Phil Butler BBS(HRM)

General Manager
Mobile: 027 600 5797
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Phil has recently joined DairyTeam as General Manager.

His primary focus is to develop and manage the business affairs of DairyTeam/AgriJobs recruitment to their full potential.

After a successful background in sales and marketing, he completed a business degree at Massey University, majoring in Human Resource Management, and until recently, has worked as an HR and recruitment consultant.

Phil can see huge developments in the dairy industry and views farmers as business owners, having good staff is an important part of the overall plan to increase and maintain profits.

 

Ian McNab B.Appl.Sc.(Ag)

Consultant
Mobile: 027 699 4912
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After several years of travelling and trying different career paths. I found myself milking cows in the Manawatu. I worked on three different farms over a ten year period and during this time I realised my potential and that I should have been farming all along.

When land prices sky-rocketed and owning our own farm unlikely, we made a big decision for me to go back to Massey to finish my Agricultural degree and then decide on the future from there.

I am married with four children and enjoy taking time-out with them to pony club and winter sports venues.

I am really excited about the opportunites that working for DairyTeam will provide and I am enthusiastic about helping farmers achieve their goals.

 

John Simmonds B.AgSc(Hons)

Consultant
Mobile: 0274 519 456
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John joined DairyTeam in 2006 after a Consulting Officer career that started with the N.Z. Dairy Board in 1971; based in Hawera and covering the Manawatu and Hawke's Bay. Between times he lived for 17 years in Te Puke where his responsibilities at one stage included managing staff throughout the Central Plateau and Eastern Waikato. So he is a familiar face to many dairy districts of the North Island, where he observed a wide range of dairying systems operating with different environmental constraints.

John is a graduate of Lincoln College with a Batchelor of Agricultural Science (Hons) that included a work study into the potential efficiencies of a rotary cowshed when dairying was a scare land use in Canterbury.

The mainstay of the Consultanting Officer's work was facilitating farmer discussion groups, potentially a tremendous generator of ideas with the right group of farmers. But to understand and apply the details of such often only come from one to one farm visits before or after groups. John did plenty of these and had a reputation with staff of staying long hours out "on the job". This developed his experience helping individual farming families to improve profitability. He has enjoyed the enthusiatic go-getters that the dairy industry has always attracted and will continue to attract in the future.

While getting animal performance is everyone farmer's goal, achieving this economically is what "productivity" is all about. John has been an avid farm accounts analyser, using Dexcel's ProfitWatch system and has shared that information with DairyTeam's Cost of Production data in the past. In future, the DairyInsight funded "DairyBase" will help give benchmark information that is critical to progress.

John is based in Palmerston North and serving the lower North Island. He has been coaxed out of retirement after a long and successful career in the dairy industry (many of you will know him from Dexcel). He is looking forward to new challenges and working with dairy farmers on an individual basis.

 

Lewis Shailer B.Agr

Consultant
Mobile: 0274 479-203
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Lewis joined DairyTeam in May 2002 and services farms in Manawatu, Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa and Taranaki.

He has vast experience of the dairy industry following ten years of dairy farming. Production of 400+ kgMS/cow was consistently achieved, predominantly in year-round calving systems. In 1995, Lewis and wife Linda won the Manawatu-Rangitikei Sharemilker of the Year competition.

Lewis holds a Bachelor of Agriculture degree from Massey University with a major in Rural Valuation. He has previous experience as a computer engineer and in the field of dairy farm related research.

 

Don Urqhart BSc(Ag)

Consultant
Mobile: 027 448 1912
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Don joined DairyTeam in 2009 and services dairy farmers north of Taupo.

He is an agricultural graduate with a BSc in Agricultural Science from the University of Natal, South Africa following which he completed a two-year post graduate diploma in Agricultural Economics at Oxford University in the UK.

Thereafter he embarked on a successful farming career spanning more than twenty-five years running his own beef, dairying and cropping operation employing a staff of twenty-five people in Natal, South Africa.

With his wife and two children he moved to a safer New Zealand in 1998. The last five years he has worked as a consulting officer for Dexcel/DairyNZ in the south Auckland and north Waikato areas. During this time his financial expertise led to his running financial seminars and investment groups for dairy farmers from Northland to Southland.

 

Bill Adam B.Agr

Consultant
Mobile: 021 993566
Phone: 07 3078293     Home: 07 3078290
Fax: 07 3078293
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Skype: bill.adam4

Bill Adam joined DairyTeam in 2010 and services dairy farms north of Taupo. Bill has a long background in both consultancy and practical dairy farming, and is based in Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty.

Bill originally hails from the Taieri Plains south of Dunedin, where his family still have dairy and dry stock interests.

After a completing a Batchelor of Agricultural Science from Lincoln in 1981, he joined the NZ Dairy Board as the Consulting Officer in Whakatane for 7 years, before embarking on a sharemilking career. His hands-on dairying career lasted for 11 years. A large part of this was as 50/50 sharemillker for a local Maori Trust farm.

In 2002 he returned to his previous role as Consulting Officer with Dexcel/DairyNZ, but now with a hard-won appreciation of the practicalities of farm management!

A large part of DairyNZ Consulting Officer’s work is discussion groups, where new and old ideas are shared and evaluated. Bill remains a staunch supporter of DairyNZ’s role as a leader in developing and promoting better farm systems. His new direction is complimentary to this – there is a great need for one-on-one decision support on farm. How can you make sure that a nice theory actually works where it counts - in your bank account? Is it practical? Will it fit your lifestyle?

Bill has a wide experience of farm systems throughout New Zealand. The starting point for improving any system is to accurately assess the production and finances of that farm system. Informed management is the basis of good management. Bill is an accredited user of DairyBase and can use this facility to benchmark clients. He has extensive experience in diverse fields such as stock & pasture management, feeding systems, reproduction, herd improvement, farm layout and infrastructure, human resources, environmental and resource management.

 

Tim Ferguson B.Appl.Sc (Ag) RFA

Mobile: 021 0251 5059
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Tim has been working as a dairy consultant since 2006 when he started with Dexcel (now DairyNZ) as the Manawatu and Horowhenua “consulting officer”. Tim was responsible for running the geographical discussion groups through the regions and at the time he joined Dexcel the topic based groups were becoming the focus, trying to move away from the geographical discussion group. With running both topic based and geographic based Tim saw the value in both approach.

Tim Joined DairyTeam in March 2011 and is focusing on working mostly in the Lower North Island. Tim is based in Palmerston North. He has a partner and four children. Prior to starting as a farm consultant Tim studied a bachelor of applied science (agriculture) as Massey University.

The high value gained from successful sharing of ideas and management techniques within the dairy industry and tailoring these to particular farm situations is of interest to Tim.

To this end he is developing a monitor farm at Robert Ervines farm in Rangiotu. The focus of this farm aims to explore what Robert is doing to achieve the current level of production at the low cost level he currently has. The focus is also about lifting the production and profit from the farm and the wider community seeing how Robert does this, the challenges faced and the lessons learnt. Part of the driver to achieve higher production is that this farm can grow 18t of DM/ha!

Not only is Tim keen on helping to improve farm systems but realises that people are one of the most important asset to a farm and is skilled in helping to developing the people. Really Tim’s approach to people management is about having the right people doing the right things at the right place at the right time. Tim works with businesses to achieve this whether through management styles or team and work systems.

Tim is keen to work with motivated farmers to together achieve their long term goals.