Bree and Reinie Kennedy with sons Clive and Wal, are new farmers in the industry and are embracing technology.
Photo by
Jeanette Severs
Reinie and Bree Kennedy were operating their livestock – beef and sheep breeding – and cropping business, Kennagri Farms, for about seven years before they diversified into dairy.
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Eight years ago, Reinie and Bree moved onto the family farm at Forge Creek and began building their agricultural business. They bought the family farm from his parents, Gary and Debbie Kennedy, in 2024.
Their home farm is 146 hectares, with a 150Ml irrigation bore license.
“The plan with the irrigation is to make winter wet if it doesn’t rain, and grow ryegrass pasture,” Reinie said.
“If we get a good winter, we’ll use the irrigation to plant and grow a maize crop in summer.”
The self-propelled milk cart has made a huge difference rearing calves for Bree.
Photo by
Jeanette Severs
Reinie and Bree have strategically taken up leases on surrounding farms; they have the use of 931ha of flat grazing country, for sheep, cropping and to agist 250 young dairy and beef cattle for other farmers.
Since diversifying into dairy, the couple have sold their beef breeders.
“We traded the beef business for the dairy cattle,” Reinie Kennedy said.
They have retained their flock of 1750 Chromedale composite ewes, breeding terminal lambs that they grow out to 52kg-plus.
They also operate a cropping business, rotating canola, wheat and barley, to improve country and grow ryegrass for livestock grazing and to cut fodder.
“We sell the canola direct to Cargill Australia, and wheat and barley, and pasture silage to other beef and dairy cattle farmers,” Reinie said.
“We stick with the traditional rotation – canola to clean up the block, followed by cereals to take care of the weeds, then we sow down ryegrass.
The couple have stockpiled fodder from their cropping business to measure feed consumption.
Photo by
Jeanette Severs
“We forecast 5-6t/ha of pasture needs to be available for the sheep on the outblocks, to maintain that business.”
For their dairy business, Reinie has forecast they need 700-1000t of fodder, for 18 months of feed. That will enable them to make decisions around drought, including milking numbers and retaining calves to grow out as young stock.
The couple stockpiled silage during their planning for stage one.
“We can always grow good grass silage and cereal silage here. We know what we can grow, when we can grow it, and if we can irrigate a crop for summer,” Reinie said.
“When we have stage two up and going, with the additional herd of cows, we’ll grow our own grain and crush it.”
The next stage of construction is already underway, with a second robot unit to be installed in November, in time for an additional herd of cows to arrive from Clydevale Holsteins.
Initially, Reinie and Bree are planning for compost bedding to be used in the shed extension.
“We’re using compost bedding for the first 12-18 months, and that will allow us to get our cow numbers right,” Bree said.
“We didn’t want to delay stage two while waiting for equipment to arrive from overseas, with the delays in shipping.”
Reinie said they were still considering whether to use straw or sawdust bedding.
“With straw bedding, we need to chop it every day and clean the shed extension area every six weeks,” he said.
“With sawdust bedding, we’ll turn it every day and top it up every week, but we don’t have to clear it out as often.”
They will be setting up a composting system for the bedding.
A Lely A5 Astronaut robot was installed on cement slats over the old herringbone pit. A second robot will be installed as part of stage two.
Photo by
Jeanette Severs
“We’ll be putting it out on our lighter country,” Reini said.
“We’ll also be putting wet slurry on the maize crop on the home farm and spreading it on pasture.
“We’ll have about 1-1.2 million litres of slurry to dispose of every year.”
With the advantages of home-grown compost and the wet slurry, Reinie and Bree expect they will raise most of their dairy and beef-dairy-cross calves.
The feed pad is an important part of the system.
Photo by
Jeanette Severs
“We’ll probably grow everything out because we have the space,” Reinie said.
From the start, the couple have invested in a self-propelled milk cart produced by Lely, that takes a lot of the work out of feeding calves.
“Bree was carrying 20 litre buckets of milk to the calves, twice a day, and that wasn’t sustainable,” Reinie said.
“I thought we’d have to drop to once a day milk feeds, then I looked at what type of equipment was available to make the job easier.
“We knew we needed it. We just had to decide, could we afford it.”
The self-propelled milk cart has taken the hard work out of moving milk from the vat to the calf rearing shed.
“It can take 120 litres of milk at a time, and starts warming the milk at 4.30am, and maintains a temperature of 38 degrees celsius,” Bree said.
“We can divert the high cell count milk from the vat and I can top up the quantity from the vat.”
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