Paul Cox has spent more than 30 years walking paddocks, dairies and shearing sheds across south-eastern Australia. Ask him where to start on a farm that wants more from its pasture and livestock, and his answer surprises most people. It isn't the soil. It's the water.

"Stock don't eat the soil," Paul says. They eat the grass that grows from it and drink the water that runs through it. That simple idea sits at the heart of how Verdyn works with every farm.

What does whole farm thinking mean?

Whole farm thinking treats soil, stock and water as one connected system. Water quality drives how much stock drink and eat. Minerals drive feed quality and animal performance. Balanced soils grow the grass that carries it all. When the three work together, every dollar spent on the farm goes further.

How Paul came to see the farm as one system

Early in his career, Paul noticed that the nutrition plans he was putting together weren't always delivering the results he expected. So he started looking wider.

A dairy cow eating 10 kilograms of good-quality dry matter a day needs around 100 litres of water to make full use of it. The feed and the water can't be separated.

One of his first breakthroughs came on a lucerne property where the grower kept adding more irrigation without seeing more growth. The missing piece was the quality of the water itself. Once that was addressed, the crop responded, and the water unit installed there is still running nearly two decades later.

A sheep feedlot near Cowra told a similar story. Sheep in the shed were growing more slowly than sheep in the paddock, which is usually the other way around. The shed was running on rainwater. Once the water was treated, the health of those sheep lifted.

Why does water quality matter so much for livestock?

Most farmers see a full dam and think the water side is sorted. But stock are a lot like us: the better the water tastes, the more they drink.

A high-producing dairy cow can drink up to 200 litres a day when the water is clean and appealing. Give her water she's less keen on and that can drop to 120 or 130 litres, and her milk follows. It's one reason feedlots clean their troughs every day.

"Where you've got water, you've got wealth," Paul says. Lift the quality of the water and you lift intake, and production follows.

What makes a productive soil?

Paul's thinking on soil was shaped early by Dr Arden Andersen, who told him that a good soil will grow any crop well. The only real difference from place to place is climate.

Paul saw that play out when he classed sheep and bought rams across Victoria and New South Wales. Merinos of the same breeding and genetics grew into big, robust sheep in the Riverina but stayed much smaller in parts of Gippsland. Same bloodlines, different result. The nutrition in the ground made the difference.

Where should a farmer start?

When a farmer asks Paul for help, he works in a set order: water first, then minerals, then soil.

The reason is scale. A 500 kilogram dairy cow might take in around 10 millilitres of minerals a day, but 100 to 150 litres of water. For many dairy farms, improving water quality is a modest, one-off investment that lifts the whole operation.

Minerals come next, because the benefits flow straight through: better grass, healthier animals, and better milk, meat and eating quality. Those minerals then return to the paddock through manure and urine, building the soil as they go.

Then comes the soil itself. As it comes into balance, it holds onto more of what's applied and grows more quality feed. Paul says his longest-standing clients buy less from him every year, because their soils need less to keep performing.

What does it look like on the farm?

Paul can read a lot about a farm within minutes of arriving. Cows that walk into the dairy willingly, without dogs or prodders, are a good sign. Cows that leave grain behind in the bail tell him the paddock feed is better than what's in the feed trough.

One Colac dairy farmer Paul works with milks around 300 cows of mixed breeds. His paddocks aren't the neatest in the district, but they grow quality grass, and his cows are in excellent condition. His neighbour, running a much larger herd, keeps asking how he does it.

What's it worth?

For a dairy farmer, the numbers add up quickly. Lifting milk fat and protein by 2 to 5 percent can be worth around 80 cents to a dollar per cow per day. On a 200-cow herd, that's about $200 a day, or roughly $1,400 a week.

As Paul puts it, what matters isn't what goes onto the farm. It's what's left at the end of the season.

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