Friday, March 29, 2024

Young guns shoot for the top

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A group of young Southland farmers is looking at ways to increase the kilograms of sheep meat they produce by using the skills and experience of farming mentors and industry experts. The group supplies lambs to Alliance Group. Through funding from the Red Meat Profit Partnership (RMPP) Alliance has acted as a facilitator in identifying the goals and information needed by the group and is putting steps in place to meet these requirements.
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Shona Frengley, livestock technical officer with Alliance, explains that through the company’s involvement with the RMPP pilot farm project it went looking for a group of farmers with a commonality and young farmers fitted the bill.

They got a small group together and asked them what they would like to focus on. All of them wanted to grow more meat.

So the focus is on lamb growth, Frengley says.

She admits they are not breaking new ground with this focus – it’s about gathering relevant information and applying it. 

“The information is out there so it’s about identifying the critical drivers, finding the right information and incorporating small changes into the day-to-day management.”

Benchmarking and monitoring is an important part of the exercise and Frengley is tracking how many kilograms of sheep meat the individuals within the group are producing throughout the season.

All the processor data will be used for benchmarking which includes kilograms of lamb produced, carcase yields, target weights and grades.

Frengley says they are trying to keep the onfarm monitoring as simple and relevant as possible.

“It’s about having empirical information around whatever changes they are making.” 

All of those involved were keen to draw on the experience of high-performing farmers so Alliance have brought in these local farmers to act as advisers and mentors along with farm consultants and other industry experts such as animal scientists, geneticists and agronomists.

Frengley says the focus on increasing lamb production incorporates management throughout the year so they will be looking at factors such as body condition score, strategic feeding at critical times of the year, feed budgeting and the use of genetics.

For example, one member of the group has already had AgResearch animal production scientist Julie Everett-Hincks talk to them about lamb survival and how to improve it.  

A calendar of events will bring a relevant expert and a high-performing farmer in to talk to the farmers ahead of that particular time in the farming calendar. 

Within the group, each farmer will also have their own individual projects they’ll be working on and will use the experience of a high-performing farmer and farm consultants to help them.

Frengley says this might be addressing issues that are relevant to their farm system such as flat post-weaning growth rates, utilising scanning information or comparing the lamb performance from ewes with different body condition scores.

While the group has been going only since March, Frengley says the feedback she is receiving suggests the farmers are seeing real value in the project.

They are finding it better than a farm discussion group because they all share a common goal and they have the opportunity to sit down with industry experts and high-performing farmers to discuss ways they are going to achieve it.

One area where the group believes there is real opportunity to add value to their lamb crop is through a focus on lifting the number of lambs drafted at weaning. Frengley says focusing on this area has the potential to add $150-$200/ha to their bottom line. To do this the group might look at shifting lambing dates, their feed management and the use of specialist forages.

Frengley says it’s about fine-tuning their systems and looking at what can be done to improve profitability for the individuals within the group.

Under-pinning the collective goals of the group are the personal goals of each individual farmer.

“It’s about finding a system which allows them to fulfil their farming and lifestyle goals.”

A Facebook page has been set up to allow the group to keep in touch and Frengley says building social and professional networks is all part of what the project is about.

Fine-tuning is the key to success with lambs

Tuatapere farmers Nathan and Marilyn Parris are part of the group and are excited about the progamme’s opportunities.

The couple farm 415ha effective, wintering 3550 ewes, 860 hoggets and 130 trading cattle.

Nathan says through the programme he has an audacious goal of increasing lamb production by 100kg/ha within the next three years. But he’ll be happy if they increase it by 50kg/ha.

He says rather than changing their whole farm system they are looking to fine-tune it to help the business reach its potential.

Last year the couple produced 240kg/ha of lamb meat, which is slightly ahead of the Southland average but a long way off the 500kg/ha top-performing farmers in the region are doing.

The couple have been frustrated by lamb growth rates that saw their average kill date sit at March 20, a month later than the average kill date for other Alliance suppliers in the region.

With lambs hanging around until autumn this meant that they were behind the eight-ball going into mating and setting-up pastures for winter and spring. This is even more important given they run an all-grass system and don’t grow any winter crops.

“A slow growth rate also means missed opportunities where feed could be used elsewhere, such as store lambs or selling supplement,” Parris says.

Through the RMPP programme the couple have enlisted the help of local high-performing farmer Peter Horrell to act as mentor along with farm consultant Keith Milne, also a high-performing farmer from the same region. This team have a plan in place to set-up a specialist lamb-finishing block on the couple’s farm.

Parris says they have already embarked on a pasture renewal programme that has seen them renew 10% of their ryegrass and clover pastures every year for the past three years.

He believes the key to improving lamb growth rates is to make better use of these pastures. Under the guidance of their advisers the couple intend using ewes to graze the lamb finishing block hard pre-lambing. This will allow the clover to come through and it is this that will drive post-weaning lamb growth rates.

Parris says they will run the lambs in weight groups within the specialist blocks and this will mean they are drafting only one lot of lambs at a time, rather than bringing them all in every few weeks.

Another change the couple will be making is in the way they supplement cobalt. Mineral status tests of slaughtered lambs have shown they have a problem with cobalt deficiency and in the past they have injected the lambs with long-acting cobalt at a cost of $1.12/lamb.

Parris says despite this the lambs are still deficient so this year they will be spraying cobalt on to pastures ahead of the lambs. This is cheaper than injecting and will mean all stock on the farm will benefit from cobalt supplementation, not just lambs. 

Parris admits that before becoming part of the programme they had been doing little in the way of monitoring and measuring production but this looks set to change. For the first time this year they scanned their ewes and they are hoping this information will improve their pre-weaning lamb growth rates and help them better manage pasture.  

The five farming businesses involved in the project are doing a lot of benchmarking within the group and Parris says it has been interesting to compare stocking rates and growth rates with others on similar farming types.

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