7 minute read
CO Diary: Wintering practices improve
BUSINESS CO DIARY
Wintering changes
Words by: Guy Michaels
In the past few years, it’s felt like we’ve had a lot of changes coming our way onfarm. This has included adapting farm practices and being more environmentally friendly.
I have seen farmers making some great changes recently to protect our environment, look after our animals and continue to operate a profitable and successful business. Guy Michaels, DairyNZ senior These incredible changes onfarm need to be consulting officer celebrated as something we are all proud of. for South Otago.
During the recent DairyNZ animal care consults, some of the wintering practices being implemented to ensure stock welfare made me very proud of the work done throughout our sector. We found 88 percent of farmers have already adopted at least six of the eight good wintering practices onfarm, while one third of these have adopted at least one new practice in the past two years. These are great improvements as we all strive to continue doing our best for our animals and the environment.
There has been a noticeable rise in staff training on wintering practices. Creating a fit-for-purpose plan for staff and implementing it onfarm helps clarify roles during winter and ensure everyone knows what is expected. Teams that completed a formal adverse weather plan have found they were able to take action quickly, when needed.
Providing our cows with somewhere comfortable to lie and rest is another good wintering practice. I’ve been shown many clever options for managing the wet, including utilising the area behind a back fence, shifting the crop fence more often to provide fresh ground, saving breaks near hedges, or removing animals to a specific location such as a woodchip pad.
Despite great improvements, some actions like formalising adverse wintering plans are lagging, with just under 60 percent of farmers having adopted these.
Having ideas and plans written down means others can access them. Take the first step by sitting down with your team to discuss this winter and get ideas down on paper.
I’ve also talked to a lot of farmers who go through the cycle of intending to do something, but never quite get around to it. Not everything has to be a one man job, especially when we are part of a team. It is okay, and actually important, to delegate and ask for help.
So, if you’re finding it hard to sit down and formalise your adverse wintering plan, consider whether someone else in your team can help.
You can also call on organisations like DairyNZ to provide some advice to get you started. We have new cultivation and grazing plans along with our break fed wintering resource. These are available at dairynz.co.nz/wintering.
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Fertco will keep you compliant so you can get on with farming
New freshwater regulations unveiled by the government recently will require farmers to search for efficiency of nitrogen fertiliser. Waikato Regional Council rules around nitrogen use will be upon us from 1st of June this year. Restrictions will mean the maximum amount on N applied in anyone dressing will be 30kgs/ha or less. Another new limit, applicable to the Waikato and Canterbury regions will be 190kgs nitrogen per ha per year as an average over the whole farm. More on cropping areas will be balanced by less on pasture. Fonterra, as part of their incentive bonus scheme, is advocating a target not exceeding 138kgs N/yr. There will be different interpretations of this around other Regional Councils in the country, but the theme will be the same, less nitrogen fertiliser use.
There will be other restrictions to work through as well and while some of these are yet to be finalised the direction is clear. Less nutrient loss to the environment is the goal.
What does that mean and how do farmers deal with it while continuing to maximise or at least maintain productivity? Firstly, you need to be compliant to farm and to do that you need the correct tools.
To be compliant will mean knowing what the rules are and being able to quickly and accurately supply the information required to the governing bodies in the format required. Fertco has in house capability to meet these requirements and has also teamed up with external providers to ensure we can handle the volume of reports and nutrient management plans that will be required. If you are dealing with, or want to deal with
Fertco, don’t worry about compliance, we have you covered. Another tool to maintain productivity and comply is managing the form nutrients are applied in. For over 20 years Fertco has been advocating the use of “less leaky” phosphate and nitrogen products in the form of our Dicalcic range and lately NSmart, more about that later.
The third tool is to determine which nutrients are most appropriate to be applying for maximum clover productivity. Fertco have developed the CloverZone® programme which incorporates soil and herbage testing (clover only) with the Visual Soil Assessment (VSA) to determine the most limiting factors for clover growth, be they physical, chemical or biological which then forms the basis for an appropriate fertiliser recommendation.
Ensuring your clovers are fixing as much atmospheric N is the first step in reducing dependence on synthetic N and ultimately improve pasture quality and performance.
In this vein, Fertco’s product NSmart has the potential to halve the total amount of nitrogen used on farms due to vastly higher level of N efficiency. Over historic options this is achieved by an almost complete reduction in losses to the environment.
Maximising the last of the autumn pasture growth is vital for feeding cows over winter and using a nitrogen fertiliser is valuable tool to do so. But as the weather is volatile at this time of year, urea is a hit or miss product as nitrogen can easily be lost to the environment through leaching (most likely) or volatilisation (less likely). Taking the risk of nitrogen loss out of the equation is now possible with coating technology applied to fertiliser. Fertco’s NSmart is a polymer-coated nitrogen; the polymer is made from vegetable oil so leaves nothing negative in the environment once the N is exhausted. In moist conditions it takes a couple of weeks for the hard granules to imbibe water, swell to roughly twice the original volume and start leaking out N by osmosis. This process continues for about 90 days unless there is a dry spell and the granules dry out, shrink and stop releasing N. Once it rains again the release process continues.
The nitrogen use efficiency (NUE, kg DM/kg fertiliser N applied) of NSmart has been shown to be significantly greater than that for urea. The 90-day release pattern means farmers can apply one dressing of nitrogen fertiliser at the tail end of autumn, reducing application cost and time. And here’s the real kicker, the risk of failure from a nitrogen application through leaching is mitigated, a big bonus for the wallet and the environment.
It has always been a good option to apply some nitrogen late autumn/ early winter to increase cover of higher protein and thus higher quality pasture going into the winter. But results vary depending on rainfall and the loss of nitrogen. Now thanks to technology there is an option to take advantage of this opportunity without the risk of N loss by using Fertco’s NSmart.
On its own or combined with other required nutrients such as sulphur, NSmart is easy to apply with traditional spreading equipment and mixes with just about anything without risk of chemical reaction; so no gooey mess should it have to sit overnight in the spreader. The other practical tip that Fertco can offer is to make contact with us, we have a team of fertiliser consultants that are experienced, knowledgeable and salaried technical sales people.
