This week we made the decision to move all herds to OAD milking based on current milk production, BCS, ground conditions and lameness and to make sure the farm team have the time to ensure everything is set up for wintering. Our second group of cows were dried off and the early dries are now being ad lib fed on pasture to promote BCS gain. The latest pasture quality results are in and the DM has ranged between 14 and 18%, ME from 11.1 to 12.3 and crude protein from 22.1 to 28.5%. The LI pastures ..read more

Key decisions this week have focused on setting the cows and the farm up for next season. Cows confirmed with Johnes (initial milk screening followed by a confirmation blood test) and Staph have all been culled and the last discretionary culls confirmed for each herd. The first group of 20 cows were dried off this week. The rotation length has been pushed out by reducing the area grazed per day however with paddocks being dropped out of the round for wintering and springers the proportion of eff ..read more

And just like that it is April and autumn is well and truely upon us with cooler nights and shorter days. Our focus is now well and truly on setting up for next season and as such we made the decision this week for the Std FB herd to go to OAD milking based on BCS gain required before 1 June, increasing incidence of lameness and the feed budget indicating up to 6 kg DM supplement/cow/day would be required to achieve our dry off average pasture cover. We are continuing to aerate 2022 spring new g ..read more

After a busy week on farm last week with our autumn field day and motor bike training and a trip to Victoria Australia for Dawn to present at a farmer event, we are back to normality this week. Growth has dropped below demand for the first time in several months, so average pasture cover has dropped for all farmlets. The first group of culls will be heading off farm in the next week with low producing empties going to the works and sound, young, high producing empties being sold in milk. We have ..read more

The final scan was done on Wednesday morning so we are still working through what the different results between the farmlets mean. This week we started yielding our fodder beet crops. Each year we start doing monthly yields from March so we can track progress against our winter feed budget. JJ was out earlier in the week and noticed quite a lot of yellowing of the leaves so crops will be sprayed with a fungicide when the weather allows. Hope many of you can join us on site next week 12th March f ..read more

The weather has certainly provided challenges with managing grass quality and finding the weather windows to cut surplus feed. Like many farmers we have made more baleage than normal this summer, which has set us up well for ending out the season and for the winter. We will use this surplus in the coming weeks before it gets too wet and reduce the feed going through the shed. This winter we will be looking to see how we can improve the profitability of fodder beet winter grazing while maint ..read more

This week we hosted farmers, researchers and managers from Dairy Trust Taranaki, Northland Dairy Development Trust - NDDT and Northland Agricultural Research Farm. Was great to reconnect and continue discussions on how we can work together and extract more value from research across the regions. They were very jealous of the lush green grass our cows are eating at the moment!!The R2's were weighed this week at the same time as the final scan - 2% empty plus 2 freemartins identified. Next step is ..read more

This week the stars aligned and we finally got our spring silage pit filled.The weather has really been against us getting this off earlier. As a result of the delay, we have ended up with a bigger stack than we anticipated but it is money in the bank if we have a wet spring next season.The latest pasture samples have come back with DM% from 15-18% so more like spring than late summer pastures. The calibration cut data and cow behaviour is indicating there is approximately 200 kg DM/ha less avai ..read more

Hopefully some of you have managed to catch up with Andrea at the SDH and DairyNZ site 89/90 at the Southern Field Days - Waimumu this week. She is there again today for anyone who is heading out that way. With a number of new staff joining SDH in recent months the team are taking the opportunity for some upskilling. This week the farm team completed Hazardous substance training with Ant Sutherland. A key learning for all of them was the importance of identifying the correct PPE required from a ..read more

Well, who would have thought we would be in our current feed situation given the earlier predictions of a hot dry summer, not that we are complaining.Like many we are struggling to get a decent weather window to get silage and baleage made, which is likely to impact on the quality of the final product. We will be taking quality samples from different batches of supplement and allocating the appropriate quality for different livestock classes and feeding time. We have abandoned our plan of making ..read more