Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: A drought was on the cards

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It’s the end of August and the rush for me of lambing is abating and docking is about to start, but I’ve been thinking of the drought and the things I did and the things I didn’t do that perhaps I should have.
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A debrief is always useful because those learnings will be needed in the future. It will happen again.

In my district, we are well-versed with droughts so while we didn’t have any more rainfall than others, it was easier than, say those farmers west of SH50, who shouldn’t expect a summer and then an autumn drought because of their usual higher summer rainfalls so they had a far tougher time of it.

It seems like a long time ago already, but I have learnt from past droughts to take photos. Once it’s green again and there is a bank of feed, it’s surprising how quickly you forget how grim it was.

These days with everyone with a cell phone in their pocket posting on social media, there is ample record online.

Here’s a photo (pictured) from mid-February. When I took it, we were having a good old-fashioned Hawke’s Bay drought.

The stud two-tooths had just been shorn and had a pick of snap dried feed, which sheep do surprising well on. The quality is okay until it gets rain on it and then it deteriorates rapidly.

As it turned out, this was as good as they had for the next two to three months.

I don’t feed out and, unlike many, didn’t resort to hard feeding. My stock has never been trained for it and at the time of the photo, although NIWA had predicted more of the same right through until May, I thought I’d be right.

Not hard feeding was probably the one thing I didn’t do that I should have.

Others who did reported good results. However, my sheep scanned well, and other management decisions ultimately led to a good recovery.

It has been six years since our last drought, which is the longest interval between droughts I’ve experienced. Combined with great farming returns, it has been the easiest and most profitable period of farming I’ve had.

However, during my nearly four decades farming with nine droughts under my belt, on average we have a drought every fourth year. So, this one was due.

Because of the nasty droughts in the 1980s and ‘90s, my farming policies had changed and adapted. I didn’t farm those ones particularly well but learnt each time from the experience. That is what those of you who have had a difficult time this year must do to make the next episode a better occurrence.

I used to have 80% capital stock and that ratio is now closer to 60%. The 40% trading stock at balance date are all Friesian bulls and are my first port of call in terms of destocking.

I’ve learnt not to be greedy or unduly optimistic about what might happen, and are they promptly quit, if need be.

There is no sentimentality with this class of stock. If they have to go, they go.

My decision-making to quit these fellows is driven by my feed budgeting model and that has been a feature of my farming systems since the late 1980s.

I was a B&L monitor farmer in the early 2000s and a big focus here was on decision-making driven by accurate feed budgeting. At that point only 10-15% of sheep and beef farmers consistently feed budgeted.

I’m told that it is not a lot higher now but remains a key element of my and others’ decision-making.

My feed demand in November was 24kg/ha/day as I quit the last of my two-year-old bulls, more than half of my terminal lambs to the works and all cast for age ewes.

It was still 16kg/ha/day in January and by then my feed budget was warning to rapidly destock, and by April it was down to 8kg/ha/day. Still much higher than the zero-growth rate from the pastures but the last of summer crops plugged some of the gap and dropping liveweight off the ewes, the balance.

I was able to restock with bulls at the end of June and have been around 17kg/DM/ha through the last of the winter.

Feed budgeting is a useful tool in stressful times like this and forces decisions that need to be made. It also gives you confidence to restock at the appropriate time. If you are not doing it, talk to a farm consultant.

It was very apparent that well-fertilised farms were the last ones into the drought and the first ones out. It is becoming fashionable not to put on fertiliser. Don’t fool yourself that this is anything more than a short-term financial gain. 

Keep your phosphate, potassium and sulphur at optimum levels to grow the clover to fix all that free nitrogen in the air and grow grass. Don’t piss around with trace elements if these three are not already right.

Most years, I don’t need to use nitrogen other than on new grasses and green feed crops.

But this year, I may have only used 35 units of nitrogen over my whole farm at the end of May but have seen the best response from nitrogen ever.

It is the cheapest form of supplementary feed, keep it well away from waterways and use the resulting feed wisely. It’s a no brainer.

Protect your new grass paddocks by not grazing them until they have had a good recovery. Otherwise you have wasted a large amount of establishment money.

Buy good animal genetics. It will repay you handsomely.

You cannot avoid the cost and the production losses of a drought. But you can limit them and determine when they fall. It is better to take the pain earlier and avoid shifting that pain and grief into the next financial year and season.

Finally, droughts and all the other weather extremes take an emotional toll on everyone.

As a sector, we are much better at talking about the wellbeing of people than we once were. There are well-known tools and resources for assisting folk with stress and more than likely lives have been saved because of this.

Well done to everyone who has contributed to this important element of this latest event.

Record all the things you did well and, just as importantly, the things that you didn’t.

Put it away for the next inevitable weather extreme and trust me, you will handle it better next time.

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