With only 80mm of rain since the end of January, and a string of days where temperatures went above 30C, the past few months have been challenging.
Although 80ha of the milking platform is irrigated, they have had water restrictions since November meaning they can only irrigate for 12 hours a day, and they were cut off for 20 days during the height of drought. However their situation would be much worse if they hadn’t made some decisions early in the season to prepare for the El Nino summer that was predicted.
One of their decisions was to cut cow numbers.
“They were talking up the drought, so we put in maize on the dairy platform and culled cows. We wintered 490 cows last year and by the middle of October we were down to 460 and I culled again before Christmas and got down to 420.”
Half the herd, mainly the more adaptable younger stock, were switched to once-a-day (OAD) milking just before Christmas and another round of culling after pregnancy scanning got numbers down to 380. In March they shifted more cows to OAD and moved some of the older cows to 16-hour milking.
“Cell counts and condition have remained pretty good so it has ticked the boxes for us; it just means milking times are a bit crazy.”
They expected to see a production drop, but were prepared for that to maintain cow condition going into next season.
When the first cows went to OAD they were 26% up on last year’s production, which totalled 126,000kg milksolids (MS). They maintained that increase and hope to finish the season at about 156,000kg MS.
They attribute their increase in production to better pasture management and experimentation with crops and regrassing and are hoping to maintain it even with a decrease in cow numbers.
Adam admits although the property was a little run-down when they first arrived, it has plenty of potential. They have made cow condition and pasture management their main priority. When they first took over, average body condition score sat at about 3.7 and the young stock were coming in well under target weights, with last year’s R2s about 65kg under target.
“We didn’t have much feed at the runoff for the young stock, so when we took over we put all the young cows together and priority fed them as well as we could. The older cows suffered a little bit because we just didn’t have the feed for everything.”
They took a bit more control over their runoff block, which they lease and the owner manages. Adam goes out at least once a week and makes sure what they have talked about is being done. As a result their young stock are getting closer to target weights. Adam hopes that will make a difference to their performance once they enter the milking herd.
Managing cows in the lead-up to calving is important to making decisions about drying off and feeding. Adam tail-paints all his cows after scanning – green for cows due to calve before August 17, blue for before August 20 and orange for after August 20.
“It’s easy to be able to stand up at the drafting gate and go ok she’s green and a bit light so I will draft her out and dry her off or chuck her on OAD, rather than having to look at their tag numbers and look up when she’s due to calve.”
Their other core focus, pasture management, won them the Ravensdown Pasture Performance merit award in the Wairarapa-Hawke’s Bay Dairy Industry Awards. Last season the property harvested 8 tonnes/ha of crop and pasture, which they have managed to increase to more than 10t/ha this year.
Adam and his staff do pasture walks every week and collate the data into feed wedges to use to make decisions on paddock rotations and round lengths.
“We each have our own block of the farm that we walk each week, so the same person is doing the same block to keep things consistent and that way it’s not taking one person out for four hours. It helps keep everyone involved and in the know as to what’s going on, on the farm.”
Nitrogen is applied strategically, little and often, at about 60kg of urea per application, following the cows around when the pasture is growing and stopping use when it’s not. This year Adam used ProGibb and liquid urea to try to boost pasture growth before winter. He pre-mows in front of the cows in summer when required to increase intake and maintain quality.
The soil types on the farm vary between stony and heavy loams, which Adam has learnt to take full advantage of. Earlier in the season before the restrictions on irrigation kicked in he took soil samples to figure out exactly what his soils were and irrigated accordingly.
“We don’t have a variable rate irrigator but we did want to be efficient with it. On the heavier soils we put a pass of 10mm and on the lighter soils we did two 5mm passes and repeated. The grass seemed to grow a lot doing that.”
Regrassing was also top of the list when it came to their pasture management and figuring out ways to reduce the impact of future droughts by experimenting with various crops.
“The paddocks were hammered last year in the drought and being overgrazed, so at the end of last year we under-sowed some paddocks to give some feed for spring.”
Shane Gray, whose parents Kevin and Janet own the farm, has a contracting business attached to the farm, meaning that they are able to grow crops at cost and make their System 4 operation economical. The 4ha of maize they planted in anticipation of drought came in at about 18c/kg. The 12ha of turnips that was planted this year was a bit hit and miss, with staggered germinations and the loss of some seed, yielding 6t/ha.
“We direct-drilled some thinking the drought might come early, and we had a really mild spring so it didn’t actually get that wet. It was good grass growing weather but probably not right for turnips.”
They planted under the pivot where the soils were pugged and rough. A combination of the pivot going over it and a big downpour of rain meant a lot of the seed was washed out. Adam put it down to experience and says next year he’ll direct-drill on his irrigated paddocks.
When considering his regrassing programme Adam decided to focus first on his 80ha of irrigated paddocks, which he will do over the next three years. In a normal year, he says he would like to have planted some tetraploids, but because of this year’s budget and the sheer scale of regrassing that needs to be done, he opted for diploid grasses.
“I decided that new grass diploids across more of the farm was going to be more beneficial than having a few tetraploid paddocks and leaving the old stuff.”
He is trialling Shogun in some of his dry-land paddocks and has a demo paddock trialling a new Agriseeds seed. They have already tinkered with chicory, having inherited a second-year paddock when they took on the farm, but had some issues with it going to stalk. Adam says in future he would treat it as a one-year crop and only plant it in his effluent paddocks, to allow him to mine some of the soil fertility, and irrigate during summer if needed.
Effluent isn’t just limited to the effluent paddocks on the farm. Their system is old and lacks storage but they are lucky to have a slurry tank that they can use to suck out the effluent and spread it on the farm.
“I use it a lot in summer and take the effluent to the far corners of the farm to try and give the soil fertility a bit of a boost. The paddocks we are targeting for cropping next year have been getting effluent on them which will hopefully make a difference.”
Adam plans to continue with the maize again next year because it fills a hole for them and is versatile in terms of feeding options. Turnips will be tried again and Adam is hoping the Shogun paddocks will take off. He is thinking of growing some rape to help spread the risk a little bit more. At the runoff they grew barley and peas in summer and turned the paddocks into oats and annual ryegrass for winter, which Adam hopes will help tide them over given the poor pasture growth on the home block. The runoff block also has a paddock of grass seed which they use for themselves for under-sowing.
For the next few years Adam says they are focused on “getting the farm cranking” and are aiming for a total production of 200,000kg MS, which he admits might be a little ambitious to achieve in two years. Keeping cow condition and pasture management top of mind will remain a priority for them as will continuing to experiment with crops and grasses to help assist them in the dry summers to come.
Farm facts
Farm owners: Kevin and Janet Gray
Contract milkers: Adam and Rebecca Giddens
Area: 132ha effective
Runoff: 200ha, leased
Irrigation: 80ha
Cow numbers: 455 Kiwicross
Production: 156,000kg MS
Farm working expenses (contract milkers): 98c/kg MS
