Sunday, August 11, 2013

Drought Aftermath - Back on Track

For many hill breeding farms the aftermath of last summer's extended dry has been a long climb out of, both physically and financially, and for many, the effects will linger for some time still.
Am personally pleased to see our ewes, now just a month off lambing, have regained a respectable liveweight, the 2ths, 48kg at mating April 1 are now 61kg, having gained 13kg in 4 months. Similarly, the MA ewes pictured are upward of 65kg.
Normally, they'd be shorn before lambing, but we had to can it halfway through after a couple went down in the yards with grass staggers, but a bit of quick thinking and a 50ml dose each of calmag avoided any losses.
The hills pastures, shaved bare of rough top and now rejuvenating with a fresh short young sward, are a prime candidate for mineral imbalance. The associated grass staggers, (hypomagnesaemia), is a problem you see more with cattle than sheep, so I'm a bit chuffed at having made the connection with the ewes off pasture for the short time in the yards and after a walk in from the hills.
As luck would have it, or rather by 6th sense, I felt back in Mar/Apr I'd need to make some extended provision for cattle feed should the drought extend right into and even maybe through winter, so I kept 30 acres of hill sidling in reserve. The cows are on this now, munching their way through 6000kg dm/ha nice mature feed, in their 6 week build-up to calving where they'll come down onto the flats to a controlled calving rotation.
Having sold off the hill block the beef herd used to run on 5km up the valley, its taking me some time to work out a suitable management system, but this latest find of summer reserved pasture on sidling country of limited use otherwise, is ace in the hole to get the cows through the critical winter pinch. Theyre not having to compete with the closer grazing ewes, they're not stressing my fences trying to push somewhere the grass might be greener, theyre not eating at the macrocarpa hedging round the place and risking aborting their foetii, and theyre not pugging great footmarks in wet winter ground, plus I dont have to feed out hay.
Bliss......
You never stop learning in this game.

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