Farming in the wet not easy

Bay of Plenty dairy farmers battling very wet conditions are encouraged to not only protect their pasture growth for this spring, but also take care of their own welfare.

DairyNZ Bay of Plenty regional leader Sharon Morrell says calving is a challenging, busy time on-farm and both people and pasture need to be cared for.


File Photo.

'Soil moisture conditions are now extremely wet. During July, the coastal Bay of Plenty had around 150 percent of the long-term average for July (200mm at Te Puke),” says Sharon.

Along with managing pastures, farmers are encouraged to talk to neighbours, farm advisors or their DairyNZ consulting officer to discuss their situation, and look after their team.

'Simply getting everyone together for a home-cooked meal or finding a way to keep the team motivated and uplifted can be a real boost – even something like a morning tea in the shed.”

The way farm teams respond to pasture management can also pose a big threat to future pasture re-growth and milk production.

'It can be tempting to change set paddock rotations and offer larger or fresh breaks of grass when paddocks are so wet,” says Sharon.

'But it's important to manage rotation length and therefore pasture cover to achieve the growth required later, when the herd is eating more.”

Grass growth from balance date will secure feed supply and milk production until Christmas, and underpin a profitable farm business under the current reduced milk price. Farmers are encouraged to achieve target pasture covers firstly by sticking to the set rotation area, then working on preventing pugging.

Research has shown that fast rotations have cost 20kg milksolids/cow before Christmas, due to pasture growth rates declining by 1.8t DM/ha (60 days x 30kg/day).

It takes extremely bad pugging to reduce a farm's annual pasture yield by five percent or more – meaning a farm with 16t DM/ha pasture might lose just 0.8t DM/ha annually due to severe pugging.

Farmers may need to feed supplement if there is not enough pasture to hold the rotation to plan.

To manage pugging, the best solution is having cows on paddocks for just a few hours and using stand-off pads combined with an area where supplements are fed.

Alternatives to stand-off pads include the dairy yard, waste areas, a paddock to be cropped or re-grassed in the spring and farm races (for short spells).

If feeding supplements on paddocks, put feed onto long grass before the cows arrive. Walk cows over long grass when going in and out of paddocks or use multiple entrance points to prevent damaging the re-growth of pastures on subsequent rotations.

Throughout calving, the DairyNZ Bay of Plenty team will be working with small groups on-farm to review how the host's spring rotation plan is going. Feed allocation, rotation and all those curly questions on juggling multiple aims will be addressed in a 1.5-hour event.

If you are interested in being part of one of these, please ring Sharon (0274 922 907).

Resources available:

To discuss on-farm issues with other farmers, the Dairy Connect programme can help – visit www.dairynz.co.nz/dairyconnect

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1 comment

Never Easy

Posted on 06-08-2016 09:10 | By Gigilo

Funny the other day a bloke told me that farming was seriously hard in the dry. Probably why foreign investors want to buy our farms because they either feel sorry for us or maybe don't see it that way


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