Managed by Mark, with Wayne as his operator, Sweetwaters Farms is a joint venture farming business between Landcorp and local Northland iwi. There are 3 dairy farms, with more than 3000 cows producing a tanker load of milk a day.
The farms were originally set up with large storage ponds, feed pads and solids separation. However during heavy rainfall, they found the solids separator could not process the effluent fast enough, and the immediate storage area around the feedpad became flooded. So when the mechanical separator on Dairy One reached the end of it's useful life, Landcorp (Pamu Farms) took the opportunity to explore other options. After thorough investigation it was decided to abandon the solids separator and pump all the effluent into the storage pond.
Now the pond is stirred with a Nevada TurboStir 7000 and the effluent is applied using a tractor pump through a Nevada Rainwave™ drag hose system.
The Rainwave ensures very accurate placement of the effluent, so Sweetwaters were granted special dispensation to apply effluent to the peat area of the farm.
Previous systems have focused on applying effluent through moveable sprinklers to the hill paddocks, however application was uneven and there was considerable labour required to manage them.
Now all the effluent is pumped directly to the pond and is managed from there through the Nevada Rainwave. The removable spools of layflat hose enable the operator to take the effluent almost to 2 kilometres away.
Sweetwaters also recently added the remote diverter, which lets the operator divert the flow from the pump back to the pond while adjusting the hoses. This is done easily at the press of a button on Wayne's cell phone.