“We are running a business and there are bills to pay and a mortgage to address,” Guy says.
The farm lends itself to enterprise diversification with its range of soils and contours. The block at the back of the farm is rugged, steep, southerly-facing hill country ideal for breeding stock.
The stony river accretions with shallow, silty topsoil is tailor-made for wintering cattle, and the heavy, blue-clay soils suit a winter lamb-finishing operation.
Guy is constantly evaluating opportunities to extract more profit from the business. He is prepared to have a crack at anything as long as it is more profitable than an existing enterprise and fits into the farming operation.
“We find that short-term, highly profitable enterprises sometimes aren’t as profitable on an annual basis,” he says.
While he is very keen on gross-margins, he freely admits they are constantly moving targets and it’s almost impossible to quote stable figures.
Pirinoa Station with its range of enterprises is a very complex operational business. The home block, of which 1000ha is flat, 220ha is rolling and 400ha very steep, is run in conjunction with a 140ha leased block at Greytown, about 40km north of Pirinoa.
The station was settled by Guy’s great-great grandfather Duncan McDougall and his wife Ellen. One of their daughters, Euphemia, married Guy’s great-grandfather Harold Guy Didsbury, providing the Didsbury connection. As the fifth generation to farm the station, Guy is very conscious of the responsibility this stewardship brings.
The family have preserved the farm’s history by erecting a stone monument with a marble plaque inscribed with the family tree. This sits at the original settlement, surrounded by old gnarled gum trees and an orchard of fruit trees planted by his great-great grandparents.
'When people come from town to work on farms, it means they genuinely want to be there and are highly motivated.'
The current workforce of stock manager Peter Mehlhopt and shepherds Jakob Florance and Cam Ewen is young and enthusiastic. Peter hails from a farming background in Marlborough, while Jakob and Cam are city lads trained at Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre. They are all passionate about their jobs and their working environment.
Guy, who appreciates their contribution to the business, says it is great to see young people from an urban background wanting to go farming.
“When people come from town to work on farms, it means they genuinely want to be there and are highly motivated,” he says.
Guy’s father Tony also continues to contribute many hours to the farm. The bull finishing enterprise involves buying 500, 100kg weaner bulls from August to October. They are wintered on silage and kale on the river accretion area adjacent to the Tauanui Stream. This area has a shallow topsoil overlaying gravel, but grows reasonably good kale or green feed crops.
The 500 R1 bulls enter the wintering system in mid-June and remain there for 80 days during which time they gain on average 0.75kg/head/day. Most cattle on the farm are wintered off pasture as the heavy soils are easily pugged. Instead lambs are finished on them through the winter period.
After coming off the wintering system in early September, 350 of the more forward bulls are trucked to the leased property at Greytown. The balance is set stocked on the station at an average of five per hectare on either grass paddocks or paddocks sown with a mix of red and white clover and plantain.
He is reluctant to overgraze the plantain-clover pastures with lambs as they preferentially graze the clover.
“Because of their grazing habit, cattle are far less selective when grazing the mix,” Guy says.
Most of the lambs are sent to Ovation at an average slaughter weight of 22kg, giving an average return of 18c/kg DM eaten. The station runs 1000 ewes for the Wairarapa Romney Improvement Group’s progeny test programme. Potentially the top young sires from the group are mated to these ewes and the progeny are evaluated for a number of different traits.
All male progeny are slaughtered and their carcases are boned out and assessed for traits such as meat yield.
Ewes are run on the flats over lambing, making it easier to identify and tag their lambs at birth. After weaning the ewes are sent to the hill block. As part of the arrangement with the group, Guy retains the ewe lambs and the rams are provided free of charge. While this arrangement may not be as financially profitable and convenient as some of the other enterprises the farm runs, Guy finds it interesting and says the group is a pleasure to deal with.
Pirinoa Station is a shareholder in the beef marketing group Firstlight Foods. This enables it to get involved in the business by finishing Wagyu cross cattle in which it specialises.
The Wagyu is a very old Japanese breed revered in Japan for its meat quality. It is renowned for its genetic predisposition to produce a high percentage of intra-muscular or marbling fat which helps provide the flavour and juiciness of its meat. It is sold to high-end markets that pay a significant premium for it.
Guy’s involvement in the business entails buying the cattle as weaners and finishing them between two- and three-and-a-half years of age. All of the 250 cattle finished are Wagyu crossed with Angus or Friesian. They spend their first winter on grass then are wintered on silage as older cattle. Traditional heifer and steer breeds are also finished on the farm.
Not wanting to be left out of the dairying boom entirely, Guy buys 100 Jersey weaner bulls from a local dairy farmer, winters them and leases them out at 300kg to dairy farmers for $450. Following the lease period they are taken through a second winter before being sold to dairy farmers as two-year-olds.
While soils on the farm are very diverse there are two main types: Biddiford clayloam and Ahikouka silt-loam. The latter is a very fragile, heavy, tight soil that contains a lot of blue clay and is prone to pugging.
The river terraces associated with the Tauanui Stream are shingle beds covered with varying depths of silt and are ideal for wintering cattle, while the hill soils are rotten rock and greywacke.
Phosphate levels (Olsen Ps) range from 20 to 45 (average 26) over the fertilised areas. PH levels average an ideal 5.9, potash levels are a little low at 5 (optimum level 6-8) and sulphur levels are also a little low at an average of 9 (optimum level 10-12).
An annual fertiliser dressing of 300- 350kg of sulphur-super is applied while the 1000ha of flats receive two 30-unit dressings of nitrogen fortified with sulphur, one in autumn and another in spring. Over the generations the family has been very conservation focused.
There is 160ha planted in pine trees on a 30-year rotation. Some of this area has been harvested and is growing its second generation of trees. An area of 30ha has been retired and is covenanted with the Queen Elizabeth II Trust. Other smaller blocks have also been retired and either planted in natives or left to revert. Guy’s father Tony has a particularly strong interest in this aspect of the station.
The cow herd
Pirinoa station is home to 150 Hereford-Angus breeding cows whose main role is to maintain the feed quality on the hill block.
“If we didn’t have the hill block we wouldn’t have the cows, Guy says.
“However, there’s not another stock class that even comes near them in terms of the role they play, so that’s why we have them.”
The herd is wintered on the hills then comes down on to the flats when a clean-up job is required. A criss-cross mating system is used to generate the calves whereby Hereford-type cows are mated to Angus bulls and vice-versa.
