legume, but our rotation base probably has 50% break crop scenario in it. So we use the different, I guess, the different legumes and different in different parts of the rotation, depending on on what we’re trying to achieve.

Steve Page 04:20

And can you tell me what’s your sort of percentage of vetch to lentils to lupins to cereals? What, uh, you’re running a quite a large operation here. So can you tell us a bit more about that?

Michael Pfitzner 04:32

I guess it comes down to soil type, as to what variety of legumes we grow. It’s probably vetch is probably about a 10% maybe 12% of our rotation and, and the others are probably a similar share as well. Add to that canola and, and then, of course, on top of that wheat and barley. So yeah, it’s not something that we put a huge amount, but it’s a reasonable portion of our of our rotation and, and, like I said, it sort of comes into its own. And with different herbicide groups, and also different management to, I guess, for controlling weeds, for preparation, for the cereals.

Steve Page 05:08

And that’ll be spreading your labor risks also, and your, yeah, your risk to climate at the same time.

Michael Pfitzner 05:14

Yeah, I guess, to some degree, yeah, certainly, yeah. The it’s a different operation, as opposed to harvesting grain. So yeah, it is quite a reasonable workload before harvest, but in saying that, yeah, it does lighten the load at harvest, it just sort of spreads into a slightly earlier period. And yeah, different marketing strategies, I guess, as well on top of that, yeah, with different markets. So that’s where it sort of fits in. And

Steve Page 05:42

You you’ve also with the Local Ag app that we’ve now got out and the marketing system with that. I believe you’ve done a little bit of that this year. How did you find that?

Michael Pfitzner 05:51

Yeah, I found that actually pretty good, initially obviously there’s a little bit of a learning of how it works, but I was pretty impressed with the fact that once you’ve listed it on there, and somebody can then see it, and you can create a dialog between two parties, once you agree on on everything, then basically the counterparty puts the money into the into that side of it. So you know that the money’s there ready to go. The product gets picked up and delivered and and if they’re all happy with it, and everyone’s happy, then the money gets transferred straight away. So I guess on that side of it, yeah the once the product’s been picked up and and delivered, then the money gets transferred straight away, which I think is a good thing. So yes, builds a lot of trust into the system, I think.

Steve Page 06:39

And that texting backwards and forwards between yourselves and the buyers. You liked that, or how did that go for you? That chat was fine?

Michael Pfitzner 06:49

Yeah, no, all that was fine. Yeah, yeah. We didn’t have any issues in regards to any of that. I found it a pretty, pretty simple system, and once, I guess, being a new system, sort of understanding it on both sides as well as our side and their side, understanding that side of it, I think that probably builds trust into the hay job.

Steve Page 07:11

Yeah. So what would be your largest challenge as managing the farm that side of it?

Michael Pfitzner 07:16

I guess these days, machinery ownership is a pretty big challenge. So yeah, having someone like Wayne, who has, has got the gear to be able to come in and do the job, and considering, for us, it’s a doing hay is probably a small portion of our harvesting operation. So it’s definitely, definitely worth having a good contractor on your side that, yeah, is working with you. So, yeah, but that’s been, I guess, the challenge for for a lot, is trying to balance that Act of, you know, what machinery do you actually need to own and what, what can you outsource with, with contractors, and then finding, finding a contractor that suits your operation and you suit his operation as well. It’s, it’s got to be a mutual, mutual thing. So yeah,

Steve Page 08:05

And this Riverina area, it’s, we’re standing out in a crop of vetch here at the moment that you’re looking at making this year. It’s been a bit of a tough start to the season. How are you, have you changed anything in this year for your hay production? Or are you looking at changing anything in the bailing side of it or not?

Michael Pfitzner 08:23

Not really, pretty much what we’ve established last year with in regards to the operation of how we do it, we’ve, yeah, we’ve sort of tweaked a few things from a from a couple of years ago, I guess. But, you know, in the hay jobs a moving target. So, you know, it, if conditions are right and you can just sort of cut it, rake it, bail it, that’s fantastic. But, you know, obviously, yeah, seasonal conditions change. I mean, it was a dry start this year. We were lucky. In regards to this paddock, had a bit of moisture under it that we we could actually sow into. And then at the end of April actually had, I think we might have had about nine, nine mils on here, which obviously aided some germination as well, to get it, get it up and away. But in saying that, like it’s still, it’s probably not to the stage that it would have been last year. It’s probably a little bit behind still, in crop rainfall has been been, certainly lower than other years up to this date. So yeah, but the growing conditions at the moment are reasonable. We’ve had some good sunny days and a bit of moisture a week or so ago. So, but yeah, certainly it’ll need need a favorable spring to get us through.

Steve Page 09:42

Right. Okay. Thanks Michael, very much, and hopefully the rest of the season goes well for you. Thank you very much.

Michael Pfitzner 09:47

Thanks. Steve.

Promo 09:50

With Feed Central’s Local Ag, you can connect with farmers and suppliers across Australia, increasing your market and ensuring you get the best deals wherever you are. List your machinery, livestock feed and more for free, and take advantage of Local Ag’s safe and secure payment system Check Vault to ensure all of your transactions are protected. Feed Central’s Local Ag is providing Australian farmers with trusted connections and transparent trading.

Steve Page 10:18

Hi, it’s Steve Page here again, and I’m with Wayne Williams, and he was the baling contractor that did the vetch hay for Michael Pfitzner, and just having a chat to him and asking how the conditions were when he did that bailing. Hello, Wayne.

Wayne Williams 10:34

How are you? Stephen, yeah, it was last year. We had a pretty good start on cutting. We had no bad weather to start with. It was pretty good to cut. We run a class 930 with triple mowers, a 10 meter mower set front and back with rubber rollers, and that works pretty well, pretty quick to cut. About 50 acres an hour. It’ll cut. Then we run a we ran into we had a pretty good drying run in in September, which is not really what usually happens. And then we had rain about to come, so we put the merger in, and we run a 10 meter merger, and we got it merged and baled, which we use a New Holland 1290 HD, with the loop knot system baler. And we got it into a bale before, well, that paddock before it rained, and that came up pretty good. Bailed a bit dry, but, but looked, look quite good.

Wayne Williams 11:40

And then the rest the other couple of paddocks got, I think we had 10 mil, might add 10 and a couple of lots of rain. So we then flipped it up with the merger again. And the good thing with the merger, you can flip your rows, and you can also, if it’s a bit light, you can bring a lot more together, quite easily. If you can actually shift it, you know, a long way. You can shift 30 feet across in one go and bring some rows together. But Michael’s is usually pretty heavy, so we don’t normally have to do that, you know, we can literally do anywhere from two to five into one or, depending on what, you know, what we’re doing. And then we did use on the second lot. Once we had rain on it, we started to put some product on the inoculant, yeah, just for give us a buffer. And it was a good job we did, because we did notice, because we tried to bail at 14% or under. And then we’ve obviously got more some there that didn’t, didn’t do that. And out of I think 1000 bales, we might have had 20 bales maybe that were, you know, too hot, so we did the right thing by putting it on now. Anyway, yeah, baling in September is fraught with danger with vetch, it’s really, really difficult, all subject to the weather.

Steve Page 12:56

Yeah, difficult get those good conditions where you can get it and that country would have been rolled before you actually cut it, so that that would have been good for you, giving you better conditions, less less dust getting into the bales.

Wayne Williams 13:09

Yeah Michael does good job with his paddocks. They’re always rolled. We did have one. I think a couple of paddocks had still had stubble, one who burnt, which come up very clean Vetch. And then then there’s a couple of others, they didn’t burn, and a little bit of wheat stubble in it, not a lot, but enough, you could see it. That’s about all where they still come up, pretty good, yeah.

Steve Page 13:32

And what sort of weights you’re looking at in those bales.

Wayne Williams 13:37

I think we average it around the 650 kilo bales. And that’s not running it actually at high density. They vetch is pretty easy to get the weight in, even in a standard bale of it. But yeah, 650 is not too bad. Yeah.

Steve Page 13:54

Yeah, no, I remember them. They were nice, solid, well made bales, good edges and everything on them and on the machinery side of things, what would you change if you were going to change some of your machinery over? What would you be looking at next?

Wayne Williams 14:09

I think we’d we would like to go a self propelled mower, but we’d have a lot of trouble with contracting. It’s quite hard to move around. It’s not a good item to move. That’s why the the tractor and the triple mowers are really good for that job, but it takes up a big tractor, which, you know, usually on the baler. So that’s, you know, another tractor would be nice. But yeah, we don’t want to spend another 500 grand on us, just because we got to swap and change. But yeah, I think, I don’t think I’d change too much.

Steve Page 14:39

You like that merger?

Wayne Williams 14:41

Yeah, the merger has been a good, I just bought a second hand one to give it a go, because everyone you talk to that’s had a go at one has got a bit of a love, hate, a relationship with them. And we’ve had a good run. It is a second hand one, and it is a bit of an accident going somewhere to happen . There’s a lot of moving parts on it. We had a pretty good run, but it is a very good tool. So we’ll use that on raised beds as well. It’s very good for for rake or for merging on bed. So because it’ll pick we can literally put five beds into one up and back, you know, with with the directional change, and sit it on top of a bed. That works really well. That’s actually what I bought it for that. And the early vetch, where we have light crops, and you can literally merge it, sort of 20k an hour, and it does a pretty good job. Yeah?

Steve Page 15:36

So if you had the opportunity, what other ways would you change what you’ve been doing?

Wayne Williams 15:40

Oh, probably not bail at all. Actually, it’s to do with me, with me, young bloke, once I stopped doing it, it ain’t gonna happen after I stopped doing it.

Steve Page 15:52

And you had a fire last year.

Wayne Williams 15:54

I did, yeah, we did have not this January. Last January, we did a bit of lucern and sorgh um, and we had an old paddock of seed lucern, and then we planted some forage sorghum in it, just to fill it up now, to make some hay for just for here, for cows. And anyway, we we bailed it, same thing. It wasn’t ready, but rain forecast a lot of rain, and it did rain. It rained four inches, so we bailed it and and I said to Brady, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put it in the shed and then take it straight back out once the rain finished. But we never got there.

Steve Page 16:31

So how long was it between when you actually got it in the shed and, oh, finished bailing, got it in the shed and in the fire? How many days or weeks.

Wayne Williams 16:40

About seven weeks, it took that long. It was only, it would probably only be one or two Bale, just only takes one bale. And I wasn’t there, but they were there, taking hay out that morning, feeding cattle, loading cars. Not a hint of any smoke. No nothing. No smell. You know, usually you can smell it. And he went back down the paddock, actually cutting the same paddock with just with Lucerne, and looked up and seen a whiff of smoke coming up out of here. And he said, shit, I better have a look at that. By the time he got there, which was about 10 minutes, the whole shed was on fire. Yeah, 1000 ton of hay had gone.

Steve Page 17:19

And were you insured?

Wayne Williams 17:20

The Shed was insured, but the hay wasn’t, and it was underinsured, which was, give me the shits, because it’s only four years old, and the price of the shed had nearly doubled in four years. So I, I haven’t replaced it yet. So.

Steve Page 17:35

And how’s the claim gone with the insurance company?

Wayne Williams 17:38

It was a long road, but there was no problem with it. But geez, because once you go to a large amount of money, it was a 2000 ton shed, so once you get it, I don’t know, it took three months, I reckon, for anything to happen. Yeah, now all good, that way. I just haven’t replaced it. I’ve, yeah, there’s a bit of bad taste in your mouth.

Steve Page 18:02

Any, what’s your major learning from that, that fire and the insurance and that side of things?

Wayne Williams 18:07

I think it’s quite hard to chase the insurance for hay, as in, because we’re doing hay all the time. You know, the volume goes up and down. The sheds empty. The sheds full there. And you know, we’re paying 50,000 a year now premiums for hay, not for hay, for insurance altogether on our little operation. So you know, a lot of the times you’re paying 5 or 6000 $7,000 in insurance. There’s nothing in the shed, you know. So anyway, and we learned that lesson, I suppose, yes, yeah.

Steve Page 18:39

And actually the value of the shed increasing the value of the shed within your policy.

Wayne Williams 18:44

Yeah, it was, yeah, it almost doubled in value the shed. It was built basically in COVID or a bit before, and the price of the shed jumped 150,000 I think it was, the same shed bolt, nut for nut and bolt for bolt. Yeah, identical shed. So I said I’m not building it again. I’ll fix it myself.

Steve Page 19:07

All right. No. Thank you very much Wayne for that, and congratulations again on your award.

Wayne Williams 19:11

Yeah, well, thanks again, Steve. And thanks to feed central for Yeah, all their effort.

Steve Page 19:17

Thank you for listening to the Hey Matters podcast, if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast or getting your brand in front of our national audience of 20,000 plus farmers, growers and agribusinesses, get in touch with the team at Feed Central to find out how. This podcast is proudly presented by Feed Central and Local Ag, stay tuned for upcoming episodes.