The crop area is sprayed with Roundup. Regal Kale seed is sown by direct drill at 5kg/ha, then heavy rolled, watered and given a pre-emergent weed spray, then another water, all within four-five days.
Robert said the sowing rate was higher than recommended, because they try to get a thicker crop with more leaf and more palatable stems. He said the stems tended to be woody, which wasn’t great for digestibility. Their kale crop usually yields about 16t/ha.
White moth was prolific on the kale this summer, so the Dingles had to spray for that in February. The crop is grazed in June and July, then cultivated or grubbed up in spring to prepare a seed bed for new pasture to be planted in October.
Robert said deciding exactly what pasture mix to sow was a toss-up between fast-growing, short-rotation ryegrasses or a permanent species.
They usually opted for a longer lasting perennial, either a mix of Base AR37 at 12kg/ha and Trojan at 8kg/ha; Ceres One50 AR37 at 20kg/ha with 4kg/ha white clover; or Ultra on its own at 20kg/ha.
“All the mixes we put on in year one are still going strong.”
The new pasture was sprayed and usually topped before the first grazing in December. Waiting for the topped plants to wilt before putting cows on the new grass helped prevent cows pulling young pasture plants right out of the ground.
By its second grazing, the pasture was about 10 weeks old and the roots were usually well-enough established that excessive pulling wouldn’t be a problem.
The Dingles started spraying their three to four-year pastures a few years ago, to address the sub-clinical grass-grub problem that was starting to impact on pasture performance. They are still spraying these pastures (40-50ha) with Diazinon 50W. Their regrassing programme is simple and fits well into their dairy system. Robert said irrigation certainly made the whole process easier.
They have considered trying high-yielding fodder beet, but kale fits well into the system – wintering cows on 10% of the farm and regrassing 10%.
“We would have to plant fodder beet late September-early October so would miss out on three rounds of grazing, which is quite a bit.
“It doesn’t match up with our young pasture coming on at Christmas time.”
Farm facts
- Robert and Rachel Dingle
- Wendonside, Southland
- 230ha
- Milking 680 cows
- Converted to dairy six years ago.
- Renewing 20ha of pasture every year.
Anne Calcinai followed up five past Country-Wide farmer case studies and their pasture renewal. See the others:
