A Dream Shared

If you get the Country-wide magazine in the mail, you may have already spotted us on pages 34-38.  If not I have copies of the article down below and in due course you may find it at http://www.country-wide.co.nz/.  In the meantime if you want a sneak preview ...

Last of the shearing



Fridolin crutching away

Since getting back from our Christmas break of two days, it was back into the final of the crutching and preparing for shearing.

Last of the lambs to be crutched



Mal and Fridolin getting through the crutching

The lambs at the end

 Today, the 29th December, it was another early start with the shearers arriving, hoping to get the shearing done and/or the sheep in the shed dry before this predicted wet weather arrives.  First up this morning were the wet hoggets (n=78).

Wet hoggets with their full wool emptying out in the yards

Whilst some had lambed but not reared a lamb, the majority of the hoggets came out of their full wool fleece in good condition.  A hint of fly is sneaking into the flock, and a few of these girls, along with the odd lamb, are now being struck.  The warm, wet, humid weather is ideal conditions for fly.  As all these girls were scanned in lamb, they were identified after shearing with a small age mark near the station mark for future reference.

Then it was onto the black face lambs left (n=296). 

Lambs waiting in the catching pen





Shearers and woolhandlers working at it




Today's shearers



 

Lambs without their coats

This afternoon it was onto the white face lambs.  This took the shearers till the end of the day (sorry don't have the tally book).  Hopefully by lunchtime tomorrow all the shearing will be done.  It has been quite patchy in getting it all complete and seems more day than usual.

Hopefully the wool will be picked up sooner rather than later and a cheque in the bank!

Encouraged that shearers and woolhandlers receive training for several reasons:

1. shearers learn an good efficient technique which helps them achieve their goal (numbers shorn) and remain in reasonable physical condition.
2. shearers don't miss treat the animals or make unneccessary cuts which can be distressing for all.
3. shearers reduce the amount of second cuts which decreases the value in wool
4. woolhandler is confident in moving the wool around the shed without disrupting the shearer
5. that the woolhandler is quick and efficient in separating the wool, at least seconds and main line, and be observant in preparing the main line that it is of similar length and colour (all else is removed).  This enables the farmer to maximise their income from the wool.
6. Presser to be confident in blending wool (especially second shear and lambs) before it enters the press and undertakes a QA job of removing any missed bits.
7. Press capable of pressing a bale of wool and recording it correctly
8. Presser aware of shearers and keeps the pens full of sheep.

To find out more about training see http://www.tectra.co.nz/





Wishing you all the very best for the festive season and 2012

To all readers ... we hope that you have had an enjoyable Christmas with family and friends, and wishing you all the best for 2012.

It has been a busy time on the farm with very little rest, but we did manage to spend 2 days with family over Christmas and did no work!

Fridolin took the week off, cycling to Raglan in the pouring rain on Sunday, and spending 4 nights there experiencing different parts of Raglan (http://www.raglan.net.nz/).  He returned at the end of shearing, and was bundled off to the local cafe for a social evening.

Our pre-Christmas run, saw us send squeezing in a days shearing, with all our dry hoggets completed.  To do this, Mal was part-time on stand 3, and I was woolhandler/presser/cook, with two other shearers and 1 woolhandler.  After lunch we were joined by 3 french and 1 german traveller, with two of them sharing stand 3.  One had reasonable skills, with the other not shearing the Bowen technique and struggled a bit more.

Friday we sent off 287 lambs to Te Kuiti Meats.  Their weights weren't as high as would have liked, averaging 16.5 kg CW.

Saturday, was spent frantically getting everything organised such as stock, food etc before heading away for Christmas.  So it was nice to finally put our feet up Christmas eve.  Below are a selection of photos from Christmas Day.

Boyz at the BBQ

Christmas morn - kids, tree and presents

Opening present time!



Christmas brunch!

See next blog for this weeks activities ...

7 sleeps to go

A bit of a mixed bag week, getting all those odd jobs done rushed through before Xmas.  Only 7 sleeps to go.  Last weekend one of the main tasks was to go in search of a tree and decorate it.  This provided a great opportunity for family time as Mal and the girls headed out in search of the elusive tree.  We were doing the Council a favour by pruning roadside wildlings.

Not sure why comes up on side...tilt your computer instead!

Sarah having a go at sawing!

Once at home then it was time to decorate ... this is the kids job.


Sarah, Alice and Rachael decorating

 

The final tree ... Alice has even resisted the presents



Tuesday, we all had a day off farm.  I went to work, Mal did jobs and Fridolin went to DairyNZ for the day (http://www.dairynz.co.nz/).  Many thanks to Dee and the team who showed him around Scott and Lye Farm, the 2 research farms just outside of Hamilton.  Check out their website for heaps of dairy information.

Other jobs done for the week include:

• drenched all saleable lambs
• weaner dairy heifers got their lepto vaccination
• all the big bulls got weighed, LWG 1.2 - 1.8 kg/hd/day mob average.  A little disappointed so we have opened up area for rotation, but sped shifts up to daily.
• weaned and weighed hoggets.  We got 94% weaning % to hoggets mated.  The average liveweight of hoggets was 60.5 kg and lambs 27.5 kg, so overall we were pretty happy with this.  Note the number of hoggets to the ram is fairly small.  They have now all been crutched and await shearing next week.
• did a day of wet day jobs, cleaning and cateloging agrichemicals
• stripping a fenceline

End of last week we had a visit from Catherine who won the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society Award as par tof the Nuffield Scholar Programme (http://www.nuffieldscholar.org/scholarships/Scholars.php). 

The precise of Catherine, who is from Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire is as follows:
"Maximising returns through reducing methan emissions - an opportunity for the UK sheep sector"
Cathering farms in partnership with her parents on a 350-acre sheep farm in Carmarthenshire.  She also works as an independent sheep consultant, covering all areas of sheep production.  Catherine is particularly interested in the opportunities for the sheep industry to reduce methane emissions from lamb production without reducing productivity.  Targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been set on a government level and all sectors of agriculture face the challenge of reducing emissions.  For the ruminant sector, reducing methane emissions is a key challenge since this greenhouse gas is a natural byproduct of rumen digestion.  Catherine aims to study how other countries and other livestock sectors are responding to the need to reduce enteric methane emissions without reducing animal numbers or farm productivity.
catherine@knconsulting.co.uk

With the limited time we talked about all things sheep farming here in NZ and in Wales.  Her stop was fairly short, but hopefully January/February we can have another catch up.  To check out things about Nuffield see their website http://www.nuffield.org.nz/. 

Finally to the weather ... its a wet Sunday, but that hasn't stopped us doing a bit of sheep work.  So far for December we have at 93 mls, with about another 5 mls in the guage (as I glance out the office window).  The average for December for us, is 142 mls.  The last 61 mls was since Sunday, with fine weather planned for the rest of the week.  Fingers crossed so can finish shearing!
 

Doing some different things

On Monday, I was heading south for some work, so I took Fridolin for a ride and dropped him off in Otorohanga for the day.  Here he spend most of his time at the Kiwi House, which is a great place to go to see kiwi up close and a huge range of other birds.

Tuesday we had our discussion group meeting on a neighbouring property, and an afternoon session followed by Xmas drinks and pot luck dinner. 

Wednesday Fridolin and I headed to town, for work and Alice's swimming lessons.  We stayed the night at my parents place and checked out the horses.

Ponty

The inquisitive foal

I then had work meeting in Rotorua, so Fridolin tagged along for the day and did some touristy stuff before joining us for the trip home.

Today we have been drenching and weighing out another pick of lambs to go in 10 days.  With another mob todo, we are at 225, so things are looking good.  We then crutched the dirties before putting them away.

The other kids are home for the weekend this weekend, and tonight we are also hosting a UK Nuffield Scholar. 

There is still plenty to do, and whilst a relaxing weekend would be nice, we have plans for more work - mainly to complete the lamb draft and drenching.

We are all tired ...

It has been a busy week down on the farm.  All of the maternal ewes and lambs have been weaned, all the dirty ones crutched, weighed all the lambs, and have shorn all the ewes and ewe lamb replacements.



Fridolin trying his hand at crutching



First day of shearing, one of the shearers hurt his hand about 1/2 hour into the run, so we were down to 2 shearers until about midway of 2nd run, until a relief shearer arrived. 



Shearing snaps



Tally for first day was 206 ewes and 446 replacements.

Tally for second day was 873 ewes, 3 lambs and 18 rams.



presser putting the wool in the press

We sorted through all our ewes and are putting 189 light ewes with our hoggets, and 130 ewes have gone to the terminal mob, with 8 culls.  The average weight of ewes were 58 kg and 2.94 CS. Target is to maintain ewes at this at minimum, with a target of raising at least 0.5 of a CS before tupping in March.

Weaning, the ram lambs averaged 31.15 kg and the ewe lambs 27.93 kg, giving an overall average of 29.56 kg.  For our maternal mob, this is up on previous years. As are the ewe weights and condition. 

Also this week, we trucked out 101 of our maternal male lambs, averaged 17.4 kg CW and 102 of our cull terminal ewes, all to Te Kuiti Meats.

Cull Ewes waiting in anticipation

2nd draft of lambs awaiting the truck

Waiting to get loaded



The truck that came to take them away



The much needed rain has arrived today, as we put away stock in their paddocks, and shift the cattle, before having a rest of what is left of a Sunday!

Weaning and shearing

We started weaning this week.  Due to having two blocks, we have to bring one mob of ewes and lambs up the road.  Luckily things went mostly to plan (about 40 animals didn't make the muster but we will pick them up in following musters).

Coming down the hill about to go on road

Now the lambs are older, they are getting alot easier to move.  Once they got on the road though, they were fairly slow and drawn out.  A few vehicles interupted the flow of things, but generally everything went well.

Heading out on the road

Starting the climb up the hill

Once at home, we let them settle before we start drafting.  Things were a bit slower today as we also clean/dirty them as we drafted.  That means any ewes or lambs with dirty bottoms got drafted to the side, along with any lambs we had marked at weighing about 16 days ago.  Mal then crutched all the dirty ewes and lambs and those that are going to go to the works. 

Whilst Mal was doing that, Fridolin and I weighed all the remaining lambs to give us a weaning weight for the lambs, and also any additional lambs to make the truck.  Our overall weaning weight was 29.6kg, which is up 2 kg for us.  The prime lambs were put back out with their mums, whilst the remainder of the lambs were put in a paddock of prepared lamb feed (cattle only pastures) to settle.  We will then take the bottoms off and move to a separate paddock or sell store in the following weeks.

We managed to get 163 prime lambs on the truck Wednesday morning to Te Kuiti Meats (http://www.tkmeats.co.nz/) for an average of 18.1 kg CW.  This equates to 23% off mum.  With the price at $8.40/kg, the lambs are certainly ahead of our budget.  Despite this being a good year for product prices and also for lamb survival and growth, the extra funds in the farmers pocket are used for catch up to compensate for the last 10 years of poor prices and either survival or growth.  Farmers will be focusing on debt reduction, repairs and maintenance and  fertiliser application which have been sacrificed in times of poor financial performance.

As Tuesday was such a long day, from 7 am - 7.45 pm, we left a handful of ewes in the woolshed for Fridolin to try his had at.  After a bit of tution, he was left to it, and completed the 20-30 sheep, but not speed records were achieved.

The ewes were then yarded to empty out ... this makes them easier to shear with an empty tummy, less struggling on the board, and also when penned close together there is less risk of getting the wool soiled with faeces (this stain causes a down grade in the wool). 

Shearers started 7am on Thursday morning in our 3 stand shed.  We use a local shearing gang.  Our shed only has capacity at present for 400, so some of the sheep had to spend the night outdoors, which would have been fine, if on Thursday morning the weather had turned stormy with rain, wind and sudden drop in temperature.  The shearers only did 2.5 runs due to this.  (For those that don't know a run is a two hour slot, the shearers then take a break for either morning or afternoon tea, or lunch).  A slower shearer will shear 40-50 a run, with the better shearers doing 80+ a run on ewes.  We shear 6-monthly, now and in May/June pre-scanning.

Luckily the weather changed after the shearers left, and we were able to put sheep in the shed for shearing on Friday morning, with only 1.25 runs to finish them all.

Mal and I were left to sort all the ewes out  as Fridolin had left at 6.45 am to catch a ride to Hamilton, and then onto Taupo for the Cycle Challenge (http://www.cyclechallenge.com/)   along with the rest of the AgFirst team. In due course you will be able to see the results and see how well Fridolin did.

Back to the job at hand, Mal and I sorted through all the ewes, taking out anything that was old, in poor condition, bad udder, teeth or sore feet.  These are our culls and will be sold next week along with our next lamb pick.  The 'keepers' were then run down the road back to the block they came from.  Before sorting we also take a sample and Condition Score them and weigh them.  Our condition score was 3.31, up on previous years, as is our weight - only 56kg, but is heavier than our tupping weight in the same year!  These are regarded as our poor or cull ewes and many of them are older than should ideally keep.  Our overall target is a tupping weight of 58kg, and have made huge progress from our initial 50kg with the original ewes.

We now have a few days break before we start on the maternal flock, weaning, weighing, prime lambs, shearing of both ewes and ewe lamb replacements.

Dairy heifers arrive

On Monday we had our first truck load of dairy heifers arrive.  Just a shortish trip from the outskirts of Hamilton to our place in a Te Akau Transport truck. 

Te Akau Transport truck dropping off weaners

The first 90 arrived at 1.30 pm and were put straight out into their paddock to settle.  We left them there for 2 days and Wednesday afternoon we weighed them all.  They averaged 123 kg, with the range being 97.5 - 152.5 kg.  There will be another 15 - 17 arriving in 10-14 days time once they are fully weaned off meal. 

All the weaners are tagged with EID (electronic identification) tags as per the requirement under NAIT (http://www.nait.co.nz/).  To read these tags either a hand held wand or a reader is required that is linked back to the Weigh Indicator.  We have a Gallagher wand (http://www.gallagher.co.nz/) and a TruTest ID3000 (http://www.tru-test.com/).  The first time through the yards is a bit slower as we type in the visual tag to correspond with the EID number.  In the future it will be simply to record the EID as they come through the race. 

The weaners will be weighed 8 weekly.  Once all the data is recorded, it is downloaded onto excel, where we can monitor the liveweight gain (LWG) of each animal.  This information is then sent to the owners of the weaners so they too can monitor progress.

These dairy weaners are on a weekly retainer, with a growth rate premium on top, so there is a win:win arrangement.

The Kiwi Cross Dairy Heifers straight off the truck, with Alice counting them off!

New Season Lambs

With a week to go now till the start of weaning, all the lambs on the property have been given their pre-weaning drench.  That means approximately 2100 lambs have been through the yards for the week starting 6th November. 

The terminals, which are primarily Romney/Suffolk crosses appeared to be doing well, with our first contracted load to be trucked out identified.  We did these in 3 separate mobs, just to make the days smaller.  Also, on the first day, the weather turned for the worst, making everything and everyone a bit wet.

Fridolin had his first go at drenching.  A little harder to do than it looks like.  As seen below, Fridolin's technique needs a bit of fine turning.  Two things wrong is the pulling of the head back and the closing of the mouth with fingers.  Later on he got to do some more and we have worked on the technique to make it comfortable for both the drencher and the lamb.  The aim is to get the nozzle on top of the tongue so that the dose of drench goes down the throat and is not wasted by either getting squirted out or spat out. 

Fridolin's first attempt at drenching.

Alice keeping an eye on Fridolin

This year we have used Startech on our Terminal lambs.  We also weighed and marked a sample mob of lambs under 30kg that were given Startech and the other mob First, to see what weight gains have been achieved in 15 days time when the animals are weaned.

Lamb in the weigh crate - this one is 36 kg

All lambs that look to be over 30 kg were weighed.  This is done by self as we drafted off the ewes and the two lines of lambs (above 30 kg and below 30 kg).  This means that drench can be applied at a more relevant dose rate to their weight and also saves time in putting lambs over scales.

Coming up in the next couple of weeks we have weaning, lamb picking and shearing on the horizon.

Meanwhile Fridolin will take his first extended break by heading off on his bike around the Waikato from Tuesday - Sunday.

AgDialogue Group - ETS

Earlier this year I joined an AgDialogue group bringing together a wide range of industry wide people to discuss and hopefully forge a plan for the future around Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). 

Recently the group established its own blog site at http://agriculturalemissions.blogspot.com/.  Recently I posted my view of things, so click on the link and read what we are doing.

Busy Week - bulls, fertiliser

Lots of different things happened this week.  First priority was all the lease bulls were going home.  We started on Monday, bringing them home and weighing them in mobs, and then trucking them out on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The first up the road were a mob of Angus, and into the yard for weighing.  Probably not the best mob to have in the yards for Fridolin to gain experience on as they were a bit toey.

Angus bulls coming up the road

Knowing where to stand with cattle is important and acting calm.  Loading the race with 3-4 bulls at a time, reading their tag, weighing and recording weights, then letting them out.  The Jersey mob we did in the afternoon were a lot quieter and by the time mobs 3 and 4 came in, there was an established routine.

All these bulls trucked home and will be leased out to dairy farmers.

We also started work on a paddock that had a 'pan' caused by pugging over the years.  In order to improve the soil structure we have applied 2 tonnes lime/ha and have aerated the soil.

First the lime went on

Then the tractor aeratorated the paddock using...

aerator, leaving the paddock like ...

this.

On Wednesday we also managed to get the rest of our spring planned fertiliser.  Earlier we had taken soil test (see earlier blog), and as a result of those tests we have worked out what fertiliser we will apply based on need and financial constraints.  The fertiliser included lime at 1.2 t/ha on our other block.  This was flown on by plane.

And Maxi Super at 250 kg/ha on our home finishing country via tractor.

The rest of the spare time in the week was spent attacking some of the thistles in our finishing paddocks and doing some repairs and maintenance on the fencelines.

Fridolin's first week

We started the week with mustering the dry hoggets.  This task wasn't as easy as first expected due to the number of lambs in the mob.  Luckily though things went our way and we managed to get them all on the road for the trip home.  We had the trailer with us, so for any lamb that was struggling, they were able to get a ride on the trailer.

Dry hoggets on their way home

Some of the stragglers getting captured for a ride the rest of the way

Fidolin has been having a bit of driving practice on the ATV.  At this stage only on flat terrain, going slow and well supervised.  An example was driving the bike home behind the hoggets, towing the trailer of lambs.

Fridolin with the trailer of lambs

Once we had the hoggets home, we took a Faecal sample and did a Faecal Egg Count (FEC), to see if there was a worm burden.  These hoggets were given a LA Cydectin injection on 3rd July.  After 100 days, by giving them an oral drench it cuts of the tail, which is when worms can become resistant.  Our FEC showed 0 epg (eggs per gram) indicating that the drench has worked to date.  We also weighed a sample of the hoggets before we drenched them, so we knew the amount of drench required to cover the heaviest animals.  The average was 45kg, which was a little disappointing, with the range 35 - 58.5 kg.

We then drafted off any hoggets with a lamb and any with dirty bottoms.

Calling for wet and dirty hoggets for drafting

We then docked the lambs.  A full detail of what is done at docking is found under 1st day of docking blog.

Fridolin getting first hand experience at docking

The wet hoggets and lambs were then reunited.  The dry hoggets were taken back to their paddock.  Finally the dirty hoggets were crutched.  We pulled out 7% of our hoggets - which equates to 22.  Of these approximately 16 were classed as daggy.  All 22, rather than be culled, have been transferred to our terminal mob so that we do not keep any of their progeny in the future.

Mal giving the 20 hoggets a bit of a touch up

Other tasks for the week have been shifting all the bull mobs on their rotation.  The spring grass is certainly beginning to kick away now.  We have on and off rain since the 10th - totalling 117.5 mls to date.  Have started on some fence repairs and maintenance (R&M) jobs.