Wet wet wet! – Matthew Zonderop

Quite the interesting season thus far isn’t it? Saturated soils and NIWA telling us we have had a mild dry winter. Well, I can tell you from here in Te Poi 10mm over night might have well been 100 as we were on the knife-edge in terms of resorting to OAD until it dried out […]

Roller-coaster season – Matthew Zonderop

It has been quite the roller-coaster this season, especially in the upper North Island. It was a pretty tough winter by all accounts, plenty of rain to be had. Shame it wasn’t shared around a bit more because, wow, did we cop it during the early part of calving. But that was 6 to 7 […]

Wet and challenging start – Matthew Zonderop

Woow what a start to the season this has been. The heifers returned home at an average liveweight of 484 kg and condition scored at a 5.5 and going into calving our cows were at a 5 average. This season’s start has really tested our management skills as farmers, not only financially, with a drop […]

What a season! – Matthew Zonderop

Woow, what a season it has been.  Rain, wind, sunshine, and for once we aren’t being driven back indoors due to the heat. The spring was a precursor to what I believe had to be the wettest start to the summer in a decade. Our own records show that this was the case, by the […]

Handling the heat – Matthew Zonderop

The 21/22 season has been the perfect storm from our farm’s perspective. We were firing on all cylinders until mid-November then the humidity hit, our grass went into a reproductive state and production crashed. All while we were making grass silage, had hay locked up, and were topping. But more to come in our ‘storm’ […]