Feed Budgeting

At the end of August/beginning of September we do farm covers for the whole of the property.  These are taken in the same spot each time.  We don't manage to do 100% of the covers each time, but on the whole would do about 70%.  We use a Pasture Probe to do this.

This data is entered onto a spreadsheet which has all the paddock names and sizes and calculates the total pasture cover.  We also break this down into two blocks (geographically seperate), and our finishing country v's other. 

Once we have the whole farm pasture cover we enter this into Farmax (http://www.farmax.co.nz/) which is a decision support tool that we use for tracking how the farm is doing and what opportunities/actions need to be taken depending on pasture growth rates and animal weights. 

The last pasture cover 1256 kgDM/ha, with our average being 1208 kgDM/ha.  The graph below shows the pasture cover over the last 3.5 years.  As you can see it follows a similar trend but there has been large variation between years.  Summer 07/08 was a drought, spring 09 was a drought, autumn 10 was also a drought. 

Many perceive this as too much monitoring, but by recording data - pasture covers, rainfall and animal weights, you can get to a level of prediction which many who have farmed the same piece of land get to.  

We feel that this data allows us to make decisions and react before hand that allows us to minimise the impact or to take opportunities that others might not see until too late.  It is also a good benchmarking tool for the property, comparing year by year production and other key indicators.