Our tank overflowith ... finally!

It was with pleasure that we finally watched out house tank overflow during heavy rain.  For April we received 145.5 mls, enough to kick the grass off.  It's turned the grass green and visually things don't look bad. 

The consequence is that the grass is not high in DM and although it might look good, there is no guts in the grass and they munch through quickly what is given to them.  So whilst we had good animal weights at the begining of April, we have struggled to maintain them through to the end of April, after the rain.  Our farm pasture cover as at 30th April was fairly tight at 1450 kgDM/ha, but reassuringly we have had less before.  To get through though we have used more silage, been fed out to all the dairy stock.  Updating Farmax, things will be tight and it will be a case of selling off stock and prioritising mobs around blocks as pasture allows.

The rain is currently continuing, with 16 mls yesterday, mainly arriving after 5pm.  More rain today from lunchtime onwards.  After having all this dry weather, you suddenly have all these tasks which would be so much better to do in the dry rather than the wet. 

Last week was focused on weighing and transferring dairy weaners and R2s.  All mobs weighed, R2s trucked home and a new mob of R1s arrived.  Our weights are back about 10 - 15 kgs on our targets, depending on mobs.  All the mobs are now settling down into their winter rotations to allow some pasture growth to create a feed wedge whilst the soil temps still remain warm.

Facial Ezcema still being high at 50,000 on home block and 30,000 on other block.  All R1 heifers are still protected by a Time Capsule through to 20th May.  We seem to be higher than other blocks sampled through our vets in the Northern Waikato area.

Our focus has been a little on repairs and maintenance - repairing some of our fences in our back sheep country, blocking goat holes, replacing flood gates, replacing staples and any broken wires.  On our other block, focus has been on tracks and crossings, making sure that we can access main parts of the farm safely and filling up gateways. 

At the end of the month we look forward to shearing and scanning.  When taking the rams out of the ewes, the ewe condition seems to have been maintained through tupping, so fingers crossed that scanning results will be positive.

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.