AK & PJ Pastoral

AK & PJ Pastoral southerner's farming in northland

Heart breaking end to the season.I sure does look like it is going to be a another hard season ahead.
30/04/2023

Heart breaking end to the season.
I sure does look like it is going to be a another hard season ahead.

To somthing alot more cleaner and easy going.
16/04/2022

To somthing alot more cleaner and easy going.

From this rough hill
16/04/2022

From this rough hill

Been a bit of a busy weekend with the maize finally harvested yesterday. Turned into a late night stack covering althoug...
10/04/2022

Been a bit of a busy weekend with the maize finally harvested yesterday. Turned into a late night stack covering although this was made easier by using Nutritech Silostop and UV covers, as well as the Northland Nutritech rep Nick, lending a hand.

This morning was calf weighing again which included their Leptoshield booster. Happy with the weight gain over the last month and with the big lift in the group average over the last two years. This year they are sitting at 227kg average, up from 190kg and 191kg from the two years previous.
The heifers will get their start weigh on the 18th before leaving for grazing with New Zealand Grazing Company

02/04/2022

Theres been a bit going on on the farm over the last few months. Monthly weighing is still happening with the R1s at the runoff and the R2s with New Zealand Grazing Company. Averages for the last weight were 199kg with 1kg/hd/day for the R1s and 430kg average with 1.1kg/hd/day for the R2s.
These will swap over come the last week of April with 66 in calf R2s coming home to join the herd and 72 R1s heading off to take their place.
We had an mt rate of 6% on the heifers this season which was an improvement on last year but still needing to tighten up on that.
The herd had an mt rate of 11%. This was the same as last year although was our first mating with the CowManager monitoring system so we’re pretty happy with that result. We also saw a lift of 1% in our 6 week in calf rate. Hopefully we will see a drop in our mt rate next year.
Last week saw 190ml of rain over 4 days (132mls in 3 hours) cause a bit of damage with surface flooding, a section of new race washing out, and the maize which is almost ready to be harvested standing knee deep in water. It is looking like it with be another good crop this year.
Spraying out of a few paddocks has started to oversow in annuals for the winter before being replanted in maize come spring.
Mulching has also begun in a few of the chicory paddocks as they have started to run out of steam. They will be stitched up with annuals before being sprayed out in spring and replanted in chicory for another summer.
The renovation of the hillside has seen a lot of progress, although unfortunately, our idea to replace an open drain with drainage coil couldn’t handle the volume of rain coming off the hill last week and partially opened the drain back up. Plan B is currently being implemented! The hillside will be planted in a short term grass to allow us time to fix up any issues that arise before we put in some sort of crop to continue to increase topsoil, which it lacks in a big way.
12 mt cows left the farm last week. These were either not producing well or had some conformation issues we were tired of putting up with. The renaming 20 mt cows will continue to milk through winter at this stage and hopefully get another chance at getting in calf.
The cows are in good condition heading towards dry off later next month and currently sitting 9% above last years production. Hopefully this is the year we will hit 100,000kgms!! They are being fed grass, chicory, with maize, baleage and pk on the pad and getting canola/ wheat ddg in the shed.

Time to get onto it..
02/03/2022

Time to get onto it..

Another weigh for the calves today. They also got a pour on drench. The heifers are averaging 0.85kg a day and the Vikin...
18/12/2021

Another weigh for the calves today. They also got a pour on drench. The heifers are averaging 0.85kg a day and the Viking red steers are doing 0.88kg. The 8 Belgian Blues are still powering along at an average of 1.35kg daily gain!
Heifers average weight was 162kg with the heaviness heifer weighing in at 221kg!! Her daily gain since the last weigh was 1.39kg.
At the beginning of December we had two Ayrshire calves arrive which we purchased from the Kiteroa Sale. These were weighed for the first time today and were 153kg and 183kg. Very pleased with how they have adapted to the Northland climate.
A few photos were taken today by Ruth from New Zealand Grazing Company which was awesome.
The last photo is the whole groups weights which is why the lightest weight in the photo is not the lightest heifer weight mentioned above.

The cows have now been on chicory for the last 11 days and are holding production and weight well. Mating is a few days away from finishing so it’s been good to see the bulling cow numbers dropping off considerably. Pregnancy detection early next year will be interesting to see how many cows held to our trial breed straws and if, with the help of Cow Manager, our empty rate has decreased.
Also, with the addition of Cow Manager, we have been able to monitor and track heat stress in the cows. We have decided to do a months trial with a Nutritech Heat Stress product which we will hope to see a production lift and a reduction of early to mid term embryonic loss.

The maize was sown three weeks ago and is at mid calf height. A bit further behind than we’d like but not doing too badly considering it’s late start due to the wet weather earlier in spring.
The turnips were sown two weeks ago and are slowly poking their heads up.

This last weeks worth of rain has helped the crops and grass growth so hopefully it continues through the next couple of months.

Let it begin 🌧🌦🌡🐄
10/12/2021

Let it begin 🌧🌦🌡🐄

First grazing of the chicory. Looking like they will enjoy it 🐮
07/12/2021

First grazing of the chicory. Looking like they will enjoy it 🐮

First calf weigh since weaning today so thought we would share the results!60 replacement heifers averaged 139kg with a ...
20/11/2021

First calf weigh since weaning today so thought we would share the results!

60 replacement heifers averaged 139kg with a daily gain average of 1.14kg. The lightest being 111kg, up to the heaviest at 182kg!
MINDA weights have 100% above target by 35kg. For comparison, the last two years of calves have averaged 114kg for 13kg above target in 2019 and 2020's calves were 123kg average and 21kg above target for the same time.

Also running some Viking Red steers which averaged 159kg, 1.18kg daily gain.
Belgian Blues averaged 130kg with 1.35kg daily gain.

Very pleased with how they are tracking

First lot of replacements tagged. Looking very grown up
13/07/2021

First lot of replacements tagged. Looking very grown up

Address

353 Wilson Road
Whangarei
0172

Telephone

+64273092867

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