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YOU DON’T HAVE TO LOOK FAR FOR gloom and doom, but there are plenty of positives out there too.
During the summer I spoke to several farmers who had children who were not going farming. They had started other careers and their fathers didn’t blame them.
Why would anyone want to be farming, what with land and farmgate prices, input costs, government regulation and extreme weather?
The recent cyclone and its devastating effect on North Island rural regions is hard to comprehend. Cleaning up after a flood is soul destroying and will be tough especially on farms hit by forestry slash.
Farming has never been easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. But it is still a great job.
I learned of four couples who had recently gone into farm ownership, two of them up against carbon forestry developers. Two couples had help from family, the others had support from outside investors.
So, there are still options but innovative thinking is needed.
Also, you don’t have to own the land to go farming, managing is a good career option.
Our ongoing super managers series features Tony Plunkett. When Tony managed Awakino Station in North Otago, he told me he could manage multiple stations. Now he runs four.
A major problem in farming is the Government won’t keep out of it and leave farmers to farm. The Government has come inside the farmgate and dictated how farmers must run their farms.
That’s why farming needs strong advocacy.
Beef + Lamb’s southern director election will be a
test of how upset farmers are; how well the levy group is perceived to have represented grassroot farmers and how strong is Groundswell.
I once asked a Landcorp CEO why the SOE had a vote in director elections when it had no skin in the game. He said his salary was at stake. But he didn’t have a major investment of resources and emotion in a farm. He could easily move on and get another job. A major problem appears to be the fragmentation of farmer advocacy. In the past, Federated Farmers handled the advocacy and levy groups passed on their concerns to it. Then farmers called for Beef + Lamb to be involved in advocacy. Do farmers now regret it?
Industry groups came together to be one voice under He Waka Eke Noa, but it seemed to be corrupted by the presence of academics and nonfarming interest groups.
Was sheep and beef farming well represented in the He Waka? Even the He Waka name was suspected by many farmers as deliberately innocuous to keep most farmers disinterested until it was too late. If it had been called a farming tax it would have gained a lot more attention.
The
Top
Keeping
A North Canterbury couple running a multi-generational hill country farm make a formidable team.
26
M
The impact of the eradication programme on meat processors.
8 BOUNDARIES
HOME BLOCK
10 Gaye and Murray Coates’ children are following the OE trail
11 Mark Chamberlain contemplates the battle of the Chrises
12 Joanna Hoogenboom finds there’s a lot of sugar in Brazil
13 Despite being an amputee, Chris Biddles shears some sheep
15 Dani Darke finds cricket is more than just a game
The second part of our large-scale farm manager series.
16 Spotlight on farmer advocacy
18 Making the farm plan fit together
20 China: Sheepmeat recovery is not easy
22 Forecasting the economy
24 Coaches and their credentials
26 Series: M bovis - Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
FARM MANAGER SERIES
32 Stations and school of Coleridge Downs
LIVESTOCK
42 Onfarm: Quartz Hill assurance status is pure gold
50 Planning lifts lamb percentage
52 Onfarm: Playing to their strengths
60 Dairy beef is not inferior
61 Animal health: A case of coccidiosis
62 Dogs: Best mate, loyal and cheap to keep
65 Vet Trevor Cook is missing his faithful huntaway
CROP & FORAGE
66 The pros and cons of all-grass versus crops
68 All-grass wintering: Learning from history
70 Fertiliser: Redirect rather than withhold
ENVIRONMENT
72 Adapting to compost
76 Trees: The burning question
COMMUNITY
78 Wild horses under the hammer
80 Apps making life easier
81 Aunt Thistledown: Those food star ratings
82 FARMING IN FOCUS
A Canterbury couple are leading the way with a farm assurance programme.
SPOTLIGHT ON FARMER ADVOCACY
Two B+LNZ director elections take place this month, but eyes will be on the Southern ward.
60 DAIRY BEEF NOT INFERIOR
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The Country-Wide West Otago two-tooth competition is on again with judging taking place on March 29 and 30. Judges will be looking at flock features and performance, studying wool quality, breeding objectives and genotype results. Prizegiving will be at 6pm on March 30 at the Tapanui A & P Showgrounds and the winner will receive $500 from Country-Wide
For more information, phone Mike McElrea on 027 242 9376 or email mcelrea@farmside.co.nz
Engines were revving and mud was flying as spectators sat on the banks of Fieldays 2022 watching competitors race against the clock, all in the name of the Rural Support Trust.
Sometimes dogs do bite the hand that feeds them. One of our ag journalists was bitten by an injured heading dog. The two-year old dog had jumped across a ramp, where it was knocked off course by another dog. Landing hard on its abdomen, it went into confusion mode and lashed out at the nearest thing within five metres… a handy exposed knee and then an arm.
The dogs’ internal injuries were so bad it had to be put down. The arm required a quick bit of pressure (a clean merino sock off the clothes line) and a sluice out and stitches.
Any lessons learnt? Try to stop dogs zooming when they get let out? Easier said than done to get young ones to sit and wait. A chain on the collar (and a clothes line handle) are gold when trying to immobilise a biting dog. Dog insurance is well worthwhile.
Unlike posties and meter readers, who deal with unfamiliar dogs, farmers have a known team. Even friendly dogs in distress (e.g. a leg caught in a fence) can lash out, so throw a coat over their head before rescuing.
The Massey University Working Dog Centre ran a five-year study on farm dog health, through the TeamMate project. The study involved 150 farmers and 765 dogs. Fifty percent of working farm dogs had an injury during their lifetime.
Hurunui has the most registered dogs per 1000 people in New Zealand (421 dogs/1000 people). Southland is next at 380 dogs/1000 people. There are about 32,000 huntaway dogs and 18,000 heading dogs in NZ (Department of Internal Affairs). Between 2014 and 2019 there was, on average, 690 dog-related injuries a year requiring hospitalisation. Half were dog bites. Bites from working dogs were not singled out. Most involved children under 10.
Above: Butter wouldn’t melt. Even the friendliest dog can turn bad when in pain.
In February, New Zealand National Fieldays Society chief executive Peter Nation handed a cheque to the Rural Support Trust’s chairperson Neil Bateup for $4500, raised towards the Trust’s critical work.
The Rural Support Trust is a not-for-profit made up of farmers and those with a good understanding of rural life, acknowledging that there are often ups and downs, and the farming community face many stressors around health and wellbeing, financial pressures, animal welfare, employment matters and adverse events.
Fieldays is returning to its traditional winter dates on June 14-17, 2023.
Under the Official Information Act the Ministry of Social Development has released to Country-Wide the wage subsidy data which is accurate as of November 3, 2022.
The wage subsidy scheme was paid to thousands of New Zealand business owners during Covid-19. It closed on December 9, 2021.
The ministry scheme was based on a high-trust model in order to quickly deliver funds to support workers, families and businesses. The dataset does not include businesses that have repaid the subsidy in full. Businesses may be known by, or operate under, different names. See subsidy data: nzfarmlife.co.nz/governments-wagesubsidy-scheme
A new source of phosphate rock from Australia is being trialled by fertiliser co-operative Ravensdown.
A shipment of 5000 tonnes from the newly commissioned Ardmore mine in Queensland reached New Zealand in December.
Ravensdown general manager supply chain Mike Whitty says that while it’s early days, the high-grade rock could firm up local supply of superphosphate for New Zealand farmers.
NZ is reliant on phosphate imports, the bulk of which is sourced from Togo in West Africa, along with China, Christmas Island and Nauru.
The phosphate rock will undergo rigorous quality testing in NZ and will be processed at its Christchurch and Dunedin manufacturing sites. Rocks from different sources are blended during the manufacturing process to ensure chemical specifications are met under the FertMark Quality Scheme while managing acceptable levels of cadmium.
Future Beef New Zealand’s Hoof & Hook competition is back for 2023 and will be held May 12-14 at Tomoana Showgrounds in Hastings. The weekend-long competition is for eight- to 25-year-olds and involves a series of educational modules covering the beef industry and wider farming practices. The main event involves competitors bringing along prime cattle to be judged first on their likely merit as an animal for eating. It is then processed and judged on the hook to find the overall champion. New for 2023 is a prime heifer section.
Entries are now open and if participants don’t have their own cattle to compete, Future Beef NZ can help out. For more information, email info@futurebeef.co.nz
German scientists managed to turn peanut butter into diamonds. It is possible to turn anything containing carbon into a diamond with the right equipment and an immense amount of pressure.
A German TV station convinced the Bayerisches Geoinstitut to put peanut butter in their diamond making equipment.
A man went to Spain on his vacation. He stopped by a restaurant and saw an interesting dish. He asked the waiter about it, who said “Son los cojones del toro, the balls of the bull sir. we serve it once a day after the bullfights.” The man places an order for the next day, and leaves.
When he comes back the next day and gets his dish, he looks at it for a minute and notices something is wrong. He calls the waiter over and says “Excuse me, but why are these so much smaller than those from yesterday?” the waiter pauses, looks around, and replies “I’m so sorry sir but sometimes the bull does win.”
Overseas Experience (OE) is a standard part of young adulthood for many Kiwis. The Coates children are following the trail set by Gaye Coates and husband Murray.
LIKE MANY YOUNG PEOPLE, OUR children have grown up listening to stories of their parents’ OE travels. In our case, it would be fair to say Murray’s encounters and escapades have received more attention than my own recollections, which in comparison seem witheringly subdued both in circumstance and execution.
Murray’s fervid recounts fall well into the category of unbelievable and wildly thrilling.
of driving to get home and 20km from the end, in the dark with thunder and lightning electrifying the surrounds, the engine came to a sudden stop.”
Tales of solo hitch hikes through the Australian desert; encounters with large spiders in the shower (even the most unimaginative mind can visualise a naked man armed with a cake of soap bowling out the arachnid with Southee precision); and of retreating to an English pub when the cultivating of a posh university cricket field went awry after the plough sliced through the main fibre optic cable resulting in the professors and suited administrators racing on to the pitch with significantly less reserve than the cucumber sandwiches in the staff cafe.
So, it was of no surprise when our two sons at the conclusion of their university studies, set off overseas to compile their own adventure stories.
The eldest is in remote Western Australia narrating incidents with rogue camels, sneaky snakes and perpetual vehicle breakdowns.
The younger is in Queensland cotton country plagued with bad weather in the worst season for rain in 20 years. His messages with equal humour and enthral describe larger-than-life machines with more dashboard lights than his colour-blind eyes quite know what to do with. The stories both memorable and mundane are welcomed, proof all is okay.
Among the memorable, has been the eldest son’s attempt to buy a vehicle. Weeks into living remotely, he decided having access to a vehicle when four hours from anywhere might be an advantage! So began a not so simple two-day journey involving cadging a 500km ride to town, followed by an overnight train to Perth.
He left his lust for a Hilux ute behind (high kms, no service history) and took the sensible option of buying a Mitsubishi 2WD ute that had an impeccable service record. Twelve hours of driving to get home and 20km from the end, in the dark with thunder and lightning electrifying the surrounds, the engine came
to a sudden stop.
Fortunately, the good luck combination of a spot of cell coverage and an understanding boss rescued him. With the mentoring of YouTube, he has carried some positivity away from the saga taking pride in diagnosing what the mechanical problem is likely to be. He is obtaining “international advice” from mates with questionable mechanical talent and may yet expand his diagnostic skills to having a crack at repairing it.
That was last week’s story.
This week started with a snake under his kitchen table, the subsequent murder of it with a shovel and then the perfect “Croc Dundee” selfie of him with said snake. Thankfully he had googled comprehensively to know that waiting at least half an hour for this photo opportunity was advisable. Apparently snakes can still bite post mortem!
The stories are a great form of diversion.
Summer 2022/23 is packing a hefty, dry punch to the West Coast equal to that of the drought of last year. It’s a phenomenon that those in the North will find inconceivable with their sad and sodden summer. Likely however, the ramifications of both polarised versions of the season will be the same.
Profit is following the same downward trajectory as grass growth and milk production. The only upward movement has been in farm working expenses and interest rates; a rather frightening visual exponential curve.
Six weeks of dry and intense heat have shaped the summer in our region. We have been granted some reprieve with the recent gentle delivery of 94mm of rain.
The assault on morale is massive; the practicality of managing through the challenges un-nerving despite the arrival of some rain. So, in the spirit of resilience we’ll keep leaping to the notification sounds emitted from our phones and take up the psychological sanguinity offered by the Snapchat excerpts that share our boys exploits and pull from the archives memories of our own travel adventures.
“Twelve hoursHOME BLOCK Haupiri Thomas Coates’ snake encounter at Kanandah Station in the Nullabor, Western Australia.
IRECENTLY ALLOWED MYSELF A moment of quiet smugness when news broke that Ms Ardern had stepped aside. Smug in the fact that in my January column, I had predicted that she would step down. But apparently, everyone is a Nostradamus these days with numerous people claiming they had foretold it too… after the fact, of course.
Nestled on a small beach with friends, hiding from the unforgiving Central Otago sun, is where we were when we heard this historic news. A collective hoo-rah went up. Not because we are, as the media would have you believe, misogynists; but rather because we thought she was a twit. She had pulled the wool over the collective eyes of a flock of five million. So, what are we left with? A battle of the Christophers. One, a savvy politician with little business experience; the other, a savvy businessman with little political experience.
Why not campaigning on radical (if not separatist) policies out in the open, which would have allowed for a contest of ideas – true democracy.
I believe time will judge Ms Ardern harshly. This Government will go down, quite possibly, as the worst of all time. But to be fair, this too could be said of the opposition.
Case in point, very few will know that second only to the United States, this Government borrowed more money per head of capita, than any other country in the world. Another good example can be seen in Mr Hipkins’ experience as Minister of Education for five years, a time in which all the numbers have been heading in the wrong direction.
Truancy rates are high, positive outcomes for students are low. It shouldn’t be my job to communicate this to the nation but rather the job of a much-muted (or could that perhaps be politically neutered?), Christopher Luxon.
Poor Ms Ardern said her tank was empty, much like the children living in poverty with empty tummies, whom she promised to rescue.
Businesses, families, friendships, education, health and careers now lie in ruins at the base
of her ‘pulpit of truth’. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, the reasons and efficiencies of lockdowns and mandates look weaker by the day. In her obsessive quest to ‘flatten the curve’ they inadvertently flattened the economy. But it was her self-described creation of a ‘second class citizen’ and culture of fear and control that will have the most lasting effect.
It got me thinking, how wrong were the parliamentary protestors? Excluding the extremists of course, the mandates were lifted a few weeks after the riot and, interestingly a year on, most charges brought by the police have been withdrawn. Also missing is former Speaker, Trevor Mallard and with the new Prime Minister, so too have disappeared many of the publicly unpalatable policies.
So, what are we left with? A battle of the Christophers. One, a savvy politician with little business experience; the other, a savvy businessman with little political experience.
While those who celebrated Ms Ardern’s departure were labelled misogynists and bullies, it appears that the person who has been the least kind to her, is in fact, her replacement. He has thrown a vast number of her policies “on the bonfire” and has been quick to point out their flaws. Rather hypocritical when Mr Hipkins had, of course, sat in Cabinet meetings where such policies were agreed upon.
At the time of writing this, Cyclone Gabrielle is unleashing a torrent upon the north while we in the south are baking in drought. We may poke fun at our northern compatriots, but lives have been lost and families who were already under pressure, are now increasingly so.
At times it has seemed, as farmers, that we have been the proverbial whipping boy for all that is bad in our country, but compassion is a noble quality and as the political ‘Which Chris?’ contest heats up, we need to remember that we are all on the same team. Come October, I ask for one thing; a leader who will reunite our country.
P.S Look for a snap election in April.
From the depths of the south, Mark Chamberlain contemplates the future of government.
“So, what are we left with? A battle of the Christophers. One, a savvy politician with little business experience; the other, a savvy businessman with little political experience.”
WOW, TIME HAS GONE FAST. THREE years of fun, new friends, challenges and hard work at Lincoln University are now over after completing my studies in a Bachelor of Environmental Management.
I was fortunate enough to be able to complete my degree whilst overseas in Brazil on the Prime Ministers Agribusiness Scholarship.
The scholarship was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a small-town girl from Waipukurau who had only been as far as Brisbane, Australia. It was a surreal experience to embark on a 12-hour flight to the United States followed by 10 hours down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for a six week study tour. I was so excited I didn’t even notice the jetlag.
The trip offered a great range of insight into Brazil’s food and fibre sector and the opportunities New Zealand can create through import and export with Brazil.
It was intriguing to see the diversity in scale and technology from one farm to the next when compared to NZ’s dairy production. For example, a research Dairy farm in Curitiba milked 130 cows using robotic milking, and the cows were housed in a composting barn system, requiring very few staff.
In contrast, another dairy farm we visited milked 17 cows using a portable milking machine, milking one cow at a time. Once the 45-litre bucket was full it was then carted up the hill in a wheelbarrow and poured into the refrigerated vat.
Both farms were very different in size and showed how the integration of technology can be vital to increase efficiency and rely less on labour.
The smaller operation provided some entertainment as the farmer had bare feet on the farm and while milking the cows. We watched the multiple near misses of the farmer’s feet and the Holstein Friesian getting too close for comfort. Not once was he worried about getting a broken foot.
However, I think I’ll stick to wearing my Red Bands. One of Brazil’s largest exports is sugar from sugar cane. I had never thought about where my sugar came from, this quickly changed once we got off the plane and were driving from Sao Paulo to Piracicaba. Both sides of the highway were planted in sugar cane nearly the whole way to Piracicaba, a two-hour drive. It changed my whole perspective on how important this industry is to Brazil.
We visited CTC, a sugar cane technology centre focused on increasing productivity and creating new varieties by genetic modification, and other genetic improvements. It was interesting to gain their perspective on GMO and how vital it is to ensure the industry can adapt to climate change and diseases to continue sugar cane production in Brazil.
Sugar cane is not only essential for the export of raw sugar but is a source of green fuel in the form of ethanol, an alternative to petrol, and is an approach to help lower GHG emissions.
It was exciting to see so much innovation within the food and fibre sector.
Koppert, a company working towards achieving 100% sustainable agriculture was one of my highlights. They provided farmers with natural alternatives to disease control, boosting pollination, plant growth promotion and crop resilience.
The trip gave me a perspective of what the food and fibre sector looks like in other countries, and how they adapt to challenges within the industry. Travelling to Brazil has enabled me to gain a snippet of looking at NZ from the ‘outside in’ and how we can respond to change and continue to grow our industry.
After returning home and spending some down time in the Hawke’s Bay, I moved even further south to Central Otago where I have recently started working at Landpro in Cromwell as a graduate farm environmental consultant/planner.
There’s a lot of sugar
“We watched the multiple near misses of the farmer’s feet and the Holstein Friesian getting too close for comfort.”HOME BLOCK Cromwell
UNLIKE SO MANY READERS WE HAVE been very fortunate to dodge all the damaging rain of the summer but have had regular rain.
We managed to get our balage done in late November a month late and of pretty average quality for half of it.
Our hay was done in mid-January. We knocked about 50ha down in one day with two mowers. I finished my last paddock at 10pm with my wipers on. That moisture (2mm) was expected and the only moisture the hay got.
The baling was worked around two funerals. A midmorning celebration of our neighbour’s life. She was 93 and still living on the farm that boundaries the end of our farm. The other funeral was midday for a wonderful friend of ours and our whole community. Ted, at 74, was still active on his farm but lost a fouryear battle with cancer. Both funerals were big but Ted’s packed our rugby club and probably had another 150 people outside.
We were fortunate for the second time this spring/ summer to string together nine days without rain and have all the hay in sheds. In 50 years of farming I have never seen so much grass on our farm at this time of the year. The whole district is commenting on the abundance of clover and in particular the red clover in places we have never had it before. I learned 30 odd years ago that without good moisture levels you will struggle to get good clover growth.
The irrigation system I referred to in my last article (a $300k nightmare) is now two years into its construction and still the contractor has not completed. Promises regularly that he will be here to finish the job but it does not happen. A very bloodpressure-raising issue, so best I stop now.
As we have no interest in just eating beef we run
a flock of 35 ewes. With lambs and killers we have a total of 70 to shear. We have a young guy who has shorn them the last couple of years. We struggled to get dry sheep when he was available. I decided this would be another challenge for me as an amputee. So I locked up nine killers we needed to deal to and was very pleased to manage to shear them on my own.
When Ben got here in December I decided he would not have all the fun and took a stand and pushed out another 15 to help him. Satisfying for an old bugger with one leg.
We were fortunate to pick up a new man just before calving. Anaru had little farming experience but has proved a very quick learner. I quickly gave him responsibility to tag, weigh and record calves in one or other of the mobs. I was able to carry and tag calves also which was another satisfying box ticked. There is very little I am unable to do. The biggest difficulty is standing for long periods, such as in the yards. My good leg is quite sore by the end of a long day.
Yesterday was another test for me. We joined daughter Joanne and her kids at Glinks for an afternoon netting. The sea was quite big but good conditions for netting. I had netted last year in the early days of wearing a prosthesis but had to take the shallow end of the net for the first time in 40 years. Yesterday I managed the deep end with Joanne on the shallow and Karren keeping an eye on it all. We managed a good feed of mullet, probably our favourite fish to eat especially straight out of the sea. Another box ticked.
The last word for this column. Life is pretty good when I think back to lying in hospital exactly four years ago knowing I was lucky to be alive but with some pretty horrific injuries. I cannot say it often enough, as farmers we need to be so careful working in a fatigued state.
Chris Biddles and team have managed to harvest plenty of hay and balage, and despite being an amputee, has managed to shear some of his sheep.
“Life is pretty good when I think back to lying in hospital exactly four years ago knowing I was lucky to be alive but with some pretty horrific injuries.”HOME BLOCK Te Kopuru
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Cricket was never on Dani Darke’s agenda, until her daughter took up the game.
BACK IN 2016, NEW ZEALAND CRICKET did some research to try to work out why only 10% of those engaged with cricket were females. One thing they worked out quickly was that at a governance level very few of the decision makers were women. NZ Cricket ran some workshops to try to understand what was important to young girls when getting involved and sticking with a sport.
The overwhelming answer was having fun with friends. So from this, NZ Cricket developed a dedicated programme to encourage girls into the sport. The aim was to change girls’ and their parents’ minds about the game. And I have to say that my mind was one that needed changing. If one of our daughters had come to us and asked to play Saturday cricket, the answer would have been “no way, our weekends are too precious!” Bearing in mind that we live about two hours away from where games are held, it would’ve made for a very long day. But once Eva, our eldest daughter, got to boarding school two years ago, she jumped on the cricket team that played on a weeknight, just for something to do. She ended up having two seasons playing in the Yeah! Girls cricket programme - a short format game, plus skills sessions designed to engage girls and show them what cricket is all about. This year the girls were offered an opportunity to join Hamilton's Seddon Cricket Club and send a girls’ team down to Hawke’s Bay to play in a tournament at the annual Hawke's Bay cricket camps.
So Anthony and I headed down to Hastings in support, and for me it was my second time watching a full game. I’d always felt a bit sorry for parents whose kids were into cricket and thought
they were just putting on a brave face when they said they enjoyed watching. Well, I surprised myself as I couldn’t take my eyes off the game, and I can totally see the appeal now.
It’s like a whole social dimension added to a sport. Instead of everyone being on a hockey turf and going hard out for 30 minutes, then a quick break and going hard out again for the second half, the girls got to spend their time lying on the edge of the field chatting, making bets, cheering their mates on, and coming up with new team chants. Every time a batter came off, they received a standing ovation and walked off under a guard of honour by their teammates.
The parents sat in deck chairs under leafy trees, catching up. And in the midst of this we got to watch some awesome performances from a young crew of keen kids. Eva managed to smash her first ever six, and retired herself from two of her games. The last game was an absolute nail biter, with our girls batting first in the T20 and coming up with 64 runs. We didn’t think they had a chance, as the team they were up against was unbeaten in the tournament. However, the girls showed some great bowling and fielding prowess and kept the opposition quiet in the runs right to the last ball. As the last ball was bowled, they needed three runs to win, and managed one. The girls were absolutely thrilled to take out the win – as were the parents in support.
I left the Bay with a new appreciation for the sport. Arriving home we were quickly brought back down to earth with reports of an empty tank, ewe lambs to toxo, and ewes to dip, but the time away was worth the extra running around required to knock the farm back into shape.
“I’d always felt a bit sorry for parents whose kids were into cricket… Well, I surprised myself as I couldn’t take my eyes off the game…”
There are two Beef + Lamb New Zealand director elections taking place this month, but most eyes will be on the Southern ward result, Terry Brosnahan writes.
The Southern ward incumbent, chairman Andrew Morrison, is being challenged by Geoffrey Young, a former Southland Federated Farmers president, and a major issue for the director election is advocacy.
Asked to stand by Federated Farmers, Young represents the frustration felt by grassroot farmers at Beef + Lamb NZ for what they see as a lack of advocacy on central government legislation. He has an association with Groundswell.
If Morrison loses, could it signal a change in how Beef + Lamb operates and force a review of its advocacy role?
Young said it would send a strong message to the board.
“They do need to change some of their views. They need to listen to grassroot farmers a lot more and reflect that in all of their negotiations with the Government.”
Morrison said the election had been pitched as a battle around advocacy, but Beef + Lamb did more than that. There is concern that having the levy bodies undertaking advocacy undermined Federated Farmers and weakened farmer lobbying.
Groundswell and others have said the advocacy role should be clearly split from the trade, research and extension. They argue the levy group’s poor advocacy is masked by the other good work carried out for farmers. Farmers should be able to vote for or against the advocacy role.
In the past, boards and the levy groups that came later discussed government legislation and passed it on to Federated Farmers to handle the advocacy.
Young said it was in the past 20 years Beef + lamb and DairyNZ got a mandate from farmers to advocate.
“Perhaps farmers at the time didn’t realise the implications.”
Morrison said they work closely with food sector leaders and had taken a united position. That’s why they’d signed up to He Waka Eke Noa.
Landcorp, a state-owned enterprise (SOE), can vote in the election and some farmers fear the SOE will sway the election by sticking with the status quo. Before the levy groups got into advocacy the Landcorp vote wasn’t such an issue.
Young has not asked Landcorp to abstain from voting. He said there are a number of big farms in Southland and he was confident of winning, even if Landcorp voted for Morrison.
“It does seem ironic that we have a government-owned organisation that can vote on whether they oppose or run with government policy.”
Morrison said about 10 of the largest farming businesses with multiple farms (including Landcorp) equate to about 4.6% of the country’s total sheep (1.6%), beef (1.9%) and dairy cow(1.1%) numbers.
Groundswell was arguably a major influential group and had strong support in the southern ward, so Morrison might have a tough battle.
Groundswell believed the levy body should have pushed back harder against government regulations and costs. It is run by volunteers and started as a protest against the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management legislation.
Groundswell said more than 16,000 people used its submission tool out of the 20,000 submissions the Ministry for the Environment received on the proposed climate emission pricing.
One of Groundswell’s founders, Bryce Mckenzie, wouldn’t give the number of financial supporters but said he had more than 100,000 signed up for their emails.
He Waka Eke Noa was criticised for not dealing with methane targets first.
Environmental consultant Steven
Cranston has warned for several years that the GWP* should have been used when setting the targets.
Farmer advocate Jane Smith has said in the past that He Waka was a rabbit hole and she was angry at levy bodies for not fighting the methane reduction targets which were undoable for farmers. He Waka itself should not have been narrowed to just two options and wasn’t palatable.
Morrison said from day one Beef + Lamb didn’t support the targets but had to get He Waka through to stop going into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The targets were separate from the pricing mechanism.
“If we had been in the ETS, the target conversation would have been completely pointless.”
He Waka’s plan was to develop a pricing mechanism that would not disproportionately affect sheep and beef farmers.
Morrison said He Waka could not be updated with the GWP* because it was separate from the scheme. The levy groups would not accept the pricing until carbon forestry was sorted and working with government on the methane target.
“The game’s not finished,” Morrison said. There is also a question mark on how He Waka would be funded if the methane target was based on science. Critics have said a reduction target of 10% by 2050 instead of 2030 would mean less methane tax and money to run the scheme. There might not even be a tax on methane.
Groundswell has opposed any tax on farmers saying they had paid their dues by reducing emissions with their efficiencies. Farmers also owned large areas of native forestry and exotic trees that were not allowed to be claimed for carbon credits because they were pre-1990.
Morrison said Beef + Lamb preferred emissions were not taxed, but both political parties,Labour and National, have said emissions will be priced.
If Morrison wins, could Groundswell become a formal advocacy group?
Mckenzie said it was something they never wanted to do.
“They need to listen to grassroot farmers a lot more and reflect that in all of their negotiations with the Government.”
It is widely expected that businesses operate in a more sustainable manner by reducing any potential environmental impacts whilst ensuring business viability is managed. Integrated farm planning is about farmers understanding their business and farm. It is about using this knowledge to lift sustainability and productivity. Third parties to our farming businesses want to know more about how farmers meet and intend to continue meeting good farming practices.
Much has been published and discussed on what sustainability of our food systems, country and world looks like. The definition of sustainable is wide and is considered to include environmental, financial and social parameters. Domestic and international consumers and markets have a view that producers are expected to meet sustainability goals in a verifiable way. Farmers have long held the belief that farming in New Zealand is a sustainable process and are now coming under pressure
to measure their efforts against evolving metrics. The definition of what good is, is changing. Agreed standards and processes are being developed in order to be able to verify on-farm standards if we are to achieve commercial benefits.
While an Integrated Farm Plan (IFP) does not define sustainability, it is a way to develop strategic thinking and bring verifiable documentation to one place.
A farming business of the future will need to be able to operate and demonstrate to stakeholders the value of its products and the way they are produced.
The thinking and decision making that occurs when developing a plan can strengthen the business to withstand economic, climatic and regulatory changes as well as the awareness and preparation for opportunities as they arise.
IFPs are a way to formalise much of what happens on a farm, in a format that can be shared with others. The reasons for having
one typically fall into one or more of three broad categories – business, regulatory and financial.
Businesses become stronger when time is given to plan, document and utilise good farming practices. This can enhance efficiency within the business through reduced cost or improved productivity. It can support the reputation of a business and provide some advantage when attracting people to work within and alongside the business.
Regional and national regulations around natural and human resource management require planning, modern farming practice and recording of activities. Farm assurance programmes also require evidence of best practice farming to maintain our market access.
The third good reason to have an IFP is to plan for the financial success of the enterprise, manage risk, and attract finance that may not otherwise be available. Through the IFP process, projects and investment opportunities may be identified.
As the calls come for more transparency in farming operations, Rachel Joblin outlines the benefits of having a full and detailed integrated farm plan.
When deciding the extent of their lending and investment in the NZ agriculture sector, banks and investors can refer to a recently developed, consistent and clear set of sustainable banking standards, the Sustainable Agriculture Finance Initiative guidelines. Using this risk assessment approach will also meet the growing environmental, social and governance requirements of international capital providers. The likely benefits of this approach include mitigating farmers and growers long-term risk, highlighting gaps in farming practices, opening the sector to new opportunities, and potentially lowering the cost of finance than would otherwise be available.
Having a plan that can be used to compare forecasts to actual outcomes will foster a pattern of continuous improvement whereby change can be measured and celebrated.
The expectations of meat and produce consumers are increasing. Our products are compared to those produced in other systems, countries, and non-farming systems. Expectations that human resources, natural resources and biosecurity
are managed in a way that is considered sustainable and equitable are more recent additions to best-practice management.
The basic components of a plan would include identifying where you want to take your business, what resources are available, the risks associated and what actions need to occur to move in the desired direction. Financial, human, soil, nutrient, water, air and livestock resources should be covered by the plan. An IFP could support farming businesses on the way towards better market access and potential premiums with Farm Assurance Programme Plus accreditation. Livestock processors can provide the information required for this, (see p42).
The New Zealand Government has identified the opportunity to invest in integrated farm planning. The Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) publication Good Farm Planning Principles: Towards integrated farm planning outlines the components considered to be necessary in an IFP. Recently MPI awarded funding of $14.4 million across 37 organisations under the Integrated Farm Planning Accelerator Fund to develop and deliver tools and resources for farmers and growers. The projects are wide ranging and include template creation, workshops, digital wallets and online learning modules. BakerAg is the recipient of funds that will be used to run workshops starting in March for sheep and beef farmers in the lower North Island that will step them through creating their own IFPs.
Several of the fund recipients are undertaking work to simplify collection, storage and security of data. Having data that can be easily used across government sectors, processors, financiers and within a business will streamline information in an age where farmers are dealing with an increasing level of business administration and frustration at duplication. Of course, we all hope it brings financial reward to farmers too.
Rachel Joblin is an ag consultant with BakerAg.“Businesses become stronger when time is given to plan, document and utilise good farming practices.”
fter nearly three years of everincreasing restrictive Covid zero rules and mounting costs throughout China, something had to give. And it did. It started in Guangzhou on December 5, 2022 and five days later had spread to Shanghai. These events have significantly impacted New Zealand lamb- and sheepmeat pricing.
I had never before seen the Shanghai locals so angry and frustrated over everchanging Covid rules and the complexity of how these rules were applied. After the Shanghai two-month lockdown in April and May 2022, you could feel the frustration growing through the rest of the year.
By late November, several large Covid outbreaks occurred in many large cities. On December 5, Guangzhou was the first city to announce, to everyone's surprise (and relief), they were removing all of the Covid restrictions. The rest of the country quickly followed, with Shanghai on December 10. Whatever the reasons behind the change in policy, it was a massive relief to many others, and me.
Overnight the rules changed from “if you have Covid, you are going to a central quarantine facility”, to “now, you are on your own with no need to report or test. If you have Covid you look after yourself at home”.
By about December 20, Shanghai felt like a ghost town, with all schools going online or starting the winter holidays earlier. Most restaurants, shops and businesses were closed as many employees had Covid. The same was happening all over China within a week or two of Shanghai. This first wave of Covid lasted until about mid-January, and by then, things began to slow down again for Chinese New Year, as it does each year. There was very little preparation for the "let it rip" strategy with the health system being overwhelmed, and it was impossible to get any medication that's useful for Covid. Chinese public hospitals are busy places at the best of times. There were reports of them being anywhere between five and 10 times busier than usual.
Broadly, the same thing that had happened in other parts of the world when
There was relief all round when China lifted its Covid restrictions and Hunter McGregor says as the economy slowly recovers, so should demand for New Zealand sheep and lamb.
they dropped Covid restrictions. But it was faster and on a larger scale. Unfortunately, the hardest hit are always the older and more vulnerable people.
China is now quickly moving to a new normal and the economic realities of the cost of Covid zero will be felt this year. Chinese consumer and business confidence is slowly coming back, but it will take some time, most likely years.
The end of each year is usually a busy time for many, but for most restaurants in China the end of 2022 was very difficult. There have been very few government handouts to businesses, unlike in NZ. Some did receive some rent relief last year but most have had no support over the past three years. Plenty of restaurants have closed and there will be lots more this year. This has dramatically affected the demand for New Zealand sheep meat in the short term.
For many in China, sheep meat (both lamb and mutton) is seen as a seasonal product for winter. Taking out four or five weeks during peak consumption Chinawide has had major effects on short-term demand.
Lamb is particularly popular in the north of China (year-round in many places, especially in summer on skewers). Most Chinese food is not seasonal, but if there is one type of Chinese food that could be, then it's hotpot. With a boiling broth, mostly spicy (there are non-spicy options as well), placed in the middle of the table to cook thinly sliced meat and vegetables. It just feels right when the weather is cooler.
Hotpot restaurants in China are very popular and in some cities such as Chongqing and Chengdu it feels like most restaurants are hotpot. In Shanghai, which is not known for hotpot, according to the restaurant APP Dianping there are about 2500 hotpot restaurants out of the estimated 30,000 restaurants in the city, second only to 2600 Shanghainese-style
restaurants and ahead of Western, Japanese and noodle restaurants at 2200 each.
I will never forget my first Chinese hotpot experience; it was in Chengdu, home of the spicy Sichuan hotpot. It was in the middle of winter with a large pot that was a deepred colour due to a large amount of spice in it. It was 95% a meat-eating experience and the meat was only thinly sliced pieces of local "lamb". It was a fantastic experience, and I ended up very hot sitting in my t-shirt and drinking plenty of cold beer with the locals for hours.
Just about every NZ commentator is saying that Chinese demand will return in the second half of the year. This might be the case, but it's going to require a massive change in both consumer and business confidence. It could happen, as there are plenty of early positive signs in Shanghai after the Chinese New Year, but there are significant challenges.
Consumer confidence will only
rebound to a point as job security is a worry. Many businesses have been running on life support for the past three years. Inflation pressures are not as bad in China as they are in NZ, but if this changes it's going to impact demand. There are many other challenges as well.
Parts of the economy will recover and do much better business than in the past three years. For example, the hotel industry will significantly improve off a low base. Some areas will be better off than others. Also, China is not immune to the economic challenges around the world. If other economies pick up in the second half of the year, this will help improve Chinese demand. I’m picking the second half of 2023 here in China is going to be very difficult. There will be an improvement on the first half of the year but it's only going to be in some regions. I do not know if this will be enough to bring lamb and mutton pricing back, but let's hope so.
“I will never forget my first Chinese hotpot experience; it was in Chengdu, home of the spicy Sichuan hotpot … and I ended up very hot sitting in my t-shirt and drinking plenty of cold beer with the locals...”Spicy Sichuan hotpot. Photo: omnivorescookbook.com
Famous economist Kenneth Galbraith once said that “the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”.
A recent, justified criticism of economic forecasting was the failure to predict the global financial crisis (GFC). Only a few economists at the time, Nouriel Roubini to mention the most prominent, predicted that the global economy would soon be in a deep and lasting recession.
When we talk about forecasting, two things are important to understand: (i) the so-called point forecast and (ii) the so-called confidence interval (or confidence band). Let’s take the weather forecast for tomorrow as an intuitive example. The point forecast is your best prediction about the daily high, say, 28 Celsius (C). The confidence interval around this point forecast tells me how
precise my forecast is. For example, I expect tomorrow’s high will be 28C plus/minus 1C. This forecast is better compared to a forecast of 28C plus/minus 10C. The wider confidence interval in the latter forecast makes me trust the point forecast less, or, put differently, it becomes more likely that the daily high will be different from 28C. Of course, even if I predict something with 100% certainty, the outcome can still be different.
Surprisingly, neither the New Zealand Reserve Bank in its economic forecasts in the Monetary Policy Statement nor Treasury in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update provide confidence bands. In contrast, the US Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England provide confidence intervals.
Why is macroeconomic forecasting so difficult and how is it done? Let me get back to the example of the GFC. Macroeconomic forecasting (mainly done at central banks, treasuries, or think tanks) relies on largescale macroeconomic models that can range from tens to hundreds of variables). These mathematical models have increased in sophistication after decades of research and increases in computing power. Models are useful because they simplify a highly complex system and therefore allow a systematic discussion of the economy. They help us to test theories, compare hypothetical policy scenarios and form a “language”, which allows us to discuss and advance our knowledge of the economy. One perverse feature of forecasts is that they themselves affect outcomes. By changing people’s expectations about the future state of the economy, they can change behaviours and actions and, therefore, macroeconomic variables.
The macroeconomic models assume a structure of the economy based on economic theory. For completeness, there are also non-structural models that can be used for forecasting, but recent research has shown that the two approaches give very similar results.
Statistician George Box once remarked, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” It is therefore all about the modelling choices the researcher makes. Almost all macroeconomic models used before the GFC did not feature a rich financial sector, if they had a financial sector at all. At the
They’re difficult to do and seldom accurate, but there’s real value in economic forecasts and macroeconomic modelling, says economist Dennis Wesselbaum.
time it was assumed that financial frictions do not matter for the macroeconomy. Obviously, this turned out to be wrong. Models already existed way before the GFC and featured some meaningful interaction between financial factors and the macroeconomy. As has been shown after the GFC, if these models had been used, the recession could have been forecast.
Having said that, I have never met anyone working on macroeconomic modelling and forecasting who would religiously believe what the model tells us about, for example, next quarter’s inflation rate. All forecasting reports and, for example, monetary policy decisions, incorporate “judgment”. The number of container ships in a harbour (trade), the number of cardboard boxes (online shopping), purchases of new rail freight containers (trade), a hot summer (agricultural yields) are examples of anecdotal indicators. Model-based forecasts are useful and often forecasts from different models are combined in a clever way to not only rely on one model and one set of modelling choices. However, experience and judgment will always remain important inputs into (final, published) forecasts and policy decisions.
Forecasting during “normal” times is difficult enough, but forecasting during a global pandemic becomes almost impossible. To me, this is partially because epidemiological forecasting of Covid-19 failed entirely, and mainly because of the uncertainty around policy responses to the pandemic and expectations about the future path of public health policy. If you would have asked me in 2019 “what is a plausible time horizon to make forecasts for the macroeconomy (e.g. inflation,
GDP, unemployment)?”, my answer would have been “about four quarters”. During 2020, I think my answer would have been “maybe one quarter” and I wouldn’t trust the forecast much. The more we get back to “normal” times, the more accurate forecasts will become. Normal times here are related to pandemic policies and can include high
inflation rates.
Researchers dealing with macroeconomic forecasting will always acknowledge the strength and weaknesses of their approach. Judgment and experience are important inputs into the art of forecasting. While we always will be chasing better forecasts, what really matters is better policy.
“As has been shown after the GFC, if these models had been used, the recession could have been forecast.”Neither the New Zealand Reserve Bank in its economic forecasts in the Monetary Policy Statement nor Treasury in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update provide confidence bands. Dr Dennis Wesselbaum is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Otago.
Coaching is on the rise. Before you sign up, ask your potential coach what they were doing 20 years ago. The answer might save you money and time, as well as disappointment, Jacqueline Rowarth writes.
It appears that more and more people feel they could do better if somebody was able to help them unleash their inner talent and overcome whatever it is that’s holding them back.
Randstad’s 2022 Workmonitor research reported that 84% of people would be interested in speaking to a professional career coach if offered the chance.
Sport gives an example of what can be achieved. A good coach clearly makes a difference to performance, and coaches are lauded/blamed/paid megabucks/sacked on the outcome of a game. Team captains, not so much.
What makes a great coach has been the subject of investigation. Starting with professional basketball, Warwick Business School and Cornell University researchers identified that a strong predictor of a leader’s success in year X is that person’s level of
technical attainment in the underlying activity in about year X-20. A good coach this year will have been outstanding in the field in 2003.
Lead author Dr Amanda Goodall has examined, with various co-researchers, the effect in sports other than basketball, as well as universities, hospitals, psychiatric institutions and “knowledge-intensive organisations” in general. The results are the same – expertise in the job required, whether it be basketball, teaching and research, or diagnosis and treatment – leads to top performance of the team, institution or service.
At least part of this positive result is because staff (or players) have confidence in the ability of the leader to take over and do what is required, because they know they’ve done the work in the past.
This is important in the context of the rapidly expanding coaching category of life coaches. After all, everybody has had a life of some sort. The question might then be, is it the type of life that you want to live?
Life coaching has taken off since the pandemic, reflecting changes in jobs, younger people in the workforce seeking development, and research suggesting benefits.
Writing in Forbes in October last year, University of Reading Professor Benjamin Laker reports that Harvard Business Review has suggested an increase in productivity by 44% after coaching, and that a study commissioned by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) “claims coaching clients report a median return on
When the people buying the training complained about what they were learning, feeling that it was insufficient to allow them to assist others, they were told that the problem was just in the trainee’s thoughts. “It’s your thinking about it that’s making it a problem.”
A whistleblower says this is very convenient, because it means they can never be wrong.
Some alternative health treatments, including craniosacral therapy, have a similar philosophy: if the “very gentle, non-manipulative and non-invasive
investment (ROI) of 788%”.
The problem with percentages is knowing the starting point of the calculation: what was really being measured and how any comparison was done.
Further, although many people want coaching, it isn’t always valuable. In an article in Talent Management and Human Resources in March last year, the chief executive of ICF stated that their commissioned research had shown that: “... the majority of respondents who participated in a coaching relationship said their coach held a certification or credential from a membership organization. More than half of these respondents were very satisfied with their credentialed coaching experience, compared to only 27% of respondents whose coach did not hold a credential.”
The cynic might then ask why almost half of respondents were not happy with their credentialed coaching, with almost three quarters of people not happy with their uncredentialed coaching.
The answer could lie in Dr Goodall’s research: lack of appropriate experience and expertise.
The problem is twofold. First, the ICF points out that anyone can call themselves a coach; it is an unregulated area.
There are organisations that offer certification and membership. ICF does both and it also has a set of core competencies and a code of ethics. About 4% of people listing themselves as a coach in Australasia are members of ICF; 1.5% are credentialed.
Anyone can call themselves a coach; it is an unregulated area. – International Coaching Federation.
The mBraining group also offers certified coach training with mBIT, and is used by some coaches operating in New Zealand. The mBIT programme has certification criteria and a code of ethics and reserves the right to withdraw certification. The training enables people to recognise the three “brains” of human beings – head, stomach and heart.
The mBIT disclaimer includes these statements: “It is the trainee’s responsibility to determine any additional qualifications and/or formal certifications necessary to offer mBIT coaching services in the contexts, facilities or locations chosen” and “An individual’s level of success as an independent contractor will be solely determined by their personal efforts, abilities, and resources”. (See link).
The disclaimer echoes words in an article in The Guardian in October 2021. It covered the increase in coaching and indicated that big money was being made by coaches running courses to turn others into coaches.
A Ponzi scheme comes to mind.
mBIT certified coach training: https://www.mbraining.com/mbittrainings
approach to whole-body treatment, which works directly with the body’s physiological, energetic and psychoemotional systems”, through the powers of the therapist, doesn’t work, it is because the patient doesn’t believe enough… Other side-hustles to coaching, like the courses, are products that are part of what is being advised and just happen to be procurable by the coach. This was the case when Mycoplasma bovis was found in NZ. A homeopathic veterinarian from America was in the media explaining a cure which he manufactures and sells in NZ through
a coach. Another agriculture example is coaches who are connected with seed companies.
Secondly – accreditation in coaching by coaching organisations does not give expertise in the discipline for which the coaching has been requested. It is the discipline expertise that has been identified by Dr Goodall as a critical factor in success.
To any prospective coach, question number one should be “what were you doing 20 years ago?” If the answer isn’t discipline-aligned, keep searching.
In part three of the Mycoplasma bovis series, Nicola Dennis looks at the impact of the eradication programme on meat processors.
Icontacted the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) several times to clarify some details regarding the slaughter of the 180,000 cattle that were “depopulated” during the Mycoplasma bovis (M bovis) programme. The ministry responded by lodging official information act requests on my behalf.
So I guess I am almost a journalist now.
I had much more luck cold-calling all the major meat companies and asking them if they would, pretty please, tell me what it was like processing these animals? And would they be well placed to do it again?
In some cases, memories were a little hazy. After all, the depths of the M bovis cull was pre-pandemic and many crises ago. But I think I have done a decent job of piecing together a consensus.
To understand the meat processor perspective, we need a basic understanding of how meat processors arrange their business. If you are the kind of person who believes that they all collude in a caviarfilled board room somewhere to laugh maniacally at your expense, then go ahead and skip this bit.
The processing game is all about keeping the factory running as close to full capacity as possible. Processors have huge fixed costs. A meat processing plant is usually millions of dollars of conveyor belts, boilers and freezers housed within ageing factories that barely keep abreast of the growing pile of environmental and safety legislations.
To make the most of these fixed costs, meat processors want to process as many
carcases as possible. The processing plant must be kept busy to make fighting for all the resource consents worthwhile.
However, none of this happens without a large supply of hardworking staff. Meat companies were worrying about staff shortages long before it became trendy. The staffing level has to be carefully balanced. There needs to be enough staff around to get the stock processed efficiently, but each staff member needs to be getting enough workshifts to make it worth their while. Otherwise they will find another job elsewhere.
To keep the staff well fed and the machinery humming, there needs to be a steady flow of stock coming through the plant which, of course, never happens. There are periods where everyone wants to kill their stock at once (i.e. leading into winter for cattle and during summer for sheep) and when very little stock is on hand (i.e. the depths of winter), as well as the less foreseeable ebbs and flows caused by floods and droughts, and too much or not enough grass on farms.
So meat processors spend a fair bit of time either begging for stock or hearing farmers beg for killspace.
To make it all work, the meat company strategy is to pay farmers as little as possible when processing capacity is overwhelmed (i.e. too much stock to process) so that they can lose money fighting tooth and nail with their competitors to buy enough stock to keep things running when processing capacity is underutilised (i.e. livestock is scarce).
If you are in the business of making the most out of stainless steel and staff, then speed matters. You have to crank through as many animals as possible in each shift.
You might think that the meat companies rubbed their hands with glee at all the extra stock coming in from the M bovis eradication programme. But no, infected cattle were more work than they were worth. Once a processing plant had received animals from a farm deemed infected, then it was essentially an infected property itself. Cattle that came into that plant afterward could not leave, which meant that other clients’ stock could not be returned home (which occasionally has to
happen if inappropriate stock has made it to the plant), or surplus stock could not be relocated.
Cattle trucks required up to two hours of disinfecting between loads. And there was a lot of paperwork and stock shuffling taking place behind the scenes to make sure the meat companies did not become a source of infection. They didn’t go as far as disinfecting the company cars each day, but the idea was certainly mooted.
Picking up bobby calves from infected farms was a regular logistics challenge. The
If you are in the business of making the most out of stainless steel and staff, then speed matters. You have to crank through as many animals as possible in each shift.
calves required their own fleet of trucks, or had to be left until the end of the run so that they didn’t go tiki-touring around a bunch of not-yet-infected farms.
Good, you might say, that is exactly the way it should be. But it slowed down plant throughput and that meant processors were cagey about who they were prepared to take infected animals from. If you weren’t a loyal customer of the company in question then you could tell your sad story walking. And even then, there were times during the drought and during the pandemic when processors could not make it work. In those cases, MPI tells me, it had to rely on pet food companies.
So speed matters, but so does the size of the stock. There is a reason why your processor has carcase weight limits. High-value meat items need to be a uniform size and quality. You don’t go to a restaurant to see the table next door getting a steak twice the size of yours.
For the most part, the international customers were unconcerned about NZ’s M bovis troubles, since every other major beef producing country lives with the disease. But that didn’t mean that anyone was in the market for a limited-time offer of tiny, lean steaks from yearling cattle. Processors ended up killing a lot of under-grown stock which yielded little more than low-value grinding beef. That was kind of a bummer, because these animals cost almost as much to take apart as a much more valuable 300kg prime steer carcase.
From a practical point of view, there are size limits for the cattle chains. One company wouldn’t accept cattle under 140kg liveweight, while another had a strict no R1 cattle policy.
Pint-sized cattle carcases are an odd size and if they go through the cattle chains they dangle up in the air where the staff can’t reach them. If you were to put them through the sheep chains (like the bobby calves) then they would drag on the ground.
The awkward “not a bobby calf, but not big enough to pretend to be a cow” cattle had to be processed via pet food operators. But I have to wonder how the pet food operators managed to process the odd-sized cattle efficiently and humanely. Are pet food processing staff taller?
During the processing of M bovis cull stock, processors incurred costs from lost time/throughput while dealing with the quarantine aspect of infected mobs and also lost profits from processing underdone cattle. And since you can only eat an animal once, there was also the opportunity cost of processing cattle before they had a chance to grow enough meat to make it worthwhile. The sheer wastage of it seems to be the most distressing element for processors and plant staff who never signed up to turning “healthy” yearling cattle and pedigree dairy cattle into mincemeat.
Processors tell me that they were compensated for lost time and margins. Curiously, the MPI compensation team rang me to specifically dispute that they paid processors anything. I said I was pretty sure they had – why would processors do it for free, and then lie to me about it? MPI said they would go check and ring me back. And then, the “Tena koe Nicola, thank you for your official information request” email popped into my inbox. I look forward to the fruits of that harvest sometime within the next 20 working days.
So far, the M bovis series has been littered with accusations of poor communication from MPI. But the processors seem pretty happy with their lot. Their plants are crawling with MPI officials on a good day, monitoring, justifying and notifying all the goings on.
Was the Government’s decision to cull more than 100,000 animals a bolt out of the blue? Sure, but MPI was quick to come to them to discuss how to go about it. And it seems like there was leeway for processors to
negotiate their terms. Or processors aren’t going to spill the tea on the government department that haunts their premises. Or it all pales in comparison to the recklessly poor communication processors are enduring from Fonterra at the moment (see bobby calves).
M bovis was a fairly unique situation. If a disease is bad enough for a full government crackdown, you usually don’t funnel all the infected animals into the food chain. If, heaven forbid, one of the major villains such as foot and mouth or mad cow disease got into the country then infected stock would be bonfired rather than barbecued. That being said, there is a long list of livestock diseases that NZ proudly proclaims itself free from. Among the scary villains such as anthrax, scrapie and rabies, there are some descriptive odd-balls like bluetongue, lumpy skin disease, heart water, and the “new world screwworm”. I won’t pretend to know anything about these diseases, but I guess that some of them could fall into the ‘’let’s eat all our mistakes” category.
But meat processors aren’t well set up to weather another M bovis type event. The pressures on farming have meant that stock numbers have dropped off. Forestry conversions have eaten up the sheep breeding grounds. Calf rearers have been progressively kicked down by M bovis, Covid-19, inflation and labour shortages. And environmental regulations are putting the squeeze on everyone else.
Usually this would mean that processor staff would be scratching around for things to do, but there aren’t enough staff. So processing capacity has fallen faster than
Processors tell me that they were compensated for lost time and margins. Curiously, the MPI compensation team rang me to specifically dispute that they paid processors anything.
I said that I was pretty sure that they had –why would processors do it for free? And then lie to me about it?
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the stock numbers, which is keeping things in a fragile balance. A bulkload of unmarketable stock would be really unwelcome right now (see also bobby calves).
I asked about robots. They are supposed to take all our jobs anyway, aren’t they? They can be great for processing poultry and pork, which are very uniform in size, but they aren’t an easy sell for processing red meat carcases which are much more variable. You can spend a million dollars trying to save one labour unit. But there are decent automation options for moving the processed product around the freezers and chillers which can free up some labour for processing.
They are making it work, “but please don’t release another disease into the country” was the message I heard.
M bovis highlighted some dodgy dealings going on in cattle trading. There were enough people swapping calves for cash or services to cause a traceability headache. But even if all the i’s were dotted, it was clear that cattle skip around the country a heck of a lot. The Friesian bull trade was a major biosecurity weakness. There are good calves to be found in the South Island, but a better grass supply and better kill prices
to be found in the North Island. So black and white bulls are often cruising on the Interislander. And they aren’t the only things sailing to the other side. Store lambs are going here, there and everywhere. That makes traceability all the more important. So I couldn’t help asking a cheeky
processors right now. The dairy company giant has unilaterally decided that it won’t condone the on-farm slaughter of unwanted dairy calves. Apparently there is an underriding clause that states something like “wherever it can be avoided”. But most people are interpreting it as “unwanted calves must be reared or slaughtered” and since calf rearing is about as profitable as blackjack, it is quickly distilled to “unwanted calves must go on the bobby calf truck”.
Which leaves the meat industry wondering why the dairy industry thinks it can process an extra 600,000-700,000 of its unwanted calves. Bobby calves are not a particularly profitable item for processors.
Sure, their pelts go for luxury leather, their meat for baby food and there are some co-products including serum and rennet, but they are baby animals with baby animal needs. They can’t be returned to sender or put on grazing. They must be dispatched within a certain timeframe or processors have to source them some milk. They are prone to infections. They need to be manually carried around. Their sizes are all over the place. One farm will try to send 9kg carcaseweight Jersey calves, the next will try to fob off a four-week-old calf they have grown sick of.
Overall, they are a high-risk low-reward stock that processors have been willing to tolerate because they keep the sheep
question about sheep – since nobody is keen to talk about tagging and registering them. What would happen if there was a M bovis-like situation for sheep? “God help us,” said one person. Another just audibly shuddered down the phone line and hoped that common sense would prevail.
chains busy during the lamb off season. But the lamb game has changed: we now get by on getting the most out of a smaller lamb kill. Staff are scarce, lambs are now a 52-weeks-a-year gig, and the bobby calves are already overwhelming the system. The processors say that the dairy companies have tried to talk them into extending their calf pick-up dates. But meat companies don’t have the capacity or the staff to accommodate what is essentially a clean-up job for the dairy industry. “We already have more calves than we need. This season we had to close the bobby calf books at 41,000 calves per week,” said one procurement manager. “This doesn’t seem like a well thought out plan from Fonterra.”
As general manager of Mid Canterbury’s Coleridge Downs, Tony Plunkett oversees three high country stations collectively running 42,000 stock units, as well as a farm-cadet training school.
The scale and scope of the operation he manages is one he could never have imagined growing up in rural North Island in a non-farming household. But Tony’s grandparents were sheep and beef farmers, so despite not growing up on a farm, farming was undoubtedly in his blood.
Obsessed with Peter Newton’s books, which captured the romance and adventure of mustering in the South Island’s high country, Tony left school at 16 and after a short stint dairy farming, went to satisfy his desire to work with horses, dogs and sheep at Timahanga Station between Napier and Taihape.
There he worked alongside three other shepherds, two of them from the South Island who encouraged the teenager to eventually head south. The trip alone was an adventure for the young naive Tony and included being led astray in Wellington, an epic hangover, a brokendown vehicle and the kindness of strangers.
He eventually washed up in Athol working for Landcorp, and as shepherds did in those days, moved on after a year to Otematata Station. He then based himself in Omarama for three years, working as a casual musterer.
“I loved that, I had a good team of dogs and we were moving to a different place every three to four weeks.”
In the second part of our large-scale farm manager series, Tony Plunkett feels right at home managing four stations and a cadet school that make up Coleridge Downs, Sandra Taylor writes. Photos by Emmily Harmer.
Much as he loved the lifestyle, Tony knew he couldn’t be a casual musterer forever, so he went to Lincoln to study for a Diploma of Agriculture.
Being slightly older than his classmates and having a lot more practical experience and life skills under his belt, Tony could see the value in what he was learning, despite struggling terribly with classwork due to his dyslexia.
After Lincoln, Tony got a job as stock manager for Peter Wardell who owned Mt Dasher, a 1600 stock unit farm in North Otago’s Kakanui mountains.
This is where Tony hit his straps.
Peter was offered a farm advisory role in Hungary for four years and offered Tony the position of manager in his absence.
“I was so lucky to get that job. Peter was such a great boss, he was ahead of his time with the way he treated people.
“He was really good to me and a lot of who I am now is because of him.”
Tony says Peter gave him autonomy but always had his back.
“He supported you; he didn’t let you fail.”
During his time at Mt Dasher, Tony married his long-time girlfriend Pam and the couple began their family of four boys.
Farming-wise, the early 1990s was not an easy time as the industry was recovering from the economic reforms of the 1980s, particularly the removal of supplementary
minimum payments.
But Tony was never driven by money.
“The reason you become a sheep and beef farmer is because you have a passion for livestock and dogs – it’s not so much about the big bucks.”
After a stint on Clayton Station (they arrived just in time for the “characterbuilding” 1992 snow), Tony and Pam took on the lease of a 250ha farm at Mt Somers.
The couple struggled financially for the first three years of the lease and Tony missed the scale he had become used to on larger operations.
They took the opportunity to manage Awakino Station in Kurow while they were still leasing at Mt Somers, but eventually let the lease go.
“You need to make cash when you’re leasing, you’re so vulnerable.”
Tony, Pam and their four young sons
Farm ownership goal for manager’s career.
Running four stations totalling 42,000su.
Doubled the stock units in four years. Runs a farm cadet training school.
Weather no excuse to meet targets.
Attention to detail and tidiness pivotal.
called Awakino Station home for 13 years and they were given the opportunity to develop the property and share farm 700 hinds.
They would have stayed there forever, but one of the shareholder’s sons wanted to come back and take over the farm. Tony and Pam needed to move on.
The couple did consider going into the dairy industry, but the job at Coleridge Downs became available at just the right time.
It was Pam who really pushed Tony to apply, but they went in with the attitude that the job had to fit them, not vice-versa.
“We were lucky that we went in with that attitude,” Tony says.
“It had to be the right place at the right time with the right people and their values needed to align with ours.”
The couple immediately clicked with Coleridge Downs owners, the Hawaii-based Erdman family who shared their love of farming, rural communities and education.
Tony stresses the importance of shared values when entering any sort of management role or equity partnership and the need to ensure that as a manager you are adding value to the business.
“It’s important. You need to look ahead and keep asking yourself what value you are adding. You need to get your head out of the clouds.”
In situations where there’s a possibility family members may want to take over the farm, Tony says it’s better to sit down and discuss that possibility early on and make an exit plan.
“You need to be leaving on your terms –it’s really important.”
He says it is as much the manager’s responsibility as it is the farm’s owner.
“You need to keep looking ahead and considering your next move.”
He admits this is difficult, particularly when you’ve been running the farm as your own, have become part of the community and made the house the family home.
“We make it our home and our community, but we need to remember that
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we don’t own the house.”
This fact has not stopped Tony and Pam from creating a home and garden at Dry Acheron which is part of the Coleridge Downs business. Other farms within the group include Big Ben and Annavale.
When Tony took over as manager, the business was running 20,000 stock units, but that doubled in four years. Tony admits it was a steep learning curve, but a growth strategy he was keen to drive in partnership with the Erdmans and their board of directors. As well as the acquisition of more land, they have carried out significant irrigation development and improved pastures on all four farms.
As the business has got bigger, Tony’s role has changed and he does very little day-today farming.
Rather, his role includes executing the
strategy plan set by Coleridge Downs’ Board, supporting the four farm managers and co-ordinating stock movements between the farms.
“A big part of my role is supporting managers, making sure we meet budgets and the wheels don’t fall off.”
Tony has a meeting with the managers every Monday morning to discuss the week ahead. While each manager is responsible for his own farm, they all work together to build a yearly plan and then they get on and execute it with Tony’s support.
Compliance is a huge part of his job and Tony says it’s only getting worse, but he is also keen to look at compliance as an opportunity to add value to the business.
“If you turn it around, it can be a positive.”
He’s particularly hot on health and safety and ensuring all the team get home safely at night.
He has a secretary to help him twice a
week with the bookwork and reporting that’s required in his role.
Ask Tony what he enjoys most about the job and his answer is people. His answer is the same when asked what the most challenging aspects of his role are.
But it’s seeing the people he works with grow and develop their skills that’s most rewarding for him, along with drawing a business plan and budget and achieving their goals.
He is dismissive of using the weather as an excuse for a failure to meet targets.
“If you’re good at your job you will make early decisions that will allow you to still achieve what you set out to do.”
While the Coleridge Downs Training School was Tony’s idea, he had the full support of the Erdman family to make it happen.
The school has been running for seven
years now and the business takes four cadets a year, selected from more than 30 applicants. Each cadet stays for two years, learning every aspect of sheep and beef farming, both practical and theory, in a supportive environment.
Tony says they have learnt a lot from running the school, not least of which is the need to plan. With eight young people to keep busy and engaged, they need to plan well, but they are rewarded by the calibre of their graduates who come out the other end.
For Tony, who stays in touch with the graduates, it is particularly rewarding seeing them take on senior roles in some big highprofile sheep and beef operations such as Caberfeidh and Mt Peel.
In a sector screaming out for skilled workers, Tony says there are still some bad employers and he believes many sheep and beef farmers need to lift their game when it comes to employing staff.
“These kids know who the bad bosses are.”
Pastoral support for the Coleridge Downs’ graduates continues long after they have left the station. Tony is always willing to offer support and advice. He says the school could not happen without the support of the farm managers and training manager Kristen Hubbard.
Tony’s advice to young people looking at climbing the ladder in the sheep and beef sector is to go out and get experience
working on bigger operations.
“This gives them insight into how these big operations are run and the complexities of those properties.”
He says realistically, if young people want really good jobs they need to go big, and the number of bigger sheep and beef operations looking for skilled managers or equity partners will only grow as farmers retire.
“Five to 10 years ago equity opportunities weren’t about.
“We’ve heard about ageing farmers and that’s starting to happen, but you need to have the right people with values that align.”
He says he has seen the wheels fall off where people go in different directions and that’s why it’s important for all parties to discuss their values, goals and expectations around how the business will be run.
He also stresses the importance of having a mentor, support person or even a good friend who can act as a sounding board when issues arise with the owners or Board.
“This person needs to be someone you respect, who will tell you how it is and at times tell you to let it go or that you are barking up the wrong tree.
“Most importantly, they will support you.
“It can be lonely in management, so this person or people are very important to
“Tertiary education is a positive, but if you’re not that way inclined, then take every opportunity to upskill through professional development courses”
keeping relationships on an even keel.”
While Tony doesn’t believe tertiary education is critical, he encourages it where applicable.
“Tertiary education is a positive, but if you’re not that way inclined, then take every opportunity to upskill through professional development courses such as Rabobank’s managers course.
He says anyone with an eye to senior management positions needs to be au fait with technology as its use will increase exponentially in the coming years.
He predicts that in the next 10 years, the technologies available (virtual fencing for example) will be akin to the shift from a horse-drawn plough to a tractor.
People skills are vital, and Tony believes it is a skill that can be learnt, as are financial skills which are particularly important in senior farm management roles.
For Tony, attention to detail and tidiness are next to godliness and this is often
reflected in the way farms are presented.
“If you go and look at a property and it’s really tidy, there is a 99% chance they’re good farmers, because it’s this attention to detail.”
One of the big challenges Tony has with the managers at Coleridge Downs is getting them to take time off.
Burnt out is a real issue in young people and Tony says it’s beneficial for everyone if employees take time out and come back to the job refreshed.
Like many young people in the farming industry, Tony and Pam did once dream of farm ownership and at one stage tried to buy three different farms. They missed out and farms quickly became out of financial reach.
“We decided some time ago to give up on that dream and focus on a career in management.”
It is not a decision they have regretted, given the opportunities they have had to run some large-scale operations and open a training school.
However, they have however invested in their own house and 160ha, which will be the couple’s next step.
Tony believes it’s important young people start investing from the get-go and this could be land or any other type of longterm investment.
As an industry, Tony loves the sheep and
beef sector and the lifestyle that goes with it.
Unlike the dairy industry with its rigid hours, sheep and beef farmers are better able to contribute to their community, turn up for school events and generally enjoy a more holistic lifestyle.
Obviously the responsibilities increase as young people climb the career ladder, but Tony encourages his cadets and other young people to get out and have some fun in the industry. Just as he did as a young shepherd working with his mates in some of this country’s most spectacular landscapes.
“If you go and look at a property and it’s really tidy, there is a 99% chance they’re good farmers, because it’s this attention to detail.”
Dan and Georgie Harper are leading the way with a farm assurance programme, reaping the benefits and encouraging others to follow, Joanna Grigg writes. Photos by Emmily
Harmer.About 350 sheep, beef and deer farms are on the road to getting accredited to New Zealand Farm Assurance Plus (NZFAP).
Dan and Georgie Harper at Canterbury’s Quartz Hill were one of the first to pass the NZFAP Plus audit last year and gain the status. They were open to going the extra mile with accreditation when asked by their lamb marketing group, Lumina.
The NZFAP Plus scheme builds on NZFAP – it’s not the base scheme on steroids. There is no duplication. Rather, it covers three additional areas: people, farm and natural resources, and biosecurity. The two schemes sit together and farms have to have the base before adding the Plus. Farms can achieve either silver or gold status, depending on the areas they decide to work on. The Harpers achieved gold.
Dan Harper says being Plus ensures the
A land and freshwater management plan. Nutrient budget. Greenhouse gas budget.
Biodiversity plan.
Crop and winter grazing plan.
Biosecurity plan including ways to minimise risk.
Employment agreements and hours, record training.
Aligns with regulatory requirements (where appropriate).
farm’s 5800 mixed-age ewes and hoggets can produce lambs for the Lumina lamb programme. For this, they were paid a premium of more than $20/head last season (2021/22).
“It’s about keeping access to this premium, as well as having better management in place and taking pride in our standards,” he says.
He says the Headwaters group with its Lumina brand is the only red meat company he knew that requires all members to be on the way to Plus accreditation level.
Dan says it will make their lamb more sought-after and have a stronger story in the marketplace.
“...more NZ farms need to be accredited, to prove we can put ourselves on a pedestal as being the best.
“Probably many farms have things in place already to get it.”
Dan estimates the work to achieve gold took about 50 hours all up.
About 8300 farms across NZ are registered
to the base NZ Farm Assurance Plan, but that’s only about 50% of sheep, beef and deer farms, which Dan believes is too low.
“We need more of the industry accredited to the entry level Farm Assurance Programme.”
the best.”
It’s designed for red meat producers and covers stock management and welfare, and the basic staff and land policies side of things, he says.
Quartz Hill board member Richard Green has been a mentor to Dan, instrumental in focusing on getting systems in place to meet audit standards.
“He’s always encouraged us to chip away at this,” Dan says.
Having a board structure has meant
“...more NZ farms need to be accredited, to prove we can put ourselves on a pedestal as beingSheep on chicory.
5800 MA ewes including twotooths, and 1300 hoggets
NZFAP and NZFAP Plus Lumina lamb branded lamb (via Headwaters and Alliance) requires Plus.
Crossbred Wool NZ Merino Company ZQ And NZFAP Plus
550 MA cows Beef NZFAP and NZFAP Plus with Alliance
600 MA/R2 stags Velvet Venison NZFAP and NZFAP Plus with Alliance
1150 MA/R2 hinds Venison NZFAP and NZFAP Plus with Alliance
many systems were put in place to monitor and measure.
“This early start has made it easier to have the environmental monitoring and staff management in place to pass.
“When I did the Headwaters’ workshop last year, I realised we were about 80% there.”
Despite this, the audit was still a scary looming event for Dan.
He was up at four in the morning trying to get all the paperwork in place. As it turned out, the audit was straightforward and Dan says he could email things he couldn’t track down on the day. For example, the cadmium soil test.
Two Assure Quality auditors and a representative from NZ Farm Assurance Incorporated (NZFAI) turned up to do the job. The audit cost is paid by the processing company.
Dan chose to highlight four monitoring points on Quartz Hill to assess the environmental impacts of the farming operation. One was one of the six watertesting spots on Quartz Hill waterways (flowing in and out of the farm). These had been tested over five years, so that became a logical site to include.
Another site was a paddock with annual soil tests. Fertility, organic matter and worm numbers are now recorded, as well as other aspects. Photos are taken and files of soil and water tests are put in a OneDrive shared folder.
A third site is two creeks, one fenced, one
unfenced, with photos showing different management to keep water quality high.
“You don’t have to fence everything, I believe, just manage it better. Our monitoring photos can show this management effect,” Dan says.
The monitoring jobs are shared between Georgie and Dan and stock manager Reuben McLay.
Staff records are also part of Plus accreditation. The eight staff across the two farms load their daily hours up via the PaySauce App. Dan monitors this, to make sure they are not working too many hours each week.
“If it looks like too many hours are worked by some staff, we schedule time off – usually something fun like jet boating.”
Richard Lee is stock manager at the Harpers’ finishing property Valehead and has taken on managing staff welfare across both farms. Days off for golfing or Primary ITO training are recorded and planned for.
“Staff are the most important people at Quartz Hill – I’m very passionate about this,” Dan says.
“New workers spend about four hours with G going through their contract and health and safety when they arrive, before they unpack their bags. We have all the employment paperwork up to scratch anyway, so it wasn’t too much work to demonstrate that during the audit.”
Once farms get the NZFAP Plus accreditation it covers all meat and wool products. Trading lambs (not certified) can
be Plus certified after being on the farm for 60 days. In the Harpers’ case, this covers lambs moved between Quartz Hill and the Harpers’ finishing block, Valehead.
Currently there are no premiums for the venison, velvet, beef or wool produced from Quartz Hill for its NZFAP Plus status. The crossbred wool is ZQ accredited (another assurance scheme) allowing it to be sold through the NZ Merino Company.
Tara Dwyer works for Headwaters, providing assistance to Lumina lamb finishers. She is based at one of the Lone Star Farms’ properties – The Wandle at Middlemarch. Not surprisingly, when it came to find someone to support all Headwaters’ farmers
on the road to being accredited to New Zealand Farm Assurance Plus, Tara got the call up. In August 2022 she hosted workshops for the Headwaters’ farmers to explain the programme and see where each business was at.
Tara says it’s valuable having farmers supporting each other with compliance, with community being a core part of the company’s ethos. Headwaters general manager Tim Saunders says his company has made a commitment to the market to have all their suppliers involved accredited to Plus over the next two years. This will make Lumina the first branded NZ lamb
Developed through the Red Meat Profit Partnership, now owned and managed by NZ Farm Assurance Incorporated (NZFAI)
Has 17 red meat company members (including a sheep-milk company) and 20 wool members
NZFAP is step one and covers origin and traceability, food safety and animal welfare
Plus is step two and covers people, farm and natural resources, and biosecurity
Voluntary for farmers to join but NZFAP membership is required by most red meat procurers
NZFAP required to supply the Taste Pure Nature brand and Cervena brand
There are more than 8300 registered NZFAP suppliers and more than 350 registered for the NZFAP Plus programme (at different stages of the process)
Processors pay for audits (due every three years)
product to have Plus status for all suppliers. Headwaters’ breeders and finishers, with their mix of genetics and lamb finishing strategies, are the suppliers of Lumina lamb. There are 50-plus Headwaters’ lamb breeders/finishers and together they supply more 150,000 lambs a year to the restaurant trade under the Lumina brand. The Lumina brand is jointly owned by Headwaters and Alliance Group (via High Heath Alliance).
Tara encouraged Dan and Georgie Harper at Quartz Hill through the accreditation process as the first Headwaters’ breeder/ finisher to be audited and accredited.
“She was awesome,” Dan says.
Livestock received onto a NZFAPcertified farm from a non-farm assured farm are eligible to be NZFAP farm assured 60 days from time of arrival on farm
Internationally recognised (and meets ISO Joint Accreditation System of Australia and NZ)
Designed to reduce audit duplication and costs, and unlock market value.
Tara doesn’t see it as just more paperwork – rather an ethos of being first and best.
“We can’t just say NZ farmers are doing awesome things, we have to prove it,” she says.
“Plus aligns with Headwaters’ ideals of having our suppliers be the best custodians of the land that they can be, with industryleading management principles.”
For this, continuous improvement is required. Farmers should integrate the requirements of the programme into their everyday farming and business practices.
“We promote an environment within the Headwaters group where sustainable practices are at the centre of suppliers’ businesses.”
She says being accredited to these ideals means the product can demand premium pricing.
Some of the routine tests required include recording nitrogen applications, water tests and recording visual assessments of specific sites within the farm environment.
Tara’s advice for those interested in
registering for Plus is to look at the requirements and see where the gaps are.
“Tackle it by being targeted.”
A Land and Freshwater Management Plan is required. Some farmers are part of catchment groups so might have some of this work completed already.
“In many cases it’s a matter of collating the evidence to show that farmers understand their natural resources and are managing them to protect and promote them.”
Plus requires a biodiversity plan and a stock take of flora and fauna. Tara recommends getting help with this from an ecologist, especially if the farm doesn’t have an identified list of land/ water species. She says there are excellent Landcare Research resources available for developing a plan.
Plus also requires a biosecurity plan –essentially about managing risks.
“Farmers have this in their heads typically, so they just need to write it down.”
She says sharing the job list across owners and staff is a good idea.
“It means one person doesn’t take all the work on and it helps to create buy-in if it’s down to staff to help implement any changes.”
Headwaters plans to run more faceto-face workshops this year. Tara has connected suppliers with subject-matter experts in their regions, as well as providing resources for different areas of the programme.
Once farms get the NZFAP Plus accreditation it covers all meat and wool products.
NZFAP has developed a digital tool to upload and store audit information more easily. This will be available shortly.
Want to know more? Hear farmers talk about NZFAP and Plus at www.nzfap.com/
With sheep mating looming it’s wise to revisit results from previous years to examine opportunities to improve your lambing percentage. Key times to consider are from pre-mating through early, mid and late pregnancy, then around lambing. You can monitor ewe body condition score (BCS), preferably held at three or above, to ensure feeding’s up to scratch.
Reproductive wastage in sheep is grossly underestimated and very difficult to measure. Farm surveys have given management recommendations that can lessen the problem: In general, avoidance of management or environmental stress with ewes, particularly around mating and early pregnancy. Middle-of-the-road grass-based pasture feeding and careful stock handling over mating, pregnancy and lambing are the safest options.
The yawning gap between potential numbers of lambs born each year and those
alive after lambing is from farm surveys summarised in my paper, ‘A guide to improved lambing percentage’.
In the first and most comprehensive survey, ovulation rates were measured and losses tracked through pregnancy and lambing to tailing. From 161 eggs shed per 100 ewes mated, on average only 121 survived as live lambs, meaning 25% of potential lambs perished.
Average numbers of non-surviving eggs were: barren ewes – 6 eggs re-absorbed; partial failure of multiple ovulations – 19 eggs; 1% of ewe deaths – 2 eggs; 10% of lamb deaths at lambing – 13 eggs. There was large variation between farms.
In other farm surveys, also shown in the above publication, lamb losses between pregnancy scanning around days 60-90 of pregnancy and tailing averaged 20% with 120-180% of lambs on board. This highlighted the relatively low lambing losses of only 10% over the lambing period in the earlier survey above.
Overseas research has shown much larger early pregnancy losses with 2030% of embryos dying within 18 days of fertilisation. Some researchers concluded that combined with later foetal losses and mortality around lambing, overall wastage could be as high as 40% to 70%. It’s a worry that foetal losses tend to increase with numbers of eggs fertilised, mainly due to partial failure of multiple pregnancies.
Specific causes of embryonic losses are difficult and expensive to diagnose. Apart from management and environmental stress factors mentioned above, most appear to be nutritional, such as high dietary nitrogen intakes. The presence of plant toxins or deficiencies of key minerals including zinc, selenium and iodine can result in conditions such as white muscle disease and goitre. Excesses of oestrogenic clovers or prolonged feeding on cruciferous forages such as rape or kale can be risky.
Unexpected additional lamb losses can
Long-time sheep researcher Ken Geenty details the best ways to improve live lamb numbers.
occur almost any time during pregnancy if contagious abortion strikes. The most common causes are toxoplasmosis and campylobacter or vibrio, and sometimes salmonella. They can all be controlled by vaccination with natural immunity generally present in older ewes through previous exposure. Vaccination is recommended, particularly in young ewes or first lambers, after consultation with your animal health adviser.
Following early total pregnancy terminations, ewes often return to oestrus for subsequent matings, meaning extended lambing spreads, particularly if mating is six to eight weeks or closer to three, 17-day oestrus cycles.
In summary, reproductive wastage can be minimised by sound animal health, good grass-based pasture feeding and
genetic selection. Ram purchases each year should focus on genetics with high lamb survival and ewes need to be fed to maintain ewe BCS of at least three, with lamb birth weights between 4.2kg and 7.4kg for multiples and singles respectively. With veterinary advice, a sound animal health plan should be developed.
The importance of good feeding during pregnancy should not be underestimated, not only for good lamb survival, but also for growth of the key conceptus components illustrated in Graph A. Included are the placenta, which nourishes the rapidly growing foetus in the second half of pregnancy, and steady development of the mammary gland for good early milk supply. Good feeding levels, requiring high quality pasture for adequate intakes, are critical both for the conceptus growth patterns shown and to maintain BCS targets for ewes.
The placenta not only supplies nourishment but also mediates between foetus and mother, particularly for early immunity to disease. Therefore increasing the plane of nutrition gradually from the first month of pregnancy, or about two and a half months after ram joining, is critical. A gradual increase from maintenance level to more generous feeding should be the aim, given that ewes in mid to late pregnancy, particularly those carrying multiple lambs, rarely have adequate feed intake to avoid negative energy balance over this period. Such feed deficiency can be minimised by offering top quality grass-based pasture, particularly given this a “safe” ration regarding reproductive wastage. Monitoring BCS of a random 50 or so ewes in each mob is recommended as a check on feeding levels.
In your planning to minimise lamb losses, it’s suggested you reconsider results from previous years. These may include causes of lamb deaths, most commonly starvationexposure for light multiples and dystocia for heavier multiples and singles. Management to minimise these losses will include
separation of pregnant ewes with multiples to feed them better in mid-late pregnancy and those with singles fed less generously.
Diagnosis of lamb deaths are illustrated in Appendix 2 of Beef + Lamb NZ’s booklet ‘Making every mating count’ (see box).
It includes an illustrated postmortem examination and decision-support tool which some farmers have learnt to effectively use after instruction from their animal health adviser. This may be considered extreme, but given the extent of lamb losses and the cost to your bottom line, familiarity and/or effective use will pay dividends.
Planning for pregnancy and lambing can also include choice and preparation of your best lambing paddocks for multiple lambing ewes. Preferences will be for easy contour, good shelter and a feed bank at lambing of at least 1400kg of dry matter a hectare. Activities likely to be diaried will include ewe vaccinations pre-mating for contagious abortion and pre-lambing for clostridial diseases. Pregnancy scanning will need to be scheduled sometime during days 60-90 of pregnancy.
The option of ewe shearing in winter during pregnancy often arises and the general consensus is there are no detrimental effects if done correctly. Some of the consequences are that pre-lamb shearing within six to eight weeks of lambing increases ewe appetite and may cause ewes to beneficially seek shelter around lambing. Shearing earlier during mid-pregnancy may increase birthweights of multiple lambs with better survival.
It’s recommended that winter shearing combs that leave a 5-6mm “wooly singlet” be used.
B+LNZ’s booklet, ‘Making every mating count’ beeflambnz.com/knowledge-hub/ PDF/making-every-mating-count.pdf
For more reading, Google search: A Guide to Improved Lambing Percentage for Farmers and Advisors: 200 by 2000 – Ken Geenty.
By Sandra Taylor
Matthew and Vikki Gould make a formidable farming team.
Both have clearly defined roles on their 1886ha sheep and beef breeding and finishing operation but share a laser-like focus on maximising productivity and profitability to hit their own financial targets.
The couple farms the Hermitage, a multi-generational hill country farm that stretches back into North Canterbury’s Lowry Range and also incorporates 192ha of irrigated flats. These flats are the engine room of their business.
It is this balance of country that is the farm’s strength as it allows a lot of flexibility. Stock can be maintained on the hill and brought forward for growing out and or finishing when the time is right from both a market and farm system perspective.
The other strength is the complementary skillset the couple brings to the operation. Vikki oversees the livestock, while Matthew looks after the irrigation, growing crops and pasture, and break-feeding over winter. He also takes care of the financial and compliance side of the business.
They both think strategically about how they will utilise the farm’s strengths to maximise profitability, such as manipulating stock flows to hit higher schedule prices. They also work to generate cashflow throughout most the year.
In spring each year, they reflect on the previous season and make a plan for the next one. This season, with killing space being so tight, they decided to sell as many lambs as possible pre-Christmas, either store or prime, and focus on selling prime cattle over January and February. This
included Friesian bulls that finished to a lighter goal weight of 530kg. It meant they were hitting the dairy beef market before the cull dairy cows and taking advantage of the higher schedule.
Calves at 100kg were bought in to replace the lambs sold before Christmas.
Vikki believes that as farmers, they should be involved in the marketing of their product and have an understanding of the end consumer. This is one of the reasons they are involved with Silver Fern Farms’ carbon zero programme, and they’ve also started working with New Zealand Merino to market their Romney wool.
Vikki is particularly enthusiastic about the carbon zero programme.
“The consumer is paying a premium and we are supplying what they want, which I find really exciting – it gives you direction.”
The couple hopes they’ll soon be financially rewarded for the compliance required to be part of the supply contract.
While wool prices continue to wallow in the depths, Vikki is optimistic prices will strengthen and through their involvement with NZ Merino they will be well positioned to capture the benefits when they do.
Vikki and Matthew have several safety valves in their farm system and are able to hold or quit stock in line with vagaries of the market and climate. They cover a lot of bases, running 200 mixed-age breeding cows and their progeny, 50 heifers, 3500 Romney ewes, 1000 hoggets (which are mated) and Vikki’s particular favourite, Friesian bulls.
They have four lambing dates, with the cull terminal sire ewes lambing on August 1 and another mob of terminal ewes lambing on August 20. All the hill replacement ewes lamb on September 10 and the hoggets in mid-September.
The farm’s early north-facing down country allows for the early lambing dates, as does the spring growth in lucerne.
As the early lambing mobs are weaned, room becomes available for the mixed-age
ewes to come off the hill and onto irrigated pasture. This helps the lambs adjust to the high-octane feed before weaning, which helps to minimise the weaning check. The lambs also get to learn about centre-pivots. After weaning, the ewes go back on to the hill.
The very early lambing ewes are weaned at 60 days and the ewes put on the truck immediately. This means the business is getting good money for its ewes before everyone else is sending their cull ewes to the processors. The ewes that lamb on August 20 can be sold with lambs at foot, or weaned early if the spring growth is a bit slow.
High-quality feeds (either lucerne, or a chicory, ryegrass and clover mix) are grown under irrigation and drive good growth rates in all stock classes.
The remaining lambs are held and they have a big lamb draft at the end of January to catch the Easter trade. The remaining
lambs are shorn at the beginning of February for animal health reasons and grown out on lucerne and rape. They are then sold when prices have strengthened.
The Goulds aim to have minimal lambs remaining before hogget mating in May.
They regularly weigh lambs, which gives a clear picture of how they are growing.
Over summer, growing out the ewe lambs to a mating weight of 45kg takes priority over finishing lambs. From 1200 ewe lambs retained, about 800 are put to the ram. The balance is sold prime. Once the hoggets have been mated on the irrigated pastures, Vikki gets them onto the hill as soon as possible to get them used to the terrain.
The couple started the irrigation development when they took over running the farm from Matthew’s parents 20 years ago. Originally, the area was watered by a mix of border-dyke and K-line irrigation.
A 1886ha breeding and finishing operation.
High quality feed on 192ha irrigated.
Three centre pivots, fixed grid, gun and k-line
In a carbon zero programme.
Manipulate stock flows for higher schedule prices.
Running a fast cattle finishing operation.
Focusing on hill country development.
Employ two full time workers.
This has been replaced by three centre pivots – watering 48ha, 35ha and 27ha respectively – and 15ha of fixed grid. A further 18ha is watered through an Ocmis gun and they still have about 20ha of K-line.
The water comes through the Amuri Irrigation Company and the Goulds are consented to apply 5mm/ha/day at a cost of $320/ha.
Amuri also looks after the Hermitage’s farm environment plans and carries out an audit every three years.
Matthew says the majority of capital irrigation development has now been completed, but they will carry on installing areas of fixed grid when finances become available through operating profit.
Rather than re-fencing the entire area when the centre pivots were installed, they have been gradually amending the fences over time and now have a series of 3-4ha paddocks and laneways.
These paddock sizes are ideally suited for their stock rotations to help maximise growth rates and for winter feed crops, namely fodder beet. This forage is used for wintering steers, heifers and Friesian bulls.
Matthew runs a five-year crop rotation under irrigation, growing 16ha of fodder beet and 9ha of summer rape as part of their
25ha/year pasture renewal programme.
Fodder beet is an important crop for wintering cattle and this is supplemented with protein-rich lucerne and pasture balage that’s fed through a bale feeder.
The cattle grow at 0.7/kg/day throughout winter.
Matthew is mindful of protecting their soils over winter and back-fences the feed crops. He will also shift breaks up to three times a day in adverse weather.
Through FarmIQ, the couple can keep a close eye on pasture production in each paddock. Staff use the app to record whenever they shift stock. This information allows them to work out their rotation length and gives them an idea of pasture production and which paddocks need to be renewed.
Vikki says the Friesian bulls fit into their system perfectly. Mostly sourced from neighbouring dairy farms, the calves are initially run under the irrigation with the lambs, which gives them a good start. They are typically moved onto the downs over the summer and brought forward for growing out over winter on fodder beet and then pasture. The top calves are given priority feed so that they are finished before the end of March. The balance are kept on the hill and brought down as feed allows. All are sold by the end of October – after their second winter – at an average carcase weight of 340kg.
If their autumn feed budget shows
they are going to have excess fodder beet, which is usually the case, the couple buy in 18-month-old Friesian bulls in autumn. These will be sold prime in October to hit the higher schedule, and their sale pays for the establishment of the fodder beet crops.
“We focus on the budget and finish accordingly, and that’s where the fodder beet is so good. We can shut them down or bring them forward,” Vikki says.
Along with the Friesian bulls, their bull enterprise also includes homebred Hereford bulls that will either be sold to the dairy industry as sire bulls or prime, depending on market demand and price. These Hereford bulls are run alongside the Friesians and Vikki says she has minimal behaviour problems with the bulls, possibly because they are so well fed.
The breeding cows play an important role in the farm system. As well as producing good calves that are grown out on the irrigated country, they are a valuable tool for maintaining pasture quality. The cows spend most of the year on the hill country.
The Goulds run a three-way cross system that crosses Hereford with Angus; the resulting white face cows are mated to the Charolais bull.
The white face cows (about 70) go to the Charolais bull three weeks before mating starts for the Hereford and Angus cows on November 26. This early mating allows Vikki and Matthew to start killing the progeny in January as 18-month-olds.
As well as capturing hybrid vigour, the calves from the three-way cross benefit from the Charolais’ growth rates and carcase
attributes. All steers are sold prime before their second winter and surplus heifers are typically sold store. Vikki says surplus heifers are a safety valve in their system.
“If we are offered good money, we will take it, and if we have grass, I’d rather put it into the bulls.”
Replacement heifers are a priority stock class over spring as they aim to have them weighing 400kg before they go to the bull.
After mating, they are put out on the hill to allow them to adjust to the hill country that will be their home for most of their lives.
As with the lambs, the Goulds are regularly weighing cattle: about every six weeks over summer or when key decisions need to be made.
“Everything is weighed. That’s how we
know everything is on target,” Vikki says. As well as being economically efficient to operate a fast-finishing cattle system, there are environmental imperatives as the heavier soils on the Hermitage’s flats are just not suitable for wintering heavier R2 cattle. Similarly, dairy grazing, which the Goulds tried, did not suit their soils.
The ewes are lambing 150% off the hill and while Vikki is happy with that, she is now focusing on reducing dags and flystrike in their flock which have a strong genetic component.
Any ewes she doesn’t like the look of will get a black ear tag, as will any ewe that has been flystruck or has significant dags. These ewes go to a terminal sire.
“If we are offered good money, we will take it, and if we have grass, I’d rather put it into the bulls.”The couple think strategically about how to utilise the farm’s strengths to maximise profitability, including manipulating stock flows to hit strong schedule prices.
A month after weaning, the ewes are body condition scored and have their udders checked. Any that have not recovered body condition or have poor udders get a black tag and will go to the Suffolk terminal sire.
Vikki says she used to try to lift the condition of those lighter ewes, but now puts them straight into the cull ewe mob. The focus is then on feeding the capital stock ewes as well as possible.
“They’ve really got to perform.”
Recently they have been sourcing their Romney genetics from Turanganui stud, Suftexs from Hemingford, and Suffolks are bought from Terry Ashley who has been, and continues to be, very much part of the Hermitage farm and the Gould family. Terry worked for both Matthew and his father Michael for 40 years and has been a huge help to Vikki, particularly when selecting sheep and cattle genetics.
Charolais rams are used over the hoggets, which typically lamb 90%.
Running such an intensive finishing operation, the Goulds test for drench efficacy and so far so good. Vikki points out that they are cross-grazing which helps control parasite burdens.
With the development of their irrigated flats nearing completion, the couple are turning their attention to the hill country.
Through sub-division and an improved
Over the past two years, Silver Fern Farms has been working with 17 farmers across the country to understand their carbon footprint and recognise carbon stored on farm.
The processors have worked with Lynker Analytics and Carbon Forest Services to map and measure the sequestration potential for a range of woody vegetation found on New Zealand farms
A system developed by Lynker uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and artificial Intelligence to map, classify and age vegetation, and ultimately create
stock water system they will be better able to manage and improve pasture quality.
Vikki grew up on a dairy farm so is very cognisant of the importance of pasture management across their whole farm.
The couple work alongside their two full-time staff and periodically use a farm consultant. They are members of the Waiau Discussion Group and are never afraid to
ring good farmers or rural professionals in the district for advice or to bounce ideas about.
Vikki and Matthew say that to maximise productivity and profitability off their irrigation development, they make sure to plan well and keep a close eye on cashflows, budgets and interest rates, then make decisions accordingly.
carbon stock assessments.
At a farm level, the system maps vegetation units larger than 1000 square metres in area. This includes woodlot forests, shelter belts, regenerating native bush, soil stabilisation and riparian planting. A calculation is then made of each farm’s ability to sequester carbon.
Of the 17 carbon pilot farms, 14 had a clear path to carbon neutrality.
Products are certified net carbon zero when emissions associated with each kilogram of product sold are balanced with the equivalent carbon sequestration
occurring within the lifecycle of that product.
With net carbon zero beef, total emissions are measured from the birth of the animal through to the consumers plate and even includes any emissions associated with the disposal of packaging.
Participating suppliers are paid per tonne of removals for their sequestration and there is a separate payment for livestock.
Net carbon zero beef is only available in the US, but Silver Farms is planning to include lamb and expand into other markets.
The New Zealand beef industry is heavily reliant on the dairy industry. How much beef comes from dairy farms is unknown, it is not recorded at slaughter. Even if it was, assignment to a breed would be just a guess in many cases. About 70% of total beef is estimated to originate from dairy, a mix of bobby calves, surplus heifers, bulls and cull cows. Most bulls and cull cows finish up as manufacturing beef, with a few key cuts removed from time to time when value can be added.
But what about dairy heifers and steers? Visit any saleyards or talk to agents there is a widespread belief that the yield and quality of prime beef from dairy animals is inferior to that produced by traditional beef breeds. However, there is little information flow from processors to farmers. There is little direct information
on the value components of carcases. So, is there substance to this prejudice against dairy animals?
Dairy animals have evolved and been selected for milk production for many years. This has resulted in dairy animals being metabolically different to aid them with high milk production. For example, at the same liveweight, they tend to have more gut and liver tissue than beef animals. They also have different fat depots, with beef animals having more subcutaneous fat and dairy animals having more intramuscular and abdominal fat. For the latter, abdominal fat (omental and mesenteric), and in particular marbling fat, have access to a greater network of blood vessels, meaning the energy stored in fat is more available for the sudden demands
of lactation. These differences in fat distribution do have an effect at slaughter. Although there is likely to be no difference in total carcase fat when dairy and beef cattle are killed at the same liveweight, more of the fat in the dairy cattle is going to come out with the gut contents on the slaughter board, whereas more of the fat in the beef cattle will be left on the exterior of the carcase and may or may not be trimmed off in the boning room. This results in a slightly lower dressing out percentage (1-2%) in dairy steers.
Many trials have consistently shown that in dairy versus traditional beef breeds, there is no difference in yield of primal cuts as a proportion of carcase weight. Similarly, a review of many studies on tenderness, flavour and taste has shown no difference between dairy and beef animals. Where taste panels have found a breed difference, the results show that Jersey has the more preferred beef.
Several NZ pasture-fed studies and many overseas feedlot-fed studies on feedlots have shown little difference in growth rate of Holstein-Friesian steers and beef steers. Kiwi and Jersey steers will undoubtedly grow more slowly as they have a smaller mature size, and potential growth rate is proportionate to mature size. Dairy breeds have a 15% higher maintenance energy requirement than beef breeds because of their larger more metabolically active liver and fat depots. The difference is minor at light weights (<150kg) as the animals have relatively little fat. As weights increase, beef steers become progressively more efficient. We have calculated that a Friesian steer growing from 40kg to 600kg at 0.7kg/ day would require an additional 450kg of pasture dry matter than its traditional beef counterpart to meet its higher maintenance requirements.
The New Zealand beef-grading system penalises beef from dairy carcases even if they have the same amount and value of saleable meat. There is generally no reward for marbling (which would benefit dairy animals) and carcases are graded on muscularity, which penalises dairy
animals. The muscularity grades (1–3) are subjective. A typical penalty is 10c/ kg less for a muscle score of three. This is a subjective conformation score and at the same carcase weight and amount of saleable meat, dairy carcases are much more likely to be given a muscularity score of 3. Dairy carcases are also more likely to be graded L (< 3mm fat) which in some companies attracts an additional penalty of -20c/kg.
In summary, the belief that beef of dairy origin is inferior to that of traditional beef breeds is not supported by the scientific literature. If anything, the better marbling in beef from dairy animals would provide a better eating experience. However, dairy animals are metabolically different and have higher maintenance requirements and as they get heavier and fatter they need more feed to produce the same amount of liveweight gain. The NZ grading system penalises prime beef from dairy animals. They are more likely to be given a muscularity grade of 3 and graded as too lean (L grade), both of which lead to a penalty. This means there is little room for error when subjectively assessing subcutaneous fat depth in lean cattle on farm and many dairy cattle are kept to heavier weights to minimise potential penalties associated with leanness and conformation.
The combination of higher feed requirements for maintenance and reduced flexibility for early slaughter seems to be the main reason why dairy animals could justifiably be penalised in the store market. It is ironic that European cattle breeds also have a large mature size and the same lack of flexibility at slaughter, yet command a store market premium.
Worms are the most common cause of diarrhoea and dags in weaned lambs, but they are not the only cause. If you are seeing diarrhoea and dags within a month of drenching, consider coccidiosis. We often see this problem in calves, especially dairy or dairy-beef calves, after they have been weaned off meal.
A farmer rang me one year after he’d had a couple of lamb deaths at weaning and lambs scouring and daggy after drenching. Of course, he was concerned about drench resistance. He shared his usual weaning protocol with me. Lambs were brought down into the yards, drafted, sheared, drenched, held in the yards overnight and then put onto good grass pastures with “reasonable” covers. The ewes were taken back to the original paddocks. As he had a couple of freshly dead lambs I headed out to do some post mortems and have a look. I also collected some faecal samples to look under the microscope for worm eggs. The lambs didn’t look too flash – scouring and a bit skinny. The pasture didn’t look too bad. After my investigation, we found worms were not actually the problem –the drench had been effective. The lambs were instead suffering from coccidiosis.
For those who wish to read further, the following is a link to the published paper: bit.ly/40Ak9jS
Coccidia are little single-celled parasites that live inside cells in the hind part of the gut. Normal healthy sheep and cattle carry small numbers of them. The animal’s immune system keeps them under control and they don’t do any
harm. If a lamb or calf is under stress, or is exposed to a lot of coccidia, the coccidia can get the upper hand. They multiply and multiply until there are too many of them for the cell to hold, then they break out taking a chunk of cell wall with them. This results in the clinical signs – watery diarrhoea with blood in it, straining, and weight loss. Because the body has to repair the damage, it does take longer for lambs to recover and regain weight than it does after a worm burden.
In this case, the stress of weaning, shearing, being kept in the yards overnight, and changing pasture was too much for these lambs. Another common presentation is dairy-beef calves, or lambs from sheep-dairy systems, after they are weaned off meal. Calf meal usually contains a drug that stops the coccidia from multiplying. Once they stop eating it there is opportunity for the coccidia to kick into gear.
There is a specific drug that can be used to kill the coccidia – as they are not worms the worm drenches will not kill them. Sometimes, spreading lambs out on good feed can be enough to stop deaths and get through the outbreak. If you have animals with coccidiosis have a chat with your vet to go through treatment options.
The next year, the farmer in this story changed his weaning process so that lambs were not off feed for so long and were weaned back onto their lambing pastures to reduce social stress. He didn’t have any more problems with coccidiosis after that. He was happy that he wasn’t suffering from drench resistance after all. Sara Sutherland is a veterinarian for Vet Services Wairarapa.
There’s only one thing that can boast the attributes listed in the title above – your working dog (or maybe a close second to your spouse!). Good working dogs can be hard to find, so looking after them is usually well worth the investment. At our rural Southland vet practice most of the dogs we see through our clinic are of the working variety, plus the odd tractor mate in the way of a Jack Russell. Huntaways are a vet’s dream; with the odd exception they are generally stoic, friendly, a bit goofy and easy to manage. The same, however, cannot be said for heading dogs, which are generally not to be trusted, although I still prefer a heading dog over a bichon frise or chihuahua!
I have looked through the most common presentations for working dogs coming into our clinic during the last 12 months. I thought there would be value in sharing this information and providing some tips to try to prevent your dog needing an unwanted trip to the local vets.
These are more common in heading dogs than huntaways and most commonly caused by barbed wire. They will result in your dog being out of action for a minimum of two weeks, but often longer depending on the degree of damage.
TOP TIP Remove all the barbed wire from around the yards and tops of gates.
More common in huntaways and typically presenting as a GDV (gastric dilatation-volvulus) or ‘twisted gut’. Other presentations can be foreign body blockages or perforations, often the result of bones.
TOP TIP There is a genetic component to GDVs so check your dog’s family history before purchasing a pup. Don’t ignore a dog barking at night that doesn’t normally bark – this can be the first sign of a GDV. Be careful feeding bones, especially vertebrae, and ideally avoid bones altogether
These are a risk with any breeding, whether planned or not. It is best to keep a close eye on your bitch as she goes into labour and call your vet if you have any concerns.
TOP TIP Get your bitch x-rayed in late pregnancy so you know how many pups there are meant to be – that way you know when she is finished.
Accidents happen, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Get your dog to the vet ASAP; broken bones and internal bleeding are common findings. As you might expect, higher speeds and heavier vehicles worsen the prognosis.
TOP TIP Some dogs are less wise around vehicles than others – keep these dogs tied up during higher-risk activities (i.e. near roads).
One of the most common reasons we see working dogs is lameness, and often this is the result of fractures or ruptured ligaments. Falling off the truck/motorbike or getting caught up when jumping the fence are frequently to blame. Cruciate ligament ruptures are a common injury, as are dislocated hips.
TOP TIP
Place an extra board between the top rail and second rail on gates in the yard. This closes the gap and avoids legs getting trapped.
Unwanted pregnancies can be a real nuisance and of course it’s usually at a time of year that’s busy on farm, and the father isn’t the dog of choice! No need to panic though; if you choose to terminate the pregnancy we recommend to wait until after the heat is finished.
TOP TIP Termination is expensive, so make sure you consider the more permanent option of spaying the bitch – this is similar in price but will ensure no further unwanted pregnancies.
Typically seen in huntaway bitches, and appearing like a ‘bearing’, this can be another complication of having a bitch on heat.
TOP TIP There is a genetic predisposition to these and they tend to recur with subsequent heats, so we recommend spaying once the heat is finished.
Nothing pleases your local vet more than the 5pm call on a Friday to see your dog that has been constipated for a week! Constipation is no laughing matter and if left too long it can result in euthanasia being the most appropriate option. It’s most common in male huntaways and often predisposed by a poor diet, arthritis and/or enlarged prostate.
TOP TIP Feeding a premium dog biscuit and castrating your dog can help prevent this from happening.
As with human breast cancer, these tumours are often malignant and can spread if left too long. Get any lumps checked by a vet sooner rather than later. The prognosis is better when they are removed early.
TOP TIP Once again, spaying your bitch at an early age can help prevent tumours from developing. This may not be an option if you are planning to breed, but it is worth considering.
This is another reproductive tract disease, typically seen several weeks after a heat in older, entire bitches. Clinical signs can include lethargy, eating less but drinking more, vomiting, and sometimes a vaginal discharge (but not always).
TOP TIP Probably less common than some of the other problems mentioned but is another good reason to spay any bitches you don’t want to breed from.
With a long list of things that can go wrong and the potential for an expensive bill, insurance is well worth exploring for your working dog. There are lots of options available so make sure you read the policy document and ensure that you are covered where it counts. Don’t skimp when it comes to your best mate – they remain the best employee you can get and deserve the best in return!
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Ihave always enjoyed seeing, working with and owning farm working dogs. There are endless platitudes about that relationship but it is unique. Those dogs very often end up with some pet features to the relationship, but the working dog has a much stronger one. Recently I had to put my old huntaway down. A dog I have often yelled at and been disgusted with at times, yet it still trusted me. Even as I was preparing to inject the fatal drug into a vein he looked at me waiting for the next move. I knew it, but he did not.
I have been surprised by the small hole it left in the daily routine even if just not having the meaningless chat about the weather first thing in the morning. None of the other dogs stay around long enough when let out to have that chat. Emotional attachment to livestock is not uncommon but for the working dog it is something special.
Emotion in farming is at a peak. I have never seen such despondency among farmers and some of these I really rate. The interest in looking at change is rampant, driven by the spreading concept that without doing something to improve the outcome, farm profit will be lower next year.
I have commented before that a big difference in my work overseas and here is that overseas the big opportunity has been to reduce the costs of production, hence the big move into utilising pastures more.
Here the focus has been on increasing production. For sheep and beef farmers in
New Zealand, a long history of minimising costs to allow ends to meet has given us a lean industry. Much higher product prices over recent times has taken that pressure off and allowed some of those costs to be justified. But generally any opportunity has been seen as being in production.
Now that focus has changed to look at costs. A relatively new work experience has been to spend a day looking purely at reducing costs with a few farming businesses. This always ends up looking at policy changes as well.
Do some policies cost more than others? Obviously cost has to be put against profit.
As I discussed a month or two back in reporting on one of my discussion group accounts analysis sessions, the highest EFS farms also had the highest gross farm income. That was for 2021/22. Can we assume that the same will apply this year? Already budgets are under pressure with reduced sheep meat prices and increased costs.
For those poor farmers in the lower north who were totally forgotten in the flood dramas of Auckland, there is no upside. They face huge costs to get their farms functional again. Their farms will be less productive for years to come due to the multiple slips taking out so much pasture. Reviewing where they are at and what can be done to lessen the impact is a good investment rather than just sitting and waiting. Such a dramatic impact has the power to drive big change.
What options are there for change? It seems there is more desire to change rather than options. An aging farming demographic that has no desire to retire typically looks at change to stave off retirement. Those always looking at how they can do better are being joined by others who sense that if they do not try to influence the outcome they will be worse off. So they look at options to do things differently.
A big reason to change has emerged on sheep farms for the past few years, is having no fully effective drench options left. That change is way beyond a discussion about what drench to use. Reduced access to farm labour is triggering the need to change.
Just looking at how to lift production in an existing system is still a valid quest, but more and more are seeing that is not enough. At a meeting of a management team an older hand was of the opinion that we have been here before and it is a matter of hanging in until it sorts itself out again. I am not sure this is a good response today.
VetTrevor Cook is missing his faithful, if exasperating, old Huntaway.
Tom Ward considers the pros and cons of all-grass wintering versus growing winter crops.
Winter forage cropping is very common in the South Island due the lower winter temperatures, but environmental regulations are putting pressure on this practice.
Winter cropping allows more livestock to be carried in summer, using more pasture. The dairy industry is a good example. In addition, wintering animals on crops allows more autumn-grown feed to be saved for spring use, optimising early season production. This is particularly important where summers can be dry, and is generally a more efficient use of feed.
Conversely, if forage cropping is not practised, winter stocking may need to be reduced; if not, summer performance will be compromised. A deficit can be reduced by applying urea on the shoulders of the season and grazing livestock off.
I have modelled an unirrigated foothills property, typical of the east coast of the South Island from North Otago to North Canterbury. It is potentially summer dry.
In Beef + Lamb New Zealand terms, this would be a class 6 with rainfall averaging 600-800mm but with significant variation around this figure. The difficulty with managing this class of farm is not the threat of summer dry, but rather, the variability in seasons. There are two budgets: one showing all-grass wintering (AGW), the other, winter forage cropping (WFC).
The AGW option carries 1500 crossbred ewes, 230 R1 bulls and in summer, 1500 lambs bought for finishing. The 400 replacement ewe lambs are grazed off from May to November. Balage of 487kg
drymatter (DM) is fed out from April to September, on average 0.5kg/head a day.
The WFC farm winters 2500 crossbred ewes, 280 R1 year bulls and in summer, 1000 lambs bought for finishing. There is 35ha of fodder beet producing on average 18t DM a hectare a year, and there is 103kg DM of balage fed out. Due to variable rainfall, the 18t DM beet yield is somewhat unreliable, so in this year, an additional 61t DM balage is retained for a drought year.
Although not cash, this balage is a part of the farm profit. The balage in both plans is cut at 2000kg DM/ha, i.e. 3000kg DM/ha pre-cut, 1000kg DM/ha post cut. In the AGW budget, a small amount (23t DM) of extra balage is retained for a drought.
Cropping facilitates pasture renewal, and one or two years of winter crop to smooth out uneven ground, weeds or low fertility can be very beneficial.
When irrigated, beet crops of nearly 30t DM/ ha are achieved, costing 10c/kg DM. This is clearly profitable, but even a 18t DM/ha crop has a profitable effect on the whole-farm budget. Even though it appears expensive on a per kilogram basis, it still produces a lot of feed off a small area. However, on small farms, beet can still cause problems in the spring with too little area left in pasture.
Winter crops need not always be the biggest yielding varieties. Beet is expensive to grow and dominates the paddock for 12 months. Kale, by comparison, can be sown later and is more flexible for livestock. Turnips/rape/Italian, still with the
ability to produce 7–8t DM/ha (unirrigated), can be sown in January after a summer fallow and grown at low cost. Of course, if you are born in West Otago, there is no option but swedes!
The AGW option may run a higher average pasture cover, but this occurs too late and is likely to be of poorer quality. Despite this high-peak pasture cover, it will return to about 1800kg DM/ha, which is necessary for stock to be wintered on grass. This farm still needs a lot of winter supplementation. If summer-safe (rain) or of easier contour, a farmer might consider buying more lambs, but this is a risky business on poor quality hill country pasture and unreliable rainfall.
The numbers in Table 1 show how much more quality feed is eaten with a farm fully stocked in summer as the result of a forage cropping programme. Despite best efforts to control the pasture with balage making, about 32% less ME is consumed in this case. There would be greater wastage and loss of profit if the surplus pasture was carried over in-situ (another $38,000). However, it should be remembered that on this farm, probably due to the high sheep ratio, pasture production could decline by 30% in a drought.
The comparative budgets in Table 2 illustrate how on this farm, in an average year, the two farm plans line up.
The all-grass wintering budget has no fodder beet costs, but has significant amounts spent on urea, hogget grazing, and balage making.
Understanding
AgResearch farm systems scientist Dr David Stevens said all-grass wintering systems have evolved as understanding of feed requirements and knowledge of animals’ different needs have been recognised.
Otago farm consultant Simon Glennie said farmers who were looking to go all-grass wintering needed a good understanding of feed planning. He said a lot of feed was required to be carried forward and this needed to be organised early, including lamb exit times, and aligning ewe condition post-weaning.
Stevens said the knowledge of today has come from understanding why past all-grass wintering failed.
AbacusBio founder Dr Peter Fennessy said that before all-grass wintering systems became popular in the late 1960s many farmers had a brassica-based system. Swedes were sown before Christmas, or turnips after Christmas and small bales of poor-quality meadow hay supplemented the crop.
Fennessy said break-feeding was notoriously back-
breaking. “It was awful shifting them in the mud,” he said. The fence could not be wound up; you had to somehow move it forward over and through the crop for the next break. “It was horrible,” he said.
Stevens said farmers during this time used natural patterns of growth over the year, average lambing was 95% and ewes provided about 6kg of wool. “Wool was worth a lot more than meat,” he said.
During the 1960s there was plenty of publicity about allgrass systems as production levels on farms increased and put more pressure on winter-feeding systems.
Stevens said a strong research division was discovering actual feed requirements of what animals needed to produce the one lamb and 6kg of wool. They identified the opportunity to limit feeding during winter and investigated how to maximise winter stocking rate through a then-new practice called autumn-saved pasture. By rationing feed at different times of year, farmers could do things such as flushing ewes to maximise ovulation rate, then lower feeding levels to conserve feed into winter,
why all-grass wintering failed in the late 1960s and 70s can help farmers succeed with an all-grass system now, Joanna Cuttance writes.
reducing the need for crops and hay.
“It was world-leading research at that time,” Stevens said. Different ryegrass cultivars were also being investigated at the time.
Armed with this scientific knowledge many farmers changed to all-grass wintering in the late 1960s.
“It worked for a little while, then a few flaws in the system showed through,” Stevens said.
The belief it did not matter if ewes lost a little condition over winter did not hold. When a ewe was undernourished, a break in the wool was created. To avoid this, farmers began pre-lamb shearing, as it made sense to shear at the time when the break was occurring.
With feed rationed behind a wire, pastures were cleared to look like bare dirt. After rain, puddles occurred, and the silt on top would go down and block the macropores in the soil, making it difficult for air to get into it. This slowed spring growth and created a lot of mud, which was why people now say we don’t get as much mud as we used to, Stevens said. This delayed spring caused by compacted soils resulted in hoggets getting smaller, he said.
Recognising the all-grass system failure, farmers moved to winter crops to freshen the soil and break it up. This also allowed for planting new grass cultivars that had come onto the market, Stevens said.
Glennie said farmers still referred to the all-grass systems as “skinny sheep syndrome”, as ewes lost body condition and were in peril over spring. He said farmers who recognised the lack of performance in ewes was associated with the inability to meet nutritional needs soon adapted their systems.
“It wasn’t long before the ridger was being towed out from the old shed and dusted off as the winter shortfall of feed was addressed,” he said.
In the 1980s the economy changed and farmers had to be really cost effective. With low wool prices, farmers looked to lambs. Stevens said science helped develop heavier carcase weights and higher lambing percentages. With two lambs, ewes needed to be looked after in the winter so the lambs survived. The feed market responded with a combination of crops and grasses.
Stevens said history showed there was a need for a precision feed budget, the old all-grass way is no longer. Now, sheep are fed to meet their nutritional requirements and the soil is looked after.
“We now understand feed systems from a different perspective,” he said.
AgKnowledge’s managing director Doug Edmeades said if farms had good Olsen P levels, P could be withheld for a year. However, rather than withholding fertiliser altogether, he suggested farmers target their most limiting nutrient.
Edmeades said P was expensive, but it did stay and would not be lost overnight. If the Olsen P levels were in the range 20-25, then science informs that the Olsen P will decline at about 1-2 units a year. This would have no observable effect on production in year one.
He said it would be a sensible strategy to withhold fertiliser for one year and redirect funds to other more urgent tasks, including economic survival or correcting other nutrient limitations, especially potassium, which is a mobile nutrient.
History from the 1980s and 90s showed withholding fertiliser resulted in a decline in animal and pasture production of about 5% a year. Edmeades said the farmers who were able to apply fertiliser managed best during this period.
He recommended consideration before applying lime. Though lime was cheaper, if it wasn’t needed then it was a waste. If the farm did need it, the return was about a 5% increase in pasture production. If the lime budget was put towards the most limiting nutrient, the return would be about 20–30%. It was about priority, he said.
Edmeades saw rising fertiliser costs as an opportunity to streamline fertiliser application and explore what nutrients to withhold or expand to get maximum returns.
“This is an opportunity to do soil tests and prioritise what is needed,” he said.
Farmers needed to identify the most limiting nutrient and go after that nutrient.
“Remember the plant can only grow at the rate determined by the most limiting nutrients.”
Edmeades gave an example of how a Southland farmer improved his soil fertility without increasing his fertiliser budget. The farmer had soil tests done, which found the Olsen P was fine, but it was potash deficient. The farmer redirected the fertiliser budget to the most lacking nutrient of potassium and the response was about 20%. The cost was unchanged but there was about a 20% increase in pasture production.
Do not assume, Edmeades warned. Get soil tested, along with a visual check, and if superphosphate levels were fine, focus on the most limiting nutrients.
“The idea is not to fiddle with the fine tuning of your fertiliser budget but to go after the big deficiencies.”
To rationalise the fertiliser policy, Edmeades recommended dividing the farm into blocks of different economic efficiency, land class or topography and developing fertiliser plans for each block.
“Give fertiliser priority to the best blocks.”
He recommended getting an independent soil tester. He said on many occasions soil tests showed good results but visually the paddocks looked like rubbish – there was a disconnect. If it looked poor, it showed the tests had not been taken correctly and needed to be taken again. Also, with poor test-taking it was easy for nutrient deficiencies to be overestimated. “That is the problem of only relying on soil tests,” he said. Visual assessment was important, otherwise it was easy to have inflated results if correct practice had not been followed.
It was not just soil, looking at the clover was important and a good indication of pasture quality. Edmeades said good pasture should have 30 or 40% clover, low or no clover showed pasture struggling or low nutrients.
Information gathered showed most sheep and beef farms were operating at nutrient levels below optimal levels, Edmeades said. Redirecting fertiliser dollars to K, S and Mo would get the biggest bang for fertiliser buck.
“Ensure your fertiliser dollars are well spent.”
He suggested rising fertiliser costs may not be a problem in the long term provided the ratio of fertiliser costs to revenue remained constant.
Farmers should redirect their fertiliser budget to get better pasture production, rather than withhold fertiliser to save costs.
Chris knows autumn is the time to get ready for regrassing.
This means spraying out and choosing grasses that will be the right fit for his paddocks and meet his feed demand.
Chris relies on his Technical Field Representative Mark to take the lead on recommending the farm’s regrassing and cropping programmes. With Mark on-farm twice a week during autumn monitoring for weeds, pests and diseases, that’s one less thing for Chris to worry about.
With over 100 Technical Field Representatives nationwide, our team are on-farm daily delivering tailored agronomic advice and solutions. Find your Mark this season.
Murray and Gaye Coates are learning how to make compost and are discovering the process is far more forgiving than they feared. Their key message to other farmers new to composting barns, is don’t panic when there are hiccups in the system.
The couple farm 805 crossbred cows in the Haupiri Valley at the base of the West Coast’s mountain backdrop where 3.2-metres of rain falls annually on their 320-hectare milking platform. In the past they had a 400-cow feedpad with the necessary consent, but they were not satisfied. They needed more space for their 805-cow herd and wet springs could result in significant pasture damage which was stressful.
Environmentally, the composting barns ticked the boxes by quitting winter crops and reducing soil damage, reducing potential phosphate loss from mud and less nitrogen leaching.
They saw how successful composting barns were working in Taranaki which also
had high rainfall and after a couple of years of talking with farmers, consultants and anyone with any knowledge on the barns, they took the plunge. They now have two composting ‘mootels’ that each cater for 400 cows.
Aztec Buildings built the barns along a design created by Headlands Consultancy specifically for the climate and needs of the Haupiri Valley farm. Each shed is 80m in length by 45m wide which includes two 5m-wide feed lanes inside, under cover. That gives each cow 6.5 square metres of space which works well, though the cows are getting bigger because they have better utilisation of feed.
The sheds were built in time for the cows to winter in them and they remained in them until they had calved. The final touches to the project have continued through to spring and tweaks are ongoing. It is all part of the continuing improvements on the farm to try and future-proof it, environmentally and economically.
Composting barns allowed Country-Wide columnist Gaye Coates and her husband Murray to quit winter crops and reduce soil damage, potential phosphate loss from mud and nitrogen leaching on their West Coast farm.
By Anne Hardie.ENVIRONMENT Composting barns
Taking a step back, Murray and Gaye bought half of his family’s farm at the end of the 1990s and ran sheep, beef and deer for years. Then, they joined the movement to dairying by converting the farm in 2008.
“Cows got expensive to buy, but by that stage we were at the point of no return,” Murray says. “The first year we started milking we had the clawback from Westland.”
They borrowed more money to clear more land and increased cow numbers to 590 on a 270ha milking platform. Today the farm has a total area of 420ha and uses 320ha as a milking platform, with the remainder in bush. The bulk of the farm is river silt and the high rainfall is delivered in often big events. This spring they had 130mm of rain one night, but the cows were in the shed on their wood chips which will slowly turn to compost, while the pasture and soils were protected.
“It’s the relief,” Murray says. “It’s hard to put a figure on that.”
Their barns are a steel and pole design because the wind can really rip down the valley from the nearby mountain pass. Between wind and high rainfall, they added a few extras to try and keep them intact and keep the rain out. The strengthened ventilation running the length of the roof ridges is open permanently but is built with a good overlap so rain cannot get inside. As Murray points out, rain can run uphill with wind behind it and the overlap needed to cater for that.
On a hot day, the ventilation is designed to create a draft to cool the barns, as do the dimensions. The barns’ height begins at 4.5m and climbs to 11.8m at their apex, with an 18-degree pitch roof.
Airflow is crucial for successful compost and likewise, keeping excess moisture out. Through winter, the barns did not have the gables attached at each end which let rain drive about 10m inside and wet compost. Murray says water “is the killer of compost” and soil probes showed some of the
woodchip was sitting about 20C in the wet areas and 40C in other areas.
“We were panicking because we thought it had to be 60 degrees,” Murray says.
“We learnt the biggest thing is don’t panic. Compost is more forgiving than people believe.”
Gaye says they overcame the wet problem by tilling, tilling and more tilling to keep the composting process working.
“I think you have to go into this with the realisation of learning through experimentation and perfection won’t always be attained first up,” she says.
All going well, they hope they will not have to replace the compost bedding for several years. One of the farmers they spoke to in Taranaki has not replaced their compost in seven years. Eventually, the Coates plan to spread the composted bedding over the farm.
Murray and Gaye are keen to point out that the options they have chosen are to suit their own farm and system and other
farmers may do their research and choose different options.
Their farm consultant at the time, George Reveley, challenged them every step of the way to think about how they could create a multi-purpose and flexible space for their farm and weather conditions. He stressed it needed to be safe, practical and pleasant for cows and people.
“He wanted us to think about how a shelter could work in with our existing farming system, rather than change our system to fit a barn,” Gaye says.
That meant thinking about how the space could and would be used at different times, like mating and calving. Also, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of various shelter options for seasonal and climatic variances.
“For us, composting barns seemed to be weighted more to the strengths and opportunities presented by our existing farming system within the context of our climate and environment.”
Work on their barns continued through to spring and they now have the gables in place and mesh on the sides to stop rain driving inside. The eight water troughs are inside the barns, so cows do not walk out
“Cows got expensive to buy, but by that stage we were at the point of no return. The first year we started milking we had the clawback from Westland.”
into rain for a drink and bring that moisture back on to the compost.
The feed lanes are inside which is more expensive, but again it means less water coming into the sheds and the dry feed is more palatable, resulting in less wastage. They polished the concrete after viewing a shed where the cows had ulcers on their tongues from rougher concrete and consequently were not eating their feed well.
The basis for the compost is $150,000 of woodchips that gobbles up dung, while ideally the heat of the compost evaporates the urine. Ninety percent of the 805-cow herd calved in the barns and the placentas just disappeared into the compost, even before it was tilled.
A Rata subsoiler has been converted to do that job. Wings have been added to the points to help turn the compost over. When the cows were housed full-time through winter, the compost was tilled every day, aerating and mixing the compost to a depth of about 500mm. Murray says the frame of the machine holds it back from tilling even deeper and it ends up levelling the surface. Further adaptions may be necessary to achieve a greater depth. When the cows are not in the shed, they till the compost twice a week.
As well as tilling, they use a crumbler behind a chisel plough to break up any clods in the compost. Initially they tried the chisel plough for tilling, but it did not get deep enough into the wood chips. The goal is to get everything on to one machine, but that is a work in progress.
In other adaptations, the tyre pusher that pushes feed up for the cows and keeps the area clean, now has two spinning tyres which works more effectively.
Among the unexpected costs, a telehandler is now used to load the BvL feed mixer wagon to make it safer lifting feed to the height of the wagon. They add round bales of balage or silage into the mixer, a bit of straw and can add palm kernel if needed.
Through winter they fed out the equivalent of 9kg/cow/day in the barns, though they fed them every second day, which meant 18kg per cow for two days.
“It’s a bit like Christmas and then you have the pickings on Boxing Day,” Murray says.
Another extra was an older second-hand tractor to replace the tractor now dedicated to the mixing wagon. They may need to build another shed at some stage to cover woodchip waiting to be used. Woodchip has to be dry from the beginning and the West Coast climate is a risk for a large pile of dry woodchip.
The extras have added costs to the barns, but the barns have already delivered improved returns. For the first time, Murray and Gaye milked cows to the last tanker pick up on June 13 because they had the cows in the barns and did not have to worry about pasture or winter crops. That gave them another 8000kg milksolids (MS) which was “pretty valuable” to them. Their goal is to milk through to mid-June each year which will lift their production beyond the 450kg MS per cow they have been achieving.
The barns cost in round figures $900,000 each. Adding on the concrete feed areas and more concrete leading into the barns, plus machinery and woodchip, the total spend was about $3250 per cow. Murray says they were fortunate to have a set price from the beginning as building materials and associated costs have risen exponentially over the building period.
They had to change banks to get the project over the line and found Westpac
very supportive of the project.
Financially, the barns stacked up against the status quo and the winter crops of swede were becoming a difficult option with environmental regulations.
The composting barns are a massive learning curve because it is not just about compost and feeding the cows differently –there is also the effect that has on pasture management. Murray and Gaye say it will probably take a few years to work out the right residuals when they dry the cows off.
By June 13 this year, they had more than 2000kg DM/ha of cover which was too high and Murray says quality was not great. To deal with that, they kept beef stock longer than they intended. The cows calved in the barns so that again altered pasture covers at the beginning of the season.
In future, he says a residual of 1800 to 1900 may be the target going into winter and it will take time and a variation of seasons to work out how to manage their pasture on the shoulders. That will affect other aspects such as calving too.
Next winter, they will buy two-year-old steers in winter for pasture management, run them behind the cows as a topping tool and sell them to the works before Christmas.
Some of the joys of planting trees is that they can look nice, provide shade, shelter, and a change of diet for livestock, plus pollen and honey for bees.
Some, like the coastal redwood, are good for erosion control, and if they fall over in a slip, can root along the trunk. Others, such as alders, can fix nitrogen, and then you have the pines, cypresses, eucalypts, oaks and elms that provide timber. Totara, some of the eucalypts, and the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) are good for fence posts.
All of them at the end of their lives can be used as firewood: kanuka, eucalypts, oaks and Robinia being among the best.
This part of the world, west of Hastings,
didn’t get electricity till 1950 so the cooking was done on wood stoves and the copper for washing was heated with wood. Virtually every farm had its firewood block of wattles and gums. The wattles, mostly Acacia dealbata, were easy to grow and even easier to split, but were relatively fast burning, and for the fireplace needed to be mixed in with a bit of slower burning gum.
Chainsaws were a rarity pre-1950 so it was a crosscut saw, wedges to split the logs reduced to a liftable weight to be sawn into firewood-sized blocks across a mobile circular saw bench. The saw was belt driven, using the skid mounted Wolseley engine from the woolshed. At one stage there were four houses on this farm and together they burnt 80 cords of firewood a year.
The wattle with its bright yellow flower heads is an attractive sight in early spring. In Britain, where it does not thrive like it does here, the flowers are sold as mimosa. It is a light wood, free of sap and resin and if the trees are close together has tall, branch-
Trees have numerous uses on farm, but Peter Arthur says we need to be wary about burning it as a substitute for fossil fuel.
free trunks. The seeds last for years in the ground and a bit of fire will cause them to germinate. With a gas-fired burner or a rag soaked in diesel mixed with old engine oil, you can burn the spots where you want a new tree, which will then grow with amazing speed.
In the 1990s Eucalyptus nitens was promoted as a fast-growing firewood tree which was said to coppice – re-shoot from the stump once cut down. New Zealand was getting seed from 23 different Australian areas, but only four of these sources, called provenances, proved to be reliable, coppicing trees.
I knew an orchid grower who installed an American wood-burning furnace in his greenhouse and had planted a small firewood lot of E. nitens and matsudana willows. The trees were eight years old and at that age the eucalypts were all pith and wind – far too young to burn. Nevertheless, he was using it. It took four barrow loads to get the green house up to heat, but only one barrow load of the thin- barked willow – it was virtually all wood with no soft pith and bark.
We all know trees absorb and sequester
CO2, but when burnt in the presence of oxygen they emit just as much CO2 as coal or oil per unit of heat. Just because wood is a renewable resource doesn’t make it any cleaner or greener than coal or oil when burnt.
There are various industries converting their coal or oil powered furnaces to wood burners, picking up carbon credits as they do so.
DRAX, England’s biggest coal-fired power station that provides 14% of their electricity, has converted its boilers to run on wood pellets. They need vast amounts of wood which they import from Scandinavia and British Columbia, Canada. They moved into British Colombia saying they would take all the slash from logging operations, but there is not the volume in a slash pile compared with taking the whole tree, so that is what they are doing. Chopping down living, CO2absorbing trees, making them into pellets and burning them, emitting CO2 in the
process, is not reducing emissions, which worldwide increased by 3% last year, despite the Covid shut down.
For making the transition to wood furnaces the company collects a £2 million (NZ$3.82m) subsidy every day, yes every day, still emitting CO2 while devastating living, carbon-absorbing forests where the trees are anywhere between 80 and 120 years old.
Hydro, wind, solar, wave and tidal power are renewable resources. Wind turbines and solar panels only have a life of about 30 years and tidal power tends to mince up the fish. Nuclear power seems to be the answer and the French are busily building more plants, storing the waste in deep underground bunkers. They claim the waste will have lost half its sting after 300 years.
In the winter I have the pleasure of sitting in front of a fire, burning trees I planted 50 years ago.
“Just because wood is a renewable resource doesn’t make it any cleaner or greener than coal or oil when burnt.”Six cubic metres of wet pine drying in the sun before being put in the woodshed.
On a warm, overcast afternoon, 17 two- and three-year-old station-bred horses stood to attention.
It is a scene which has graced the postand-rail cattle yards since 1966. Prior to that, the horses were driven to the nearby service town of Culverden, put on a train and sold in the North Canterbury town of Rangiora.
Brothers Ben and Hugh Dampier-Crossley, aged 41 and 43 respectively, have been involved in the January muster and sale
since they were “knee high to grasshoppers”. Fourth generation, they are now at the helm of the biennial pilgrimage for the family-owned wild horses, a highlight for the family and the wider mustering crew. St James Station is tucked out the back of Hanmer Springs in the Hurunui District. The 80,000-hectare station is owned by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and used as a massive recreation park by trampers and mountain bikers.
Bordering Molesworth Station, St James Station crosses three mountain ranges and contains the headwaters of the Waiau and Clarence rivers. The huge river valleys where the horses generally run are flanked by beech trees and mountain ranges, backing onto the snow-clad Southern Alps. The land boasts red, mountain and black beech forests, manuka and kanuka – country Ben describes as “pretty spectacular, reasonably hard to explain, but it’s pretty cool”.
In 1927 the brothers’ great grandfather James Stevenson bought the hardy dry-stock farm as well as the horses for £8/7s. Both farm and horses were handed down to their grandfather Jim who ran the farm until he was in his nineties. Ben and Hugh’s mum Jill and aunt Judy then ran 1000 half-breds and some cattle themselves until the farm was sold to DOC in 2009.
Not wanting to lose the history or significance of the St James horses, there has been an agreement between DOC and Jill Dampier-Crossley for the family to own and manage them.
Old records show there used to be about 300 horses, although numbers are now kept to 80. At the start of this year’s sale week, the team of 11 musterers on horseback headed out to the Ada Valley to bring in the young horses.
Once every two years the sale yards at St James Station in North Canterbury’s high country mark a significant milestone for a great legacy of wild horses. By Annabelle Latz.Left: A selection of sale horses at St James Station. Photo supplied.
In total, 22 people were on the muster, including Ben and Hugh’s wives and children, and their parents.
“The kids are starting to do a bit more, they like helping in the yards with the quieter ones,” Ben says.
This year a helicopter was deployed to get a breakaway mob of the wider herd of 19 horses into the holding paddock at Mailings Pass, the half-way point. With the handful of breakaways eventually safely in the yards at the Ada, some swift horsemanship saw halters and ropes on them, to be led the 50km trek to the sale yards.
Ben says even with the mishaps created when dealing with a bunch of wild horses, this week is one he looks forward to each year.
“It can be a wee bit stressful at times, but you can’t do much about it – they are wild horses and they will do what they’re going to do.”
Each muster varies slightly in the route the horses take.
“It’s a bit like leading a mob of young deer out and saying, ‘see you in Hanmer Springs’.”
As yearlings, they are mustered in, lightly handled, branded with the famous F on their left shoulder (the origin of the F is not 100% known), and the year of birth with
their own number on the right shoulder, and sent back into the hills again for another year or two.
Despite the vastness of the station, there is a level of order around where the horses live. There are two stallions running at any one time with the 37 breeding mares; one sent up the Henry Valley with a bigger herd of mares, the other with a smaller herd of mares to live around the paddocks closer to the homestead.
They swap stallions about every couple of years, maintaining the classic Clydesdale crossed with the thoroughbred is a large factor when it comes to breeding the surefooted St James horse known for its good nature.
“People enjoy the versatility, as they make good show jumpers, musterers, and some even go well in the dressage arena,” Ben says.
With 600-700 people attending sale day, Hugh says they were happy with the numbers, despite being slightly down from last year because of the colder weather. For a lot of people, sale day is a chance to get out in the high country and have a picnic.
He notes the biggest thing that has changed over recent years is the temperament of the horses.
Ben says St James’ horses had a reputation for being tough. They worked on making
them more user friendly.
“With the limited handling, the horses are now a lot easier for people to get started once they get them home after the sale.”
This year’s top bidding price was $7000, the average price was $4400, with interest coming from 50 registered on-site buyers and 15 online buyers.
The newest stallion standing is Gisborne station-bred with some warmblood – its progeny foals and yearlings.
Ben says this works well, although breeding “straight forward horses” will remain the priority.
Seeing the horses coming through from foals to sale time is rewarding.
He says they change so much from foals.
“You see them as yearlings and think they look terrible and scruffy with shaggy coats, then you see them this time of year with a nice shiny coat and in great nick.”
Local vet Andrew Bayley joined the muster and worked on sale day, each horse receiving a vet clearance for general health.
Ben and Hugh are confident numbers will climb from 19 to 30 again given the good numbers of foals and yearlings grazing in the Ada Valley for another couple of years.
If you were in a cafe and heard a song being played, I assumed people would know to use Soundhound or Shazam to identify the song. Then I was with a friend who was frantically writing down the lyrics to google them so she could find the song, and I realised it wasn’t obvious to everyone.
Some of the handy smartphone functions can be done by other devices, but given most people have their phones with them all the time, it can be handier to use an app. For example, I play the ukulele and guitar and have tuners for both, but I also have apps for both that come in handy surprisingly often.
Even though I often have my wallet with me, my phone is usually handier so I use the Wallet app on PayWave to buy things.
Apps can also help with laziness. If I’m comfortable on my sofa at night, am I going to get up to find the remote to turn the heat pump on or off? No, I’m going to pick up my phone and use the app I set up that works with the wee receiver I put on my heat pump. It is also a great way to pre-heat a room.
What colour is that?
There are handy apps for when you are doing some home renovations and, like me, aren’t the best when it comes to colour theory.
They identify colours and let you see them on your walls (e.g. Dulux Colour). You can snap a colour you like and find out its name.
Where are the biscuits?
If you are heading into a large store it pays to check if they have an app that lets you find which items are in which aisle (e.g. Bunnings, Countdown).
Am I alive?
There are also things that you might be surprised an app can do. For example, you can download apps that allow you to measure your heart rate – your finger goes over the camera and the app uses your flash to see how fast your heart is pumping.
Find me those ancient coins
There is even an app that lets you detect metal (although more for entertainment value – the results are not overly impressive). They work because phones need a magnetometer for their compasses.
Hide that photo of my double chins
Ever wanted to keep a photo but not have it display in your camera roll? Perhaps you have photographed the passcode on the back of your modem for easy sharing when family comes to stay. You don’t want to see the photo every time you scroll through your photos, but you do want it handy. You can use the hide function (iPhone) or archive function (Android). This takes the photo out of the main camera roll and puts it in the hidden/archived folder.
What does that small print say?
If you don’t have great eyesight and are out and about without your glasses, iPhones and Android phones both have magnifying options. iPhones come with the “magnifying glass” app that works remarkably well. With Android phones you can use the camera app to zoom in.
Smartphones are brilliant for radio listening. There is a huge range of apps that let you tap into specific networks (e.g. BBC Sounds, NPR One, RNZ), or a wide range of choices (iHeart Radio, Simply Radio, Radio App, etc).
Kirstin Mills is surprised to find many people don’t realise what they can do with smartphone apps.
My teenage sons are consuming Nutri-Grain by the bucket load and I hate it. I know that growing lads take some feeding, but I wish they would choose something more wholesome. Will they eat avocado on toast? Absolutely not. How about eggs seven different ways? Nutri-Grain tastes like snot. I’ve tried to stage an intervention, but my other half points to the four out of five health stars on that blasted brown box and says we should be glad they aren't addicted to harder stuff like Coco Pops. But I say that if a bowl of number-eight shaped candy can earn four stars then there is something wrong with the health stars, right?
Please weigh in on this touchy topic.
Kellogg’s Conspiracy
Dear KC,
I commiserate with you. Since not only are the little brats rebelling against good solid parental advice, they are eating through your back pocket. At $15/kg, Nutri-Grain is at price parity with the most expensive free-range eggs on the supermarkets' barely stocked shelves, and the in-season avocados are half the price again. Plus they could not eat nearly as much of them. Their bums would not allow them to eat eggs or avos “by the bucket load”.
Of course the diarrhoea isn’t the only difference. On a weight for weight basis the nutri-bricks contain 12 times the protein of an avocado, three times the amount of
sodium of an egg, and 80 times the amount of sugar (but 1/6th of the saturated fat) of either of its oval shaped rivals. It’s a nightmare trying to compare foods, which is why the Australian government took it upon itself to devise the voluntary Health Star Rating.
And just like we see with other forms of accounting, ahem, carbon footprints, the result is a murky, meaningless mess. Around the world there are numerous attempts to rate food on its “healthiness” and I wish I could tell you that Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain is scamming every one of them. Alas, I cannot because what we call Nutri-Grain only exists in the Antipodes. Outside Australia and New Zealand, Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain is a jam-filled breakfast bar. So not only did the Aussies foist a questionable health star system on us, they are making us the wrong Nutri-Grain.
To be fair to Nutri-Grain, it is clear that Kellogg’s have changed their recipe to boost their star rating. Their original recipe would’ve scored two stars, but they have significantly cut the amount of sugar (still high) and sodium, while doubling the fibre.
The fact that pubescent boys around the country didn’t notice is a testament to food science. Kellogg’s boffins probably don’t shoot for the full five stars because then they would cut their sodium in half again and find a way to get by with a quarter of the sugar. At that point the kids would basically be chewing through flour and vitamin supplements.
Here is how Nutri-Grain beats the system. The health star rating calculator (available freely on the internet) issues penalty points based on overall energy content (+4 for Nutri-Grain), sugar content (+5), sodium content (+3) and saturated fat content (no penalties here because Nutri-Grain has negligible fat). And then there are negative points assigned for favourable things such as high protein content (-10 for NutriGrain), fruit/vegetable/nut/legume content (0) and fibre content (-5). So Nutri-Grain has 12 penalty points and 15 negative penalty points for a total score of -3 which lines up with four stars on the table. I bet if you asked 10 people, you could have come up with 10 more intuitive scoring systems.
I say we put 12 skulls and 15 hearts on the box.
If a breakfast cereal that is 24% sugar can earn four stars, then I agree with you that, yes, the system is flawed. But I doubt your family cares, so let's calculate the health stars for the avos and eggs. Being fresh produce, avocados are automatically a five-star item. But even if they weren’t, they would earn four-and-a-half stars on their nutritional composition (5 skulls and 14 hearts). Eggs are not supposed to have a health star, because there is little nutritional difference between brands and you aren’t supposed to compare health stars across different categories of products (even though that is exactly what consumers do). But if we force them into the calculator they earn four stars (5 skulls and 7 hearts). So overall, even with a shonky system, the whole foods give you more stars (and fewer skulls) for your buck.
Love,
Aunty ThistledownCali Thistledown lives on a farm where all the gates are tied together with baling twine and broken dreams. While she rarely knows what day it is, she has a rolodex of experts to call on to get the info you need. She’s Kiwi agriculture’s agony aunt. Contact our editor if you have a question for her terry.brosnahan@nzfarmlife.co.nz
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