Soil testing

Yesterday afternoon I spent it with our fertiliser rep, Teresa, from Ravensdown (http://www.ravensdown.co.nz/).  It has been two years since we last soil tested, and in that time due to economic pressures and priority given to infrastructure development, we have only put fertiliser onto crop or regrassed paddocks and strategic use of N (nitrogen).

At last soil testing we took GPS points of transects around the farm on blocks that reflect aspects of the farm such as finishing area (different rotations), any trouble paddocks, any paddocks we have cropped, extensive hill country etc.

To start things we needed to refresh our memory where we had taken the samples before setting out on the quad.  Once we were in the near vicinity of the soil test we refer to the GPS point to get us to the start.  To take a soil sample, a soil auger is used, which for normal pasture is to a depth of 7.5 cm.  For cropping paddocks it is recommended that a depth of 15 cm is used.  In a transect a number of samples are made (between 6 - 12 on average).  The number of samples will allow for some variation such as historic dung and urine patches, different slope etc.  When taking samples to avoid stock camp areas, troughs, trees, gateways etc.  Follow the transect until you get to the second GPS point. The soil samples are then placed in a plastic bag which is labelled with the site (most fertilser companies have their own bags which can be supplied if doing it yourself).

Being a hill country property it takes quite a while to get around the 1200 acres - yesterday it took us 5 hours.  The person taking the samples gets quite a bit of exercise as it involves walking up and down hills, and often in all kinds of weather.  Yesterday we had 3-4 layers of warm clothing and woolly hats to protect us from the rain showers and wind.

These soil test will be sent to the laboratory for analysis.  In this case they will be sent to ARL (Analytical Research Laboratory) which is part of the Ravensdown group (see more information at the following link - http://www.ravensdown.co.nz/nz/pages/services/testing/types-of-testing/arl-our-testing-centre.aspx)

There will be a week turn around before we get the soil tests back and we will be making our fertiliser decisions for spring based on these results, compared to our previous results.

Whilst out and about we snapped a few photos of the ewes and lambs.  The first are a set of Suffolk x Romney lambs, and the second some of our Coopworth x Romney Ewes with their lambs 3/4 Coop 1/4 Rom.  We are looking at starting docking this week if the weather holds.