Teamwork, planning & performance - David & Rebecca Buick

This is a podcast from Rover.

It's my great pleasure to welcome on to the show now, David and Rebecca Biela, who recently

took out the Tuttaroa sheep and beef farm business of the year.

So guys, congratulations on that.

Well done.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The first time you've entered, I think.

Yes.

Yep.

Yep, lately.

Yeah, there's always something you wouldn't do if a cricket wasn't ahead and say.

Yeah.

And there you go.

Hey, what was the impetus for doing it this time around then?

There's a lot to it.

Yeah, and I feel you only sort of get to show off your farm once or twice in your lifetime.

So we'd, you know, just put another one, sort of six years ago, and it does take a little

while to get them up and running, both farms are fairly round down when we took them over.

So, yeah, it's good to sort of finally get a few fences up and I think we've done six

points, seven cases of fencing on the new blocks since we've bought it.

So, yeah, sort of starting to look, look, be proud of it and look pretty good.

You done that fencing yourself?

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

We, yeah, we sort of have a sharing business as well.

So if there is the odd day that we're wet and can't get dry sheep in the, the presses,

get them out on our place to, to help out a bit and they're pretty good at running

on our place and stapling on, stapling on, yeah, on the posts and things like that, so

it nuts.

Yeah.

Win-win.

So you've got a lot of things going on.

We're going to touch on them.

But if I take your back, I think around about maybe 25 years, you might have bought the first

farm effectively, I think.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep, and we did.

Yeah.

3,000 at one, wasn't it?

And a lot of people at the time told us not to do it, you know, we're young, you know,

you're risking too much, whereas we felt like we had nothing to risk and we had everything

worked again.

So is it panned out in that fashion, do you think?

Yeah.

I'm pleased we did it.

Yeah, we had nothing to lose back then and as you say, people said you were buying at

the peak, but you'd actually, the peak just keeps getting higher and higher and the same

with stock prices.

They were saying they were the people, now look at the stock prices.

So yeah, we had a really good bank manager and it was pretty awesome.

We sort of looked at, you know, we had enough money together to buy a bit of stock and

we realised if we went to isolated areas, then we could actually pay the same to service

and mortgages you were for leasing it and it was out, so yeah.

We both worked off farm at the start and I worked in Parme full time, so I was travelling

an hour and a half each way there and Dave was cheering full time and we'd come home at

night and do some farming by, you know, head torch, really.

Yeah, not the ideal way to go about it, but hey, it's funny, though, isn't it?

How many people have a dead certain crystal ball at certain times in your career, isn't

it?

Yeah.

No.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They sort of speak with great certainty as to like you're saying there were things that

pick, yeah, well, as you say, yeah, time can often prove different, so from that first

farm to where you are now in the sharing business and everything else that's going on, it's

been a hell of a 25 years, though, isn't it?

Yes, we enjoy working hard and sort of we had this goal to buy a farm and sort of get

up and running and so yeah, I suppose that just then became a norm and we bought another

one 400 feet years up at the top of the book of toys and then at least that out for five

years.

I wanted to give the sharing a good nudge and that was a good call too because it sort

of, I got into the New Zealand team a few times and nothing like representing your country

overseas, so yeah, and then we bought the last one six years ago, so.

Did you go to the Golden Shears over the weekend?

Yeah.

We're not talking about that, though.

Yeah, I didn't fire, actually, yeah, where's the result I probably had for what 20 years

or something?

Well, you know, I mean, as you say, you might not have Golden Shears started, but I mean,

you've been, you've represented the country, so I mean, you've done pretty much what you

can do in the sharing world, you must be pretty happy with the way that's kind of panned

out over the years.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah, no, very lucky, no, it's given us some cool trips overseas and yeah, and it's a huge

part of our life and always will be, so yeah, no, no, definitely very privileged, nothing

like standing up on a, on the world stage, representing your country as it's any kid's

dream, so yeah, pretty honored.

I wouldn't know, mate, but any whale time.

One day, one day.

You never know.

That's 10 million.

Okay, so I see the scene for people in terms of we guys are situated, what properties

you've got at the moment, what stock you're running, give us a bit of an umbrella view

or a bird's eye view, if you like.

So you've got County, well, running 500 hectares here in Pongora, so yeah, sort of sheep

and beef with a couple of thousand Romney use, we've got an Oxford stud as well that

we sort of started a few years ago, we're all bulls now, sort of 250 to 300 bulls, sort

of some of the thing we were cows and calves, but yeah, they were spending a lot of the summers

off grazing on someone else's face more than now, so just, yeah, we sort of headed towards

bulls for good, gross margins as well as just that flexibility, Pongora, I say to people

who are best of both worlds, it's wet and cold in the winter and dry out in the summer,

so yeah, you've got to have some flexible farming systems to be out of debt quickly and

yeah, sort of that pretty high performance U-flog, we try to renew Romney's, we sort of

knock around at 150% and everything's killed to 18 to 20-case carcass weight, so.

Yeah, I know the results have been pretty bloody good recently, the stud though,

that's an interesting one, the sheep stud, what was, why did you want to start that?

It wasn't something that just sort of happened, we were buying these rams and the guy

passed away who owned the stud and so the sun took it on for a couple of years and then,

you know, sort of he wanted to go down a different road and asked us if I wanted to take it on and

I sort of was in hospital at the time and didn't know where I was going to end up, so I said

they're climbed and then I thought it's a good opportunity to actually do a trial with all

different sort of breeds and so we tried, got some leases and really high index rams and

put them all out with our hoggots and yeah, long story short, the oxwoods were 900 grams

that weaning heavier and so I rang them back and said, yeah, can we actually, can I take those

stud use and so yeah, then we've been lucky to tap into some pretty good genetics and

voicing pretty good size so yeah, that starts sort of taking off sort of cell cluster

hundred rams this year and it's only been gone three years so everyone's wrecked with

the other gun and keeps coming back so that's good. That's encouraging, that's bloody good

and the move to bulls obviously then has been worth it as well. Yeah, that's all just good

gross margins and they're a great converter for, you know, from grass to meat for us.

Yeah, I've got joy bulls, Rebecca calls them the inmates because they are very naughty

but hey, you can't beat them for growth rates. Yeah, so now if they've got plenty of power,

we've actually just signed up with hope to the other day because you see that sort of something

new for us, we're pretty lucky we're sort of in the sweet spot with

thousand and bulls numbers wise and then yeah, sort of pace yourself even just with winter grazing

through the winter, let alone the rest of the year. So now talk to me as well about your approach

to these things, both of you in terms of, you know, everything you've been talking about here

because as I understand it, it's all very calculated, you know, you're not sort of making decisions

on the fly, things are pretty much thought out well planned, that sort of thing. Is that one of

the keys behind, you know, farming success for you guys? Yeah, definitely. I think that was the

biggest thing I've got to come away from uni with was doing gross margins and, you know, now we've

got a calculator in our pocket but before I used to have calculators all around the house and I've

got a fighter of Jima, our youngest that she was age three at the time sitting on the toilet with

a calculator and I was like, so proud. But yeah, at least, you know, you put the figures in and then,

you know, if you know what I mean, it's, well, it's only as good as the figures you put in but

it's definitely a really good guide to compete to kissing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Rebecca, are you

that way inclined as well? No, I leave that side a bit up to Dave, but definitely in the decision

making side of things. You know, he'll go through all the figures and we do pros and cons all the time

about different things we want to try and so that then leads us into the area we want to go.

Yeah, it's really good at being almost like Devils Advocate and, you know, but also too, we're like,

you know, we're both from completely different backgrounds but we're lucky we've got the same sort

of morals and values and both very frugal, which is sort of kind of where we are. Yeah, that's

a sure. I don't think it's just a different, I just come from a different perspective. Yeah, that's

right. That's all. Well, that's not a bad thing is it to have a sort of a different perspective,

a different set of eyeballs on everything. You can't underestimate a good old pro and con

shade to either Kenya winner. So what was your background, Rebecca, if you don't mind me asking?

So I was Wellington born and bred. That's right. Big smoke. So

and I was working in Wellington Hospital as a technical assistant in the operating

theaters. So quite a big change from that to farming. Yeah, yeah. But I've been, I was

past 11 years working at the local school here. So, yeah. Yeah, to flavour for the place, yeah. Yeah,

yeah, why not? David, I know you got, I think your first hand piece, I don't know, when you were a

teenager, about 14 or something, I think I've heard over the years, you know, these things take

on a life of their own, don't they? These stories, but was that, did you grow up on a farm as well,

or how did that all happen? Yep, definitely, yep. Now we, you know, born on a,

born and bred on a, she can be farm just out of Macedon. And so, yeah, my father was a shearing judge

and, yeah, you know, I tell the story. He brought us a hand piece, Father Christmas brought us

hand piece, pretty young and, but yeah, hey, it, you know, times are pretty tough through the 80s and

we all, you know, got stuck in and sure mum and dad's sheep and this sort of what you did just to

to keep, keep a float and then it sort of, yeah, became a hobby and that sort of went into the shows,

you know, and then, yeah, that's where the, I suppose, right at the start, we bought this place,

and we went for a big night of the season shearing because we looked at a lot of farms around

before we bought our first one and, yeah, we ended up doing a season shearing for

Collins Brown and Macedon. Yeah, so the bank could see, I suppose, it really helped that we can

sort of share a way out of trouble with if that came along or, yeah, they do sort of work quite

well together that, you know, you can shift a mob when you come home from shearing or that,

wet day, that's why we employ the presses here because they're on a really good wage, but

suddenly you have a couple of days off with rain and it becomes a pretty average wage, so

if we can just full that gap with something helps them out and helps our farm too, so that's, yeah,

weeks well. Yeah, and because you're like the shearing business, you actually, you put through quite

a quite a few on a annual basis, don't you, from my understanding. Yeah, yeah, now we share,

you know, sort of 130,000 sheep a year and yeah, that sort of started off with just a few

mates hearing each other's sheep and then it just grew, grew and grew to where it is now, so, yeah,

very lucky. Now, the thing is, and everyone talks about, you know, you mentioned it before,

you know, commodity prices when you started out and people were sort of going, oh, they've peaked

or whatever, and now look at where we are, but I mean, it hasn't always been a lot of, you know,

bumps in the road, peaks and troughs in those 25 years, and when, you know, prices were down

countless seasons ago, did you make any changes? What do you do to stay profitable in those sorts of

times? I think one of the biggest things we did, we were sort of spending 30 grand a year on

nitrogen and sort of trying to create a spring, I suppose, and yeah, chucking the numbers into the

budget, even, you know, the the drive was still sort of head to and then it was viable too, but,

you know, there was sort of, it was squeezing the bottom line, so we thought it's sort of not

really sustainable and looked at other options and I ended up trying some sweets. I thought I

could put all our hoggots on the sweets and then that meant that you're set stocking the

use it at lighter weights, a lot, sorry, a lot of stocking rate. Over the hoggot country will

it ended up with 3-legged, their paddock, where 600 used on there for a month, there's another

600 hoggots on there for a month and then it took the in-leam hoggots off and we had 200 hoggots

and 30 bulls on there for another month, so it was just what a game changer for like a two grand

total, you know, all the, I think the seed was like $54 a hectare and, you know, bit of furt and,

yeah, so I was just, yeah, we've put in another five hectares this year and, you know, I was shifting

the brakes every couple of days, it took me 20 minutes to shift the wires, well, that's how I

talked to Shifter Mobile use anyway, so, yeah, I think things like that are quite cool that there's

sort of, you know, getting rid of 30 green cost and replacing it with three is a little bit of,

yeah, it seems pretty, pretty sensible, trickery feed as well, you running that?

Yeah, so we've got sort of, we do all our own cropping, sort of half our farms,

cultivatable and so, yeah, we've probably got 50 hectares of like really good, you know,

trickery rid of my clover and then sort of after three years, we direct draw a tip report

or something into it and it still becomes a really good clover dominant new grass, you know,

for the next sort of four or so years, but yeah, trickery has definitely been the game changer

for our area, a few people have tried it, sort of seen our results, but it doesn't sort of work

quite as good in summer, safe or under irrigation, it just likes to draw, and our yields have been

so good, like the other day, our lambs were doing 620 grams a day, like just incredible, you don't

think lambs could grow that fast, but it's just, yeah, it's a good crop for me, you know, even if

make a mistake or something, you can catch up pretty quickly by putting some lambs on some

trickery and even we've been doing trials, we had some young school kids out the other day,

you know, we've done, showing them the gross margin of putting triplets on trickery and, you know,

the lambs, the triplet lambs average 36 kilos at weaning, so, yeah, it just shows, really shows

the potential of feeding and what we actually can achieve, it wasn't that long ago that, you know,

55 kilo, are you doing one lambs, it's, we've come a long way. Wow, that's incredible numbers there,

so in terms of, well, staying with, with pasture, you guys are doing your own FEC testing at the moment

as well, you do that? Yeah, I've been doing that for probably like 15 years and I think like one of

the biggest changes we've had in the last few years was, we just changed our mindset, I was so

worried about refuge, you're just in case we did have any resistance that I was just loading these

lambs up with worms as soon as I'd drench them, but now we've actually changed completely to,

to try and get our farmers clean as we can and what a huge change, we've actually now,

you know, spread like our u-lamps now, they're coming up to 60 days tomorrow and they still haven't

got for you, we can't say 300, so it's just yeah, the checkery's been great, that's a big

part of it, so we're sort of normally getting about 45, 50 days between drenches on the checkery

and same thing, we're drenching it at 300 ex-programmed rather than 500, just to, because we can

and then that keeps our pastures, you know, even less contaminated as well, so yeah, it was only

just a mindset and so now the refuge here is, there's some like use of all some to-dos or

something and with the lambs, you know, rather, and so just trying to keep the pastures as clean as

we can, but it works good with the balls too, because the ball unit, suddenly then all the balls are

gone and then they're all warm free and that's where the, the u-lamps are now, and they've all,

you come down onto the ball unit where there's no worms and there's, I say, just about 60 days and

and no drenches, yeah, it definitely works. Okay, well, that's, yeah, again, very impressive. What

did the judges say to you with this farming excellence award? What was the feedback, specifically,

if there was anything that sort of stood out for you guys that you thought, you know what, yeah,

that's good, we've put, you know, yards into this and it's paying off. I think definitely, well,

what their feedback to us was teamwork definitely stood out and our planning,

we have planned for everything and just the performance, you know, our figures are speaking well

for what we're putting in. Numbers don't lie. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, no, having a good wife, I

reckon it's the number one tick. They can certainly help, yeah. Yeah, I can attest to that.

Actually, it's got to be where I'd be if I'm being really honest. So the accident, I know you've

probably told the story a thousand times, but people might be listening and go, well, what accident

was he referring to earlier when you looked at the, you know, the sheepstead kind of came up for

the first time. So when was it? What happened? October 2021, we were just doing some drainage on this

new farm and, yeah, I was walking along the side of the trench and fell in. Luckily, I stood up

because it sort of buried me, 30 tonn came in there, reckon, obviously, not that that's all on me,

it's all, but it was all around me and yeah, buried me to my neck. I could still shallow breathe,

but I was squishing my chest, but it didn't break my ribs, who was further down the more

pound per square inch and it just smashed my pelvis and, oops, and yeah, it was pretty,

pretty full on it. The digger driver probably, he saw it happen and poor bugger, he's probably

struggled more mentally than I did. But yeah, so they dug me out and, yeah, flew me to Wellington,

Oxford as well as there for a couple of weeks and then I was then went to Parnie Hospital

for a couple of weeks and then I still needed to lie dead flat. So, yeah, I needed hospital

care, but I didn't need a hospital bed, bleeding and all that and stopped. So I went to Eileen

Mary, which is a rest time in Danny Merck and, yeah, had a ball, like, there's a say to people,

you can make it what you want to make it, you know, they said to me, oh, Mr. Duke, you want us to

shut the door and I'm like, no, I want to say to people and, you know, people in the

end of the year, we came in one day there and there's, you know, six staff, all, you know,

giggling and hanging around the bed, like, get out of here, you guys ain't gonna do something

like that. Yeah, yeah, I like anything and I think, you know, my mental health was so good

all the way through just because I know a second's earlier, if it came in them, I would have

indeed for sure and, you know, if the ribs would have been squished not the pelvis. So,

yeah, just buddy at long roaders and I was, it was a long way. I thought I'd be at a fast tracker,

but even just, you know, I need to train my body to get up right again, even just, you know, just

fainting when you've been lying down for that long and, and this body I've faded away to skin and

bone, like they said at the rest time, oh, Mr. Buick, do you want large meals? I said, oh, if you

give me large meals, you're gonna need a fork lift to get me out of here because I just assumed

not yet huge, but it was a complete opposite. I just, I was, you know, at my sort of peak training

and fitness at the time, and I lost 15 kilos, so it was, it was all just muscle in the skin.

Skin, dangling. Skin was dangling off my arms and legs, the kids were like, oh, yuck,

dangling that away. So, yeah, hey, definitely didn't have any. Well, I suppose that, yeah,

the orthopedic surgeon said, I'll never work again, that was the only time I got it, but in order,

I suppose because, you know, I felt like he sort of written me off pretty early on, but yeah,

he had some really good people and team around us and amazing how the body heals and what it can

do. And, yeah, so now we're, yeah, 2024, I was lucky enough to win the New Zealand's

hearing champs again, and 25 was ranked number one in New Zealand again, so yeah, not that there was

kind of a goal, but it was, yeah, you just sort of took day by day, even if a wheelchair was my final

destination, I was wrapped, and I was still around to know everyone. Kids grow up, but, yeah, no,

very, very fortunate. Yeah, that's incredible. The must have been, yeah, trying obviously for you,

David, clearly, but, yeah, the whole family at that time and wondering what the hell's, you know,

the future going to hold, Rebecca? It was, but it was more, you know, just take day by day.

Each, that's all you could do was just get through this day, right, get through the next day,

and, you know, and before you know it, you're a couple of years in, and things are looking good,

but definitely made us, you know, really evaluate our life and, you know, we were working so hard,

but for, you know, makes you think for what, what's your ultimate goal? What are you heading

towards? You know, we had originally been working hard to get a farm, we'd got that farm,

and then we got another farm, so it really made us sort of sit back and go, right, we really need

to enjoy the journey as well. Yeah, so there's so many positives that came out of it, not that I

want to go through it again, but, you know, there's more positives that came out of it than negatives,

I think. Well, that's incredible to hear that. What was training like getting back into, well,

I don't even just walking around, forget training just after, you know, being laid up like that.

Yeah, that took, that took a long time, because I, like I was having my own personal trainer,

I thought I'd be able to fast track it, but yeah, no, those specialists, the specialists were recently.

Yeah, I think it was more trying to rein him in.

Yeah, imagine, yeah, yeah. You're just, you're muscle wasting that, to that extent, it takes so

long to get it back again, and I, you know, I had a bit of new damage too, so like I still can't

feel my right leg, but I can move it, and, you know, that's why I didn't want to operate on my

sacrum, but, you know, I can still do use it, but man, that just, you know, the body's amazing,

but I like even I remember doing heal lifts one day, and with the physio came in, and I was always

showing off, saying, I can, you know, standing at the beach, saying, I can do 10 heal lifts now.

This was with both feet, you know, I'll do your good leg, and I'll do your bad leg, and I was like

shaking, and I couldn't even do one, but I would have sworn my body, you know, that I was doing

exactly the same weight on both sides, but it's, the body is incredible, it doesn't even have

tricks here, you know, like now when I do weight, I definitely don't do, you know, like I do individual

dumbbells, and you know, because I think my right arm is taking all the weight, and the left arm's

just there for the right, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, that is incredible, actually, even if you do

something like, you know, a body weight squad, it's amazing, if you're, your favor one, one leg over

the other, it's incredible, actually, how that, how that all works, and everyone has had a

cast on for even a few weeks, knows, when you get it back out, you look at your lumbar,

let alone the whole bloody body, you know, definitely unreal, unreal. What's next guys?

Obviously, in light of what you just say in Rebecca in terms of, you know, taking stock and

getting perspective and all that sort of stuff, you're happy with the way, things are just

tracking at the moment. We are, we're, we'd really like to, at some stage, sort of,

do some more travelling, sort of help the kids in their journey, where they're, you know,

whatever area they want to head down, but more just, really, read the benefits of what we have done,

yeah, and enjoy the farming more so, because, you know, we've got things in place and, you know,

good lanes and all that sort of thing, so we can enjoy the farming and its own right.

Well, it's a good place to finish up on, on that nice positive sentiment. Well done,

David, Rebecca, lovely to have you on the show as well, and, yeah, hopefully we get to talk

again at some stage, but all the best. Thank you very much, thanks for having us.