SPECIAL REPORT
RYEGRASS
Treating the pasture
right at Canvastown
Six-year-old Isabella tempts a cow closer.
Words by: Anne Hardie
M
ichael Shearer has always been a pasture fanatic, keen to try the latest generation of grasses because theoretically they should be genetically superior to what he has been growing. He and his wife Cheryl are in an equity partnership with his parents on the 62-hectare dairy farm near Canvastown in Marlborough where they milk about 175 cows once-a-day. Michael was part of Agriseed’s Grass to Gold programme several years ago when he was a sharemilker wanting to learn more about
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pasture management and he continues to trial new varieties to find out what suits his farming system best. Since they moved on to the farm they have been annually regrassing between 10% and 25% of the pasture, initially with the tetraploid hybrid ryegrass, Shogun, to get things going and now mixes more targeted to suit their needs. In autumn he direct-drilled a mix of the diploid perennial ryegrass, Maxsyn, with the tetraploid perennial, Base, to combine the palatability of the tetraploid with the tougher-growing characteristics of the diploid. He bought them separately and mixed
them himself at a rate of 15kg/ha of the diploid and 10kg/ha of the tetraploid with 4kg/ha of white clover. He would like to add red clover as well, but it doesn’t suit their style of grazing on the dairy platform so it only gets added on silage paddocks on the support block. Maxsyn’s strength is its summer growth due to strong tillering through the season that helps it persist. That suits the Canvastown farm that has K-line irrigation on the flats at the bottom of the farm but then rises up rolling hills to steeper paddocks edging the forestry higher up. Though the farm gets an annual rainfall of two metres or more, it can also get prolonged summer dry periods. He is a big fan of Base which he considers the best-growing tetraploid as it has the highest tiller density, making it slightly tougher for a tetraploid. Despite that, after three seasons on the Canvastown farm he is beginning to question whether tetraploids suit his style of farming. He doesn’t top pasture and instead takes the residuals down to between 1400 and 1600kg drymatter (DM)/ ha. “Sometimes the residuals get a bit low for the tetraploids and at wetter times of the year it gets a bit trampled and doesn’t handle that so well – just less plants per square metre.” It’s a matter of finding out what grasses best suit their farm and farming style, he says. Hence he is still trialling the latest tetraploids to see if there is one that works well in their system. In another paddock he has sown a similar mix this spring
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | November 2021
