For a number of reasons I am very thankful for the mild winter.
First, I have come through the winter with reasonable covers of grass and the wastage has been minimal in the fodder beet, rape and swede crops, but also, I have been living in a caravan since the beginning of June.
Crazy I know, but we decided to knock down the house on the farm, and rebuild on the same site, because it has a developed garden and shelter.
It was all supposed to happen over the summer, but like all great things, it took time.
We are going to have a beautiful warm, modern house, hopefully an asset when we sell the farm in the future, but I am glad it was just me (and two cats) in the caravan, since space is limited and the novelty of caravanning has certainly worn off.
Over winter I had 200 R1 cattle and 60 R2 cattle on fodder beet for about 75 days, and about 1600 ewes spent nine weeks on swedes and rape, and for the first time I seem to have got to the end of winter and not been panicking about how much grass I haven’t got.
I would like to say this is because of great management, but a bit of good fortune with the weather certainly helped. At the time of writing I still have to set stock the ewes, but I think pasture covers will be adequate.
Looking at some of my younger paddocks I am a bit worried about what their growth rates are going to be. There is more porina damage than I realised.
South Otago is a hotspot for porina, and I was a bit lax with my pasture digging in autumn. Talking to others in the south, I think last season was a good one for porina.
In the past we have sprayed paddocks in autumn, but are now using ryegrasses with AR37 endophyte to try to control it. It helps, but is not 100% effective. As this is for the sheep special, I had better mention some of my sheep management.
I mated the ewes in two mobs this year, with five days’ difference in mating date. I used ram crayons after 11 days and used two colours.
I always think remarking all the ewes, for easier drafting, will be time consuming, but it doesn’t really take very long and it spreads the workload at vaccinating and set stocking.
Also, when I run all the ewes through to remove the rams and re-mark them, I put my hand on every ewe, and take out any lighter ewes.
Over the years I have learnt that looking after the bottom 10% of the flock is one of the better ways to improve overall performance.
Once a ewe has a couple of months’ wool regrowth after shearing, it is actually not very accurate drafting for condition by eye alone. A lot can be hidden under the wool.
I did this again a few weeks after scanning, at which stage I drafted off the triplet ewes – 70% of the light ewes I took off early winter had improved sufficiently with the better feeding they received, so returned to their mob.
Lambing is very easy care. In other words I don’t see most of them for at least three weeks.
But I drafted off more that I wasn’t happy with and they will be fed preferentially until set stocking, and hopefully will be lambed on some of the better blocks, so they can maintain or gain weight over lactation.
I use long-acting drench capsules in the triplet ewes, (at 197% scanning this year, 18% of my ewes are carrying triplets, so over 430 triplet ewes) and in any lighter twin ewes.
This is done for a few reasons. They need all the help they can get to try to milk well and wean heavy lambs, but also they are lambed on the cultivated areas of the farm that will be used for ewe lambs and lamb finishing after weaning.
If I can keep egg larval loads as low as possible on these areas, hopefully lamb growth rates will not be reduced too much by worm burdens.
The other management tools I use to reduce lamb worm egg uptake are grazing lambs on new grass after weaning and in spring the yearling cattle are rotated around an area. These paddocks are then used for lamb grazing later in the season.
At set stocking all the ewes get a five-in-one vaccination and a LSD drench, which contains iodine and vitamins A, D and E, as well as some other minerals.
Lambing is very easy care. In other words I don’t see most of them for at least three weeks. I will check the triplets for cast ewes for the first couple of weeks, but once there are lots of lambs in the paddocks I try to keep away from them.
Hopefully in my next column I can report that I am living in our new house, and we had a record lambing.
Suzie’s world
Suzie Corboy is married to Paul, and they run two farms 85km apart. After 21 years they are in the final year of leasing a 1540ha farm at Table Hill near Milton that Paul manages.
For the past five years Suzie has been managing the 495ha farm they bought in 2011 in the Owaka Valley.
As well as running the farm on her own, Suzie is an ambulance volunteer.
She says it was always their aim when they started leasing to buy an economic farm, but it wasn’t in the plan that they would live apart for five years.
However, it has been a means to an end, and Paul will join her in July 2017.
The Owaka Valley farm is running about 2500 Headwaters ewes. These are a composite breed, with a mix of Finn, Perendale, Texel and Romney.
Paul has the hoggets, two-tooths and four-tooths, Suzie all the older ewes.
They run a large herd of Stabilizer cows at Milton, and finish all the steers at Owaka, with just under 200 R1 steers there this season, along with about 100 R2 and R3 steers and finishing heifers.
Suzie also has 96 once-mated R2 heifers due to start calving at the end of September.
