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 months ago now and the only remnants of that is the damn water pepper. Do you know how hard that is to kill?
Mooving on to the summer. We’ve all had a summer break. Never quite long enough though is it? I know I returned with a fresh mind and was quite enthusiastic to return until the alarm went and I had to milk…by the end of milking I needed a ‘cup of tea and a lie down’. I was knackered. After two weeks of fishing, swimming, and relaxing it was a bit of a shock to the system. The following morning though all was back to normal.
This season’s summer has been quite mild. Yes, it’s been warm, but that is what summer does. Maybe there is a sting in the tail of El Nino yet to come but so far the majority of the upper North Island is producing cheap milk with grass in abundance. Crops have maintained their quality with the 150 mm of rain we received in January and grass growth rates have met demand. Safe to say now that from this week we will start to feed some silage as we can see ahead, through our regular pasture monitoring, that there is a pinch coming. So, with still another three weeks of crop ahead of us and some silage we will still be on a winner in terms of cost of production.
Happy with these residuals.
Our maize is yet to be harvested. Barring another tropical cyclone, it should be a bumper crop with the heat units combined with the moisture it’s received. It looks fantastic. This time last year I was already losing sleep due to the amount of rain we had received and the prospect of us not being able to get onto the maize ground. We did get on it but lost 25% during the cyclone. Although this did impact us at the start of the season we managed to get through the hardest part of winter by going once a day. But back to now…
Scanning is around the corner and something is amiss.. we are getting long returns 64+ days, time will tell I guess.
The heifers at grazing are doing well and their in-calf rates look superb. They were weighed and zinc bulleted last week, along with the calves on farm. One of those jobs you need to psych yourself into, but once done it’s a relief and one less headache.
So, onto something a wee bit exciting. We are moving into the world of AI. From March this year, after some in-depth tech evaluations, we have decided to go with Smaxtec. It does all the usual heat detection, health etc etc…but from the gut – it’s a bolus. Looking forward to getting this on the farm and increasing productivity.
That’s about all for now…looking forward to seeing some of you at the next SMASH meet.