My wife Tanya and I farm in partnership with my parents Ken and Nancy. We farm almost 1,000ac in Kelso in West Otago on the South Island of New Zealand.

Our Fairleigh Ayrshire and Holstein pedigree stud has 550 cows, split calving in the autumn and spring.

My father bought his first Ayrshire cow in the early 1960s and we’ve had Holsteins for the last 25 years. We’ll have been 25 years on this property in June this year. We bought it and converted from a grazing property.

We milk through a 40-aside herringbone shed. We’re different from the traditional New Zealand dairy farm because we winter all our cows indoors in a 550-cow freestall barn. They go inside in May, calve indoors and are back outside full-time by mid-August. Youngstock are housed for winter in a straw-bedded barn. We built the barn eight years ago because out-wintering on our heavy soil was not going to be sustainable in the long term.

Our Ayrshire herd is mainly bred from UK and Irish herds. We have a strong element of the Raven Hill Ayrshire stud in Northern Ireland in our herd, as well as the Ardmore herd.

I also worked for 12 months for the Sheridans’ farm in Kilberry, near Navan, Co Meath. That was in 2001 when I was a young fellow – I loved it.

Our Holstein herd is mainly the North American larger-style cows. Our top cows milk over 10,000l and our best Holstein gave 850kg of milk solids last year. The herd average was 530kg.

We rear 80% of the bull calves and the other 20% of calves are sold to rearers at four days old. The four-day-old Friesian calves sell for NZ$100 (€59) and the Hereford-Friesian or Herdford-Ayrshire crosses go for $120 (€71) to $150 (€89).

The ones we keep to kill at 18 to 24 months average $1,950-2,000/hd for Hereford-Friesian or Hereford-Ayrshire and straight Friesian bulls. They are wintered outdoors on kale, fodder beet and baleage.

This season has been tough – rain, rain, rain. Spring was terrible. The cows never peaked properly, grass never grew properly. January started beautiful but last week we got 200mm of rain in 48 hours. We’re 200m above sea level in rolling country so we weren’t that badly affected but those downstream were.

The local town of about 2,500 people had to be evacuated. Probably 75% of the roads were cut off. This meant Fonterra trucks couldn’t get on the road so there are large amounts of milk being dumped into effluent ponds because it couldn’t be collected. Fonterra compensates us for dumped milk, at the average of the three days prior to dumping. As I write, the roads are opening up, but there are still some farms inaccessible to tankers.

Weather wise, we occasionally get snowfalls of up to 6in but it’s usually gone the next day. Our summers can be quite warm at 20°C to 25°C. Our driest months are February and March and our wettest months are June, July and into August.

Fonterra forecasts milk prices of between NZ$6.25/kg (€3.70/kg) and $6.75/kg(€4.00/kg) milk solids for this year. That’s very good. With our winter milk contract we get close to $11/kg (€6.54/kg) for June and July only.

Bruce and Tanya Eade's children are keen farmers, keeping an eye on proceedings.

The challenges for New Zealand farmers? Nutrient level capping is becoming an issue. Fresh water is another hot topic. New Zealand dairy farmers have got 99.9% of waterways fenced. Fonterra won’t pick your milk up if you haven’t got your waterways fenced and they do inspect that.

There is a big push for cutting back on fertiliser and also the threat of the soya juice, almond juice and lab-based meat but we believe we have an advantage in New Zealand with our outdoor, beautiful green story.

Bruce Eade milks 550 cows with his wife and parents on New Zealand’s South Island, where weather problems left them dumping milk for a time.