In late March 2013 he was no more than 14 days from drying off because of the drought and the expense of supplementary feeding. During spring he lifted milk production by one litre/day/cow when grazed on fescue pasture, compared with ryegrass.
The 550ha dairy and beef farm milks 650 cows. The dairy platform is 235ha.
SeedForce Finesse Q tall fescue and Greenly cocksfoot remain Murray’s top seed choices because they perform so well. They are now planting a fescue, cocksfoot and clover mix every year rather than just fescue.
Different pastures on the Jagger’s Whangarei Heads farm, looking back to Mt Manaia. Nearest the camera is fescue, with rank growth kikuyu around a fenced water dam, while ryegrass pastures in the middle ground show the brighter green kikuyu re-invasion.
Much to the envy of many farmers, Murray’s farm doesn’t have the pest problems a lot of farms do, but he says it’s simply a matter of knowing your district.
“My view is that you need to understand the district you live in. If you have an endophyte problem, then deal with it. We are lucky in that we don’t have any issues so are using nil endophyte pastures.”
When they first started planting fescue they discovered sowing rate was important to ensure the slow-establishing plant had a chance to thrive.
“We increased the rate from 18kg/ha to 26kg/ha initially as the seed population of 18kg/ha just wasn’t enough and the fescue struggled to establish. We use a 26kg/ha mix of fescue, cocksfoot and red and white clover now. Because it’s slow-establishing you need have a big population there to avoid competition to come back.”
Soil bed preparation and time of sowing are equally important to the plant’s success. Murray still uses a three-spray, two-crop routine on some paddocks as he’s found it to be effective at preparing the soil bed.
“The best mechanism is to spray out the paddock, put in an annual in autumn, spray out again, then put in a crop, spray out and then put into pasture; it breaks the cycle of the kikuyu and weeds.”
Murray plans to continue with the fescue, cocksfoot and clover mix they currently have but says he is also experimenting with other pastures including clovers and other legumes.
“Cows get such good responses on clover I believe we should be putting a bigger focus back on it, we need to be planting things that are going to survive our climatic conditions and add more value, so we’re doing a bit of work around that with Gavin Ussher of Clover Consultancy.”
Although dabbling in trial work for other pastures, Murray says fescue will remain a key component of his farm and will continue to plant more of it.
