Tuesday, 18 February 2020 12:43

Another good rain needed for clean-up

Written by  Nigel Malthus
Farmy Army members fixing fencing on a flood-ravaged farm. Farmy Army members fixing fencing on a flood-ravaged farm.

Southland dairy farmers ironically need some good rain to wash the silt off their pastures and help recover from the early February flooding, says Open Country Dairy regional milk supply manager Myles Herdman.

“The majority of farmers are okay, it’s the ones that were close to the rivers that ended up with silt on the pastures are going to have problems,” said Herdman. 

“We really need another good rain to clean the pastures up.” 

About 10 of the company’s supplying farmers had to shift stock to other farms.

“A lot of them along the rivers have lost their fences. So that’s a major cleanup and it’s a time-consuming clean up because you’ve got to pull all the wires out of the mud and in a lot of cases you’re just better to cut them.”

Herdman praised the way farmers turned out to help each other. One Open Country supplier had 30 people turn up on Sunday unexpectedly to spend the day picking debris out of his fences.

 “It’s amazing just how much they do for each other when the chips are down.”

However, those who lost baleage, or whose winter crops went under “might not recover very well,” he said.

The company, whose sole South Island processing plant is at Awarua, near Bluff, picked up milk early from some farms when they knew the water was coming.

“We knew we wouldn’t be able to get back with the rivers rising so quickly,” said Herdman. 

“So it was just just a big coordination job, with the transport and communicating with the farmers, knowing what milk was there and what wasn’t there.”

Herdman couldn’t give a precise figure but said “quite a bit” of milk had to be dumped but farmers’ milk losses would be covered by dairy company insurance. 

“Anything outside spec... so if it goes 48 hours we have to dump it.” 

More like this

Featured

$52,500 fine for effluent mismanagement

A Taupiri farming company has been convicted and fined $52,500 in the Hamilton District Court for the unlawful discharge of dairy effluent into the environment.

Ospri brings Bovine TB testing in-house

The move to bring bovine TB testing in-house at Ospri officially started this month, as a team of 37 skilled and experienced technicians begin work with the disease eradication agency.

National

Machinery & Products

Fliegl offers effluent solutions

Founded in Germany as recently as 1977, today, the Fliegl Group employs more than 1100 workers, offering an expansive range…

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

It's all about economics

OPINION: According to media reports, the eye-watering price of butter has prompted Finance Minister Nicola Willis to ask for a…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter