The former banker and Lincoln University Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce graduate came back to the home farm with his wife Mandy seven years ago, a year after the property was converted.
The initial land holding in the South Canterbury, Pleasant Point property, came under the family’s stewardship back in 1876 and it’s been run over the years as a mixed cropping and then bull beef unit, but in the early days did milk a few cows.
The milking platform is now 260ha with the addition of 70ha about the time of the conversion.
In the last couple of years Hayden has also been flat-out developing a 1200-cow equity partnership across the Opihi River from the home farm.
He’s the first to admit over more recent years other things have pushed their way to the top of his priority list ahead of an active focus on pasture management.
While he knew how important it was he had just one eye on it rather than giving it his full attention – and since it’s at the very heart of the farming system that just wasn’t enough, he says.
At first, with most of the farm in new grass, making sure cows were well fed on high-quality pasture wasn’t too difficult.
“When I came back, the farm was in its second year and there was a lot of new grass. It was a lot easier farming in those first couple of years than it was even four years later,” he says.
“The farm plateaued and production started to fall off a bit but we also had a creep in supplements.
“I could see that some paddocks weren’t doing as well as others but we fell into that trap where you’re not growing enough feed to take paddocks out (for regrassing) and that amplified the problem even more.”
Seasonal peak cow numbers were maintained at close to 970 cows or 3.8 cows/ha and while the farm never became what would be classed as a high user of bought-in supplement it did almost double its use, going from 300kg drymatter (DM)/cow/year to 550kg DM/cow.
Hayden could see they were heading down a route he really didn’t want to go.
“I like being a pasture-based farmer but it’s also about profitability.
“If I could convince myself that by feeding one tonne per cow of palm kernel I could make more money I’d do it, but the fact is profitability basically comes down to pasture harvested and operating expenses.”
Hayden says while they’ve always had some level of pasture monitoring they weren’t necessarily doing it well.
A wake-up call came when he realised the staff member doing the monitoring could get around the whole farm with the platemeter in an hour.
They lost a staff member through the spring of 2011and Hayden stepped in to fill the gap in the milking roster.
“I remember seeing the cows going into the paddock and just sitting down in all this grass – they could just sit there and eat what they wanted around them.”
The farm’s average cover had crept up 2700kg DM/ha and to rectify the situation they ended up making 90ha of balage.
Hayden says they bought a tow-behind pasture meter and that solved the problem of every paddock being accurately and consistently measured.
“Measuring it is one thing, anyone can go out and measure it but that’s only part of the story. You’ve got to look at it properly. A 2800 (kg DM/ha) cover can look great in one paddock but terrible in another. You’ve got to look at the quality and the composition of what’s there.”
When Hayden saw Agriseeds’ Grass into Gold promotion he decided to get involved.
He was selected, enabling him to take part in an exclusive two-day conference with Massey University professor of dairy production Danny Donaghy, DairyNZ principal animal scientist John Roche and dairy consultant Dr Terry Hughes.
He’s also had on-going support from Agriseeds agronomists and some free seed to boot.
His progress is being updated on the programme’s website along with the 11 others taking part in the programme across the country.
For Hayden the big take-home message from the two-day conference was the absolute importance of good monitoring, but it also got him fired up about really putting pasture management and all that entails back at the top of his priority list.
Since then he’s made sure accurate paddock records are kept, so grazing intervals and weekly covers are recorded. He uses Pasture Coach software to record pasture covers and produce a feed wedge to help set the grazing plan for the week.
During periods of rapid or tricky growth he’ll re-measure the paddocks at the top of the wedge mid-week to get a more accurate picture.
Paddock records, the data he’s collected and his own observations all back up industry predictions of the benefits from doing well-managed pasture renovation – more pasture, better feed quality per bite and better utilisation.
Hayden says before his re-focus, during the 2012-13 and 2013-2014 seasons, he regrassed 7-8% of the farm but after joining the Grass into Gold programme and looking at the variation in his paddock productivity he decided to up the rate.
In November and early December 2014 he renewed two paddocks totalling almost 15ha but about that time the severity of last season’s summer dry really started to be felt with the hot, dry weather conditions and plummeting Opuha Dam levels resulting in 50% water restrictions by mid-December.
The new grass established well despite the water restrictions and by January he’d had two grazings off it.
Hayden had identified additional paddocks for regrassing but the water restrictions were biting into the farm’s average pasture cover even though he’d culled cows after an early scan and had moved to once-a-day milking on February 20.
After some deliberation he decided to go ahead and spray out the two worst-performing paddocks after they’d been grazed, knowing with further water restrictions to come they’d grow little if anything anyway.
“In terms of water use efficiency those poor-performing paddocks aren’t a good use of water anyway and getting new pasture established is also going to use less water.”
Water was cut off completely on February 25 but the seed struck well and establishment was successful, although growth was hampered until late autumn rains finally came.
All up he managed 12% regrassing in one of the worst seasons for years, and buoyed by the results he’s doubled that this season.
That’s despite the low payout and tight cashflow conditions that were even more extreme through the front-end of the season.
The additional growth and improved quality in new pastures made such a compelling argument that regardless of the payout he was confident it was time for “catch-up” regrassing.
Hayden says a quick look at the grazing records shows the performance difference between a paddock regrassed in December 2014 and his worst paddock (paddock 26).
In December 2015 cows were back in the regrassed paddock after its previous grazing almost twice as fast with a 17-day grazing interval compared with 31 days for the worst paddock.
A paddock sown in the Italian ryegrass Tabu in October this season had already out-yielded paddock 26 by January 3 even though the new grass paddock was out of the grazing round proper for almost eight weeks.
Water restrictions have been a feature again this season with the farm on 25% restrictions from the start of November and 50% from December 23 but rain in January and less extreme heat – both night and day – have made conditions more conducive to both pasture growth and regrassing than last season.
By the end of February Hayden will have drilled 22% of the farm in new grass. He’s imposed that cut-off date to ensure the new pasture has time to establish well so it’s in great condition for the coming spring and the paddocks have firmed up again.
“These new grasses are superior for shoulder-season growth so they need to be grazed before going into the winter and the paddock needs to be ready to be grazed early in the new season.
“If we leave it later than the end of February and the autumn turns out to be tough for establishing pasture, having a paddock out for regrassing through April-May can also be expensive.
“It means we’re another paddock down when pasture demand per day starts exceeding pasture supply which normally means we need extra bought-in supplements to cover that paddock. When payout’s low like this it’s an added cost we don’t want.”
He prefers to get pasture renewal done while there’s more likelihood of a feed surplus in the times of low payout but what he’s finding is that with more new grass paddocks replacing the worst performers those surpluses will be easier to come by.
Hayden says there’s close to 9t DM/ha/year difference between the worst paddock and the best.
He gets renewal underway as soon as possible in the spring.
“That first paddock should be the hardest one you’ll ever take out because you don’t have other new grass paddocks – that are growing so much more – available yet.”
Hayden points out the ability to increase the rate of renewal this season has been helped by the fact he cut cow numbers from 960 to 910 this season.
“That decision was quite separate to the regrassing programme though. It was purely a reaction to the payout and a means to get costs down.”
About half the effect of the stocking rate drop has been counter-balanced by the inclusion of 7ha of fodder beet on the milking platform.
In the past Hayden has lifted fodder beet from the support block and fed it to cows as an autumn supplement and to help transition their diet before wintering on the crop.
Managing new pastures in the grazing round when you’re part way through a “catch-up” regrassing programme could be tricky with big variations in growth rate and quality between old and new paddocks.
But Hayden has found the new grasses are far more forgiving when it comes to pre-graze covers and good utilisation is easier to achieve.
Cows don’t have to be selective and can get right into their work grazing down to a more even residual.
The tetraploids and new Italian grasses hold their quality at 3200-3400kg DM/ha and that has a flow-on effect of being able to grow and offer more pasture of a higher quality.
Agriseeds pasture systems specialist Graham Kerr says because the new ryegrasses can hold quality at higher covers the plants are making it to the third-leaf stage.
“Pasture growth gradually accelerates after grazing, which is the old ‘grass grows grass’ adage. With its first-leaf stage ryegrass produces about 20% of its yield, the second-leaf it’s 35% and with the third-leaf emergence about 45%.
“Simply put at the third leaf stage there’s more leaf area, so more photosynthesis, which means grass grows more quickly.
“With a lot of these older paddocks you have to come back into them at 2700kg DM/ha to maintain quality. So they’re only getting to a two or 2.5-leaf stage.
“For Hayden the new pastures with tetraploids or short-term ryegrass are holding their feed quality to covers of 3200kg DM/ha-plus up to the third-leaf stage, which means he’s capturing more drymatter from them than grazing them earlier.”
By the start of next season Hayden will have close to half the farm in three-year-old pasture or younger and his plans are to continue regrassing at a rate determined by the numbers – by what the paddock records and monitoring tell him rather than at a set percentage figure.
Getting a low yielding 9-10t DM/ha paddock back up to growing 18t DM/ha on an ongoing basis is simply a much better proposition than bringing in more unit loads of supplement year on year.
It’s better on the pocket and in Hayden’s eyes just a much better way to farm.
Pasture renewal – the process
The decision on which paddocks to regrass is based on paddock performance, evident from the paddock records.
The biggest payback will come from renewing the poorest performers in terms of drymatter production.
But Hayden will always take a closer look into any underlying problems, including soil fertility and drainage, and rectify these as part of the renovation.
Species composition is important too.
Any paddocks where older species have taken hold or weeds are a problem will go through an Italian ryegrass to allow for a second spray when it’s resown into permanent pasture a year later.
Paddocks are direct-drilled two weeks after being sprayed out at a high rate with glyphosate to get a good kill.
It’s the drilling – more specifically drilling speed – that Hayden says is a make or break for good pasture establishment.
At 6km/hour the seed is placed at the right depth of 5-10mm allowing clover, which is more sensitive to sowing depth and requires a shallow depth, to establish well.
Hayden also drills it in a diamond pattern to ensure ryegrass plants are more evenly distributed across the paddock, giving better ground cover, which in turn means better weed control.
Ryegrass plants are the sustainable long-term weed control in a pasture.
Weeds typically come up in the bare areas of pastures so at establishment it’s important to have very good ground cover of ryegrass and clover.
The diamond pattern is achieved by drilling in two directions – once straight up the paddock and once on an angle across the paddock.
The family does its own tractor work, drilling and spraying and Hayden puts his cost to regrass at a total of about $700/ha.
Spray out with glyphosate – $100/ha
Drilling – $200/ha
Seed –$300/ha
Spray – weeds post emergence – $100/ha
Taking time pays off
Can’t afford the time to do a weekly pasture walk? Think again.
In 2003 Lincoln University Dairy Farm made a change to a more active approach to pasture monitoring and grazing management that included achieving a consistent low grazing residual.
In the following season, under similar growing conditions, milk production increased 273kg milksolids (MS)/ha.
Based on a milk return of $5/kg MS and the assumption the increase in production was largely because of the time spent on a weekly farm walk and post-walk discussion to set the grazing plan (about 120 hours a year) that time returned $1800/hour.
Farm facts
Owners: Cartwright family
Location: Pleasant Point, South Canterbury
Area: 260ha milking platform
Cows: 910
Production: 1650kg MS/ha (water-dependent)
Supplement: 300-400kg DM/cow, barley, palm kernel
Farm working expenses: $3.30/kg MS
