TE WHANGAI NEWSLETTER SPRING 2016
Mowing lawns in August has to be a good sign although I am very aware that 'One Swallow doesn't make a summer!
As pastoral farmers we are so dependant on the weather and therefore it is no surprise that it is the opening line of so many rural conversations and is the focus of so much analysis.
A basic principle of politics is to create fear then propose the solution - climate change being the most obvious example.
Clearly NIWA is a political body, (with an $80m budget) so what happens to the livestock market when the fear that is generated has no solution?... it crashes! Even the Moon Man predicted a dry autumn for the East Coast - at no cost to the tax payer! but even he did not pick how localised the dry would be or that it would really affect the autumn/winter rather than the summer. We make our decisions based on a mix of local knowledge, historical data and gut feeling with one eye on predictions but by basing all our decisions on predictions we can end up with our risk management becoming our biggest risk.
After the devastating rain last Sept when so many lambs were lost, we had a pretty good run up till January but the wheels fell off after that so it was back to the grain trailer, silage feeder, fodder crops and mining body condition!
We tupped the very light earlies on Spitfire rape, the fats on dry grass and anything that knew what grain was got barley and interestingly they all scanned much the same, meaning the rape must have worked well but the grain not so well. We only made the decision to feed grain at a late stage and I now know they really need 3 weeks at a good rate, 300+grams, to tup well. With luck we wont have to test the theory this year!!
Mining body condition is definitely not a recommended pre tup practise but ever the optimists we try and build some feed to flush on and that has to come at the expense of something! so we were pretty pleased with the recorded 2ths which scanned 160% at 49kg. At 3.2% per kg liveweight that means a 65kg ewe would have to scan 212% to be as efficient.
The Te Whangai fertility is still achieving good results for clients. A mob of approximately 500 surplus ewe lambs were sold to a large NI coastal property last year and run together with the resident, non Romney, flock but scanned separately. The Te Whangai 2ths scanned 30% higher!
Facial Eczema
Is on many peoples minds and has maimed or devastated many flocks even in areas where it has rarely or maybe never been seen before.
Good spring growth created excess feed which converted to high levels of dead material in the base of the sward. As the season progressed and got drier sheep were forced to eat lower into this old feed and with heat and autumn moisture, bingo big problems.
By looking at all the variables that determine the severity of an outbreak of FE we can see many areas where there are opportunities to safeguard our stock.
Farmers who know they are at risk often do their own spore count monitoring and take action to avoid potential 'hot' areas. Young stock appear to be much more vulnerable and would benefit from being higher up the farm at danger times. Be sure to clean up pastures well before the autumn esp in high risk areas, and timely zinc drenching can also help although I understand there are a few issues with this as well.
Clearly there is a genetic opportunity to introduce a degree of FE tolerance, just as there is to internal parasite tolerance which has been our focus for 25 years. Just because you have a degree of worm tolerance in your sheep does not mean you completely stop drenching vulnerable stock nor would you ignore the mitigating measures you could take in the face of an FE challenge.
The ram team are a valuable investment and are often close to the farm base, for a number of reasons, but in being there they are often at high risk It seems like a good idea to throw a Zinc bomb into them as insurance if you are in a bad area.
I personally don't share the view that the planet is in a warming phase and that diseases like FE are going to become more prevalent in fact you could google 'global cooling' and see there is strong evidence we are in the cooling phase of a 25-30 year cycle in which the last warm phase peaked in 1998 and started cooling from about 2005.
That said, we are very conscious that we have clients in red hot FE areas who desperately do not want to throw away the progress they have made with their Te Whangai genetics by switching to another genetic source solely to achieve some protection from FE.
We feel a responsibility to incorporate FE tolerance into a subset of the flock, so we have begun to develop a programme which has started with the purchase of an FE gold sire, himself Sporidesmin tested at .6 which is the maximum. As it was late in the season before he was available he has been mated to ewe hgts.
The programme will include searching our ewe database for relatives of two high FE sires we used a number of years ago as part of the Sustainable Farming Fund project on worm resilience. Also maybe screening in some high performance ewes from a client's flock which has had several severe FE challenging years recently and then with AI and embryo transfer programmes we can rapidly build up numbers of tolerant animals.
Lamb prices have slowly lifting again after the beating they took at the end of 2015 with the mass slaughter driven by NIWA's drought predictions. Of course the weakened Sterling value after the Brexit result has definitely not helped although despite NZ strengthening against the USD, selling lamb into that market is said to be highly profitable at present.
Finally some progress on the SFF deal, it would be an understatement to say it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the industry.
Niche product sold as a commodity
Just as with milk powder, logs, beef or bloody pork bellies wool's roller coaster continues which is hugely disappointing, although predictable as it is really only niche by volume, yet it is largely still traded as a commodity.
After the euphoric highs of last years hogget wool prices I warned we need to be careful what we wish for and it seems the Chinese buyers have once again pumped the price up and walked away leaving particularly the fine crossbred wool prices to fall back again.
Interestingly the stronger micron carpet wools have not been as affected by the lack of Chinese orders, presumably because although most of the manufacturing is done in China the biggest market for carpet is still the US and demand there remains ok.
We have just sold our ewe hogget wool and received $5.99 cln which is still actually well ahead of 2014 so perhaps we need to keep the current price level in perspective... but use it as further motivation to strive for greater innovation and collaboration in both our marketing strategies and internal industry activities!
To get even close to achieving the Govt's Business Growth Agenda of doubling real export value by 2025 we will have to be adding considerable value to a good portion of the wool clip through branding and further processing. There is no point in looking enviously at the retail price of a carpet unless collectively we are prepared to invest and take some of the risk involved in the value chain that creates that carpet.
The value of our agricultural exports is about $37 billion, the value of those goods at retail is $200 billion! surely some of that is worth striving for.
Gorse
I have encountered more than a bit of gorse in my travels around the country and I though I would share this spray recipe from a very thoughtful client who farms in a very bad gorse area at Pongaroa. This is half the water rate and way less chemical than traditionally used and is having great results, at about $115 per ha
Per ha - 200ltr water with 400grm of Metsulph and 300mls Organo Silicone penetrant.
Add - Fulvic acid 300grm
- Urea Ammonium Nitrate 3 litres (can be sourced cheaply from "Dickie Direct Ltd" in HB)
Naturally spraying should be done when the fresh growth is occurring in spring, and a thought from another gorse murderer, applying one tonne of Ag Lime at the same time produced a massive clover response compared to an unlimed block. Maybe aiding the recovery from the Metsulph.
Congratulations
I'm sure you would all join me in offering well deserved congratulations to Bay for his receiving of the Laurie Dowling award for outstanding service to HB agriculture.
We continue to be heartened by the new inquiries for rams. One comment that always amuses me is that Te Whangai has a reputation for having 'small sheep'. The simple fact is that we are using the exact same SIL growth rate BV's as everyone else but it must be remembered that those BV's are recording weight not size and as I have said before, the sheep which produce the highest growth figures when feed is always at a premium are deep meaty sheep, heavy but not big framed.
Will hear from you soon, meantime lets hope we all get a spring!
Regards Hamish, Harry and Bay