Farm destock a dry-season arrangement

• Published date: 10 April 2024
• Publication title: Central Rural Life

Co-owner David Harper showed about 70 farmers the state of winter feed crops and paddocks which at first glance had a green tinge, yet not a single animal could be seen

The farmers were attending Beef + Lamb NZ’s (B+LNZ) Farming for Profit: When Will it Rain field day at Windwhistle’s Tui Estate

Mr Harper said looks could be deceiving and the dry season had been stressful for the team.

‘‘I’ve been farming here at the gorge for well over 20 years and this is the first time we’ve had to destock. While it might look green as you go up and down here, and remember we are in a goldfish bowl here, it’s relative. Our stocking rate is high and when it hits us, it hits us hard and costs us.’’

Just over 700ha includes 100ha owned by the business at the bottom end of the Zig Zag Road. The rest is four lease blocks including 60ha at Tui Creek on the boundary of Terrace Downs resort with land extending to the gorge.

Braided Waters is owned in partnership with David and Millie Harper and the Bogoievski family and managed by Angus and Nicole Lang.

In a typical season dairy grazing is a major income earner for the partnership and this year about 580 1-year-olds and a similar number of 2-year-old cattle were due to leave in May. About 130 heifers either bred or bought in the autumn are put to calf and once they are reared the heifers go to the works before February.

Just over 1200 ewes are run on the blocks with about 4000 lambs finished on chicory through the Lumina Lamb programme. About 600 deer were finished this year and other animals were also traded.

Mr Lang said they started to get reasonably dry in early January and had a lot of hay shut up at that stage.

‘‘We went away on holiday and came back and things weren’t looking quite as good.’’

Stock were shifted to where there was a hay stack to get them through the next two weeks, but the rain never arrived.

‘‘We need to be growing 50kg a day and I would say we were probably growing around 20kg then. I wasn’t really monitoring paddocks that closely at that stage . Then it got to early February and I said to David ‘I can’t really see a way out of this’.’’

Mr Harper said he initially pushed back and put pressure on to make sure they made the right decision.

Then they made the call to bring in MacFarlane Rural Business farm management consultant Mark Everest and it was good to share the load, he said.

‘‘The stress was on everyone on the chain, not just one person and if you share it that way it’s a lot easier to manage...