From land once marginal dairy country, Landcorp now achieves 800kg milksolids (MS) a hectare, while the drystock farm carries between 15 and 25 stock units a hectare – depending on the quality of the soil that was flipped – compared with an average of six on the unflipped land.
It’s a radical change from the former landscape. Farm business manager for drystock and machinery Paul Hateley, who has worked on the station for more than 40 years, has been there through the transformation and the battles along the way.
“We got diggers and started flipping it on a small scale and it took off,” he recalls. “Cowsheds came on and cows came on and away we went. And then the manuka beetle came on.”
Gumboots are hardly needed on a flipped paddock.
One of the challenges of flipping soil is restoring the humus on the surface.
At the base of Cape Foulwind, Johno and Kate O’Connor reckon they are finally making headway after about 12 years.
The couple have displayed pioneering spirit on their 800ha block of land, where 100ha still stands in old man gorse and manuka on boggy pakihi soil.
It was originally oversown into pasture early in the 1970s, but quickly reverted during the high interest rate era of the 1980s, so when the O’Connors bought the first chunk of the farm in 1990, they ran beef cattle on the areas that still had some pasture. Some of those paddocks still exist in their pakihi state – waterlogged in wetter months but growing respectable pasture in summer.
They were sharemilking when they bought the farm and like Landcorp staff, they’d also watched the Kings flip land and make a dramatic change to the infertile, wet pakihi soil, so 12 years ago they borrowed money to build a dairy, add lanes, and begin flipping land for a dairy conversion.
Today, a third of their cows are wintered on the solid surface that resulted from flipping the soil, barely leaving a mark even after 200mm of rain had fallen – and this is a farm that receives 3m of rain a year – with supplementary feed staying dry on the ground.
Psychologically, getting rid of the mud has made flipping worth every penny they spent, but they had hoped to build up production faster than it has.
“We thought we would be building up the humus by having more cows on the place, but looking back we probably grew less grass because our residuals were too low,” Johno says. “By lowering the stocking rate we’ve allowed the grass to grow and build up humus.”
Kate says the grass was constantly under stress with higher cow numbers and never had the chance to bulk up, so production began going backwards.
At one stage they milked 800 cows on around 400ha, but have dropped that back to 600 which is 1.5 cows a hectare, and though that may be considerably fewer than in other regions, Johno says it’s the reality on land that is so hungry, with no natural fertility.
They tried various fertiliser regimes after becoming dissatisfied with the results of large amounts of NPK superphosphate mixes they had put on.
“We didn’t have the holding capacity in the soil,” Johno says. “I started to take an interest in fertiliser and found that the more you learn, the more there is to learn, especially when applying the knowledge to your own situation.
“There are farmers obtaining outstanding results from various fertilisers but don’t be in a hurry to replicate these results on your own paddocks. Basic soil reports give me trends, but the in-depth analysis gives me confidence to manipulate my fertiliser expenditure.
“I think there’s another side of growing grass efficiently and growing quality grass. It’s not all about drymatter.
“We’ve come from 200 units of nitrogen a hectare down to 65. When we were at 200 there were areas of the farm that wanted more and more. And there were parts of the farm that didn’t grow no matter how much you put on.”
Kate: “It was like a drug. It needed more and more and when you tried to reduce it, it had withdrawal symptoms.”
Johno says their aim now is to get the right balance in the soils, starting with the main elements calcium and magnesium. They’re also tending toward the Kinsey philosophy of fertiliser that recognises the soil is made up of biology and essential elements, not just a straight chemical equation.
“You have to recognise that if you want quality products off your farm, you have to understand the soil and its full potential. If you’re farming properly you’re building up carbon in your soil – it’s a measure of your farming practices.”
Their fertiliser programme has moved to DAP, potassium sulphate, dolomite, lime, plus some urea and liquid fertiliser.
Combined with the slow build-up of humus in the soil and adjustments in fertiliser, they are growing more grass and fewer rocks are visible in the paddocks. In some areas, it’s still only growing 5t/drymatter/ha, whereas other areas are 8-9 tonne – a huge hike from what it originally produced.
“When you look back, you didn’t realise the effort involved in getting a large area of low fertility ground up and running and how long it would take.”
Milk production is increasing, though the drought took its toll this past season to finish with 190,000kg/MS compared with 208,000kg the previous season.
They’ve had their battles with manuka beetle and porina as well, but while they’ve sprayed the latter with Dimilin when there are badly infested patches of ground, they’ve chosen to put up with the manuka beetle and work on the long-term goal of improving soil and pasture to lessen the problem.
“Once you build up humus and get the soil going, it’s not such a perfect environment for them.”
Despite the hurdles, the O’Connors enjoy a challenge and without flipping the farm would have remained a bog.
“The major benefit of flipping is being able to physically farm this land in this climate,” Johno says.
Kate says: “It’s the difference of being able to drive across the paddock instead of sinking up to your knees in mud.”
