Friday, March 29, 2024

Hard yakka earns farm

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Rain at Christmas time is the sort of gift money can’t buy for Larry and Wendy Langley. It’s that early summer moisture that affects the Langleys’ decision-making the most on their farm at Shannon Creek, Otago. Sometimes Larry will have weaning approaching and a truckload of store lambs pencilled in but then it rains. “It is the December rains which saves us.” If the rain doesn’t come by the end of December, and it happens occasionally, it is virtually game over. A dry spring in farming would be like having a rugby team’s top four players sent off in the first quarter of a game. “We are buggered,” says Larry.
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The impact is noticeable on the bottom line.

Within the past five years the gross farm income ranged from $170,000 in a poor year to $370,000 in a good one and the operating surplus ranged from $14,000 to $210,000.

After more than 25 years of hard work, the Langleys bought the dryland farm in 2003. At well-under $2500/ha ($1000/acre) Larry reckons it had to have been some of the most affordable, ploughable land in the country – albeit at 500m above sea level.

Key points

  • 438ha (400ha effective)
  • 45 minutes northwest of Dunedin
  • Shallow soil and tough environment
  • Rain in early summer dictates profit

The Langleys wean mid-December or even a tad earlier to get about 350 ewes off the farm before Christmas and relieve feed demand pressure.

Ewes and lambs have never been sold all-counted but it is always an option.

The Langleys run 1750 composite ewes (half Perendale, quarter Romney, one-eighth Texel, one-eighth Poll Dorset).

“They are good sheep, got a lot of guts to them.”

They also buy in stock to finish depending on the year and the farm runs about 2500su.

The Langleys achieved a respectable 147% lambing in 2012 (172% scanning) and 146% in 2013 (171%).

Scanning takes place mid July, lambing starts September 20 and weaning is about December 15. Lambs weighing 35kg liveweight are drafted off to be killed.

The silt loam soils are fragile and need to be cultivated carefully.

They buy in 400 hogget replacements from Andrew Morrison in Southland in late February, early March.

He believes it is important to get the ewe flock performing well first and wouldn’t have considered mating hoggets if the ewes weren’t scanning at least 170%.

The Cheviot ram lambs go out to the ewes on Anzac day, 10 days later for hoggets if mating them. He brucellosis tests bi-annually but so far it has not been a problem. He buys terminal sire Suftex rams for the ewes off Mack and Mary Wright at Ranfurly.

At lambing he goes around the sheep once a day. Twin-bearing ewes are lambed separately on more feed.

Larry shears the ewes once a year in early July with a cover comb.

The crossbred wool is about 33 micron and sold at auction. The hoggets are shorn August and any cryptorchid lambs not killed by February are shorn too.

They have help for tailing and drenching.

He uses a neighbour’s conveyor belt which requires six people drenching and injecting the ewes in early September. Twin-bearing ewes get a jab of Cydectin, the singles an oral drench. They all get five-in-one and LSD drench and then a Flexidine jab when they are crutched in February.

With such a fickle climate and limited soils it is not the easiest of farms but it is theirs and the Langleys consider it a great location and community to live in. Dunedin is not far and Middlemarch is only 15 minutes away – though the local Four Square is no more.

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