Saturday, March 30, 2024

A dry run for drought

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There’s no doubt in Tim Rhodes’ mind a drought will hit the Gisborne area this year so he’s already preparing.
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“I’m constantly monitoring data from NIWA and my interpretation is it’s going to be a dry one,” Tim said.

“We normally get reliable growth from August to the end of October. However, after that all bets are off.”

Tim oversees the 4900ha Wipere Trust farming business near Gisborne so there’s a lot at stake when a major weather event threatens the viability of the business. Preparations are well under way to drought-proof the business as best he can.

“You can’t wait until you get into a drought to make critical strategy decisions because your head will be in the wrong place.

“You need to develop a detailed plan involving a decision tree, critical dates and trigger points when action must be taken, well in advance of the event occurring and articulate the plan to people critical to your business.

“You must be disciplined and follow the plan and when you get to those trigger points be prepared to re-plan and reforecast as things change.”

Long-term feed budgeting and business planning are central to Tim’s strategy. They involve regular monitoring so he knows exactly what’s going on.

‘It’s critical we know what our
pasture growth rates are because if we start missing our target pasture covers now we’re in real trouble later on,” he said.

“Our pasture covers are currently a month behind normal so we have destocked and added more feed into the system.”

As a means of helping to build covers and also in anticipation of a positive beef schedule, Tim is feeding 900 R2 finishing bulls and 300 R2 steers on a mixture of palm kernel, silage and kibbled maize costing $3/head/day. 

He has also contracted extra silage for this coming season as part of his drought strategy.

The condition of all breeding animals is being closely monitored to ensure they go into summer in good condition so they are better able to cope with a drought.

“We’ve deliberately avoided putting our breeding animals under pressure this winter, not only to maintain their condition but also to protect weaning weights.

“We’re also pushing our ewe hoggets and R1 heifers along so they reach good weights before the summer.”

Arguably the greatest insurance against the effects of a drought has been the commissioning late last year of a 690m centre-pivot irrigator, which, along with an irrigation gun, enables 170ha of very fertile alluvial flats bordering the Waipaoa River to be irrigated. 

This has ensured they have been able to confidently contract their 25,000 home-bred lambs to ANZCO for the coming season.

 

Cows are wintered on self-fed silage when there is no roughage to clean-up.

Cattle recipe 

One of Tim’s breeding objectives is to maintain a crossbred cow herd involving the Angus and Hereford breeds. 

Any black cows that have a white face are mated to Angus bulls and any straight black cows are mated to Hereford bulls.

The mixed-age herd is wintered on self-fed silage or roughage on the hills or a combination of both, depending on the season.

“We always have stacks of silage stored for the cows and whether we use them depends on the season,” Tim said.

Cows are set-stocked among the ewes and lambs for calving which begins on September 20.

The calving percentage hovers at about 90% and the calves are weaned early at an average weight of 200-210kg. 

Tim’s objective is to get that to 230kg and reducing the calving spread will help achieve it.

The cows are cycle-scanned after the bulls are out for three cycles and any cows conceiving in the third cycle are culled.

Heifers are calved down as two-year-olds, having been mated to Saler bulls on December 8.

When Tim arrived at the trust he decided to mate the yearling heifers.

“They were extremely well grown at 370kg average liveweight, but when it came to calving we had to assist about 40 of them and lost 20 heifers.

“I discovered that some of the birthweight EBVs of the bulls that had previously been used in the herd were massive, so obviously some of these big birth genes were influencing the birthweights of the heifers’ calves and causing calving problems.

“I can’t understand why farmers do not use EBVs when buying bulls because if they don’t they are likely to be buying the stud breeder’s feeding skills.”

After extensively researching bull breeders and their products Tim now gets both his Angus and Saler bulls from Forbes Cameron in Manawatu and the calving problems have all but disappeared. 

He gets his Hereford bulls from Peter Humphries of Gisborne.

The trust finishes all its homebred steers and cull heifers. 

The steers are killed in October as two-year-olds at an average carcaseweight of 300kg and the heifers at 240kg CW. Then 1500 Friesian bulls are bought as yearlings or 18-month cattle and are carried through one winter before being killed in the spring at an average of 320kg CW. 

 

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