Here are a few photos that I took in Southland on Wednesday. This came after 63ml of rain over three days (with fields and roads flooded), thunder storms, hail storms and snow on the hills.
I made the most of the break in the weather to take these photos, just as well as the rain came back that night!
Overnight snowfall on the Takitimu mountains
Shifting a mob of ewes onto a new break
A new break on the kale crop for these dairy bulls
On Tuesday I accompanied Simon Glennie to a discussion group meeting near Balclutha. The last farm I visited with this discussion group was at a cross roads as to where he should be going in terms of ewe breed on his farm. The host of this months meeting has gone a step further, and is following the trend of converting his sheep farm to dairy.
The 800 ha farm had obviously been well farmed, and was in a very nice location with flat land in the bottom leading to slightly sloping land. Until recently the 6,000 Tefrom ewes (Texel, Fin and Romney composite) and 1,500 hoggets had consistently been achieving a scanning percentage of 185-190% and lambing percentage of 150%. Trading lambs were also purchased, and this year with the high lamb prices a margin of $69 was made on 1,600 January bought store lambs (previously 3,000+ store lambs). R1 (rising 1 year old) Hereford, Angus and Jersey bulls are also purchased, grown on well and leased to dairy farms on contract as yearling bulls. Once returned to the farm, the bulls would be grown on to 2 year olds and sold to dairy farms.
Over the past few months they have been exceptionally busy converting 300ha of the farm into the milking platform, with the intention of calving and milking 800 purchased Jersey cows and heifers this coming spring. The remaining 500ha will continue to run around 3,000 sheep and act as the dairy support unit. A discussion was had amongst the group to see where everyone thought the farm would be heading in two or three years from now. Half of the group considered sheep to be valuable in terms of complementary grazing management and their financial return but anticipated cow numbers rising to 1,000, while the other half of the group thought that the sheep would all be sold and 1,200 or more cows would be milked. The farmer's current intentions are to increase cow numbers to around 1,000 and continue with the sheep, as he is a sheep farmer at heart and believes he will always want to see sheep on the farm. Only time will tell!
A few discussion group members in a paddock of fodder beet
Mixed age Tefrom ewes running with terminal sire rams (second cycle)
Yesterday saw the first ever Annual Field Day for the Southern region Beef Profit Partnership (BPP) group. Hosted by Peter and Nellie McNab at Lochindorb near Balclutha, the day was a great success with a turnout of around 100 farmers and industry representatives.
Host Peter McNab and BPP Southern area facilitator Simon Glennie
The day began with a tour of Lochindorb. The weather couldn't have been better, with fantastic 360 views from the top of the farm. Peter gave an overview of the 2,300ha farm, the beef, sheep (and deer) enterprises, and how he sees himself being able to meet the BPP target of increasing profitability within the beef herd by 5% year on year.
One topic I have previously mentioned on my blog that is being considered by the BPP group is worm burden in calves. Greg Mirrams of Techion Group presented information on the FEC samples collected by group members from February through to late April, with the majority of calves being weaned in April. From the FEC samples collected from the 12 participating farmers, it was evident that calves are affected by worms, and that the challenge varies between farms and within farms, depending on such things as season, environment, management and previous grazing history. Peter McNab had FEC results of 370 epg in calves in February (>150 epg considered to be a high burden in calves), and decided to randomly drench some of the calves and to leave some undrenched. The calves and their mothers were all run together and treated in the same way up until they were weighed in April. The drenched calves had gained an average 2.7kg more than the undrenched calves (72g/day), and at a weaning value of $2.60 kgLW for 650 calves this increase in weight gain equated to $4,563 (approx. £2.250). This goes to show that undetected parasite burden will cost calf performance, and depending on the level of challenge drenching will generally pay. It is important therefore to monitor what is happening in different calf groups on your farm, as it is not reliable to depend on monitor farm results or even what happened on your farm last year.
Two other areas that the group has been looking at is over-mating heifers and once-bred heifers. Heifers can still be classed as such up until 3 years of age, and will receive a premium slaughter price if sold as heifers as opposed to cows. This has led to some farmers calving all their heifers at 2 years old, and then selecting which heifers they want to keep as replacements once they have calved; hence 'over-mating' as more heifers have been mated than are needed to enter the herd. Once-bred heifers refers to the poorer heifers that calve as a two year old, rear their calves until weaning and are then culled (or sold elsewhere). Jason Archer from AgResearch Invermay talked about once-bred heifers, and some members of the group discussed how they are now once-breeding heifers to still attract a premium price for the heifer, with the added benefit of having a calf from her. Jason discussed some of the key issues, including having to treat the heifers as finishing animals so feed quality must be good, and being prepared to put extra labour input into calving as 8-10% of heifers (generally) will need calving assistance. He also considered suggestions that overmating and matching calf to heifer to select replacement heifers is a strategy to increase genetic gain. Jason's answer to this suggestion was No it doesn't stack up, as heritability is low and repeatability of weaning weight is also low. In his opinion (and all at the field day), for genetic improvement the best bet is to buy a good bull with EBV's.
In all, it was a fantastic Field Day to attend, and having heard so much recently about breeding bulls for the dairy herd and meeting the needs of dairy herds it was nice to hear so much focus on beef.
Mixed age Hereford, Angus and composite cows at Lochindorb
For any of you in Wales thinking that growing combinable crops isn't an option in our climate and on steep land, take a look at what I saw on my travels yesterday!!
While driving to visit a beef and sheep farm in one of the wettest parts of New Zealand (and there was enough rain while I was there to know that it's no word of a lie), we happened to pass this on our way. The deep trenches and dark soil at the bottom of the field was evident of how wet and peaty the soil is here, and I was amazed at how anyone thought it would be a good idea to sow combinable crops at this altitude and in such a wet area. Down the road from here we saw a huge Case combine with two big headers on the front trying to combine oats on similar land to this. Not a challenge that I would like to take up!
It's steeper than it looks!
On Tuesday I accompanied AbacusBio sheep and beef consultant Simon Glennie to a discussion group meeting that he facilitates near Lawrence, Otago. This is the third time that I have been involved in this particular discussion group, and once again it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.
The 1000ha (effective area) farm is divided into 400ha of cultivated land and 600ha of gullies. Current stocking levels on the farm comprises of 5,000 ewes, 1,800 hoggets, 70 cows and 190 calves; 120 of which have just come onto the farm as a share farming partnership to be grown on over the winter. One question the farmer posed to the group was 'should I be increasing my stocking rates'? On a year such as this where grass growth has been phenomenal (in an area that stocks relatively low due to summer drought), the obvious answer was 'yes'! The majority of the group suggested that the farm could be running more cows, as they can as such get lost in all the gullies on the farm. However; it was appreciated by the whole group that this year has been exceptional, and now is not the time to be making such decisions.
Another key area that the farmer has had to tackle this year is that of worms and wormer resistance. The young farming family came back to run the farm last year having been away for several years, and found this year that he had difficulty finishing lambs, particularly on young pasture where you would expect the lambs to be achieving high growth rates. Working closely with the local vet practise, the farmer wormed his lambs using the usual combination drench (white & clear) and did a Faecal Egg Count (FEC) 10 days later, to discover exceptionally high worm burden of 350 eggs/gram! The local vet was in attendance at the meeting, and she talked about how larval cultures were taken from FEC samples from lambs to discover which worm species were present and in what proportion. She showed the group the FEC reduction test results, which showed the percentage reduction of the individual worm species to different drench types, including Albendazole (white), Levamisole (clear), combination (white & clear) and Ivermectin. For all four drenches, Ostertagia worms were only reduced by 54% - 92%, meaning that each drench type failed, and ostertagia worms on the farm are resistant to all four drenches. Trichostrongylus, Cooperia, Oesoph/Chabertia and Nematodirus worms were also monitored, with Cooperia failing to be reduced by Ivermectin, and Nematodirus failing to be reduced by Albendazole and once again Ivermectin. These results highlight that the combination drench being used was not reducing Ostertagia - the worm that had been identified in the larval culture as being one of the biggest problems on the farm this year, probably due to the wet, moist conditions (usually a spring problem).
The results and future options on the farm led to some great discussion from the group, almost becoming heated at times! Recommendations from the vet were to use Switch or Zolvix or bionic capsules (Albendazole & Ivermectin combination delivered at a controlled rate over 100 days), with the farmers suggesting to either use the bionic capsules or a triple drench. The farmers in the group also highlighted the use of cows grazing lamb paddocks to ingest the worms, thus reducing the worm burden on the paddock before lamb finishing.
Unbelievable amount of grass at 1000ft in early May (equivalent to November in the UK)
I mentioned last week that I would be on a trip around the north part of the South Island over the Easter break. Along the way I took some interesting photos, from vineyards, lucerne paddocks and salt factories in Marlborough to deer, irrigation systems and lavender in Canterbury. Here are just a few of them.....
Irrigators in Canterbury
Central pivot and border dyke irrigation near Mt Hutt, Canterbury
Lucerne paddocks in Marlborough....
and Canterbury.....
Deer farming in Canterbury
Alternative farming in Canterbury
Farming lavender and goats on a lucerne and plantain break
Salt factory in Marlborough
Vineyards in Marlborough
Bee keeping in Marlborough
Another cold, wet day in Otago yesterday meant another day out on farm! This time I accompanied Simon Glennie and Peter Fennessy of AbacusBio at a Beef and Lamb NZ and NZ Herefords organised field day near Roxburgh, Otago. The bitter cold, rain and snow on the hills however did not put off the 150 or so farmers and industry representatives from venturing from across the South Island and beyond.
The day was held at Limehills farm, the winners of NZ Hereford 'Herd of Excellence' Award in 2010. An introduction to the farming enterprise set the scene for the day. A 2,924 hectare farm made up of 6 seperate blocks of land, varying from native tussocks at 1000m to irrigated flats at 100m. The farm runs 4,850 ewes, 1,300 hoggets as replacements and trading lambs, along with 350 breeding Hereford cows. For the past 30 years they have had very successful bull sales selling their homebred Hereford bulls, and we were able to see the bulls that they have ready for their sale this year on the 31st May.
I was very impressed with the turnout at the event, and we all jumped into 4WD's for the farm tour. There were several stops along the way, but the bad weather made it difficult for the guest speakers to talk once we had stopped. The Beef and Lamb NZ representative who organised the day, the farm owner and guest speakers (including Peter Fennessy) all shared one vehicle and talked about the farm and the operations as we travelled accross the farm. The other vehicles (of which there were many!) were able to tune into the radio to hear what was being said; a system that worked very well and proved to be very effective.
The breeding ewes at Limehills are a split flock, half of which are Romney and half are 1/4 Finn, 1/4 Texel, 1/2 Romney. Limehills operate a cross-breeding programme, which is actually quite rare in New Zealand as many farms use stable composite breeds (for example Perendale). At tupping Romney rams are used to keep the purebred Romneys, and 1/2 Finn 1/2 Texel rams are used to breed replacements. Dorset Down terminal sire rams are then mated to the Romney/ Finn/ Texel ewes. Dr Peter Fennessy gave a talk (when we were back in the warmth of the village hall) about the use of crossbreeding to maximise hybrid vigour. He explained that a 10-15% increase in lambing percentage can be achieved from cross breeding due to a reduction in embryonic loss and improved vigour at birth leading to better lamb survival. Higher lamb growth rates are also seen, with more lambs being finished straight off the ewe. Obviously this is nothing new to us in the UK, as cross breeding is used extensively. But it was very interesting to hear about cross breeding in New Zealand; how farmers are realising that there are gains from it but that it does complicate things in large systems where labour is in short supply.
A guest speaker for the day was a beef farmer from South Australia. He has a herd of 5,000 Hereford cows, 1,000 heifers, an elite herd of 500 females and a stud herd producing his own bulls to put over the elite herd, before selling them all at his annual bull sale. In addition to the Hereford herd he also buys in and finishes 20,000 cattle a year through a feed lot system. They are generally Hereford or Angus cross heifers (although he is buying steers now as heifers are too expensive) bought in at 13 to 14 months old at around 400kg. They are kept in the feed lots for 70 days before being sold to the supermarkets at a target finish weight of 580kg, on a diet of 70% grain (oats, lupins, barley) and 30% hay. A Hormone Growth Promoter (HGP) is used on all heifers to increase weight gain and reduce fat. The talk was extremely interesting, and one thing that particularly interested the farmers I was sat next to was that Australian farmers are now (cautiously) able to go to the supermarkets and set the price they want to be paid. Last week for example, he was offered AU$4/kg, and when he said he wanted AU$4.40 he got it. This is one way that he thinks farmers can take advantage of the fact that beef is in short supply, but it is a product that is very much in demand.
The day finished with a demonstration of how to prepare beef and three different meals that could be cooked on the barbecue by a Dunedin chef that has been chosen as one of five Beef & Lamb NZ Ambassadors for 2011. We ended the day sampling this wonderful New Zealand beef, a great end to a great day.
Hereford Heifers at Limehills - a photo I managed to take between the rain showers!
Some of the Hereford bulls for sale this May
Yesterday I joined AbacusBio's sheep and beef consultant Simon Glennie at a discussion group meeting that he facilitates near Lawrence, Otago. The previous day had been a harsh reminder that Autumn is on it's way, with torrential rain for much of the day. We were fortunate to have a mostly dry day for the discussion group meeting, but the bitter wind and cold temperatures were constant.
Farmers in Otago have benefited from exceptional grass growth this season, and the higher than average rainfall over the summer has provided fantastic growing conditions for brassica crops that are essential winter feed on sheep, beef and dairy farms alike. The past two weeks however has seen a drop in temperatures, and pasture growth has declined as a result. Despite this, the majority of farms have sufficient pasture cover to see them through to the winter, and farmers are now deciding on how to manage this surplus over the next six to eight weeks.
The host farmers for the discussion group meeting were husband and wife Paul and Lisa Wilson, who farm a 410 hectare farm with Paul's parents. They currently run 2400 mature ewes and 880 hoggets with 93 mature cows, 41 two year old heifers and 43 heifer calves. On a tour of the farm, it was clear to see that the family were doing an exceptional job of running the farm. We saw some Perendale hoggets (see picture below), which were probably the best hoggets I have seen since I have been in New Zealand, and some two year old Perendale ewes that were to be mated to Coopworth X Texel rams. The farm has plenty of pasture to allow the ewes a rising plane of nutrition in the 10 or so days pre-mating, which should help increase his scanning percentage this year.
One question that Paul posed to the group was what his options were for the cattle in the future. They currently make up 30% of his stock units due to being down on sheep numbers (after the storms last year); he would be happier if this was at his normal level of 25% or lower. After a visit of the farm and a discussion about Paul’s enterprise, the 12 or so farmers involved in the meeting had a discussion with Simon (the facilitator) about what options could be available to Paul. Once three or four options had been considered, the group split into two smaller groups to discuss the different options in more depth. A summary of the discussions considered how much extra profit could be made from selling calves and replacing with dairy heifers, selling the cows and buying in calves to sell at either 20 or 26 months, or buying 100kg Hereford-Friesians and using a growth hormone promoter (still allowed in NZ unlike Europe) before selling at 26 months.
It was agreed that keeping the current system of cows and calves would only offer a return of 8c/kgDM, which is lower than for any other system including sheep. Grazing dairy heifers could offer a return of 17ckg/DM, considerably higher than that of the cows. However, it would mean having to build a good relationship with a dairy farmer, wintering would be on brassica crops at a higher expense than what it costs with the cows, if he were to keep the cows there is a potential risk of Bovine Viral Diarrhea (BVD) from the dairy heifers resulting in dry cows, and the system offers him less flexibility in hot dry summers where he has to keep the dairy heifers on. Having the cows and calves also offers Paul other benefits as a grazing tool alongside the sheep; to sweep up some of the worms on the pasture and saving labour and money as Paul did not need to mechanically top any fields the past two years (he did this year due to the exceptional grass growth). What was clear from this meeting was that c/kgDM is extremely important, but farmers are also considering what is important to them and what makes management easier on their farms. Despite the group coming to a consensus that keeping cows and calves is likely to be the best option for Paul, no doubt he will weigh up and review his options over the coming years to make sure that he is making his system pay and work for him simultaneously.
Perendale hoggets (ewe lambs) on young pasture before tupping in two weeks time
Some of the cows and calves
Yesterday I had a chance to be involved in a Beef Profit Partnership Group meeting for the Southern New Zealand region, covering Southland and Otago. The meeting was held on one of the members' beef farms in West Otago, and involved other beef farmers from the region, Simon Glennie (AbacusBio sheep and beef consultant) and a member of Meat and Wool New Zealand.
The initiative, covering beef farms in Australia and New Zealand was established in 2006 with the aim of establishing 50 Beef Profit Partnership groups, including in excess of 500 beef business. The objective of BPP is to 'achieve and accelerate improvements and innovations for sustainable impact on business profit and industry growth'. It is hoped to improve business growth by 5% year by year. Each group has regular meetings, and the partners involved in each group determine what they want to focus on, what their targets and actions are. They share and promote any successful methods that they discover/ use, and any new technologies or management tools to other groups involved in the BPP.
The meeting followed a similar structure to that of the discussion groups that I have been involved with here, starting with an update from each farmer on what has been happening on their farms and any key targets that they have met since the previous meeting. We then went for a drive around the hosts farm; a low input beef finishing operation based primarily on 800 100kg friesian cross calves finishing at two years old. Alongside this the farm also finishes summer store lambs and runs winter contract lambs. As feed demand is low in the spring when there is a surplus of grass, a lot of silage is made for the winter in the form of baylage or as pit silage for self-feeding systems in the winter. The key points the group wanted to discuss were managing feed supply and demand in a trading operation, the consideration of using hormone growth promoters, the use of EID (legislation coming in in November), and the potential threats to the 5% annual increase, in particular from new regulations involving the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) due to come into effect in 2015, which will charge farmers for how much carbon they are producing on-farm.
One management tool that the group has been looking at using is Faecal Egg Count (FEC) sampling calves. The decision to try this method is based on two main things; firstly to know when worm burden is high enough in calves to justify worming them, and secondly to test whether wormers actually do work! Listening to the group telling their tales on collecting the samples, it was obvious that they had all struggled. The majority had taken in excess of an hour to collect samples from one group of calves (inability to distinguish between cows, calves and sheep as the grass is so wet!), but one members suggestion to collect samples early in the morning when the cows were just getting up seemed to be a winner. Those that had used a wormer, either in the form of an injection or a dose had found from doing a second FEC sample that the wormers had worked, which the group were pleasantly surprised about.
I found the day thoroughly enjoyable, not just because it gave me a chance to learn about beef farming operations in New Zealand, but also to see how eager the farmers are to work together to provide a better future for the beef industry in NZ, an industry that they know is declining and it is up to them to make sure that it does not disappear from this country.
One of the self-feed silage pits ready for the winter
Some of the beef finishers
Yesterday brought about a change of scenery, with visits to three progressive dairy farms in North Otago. I joined Peter O'Neill, dairy consultant for AbacusBio on his monthly visit to dairy farms who he provides consultancy for in the Oamaru area. This was a big change of scenery for me, as I have had no involvement whatsoever in the dairy sector since I spent my placement year working on a dairy farm in Devon, back in 2006-07.
The first visit was to a share farming partnership, milking 900 New Zealand Friesian cows. The discussion involved the owner, share partner, head stockman and general worker, and they discussed current cow numbers, culls since the last visit, feed purchased (barley and silage), grass and lucerne silage made on the farm and current pasture heights. They also discussed in great detail their latest figures on milk solids produced, all of which went beyond my current level of knowledge! I was informed that February is usually one of the driest months of the year, but this year they have had more than three times the level of rainfall that they normal expect, and as a result irrigation has not been used and the paddocks are green and lush (unheard of normally in this dry area of New Zealand). On a visit of the farm you could see why their feed wedge was so high (a graph showing the quantity of grass in fields after walking the farm with a plate meter) with a farm cover of 2700kgDM/ha, as the grass was blowing in the wind!
The other two farms we visited were of a similar scale, with the same topics being discussed. The second farm was located on a steep hill, where they struggle with run off, erosion and water conservation. The farm manager told us that it rained so much on Sunday that he had to keep the cows on the yards, but by Wednesday there was no sign of any moisture other than deep wheelings on the tracks after the heavy rainfall, as the strong winds had blown any moisture away (you may have heard on the news how the strong winds were blowing liquifaction in Christchurch). They were having to feed Palm Kernel to the cows as despite having more rain and grass than normal, they were still not meeting their target farm cover. In contrast, the opposite was occuring on the last farm we visited, and they were exceeding their target.
One thing that all three farms had in common, and the majority of other dairy farms that we passed on our travels, was that they are all growing fodder beet. Peter told me that the crop has become very popular here over the past three years, with huge yield potential of up to 30tDM/ha utilised, double that of kale. The last farm we visited were milking 1300 cows, and were growing 40 ha of fodder beet, which is more than enough to feed all the cows during the winter! They will start strip grazing the fodder beet from May, and will typically feed a diet of 50% fodder beet (high in energy, low in protein) with 30-35% silage to make up the protein element, and the remainder grass/ straw.
A field of fodder beet growing on one of the dairy farms I visited (the bend in the trees shows how windy it was!)
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