Winter woes piling up

Autumn flooding in the region and ongoing rain have prevented pastures from drying, he says.

Both regions, and Northland, have relatively early calving dates and farmers there are struggling with waterlogged pastures. They need to get stock off pastures for good utilisation of the feed they have.

Reid says all New Zealand – except possibly Canterbury – is variously affected by the wet winter; new calves will be vulnerable if this persists.

“Pugging will always be an issue in early spring. The important thing is not to get too distracted by the unsightliness of pugged pastures and set up a spring rotation plan and stick to it as best you can so that pasture will recover from pugging, which it will do if it is not severe; generally it is better to restrict pugging to small areas of the farm and have sacrifice paddocks. If farmers don’t do this they could get into a real pickle in the second rotation,” he says.

Reid says the problems facing many farmers now is a combination of factors – not just the weather.

“The better milk price at the end of last season tempted some farmers to milk on longer than they normally would have, so pasture covers at drying off time might have been lower than ideal.

“That coupled with lower pasture growth rates during the winter has left some farms not well set up for the new season – a compounding effect of low pasture covers at drying off, wet winter and calving at a time when pastures are waterlogged.”

The West Coast is also badly affected by the rain, most farmers having been under pressure for almost a year.

“But this season a little different from last in that feed supplements are more affordable than at this time last year. So there is a temptation for farmers whose onfarm feed situation is tight to buy in feed.”

Reid says farmers who cut staff when the milk payout was lower will have existing staff pressured by a bigger workload. He hopes the improved milk price will prompt farmers to employ more staff and train them better, so helping build the industry’s talent pool.

He encourages farmers to look after themselves and their staff by talking to neighbours, attending DairyNZ discussion groups and getting off farm when they can.

A farmer's struggle in Manawatu

Federated Farmers dairy section president in Manawatu says the rain in his region doesn’t seem to have stopped for twelve months.

Murray Holdaway’s Tararua farm normally gets about 1200mm of rain a year, but in the last 12 months it has had 2000m. And these has been no wind to dry it out.

“We could have a week without rain but the pastures don’t dry out because we haven’t had a lot of wind,” he says.

It’s been hard trying to maximise pasture utilisation and avoid pugging, requiring the extra work of moving cows on and off the feed pad.

“During calving it is even more difficult because you have extra mobs of cows – a calving mob, a colostrum mob, milkers and a lame mob – and you need to keep them all separate. So can’t just put them all on the feed pad.

“You can only have one mob on there and then of course you are looking to feed cows more when they are milking and you can’t stand them on concrete to calve unless you have stand-on pads with sawdust on them.”

Holdaway says the wet makes for extra work in terrible conditions and it gets depressing having to deal with this daily.