Anthony and Peter Giesbers Farm is 140Ha (120Ha Effective) West of Kaikohe in Northland.  The farm operates as a system 5 dairy farm milking about 360 Cows. All cows are calved in the autumn to be milked through the winter. The farm is flat (flood plane) with mostly heavy clay soils.  Infrastructure to support winter milking includes two Herd Homes and a large concreted feed storage area.

The farm has a large effluent pond situated some distance away from the cowshed.  All effluent is irrigated to land over most of the farm.  The farm has not had a consent to discharge to water.

We wanted to reduce the risk of not having enough effluent storage capacity through our wet seasons.  We felt that if we increased the amount of pond storage the high rainfall would create the need for even greater storage capacity to accommodate the rain water falling on the pond.

The decision was made to explore using effluent storage bladders to increase our storage capacity.

We made contact with Flexi Tanks NZ, who followed up with a visit from Anton Meyer to discuss how effluent bladders could work in with our system.  We took a look at site suitability and discussed the creation of a suitable pad for the installation of two 1 million litre effluent bladders.  Further advice was also given on levelling the pad with sand just prior to installation.  The Flexi Tanks NZ team came out to guide us, and a group of helpful neighbouring farmers, to roll out the bladders in their final position.  The whole process from start to finish went very well. 

As soon as the bladders were installed we started to fill them from the existing pond.  Over a short period of time we filled them both to capacity significantly reducing the level of the storage pond.  Last year we only needed to use one of the bladders.  During the drier summer months the effluent bladders can be emptied either back into the pond to be mixed with the solids to be irrigated or back to the cowshed sump to be irrigated from there.

We have found that adding the Flexi Tanks NZ effluent storage bladders to our farm effluent system has been a good decision for our farm.  We would recommend effluent storage bladders as a solution, especially in high rainfall areas.

The advice and guidance received from the Flexi Tanks NZ team is a testament to their knowledge and experience which they were only too willing to share with us.