Late one night last March a truck and trailer unit delivered a full load of store lambs to a farm on the West Coast. Early risers driving past the roadside yards slowed right down to take a good look, shaking their heads in disbelief.

Sheep? Surely not in Little Wanganui, the heart of the Karamea dairying district. Nobody in their right mind would ever run sheep there, would they?

Yes they would. For sharemilkers Graham and Tasha Galway, buying lambs to finish on land they had leased was a carefully considered decision. They had identified a profit window, sussed out a way of exploiting it, assessed the outcome through the eCOGENT process, and taken action.

The downside was that they had to face a fair bit of flack from the locals.

"It was a real big joke at the time and the only people who didn't mock us were close friends," says Graham.

"I had never farmed lambs before so I was a total greenhorn but it turned out to be a great learning experience."

It was certainly a significant step outside the square for Graham and Tasha, and since then they have devised other strategies for increasing profit.

But first, a bit of background. For all of his working life Graham has been involved in dairying. He grew up on a Karamea dairy farm, and when he married city girl Tasha they took a lower order sharemilking position in Canterbury for six years before moving to Westport, and then back to Karamea in 2003.

There they signed up for a 50:50 contract milking 240 cows on 100 effective hectares, and that has proved to be an excellent position with the owner sharing much of his business expertise and supporting them in their quest to increase profits.

Prior to the takeover date in June they had signed up with eCOGENT and started recording data and getting used to the process. For the first two years they concentrated on gathering information and improving their sharemilking business, and then began to look for additional profit opportunities.

One came their way in 2006 when a nearby 60ha block with a milking shed became available. The Galways leased it, and in May bought 150 in-calf cows for milking on that platform and hired extra help. But Graham's strategy wasn't simply to milk the herd - he saw other windows of opportunity for maximising profit from the leased block.

"This area grows grass really well even in winter, but with cows there is a time towards the end of the season when they are eating more value in grass than they are giving in milk. So the plan was to sell them early and buy lambs, which we were sure would make more profit," he explains.

"We sold 120 cows at the end of February last year and bought 1500 lambs around 10th March. In May we sold the best 600, and the rest in July."

The strategy was not quite as successful as he had hoped, partly because the schedule did not lift as expected and partly because of his inexperience with finishing lambs - in hindsight it would have been better to put on fewer initially and turn them over more rapidly, he says.

However, Graham more than made up for that with the next profit window.

"We intended buying in-milk cows in October, but in May we heard a whisper that the payout was going to go up and we felt there was a real opportunity to buy cows then for a very good price, which we did," says Graham.

"First I arranged winter grazing for them over in Canterbury at a pretty fair rate, and then we bought the cows for an average price of $610. By October people in Karamea were paying $1700, so they almost tripled their value."

The district has so far avoided the prolonged dry spell that has affected many parts of the country, and the stock are still milking well twice a day. It looks like being a great season with both production and payout increasing substantially, leading to a forecasted tripling of profit/kgDM for both the sharemilking and lease sides of the business.

"For us the key to success is being able to plan 12 months or more ahead with eCOGENT. I can't control the payout or the schedule but for the things that I can control eCOGENT is right on the nose," says Graham.

"For our sharemilking contract, the monthly financial and production reports and forecasts have been spot on and we have been able to give copies to our farm owner so he knows exactly what we are planning. He was quite blown away with the information that we were able to give him, and it has given him confidence in what we are doing."

The process has given Tasha plenty of confidence too. "I think we were pretty slow learners but after two years of doing the basics we started to really get a grip on our business and began to plan, organise and make decisions," she says.

"We also have a coach to run our ideas past and we know he will quiz us on what we are proposing so we have to be very clear on what we want to do, and that comes back to having a clear vision and goals."

One goal for this year is to buy their own land in Canterbury, and with the substantial profits they are making plus the sale of both herds that will certainly be feasible.

"Initially we will look at dairy grazing because it means we don't have to buy stock. Once we have built up a little more capital we will consider other options such as lambs or growing crops," says Graham.

"With eCOGENT you can remain flexible and if a decision doesn't turned out to be as worthwhile as you thought you can change it and do something else. We will look at all profit windows and go with the one that is forecast to be the most profitable."

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