“Almost every bit of land that is good dairy country is being used now for milking, so that is pushing grazing further away,” DairyNZ southwest Otago consulting officer James Lawn said.
“Farms that used to be part milking platform and part young stock grazing are now only milking platforms, which means grazing has to be found off-farm.”
He said it was business as usual for stock owners who already had long-term relationships with graziers but others, such as new sharemilkers, were having trouble.
“Some people are saying they are just going to buy rising two-year-olds instead of raising their own young stock and trying to find grazing for them but are they going to be able to buy quality stock?”
DairyNZ regional leader Southland-south Otago Richard Kyte said finding
young stock and winter dairy grazing was always a challenge.
“We’ve heard some pretty silly prices being asked for this winter but things seem to have come down to earth.”
Of those talked to, May to May contracts for young stock were about $9-$11 a week and for calves from December 1 until May 1 were about $5-$6.50 a week. PGG Wrightson dairy livestock rep Murray Bain, of Mosgiel, said finding good graziers was becoming increasingly difficult.
“We’ve had a dry autumn and a trying winter, which hasn’t made it any easier, although we seem to have got through it in the end,” he said.
“As the industry gets bigger and bigger we need to find more and more grazing. We are trying to educate sheep farmers about dairy grazing and hopefully that will help. At least we have north Otago, which has irrigation, so there is always guaranteed feed up there.”
RD1 livestock rep Matt Brinsdon, of Gore, was busy arranging young stock grazing for clients and said some young stock were going into irrigated country in Central Otago from Southland.
“There’s always been a lot of winter grazing of dairy cows in Central but now young stock are going there too.
“It’s driven by lamb prices. With lower lamb prices last season it freed up some dairy grazing but lamb prices are expected to go up this year.”
Contracts
He said while young stock grazing was still paid mainly per head per week, winter cow grazing contracts were more often per kilogram of drymatter.
“There is a bit more work to do, weighing crops, and in a lot of these contracts the grazier is still shifting the animals daily.
“What is being talked about this year is what happens when something like a snow dump like they had in Central this winter destroys crops. Is it the grazier’s liability or the animal owner who has already bought the feed? It’s something that has to be worked out.”
Agribusiness Consultants sheep and beef consultant Deane Carson, of Invercargill, said poor crops of kale and swedes because of the summer dry had affected the number of dairy stock wintered in the south.
“Crops were below what was expected so a lot of cattle went north this year,” he said.
Many sheep and beef farmers used winter dairy grazing as a way of improving their farms, by growing winter crops and then regrassing, he said.
“Once their farms are developed they look for other options and sometimes it’s year-round heifer grazing and sometimes it’s more sheep.”
Diversifying income and improving cash flows were other reasons sheep farmers took on dairy grazing, he said.
“For most of them, dairy grazing is a small percentage of their income stream and it’s a way of buffering the highs and lows of the sheep industry.
“It’s very cyclical. There always seems to be farmers dropping off the radar and others popping up.”
