Many farmers were reporting lower than usual cuts of balage and silage with others pushing stock off early to processors.
For deer farmers a dry early summer was a real challenge because it coincided with the fawn drop and the need of hinds for lush, high-quality feed for lactation and maximum fawn growth.
Deer Industry New Zealand producer manager Tony Pearse said it was important to make a plan.
“Planning means you are more likely to act when you have time for manoeuvre.
“It will also give you the confidence that comes from managing your response to circumstances over which you have no control,” Pearse said.
Contractors were concerned grass had stopped growing while in some regions soaring temperatures were forcing spray rigs to park up.
“The spray loses effect if it’s too hot and I had one contractor saying he had 10 spray rigs parked up at one point when the heat of the day put an end to spraying,” Rural Contractors NZ national president Steve Levet said.
While contractors were snowed under in early spring they had now almost run out of work across the country.
“Work is just drying up before their eyes as the drought conditions set in.
“We call November, December and January rains the dollar rains because there’s so much to gain.
“It hasn’t been like that since the start of November and any rain now will be like gold from heaven,” Levet said.
The way the season was shaping he predicted there would be a shortage of harvested feed come autumn.
Mid Canterbury cropping farmer and arable industry vice chairman Brian Leadley said the dry was kicking in right across Canterbury and the impact had hit arable farmers.
Crops were under pressure and losing yield by the day with some barley crops cut for silage.
“We just can’t keep up with crops needing 8mm a day in this heat. The top irrigation systems are only designed for 5.25mm a day and that’s on dairy.”
Leadley said farmers were at the stage of making some tough decisions as to whether they dropped yields right across their crops or whether they selected the higher retuning crops to get the water and cut their losses on the lesser crops.
Several Canterbury irrigation schemes were already on restrictions with rivers starting to run low.
Federated Farmers meat and fibre chairman and South Canterbury sheep farmer Miles Anderson said his region hadn’t had rain since October 25.
“The tap turned off and we have gone from one extreme to the other since the wet winter but still I think we are better off at the same stage than the drought of 2014-15.
“But if we don’t get rain in the next 10 days we will be in big trouble and the rest of the country is much the same so there will be nowhere to offload stock.
“Every man and his dog will be trying to get stock to the works and I don’t think the meat companies will have the capacity to cope – it will be serious and a shame in a year when finally we are seeing some better prices in sheep farming but we may not be able to take advantage of that.
Reports from Wairarapa and Manawatu were of parched pastures with water levels dropping, forcing early feeding of supplements to dairy cows to keep them milking.
Further north the coastal areas of Taranaki were very, very dry, Federated Farmers national dairy chairman Chris Lewis said.
“While towards the mountains was not so dry I have had reports that coastal pastures are just screaming out for water,” Lewis said.
Lewis said milk production dropped significantly in the heat.
“The cows are just standing there, they are not producing, nothing does well in the heat and of course the heat is damaging clovers and pasture as well.”
While not wanting to overplay the situation, Lewis urged farmers to think ahead and have a contingency plan because feed would be short.
“The other big issue is there’s not been much onfarm silage made so if it keeps dry the pressure will go on buying supplement feed and of course that snowballs to other things.”
While he had good stocks of maize silage Lewis said with no pit silage this year he was 80-100 tonnes of dry matter feed down on the past five years.
“And I am growing less grass so I don’t really want to do the sums on that.”
Palm kernel was already booked out well into January and while the feed might be ordered it was another issue to get the trucks booked for delivery.
But on the other hand farmers in parts of Bay of Plenty and the Hauraki Plains were still battling the aftermath of the flooding.
“So there’s other struggles going on for those guys.
“It’s a tough one out here at the moment in more ways than one,” Lewis said.
