Sharing some NZ farmlife with others

As you may have gathered reading some of our historic blogs, we have a tendancy to have a number of foreigners coming to stay.  This year we have had 4.  Although it is great to have foreigners here and share in our story and life, and hear about theirs, we would also welcome NZers to take part!

In February we had Priscillia from Montreal.  Main tasks while she was here was to do a bit of spring cleaning in the house which was well overdue and to do some child care, entertaining Alice after school, but I am not sure whether it was the other way around, and some farm stuff.  The things we did included:



Priscillia and her helper Alice feeding Mal Time Capsules
 (Zinc Bullets for Facial Eczema protection)

Blackberry picking ... we all managed to fill our containers up but
 Alice ate most of hers!

Priscillia had a go at crutching some lambs.



















Then we spent a day at Raglan beach enjoying the sand and surf.

Then some pre-tup ewe drenching ...












And putting them away, note we were in February, and yes
it was dry!

 

Then we had Thomas from France.  We did a bit of sheep work (first time for Thomas) and lots of feeding out as we were in the throws of the drought and we put lime on a chunk of the farm, using the neighbours strip

Weighing lambs - Thomas got the hang of it
reasonably well.

Thomas having a go at drenching ... bit of hard
work!





Did lots of feeding out, with Thomas loading the trailers most
mornings.  Near the end he was left to feed out to one or two
mobs.  This is the R2 mobs of heifers being fed.







The fertiliser plane being loaded with lime

Dumping its load.

Just recently we had Chris-Ann and Shaun from Toronto.  We had the local cluster schools Arts Festival.  Te Akau did a Pacific Theme where they sung, danced and played the ukelale and doing really well at it.  Links to their performance are http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLaZv35jsUoEsUYvwJuco9g?feature=mhee.  Here you can see the dances and also go through Room 1s Gobble Gobble Moo Tractor Book that the kids have narrated. 

 

Room 1 doing the Gobble Gobble Moo Tractor Book at Te Akau School

 We then travelled into Hamilton to take Alice to her dance lesson at Dance Effects (http://www.danceeffects.co.nz/), where she is doing Jazz Intro 1.  They are currently learning their exam moves, with exams in August.

Jazz Intro 1 class at Dance Effects

Shaun testing his drenching skills on the rams

Chris-Ann getting up close and personal with one of the rams

Then we caught a possum - so far at a rate of 1 per week

And then we plucked it ...

Mustering in the 2-tooths for their 5 in 1 vaccination before set stocking for lambing

 Our main project for the week was to start planting up the garden with natives.  Below are the before and after shots and there is still more plants to go.  Their help was greatly appreciated.

 

 

Before

Before





After



After

And the chook lady ...

 

 So, if keen to help out check out Help Exchange (http://www.helpx.net/) or contact us directly.  We will be seeking some extra help for docking in September.

 



It was a pleasure to get wet this morning!

It was a pleasure to get wet this morning but it seems that our rain was short lived.  We have been getting pretty dry, as has the rest of the North Island.  We were fairly late in being impacted by it with rough feed on board and the grass hanging in, but over the last couple of weeks things have certainly changed.  The base pasture in the hill paddocks has basically gone, cracks opened up, leaving only some pickings for the stock.

So far today we have had 15 mls.  Looking back at our rainfall records, it has been the driest quarters since we have been here:

• Nov - Jan 172 mls v's 304 average (56% rainfall)
• Dec - Feb 245 mls v's 344 average (71% rainfall)
• Jan - Mar 157 mls v's 295 average (53% rainfall)

On Sunday we drove from Auckland to home in the rain, but the rain and the puddles stopped one valley before home.  So whilst Auckland had 15 mls, Onewhero 10 mls, we had none.

We have been feeding out since the beginning of March, and based on our feed budgets, would expect us to continue this into May.  Our target priority mobs to feed are our Dairy Grazers, getting silage, and the R2s getting poplar.  They are all due to be weighed this month.  Our Ewes went to the ram 1st March at condition score 3.5 across both maternal and terminal.  On the whole they seem to be holding their own.  The rams will come out next week.  Our beef cattle are fared ok with 0.4 kg/day.  They have been grazing the rough stuff and doing a bit of cleanup so hadn't expected any better than this.

Our lambs have struggled as quality feed as disappeared.  So far we have managed to meet all the contract targets but with the dressing out % being down, our carcass weights haven't been the best.  We are probably carrying a few too many lambs on and will need to shift them in the coming months.  Lambs will all be weighed on Saturday with a pick going out the following week.

Our focus now is to ensure key stock are holding or improving, with our beef cattle being the buffer.  Focus turns to giving the grass opportunity to grow.  The new grass paddocks are holding their own and bouncing back well after rain.  Key paddocks on both blocks have been targeted with lime at 1.5 t/ha via aircraft.   This was applied 2 days before we had rain in mid-March - perfect timing!

This time of year also brings challenges of FE, with all our dairy grazers given a Time Capsule and their 2nd capsule going in next week.  We do spore counts on each block on the dairy grazers rotation.  One block has been holding around 10,000, whilst the other has been sitting 40,000 +.  We are awaiting this weeks results.  We are not worried about the sheep as all sires purchased have high FE tolerance. 

It is that time of the year when budgets are reviewed through to end of June and for the following 2013/14 year.  Lamb prices have certainly played a hindrance in this years budget and we are back quite significantly.  Going forward, conservative prices have been adhered to in the budget - anything over and above is a bonus.  We are expecting a few less lambs as we are not mating the hoggets and keeping scanning/lambing figures realistic as not sure what the impact of the dry will be in the long run.  To counter that though, we have managed to get rid of all the 'old' ewes that were originally bought on the farm, and now all ewes on the place we have bred ourselves and have the potential to do better lambing percentages.

Fingers crossed we get a bit more rain ... ideally need at least 100 mls to make a difference and some warm days to get the grass growing.