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Christmas Newsletter

As 2024 draws to a close, I want to take a moment to reflect on what has been an incredibly productive year for the Southern Dairy Hub. It's been a year of growth, collaboration and exciting developments. We’ve had the privilege of working closely with many of you, continuing to test new practices and contribute to Southland's dairy sector with vital research.As General Manager, I’m constantly amazed at the work being done here – not only on our research farm but also in how it benefits lo...

Summer Newsletter

Kia ora and welcome to our summer newsletter! We’ve had a busy few months, navigating the challenges of September’s wet weather while making great progress on our exciting initiatives and trials. People are at the heart of our efforts, and I really want to express my gratitude to our dedicated team for their commitment and hard work, and to the wider community for your ongoing support.I’m excited to share some of our recent highlights and what we’re working towards as we head into s...

Weekly Farm Summary 15 November 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary 6 November 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary 31 October 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary 25 October 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary 10 October 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary 4 October 2024

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Weekly Farm Summary: On hold

Weekly notes are temporarily on hold while we review the notes. If you have suggestions for what you'd like included in the notes, or their frequency, please email admin@southerndairyhub.co.nz...

GM Andrea Dixon chats to Andy about the upcoming field day

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Early-spring Newsletter

Kia ora and welcome to our early-spring newsletter! We've had a busy and productive few months, and I'm excited to share some of our key highlights and upcoming initiatives with you. The farm team has had a busy winter delivering the DairyNZ Farm System wintering trials. An early glimpse of our progress is available in the notes from our recent field day (www.southerndairyhub.co.nz/field-days).Last week, we removed the ICE Cubes (accelerometers that measure cow behaviour, including ste...

Media Release: Southern Dairy Hub simplifying their operating and governance model

Simon Flood, SDH Chair, said “the Hub is celebrating its sixth anniversary in June, and it’s an opportune time to take the Hub to the next level. This is a natural evolution, where the original structure, established six years ago, was ready for improvement to provide better management of the business”.The new structure, which comes into effect on 1 June 2024, has the operations of the Hub and ownership of all Hub assets under one entity and one Board (previously two entities and two Board...

Weekly Farm Summary 15 May 2024

Well all good things must come to an end and the time is near for us calling a day on the 2023_24 season. While overall it has been a good season for us, this autumn is bringing its fair share of challenges - sodden ground conditions, increased lameness and average growth rates have made this autumn quite different to the last two. With heifers now back on the milking platform after teat sealing on Thursday our challenge is to manage the feed supply to ensure we don't go below our 1 June APC for...

Dry-off newsletter

Things are busy on farm as we set up for our farm system trial (more details in the newsletter), dry cows off that are light in condition and trying to manage body conditions score to ensure cows are target at calving, not to mention all the things that need to be done in preparation for winter.The weather has turned, with a drop in ground temperature by 10 degrees and we only grew 23 kgDM/ha this week, compared to 40 kgDM/ha last week! Because of this and paddock conditions, we have moved all h...

Weekly Farm Summary 30 April 2024

This week we made the decision to move all herds to OAD milking based on current milk production, BCS, ground conditions and lameness and to make sure the farm team have the time to ensure everything is set up for wintering. Our second group of cows were dried off and the early dries are now being ad lib fed on pasture to promote BCS gain. The latest pasture quality results are in and the DM has ranged between 14 and 18%, ME from 11.1 to 12.3 and crude protein from 22.1 to 28.5%. The LI pastures...

Weekly Farm Summary 17 April 2024

Key decisions this week have focused on setting the cows and the farm up for next season. Cows confirmed with Johnes (initial milk screening followed by a confirmation blood test) and Staph have all been culled and the last discretionary culls confirmed for each herd. The first group of 20 cows were dried off this week. The rotation length has been pushed out by reducing the area grazed per day however with paddocks being dropped out of the round for wintering and springers the proportion of eff...

Weekly Farm Summary 3 April 2024

And just like that it is April and autumn is well and truely upon us with cooler nights and shorter days. Our focus is now well and truly on setting up for next season and as such we made the decision this week for the Std FB herd to go to OAD milking based on BCS gain required before 1 June, increasing incidence of lameness and the feed budget indicating up to 6 kg DM supplement/cow/day would be required to achieve our dry off average pasture cover. We are continuing to aerate 2022 spring new g...

Weekly Farm Summary 20 March 2024

After a busy week on farm last week with our autumn field day and motor bike training and a trip to Victoria Australia for Dawn to present at a farmer event, we are back to normality this week. Growth has dropped below demand for the first time in several months, so average pasture cover has dropped for all farmlets. The first group of culls will be heading off farm in the next week with low producing empties going to the works and sound, young, high producing empties being sold in milk. We have...

Weekly Farm Summary 6 March 2024

The final scan was done on Wednesday morning so we are still working through what the different results between the farmlets mean. This week we started yielding our fodder beet crops. Each year we start doing monthly yields from March so we can track progress against our winter feed budget. JJ was out earlier in the week and noticed quite a lot of yellowing of the leaves so crops will be sprayed with a fungicide when the weather allows. Hope many of you can join us on site next week 12th March f...

Autumn Newsletter

The weather has certainly provided challenges with managing grass quality and finding the weather windows to cut surplus feed. Like many farmers we have made more baleage than normal this summer, which has set us up well for ending out the season and for the winter. We will use this surplus in the coming weeks before it gets too wet and reduce the feed going through the shed. This winter we will be looking to see how we can improve the profitability of fodder beet winter grazing while maint...

Weekly Farm Summary 28 February 2024

This week we hosted farmers, researchers and managers from Dairy Trust Taranaki, Northland Dairy Development Trust - NDDT and Northland Agricultural Research Farm. Was great to reconnect and continue discussions on how we can work together and extract more value from research across the regions. They were very jealous of the lush green grass our cows are eating at the moment!!The R2's were weighed this week at the same time as the final scan - 2% empty plus 2 freemartins identified. Next step is...

Weekly Farm Summary 21 February 2024

This week the stars aligned and we finally got our spring silage pit filled.The weather has really been against us getting this off earlier. As a result of the delay, we have ended up with a bigger stack than we anticipated but it is money in the bank if we have a wet spring next season.The latest pasture samples have come back with DM% from 15-18% so more like spring than late summer pastures. The calibration cut data and cow behaviour is indicating there is approximately 200 kg DM/ha less avai...

Weekly Farm Summary 14 February 2024

Hopefully some of you have managed to catch up with Andrea at the SDH and DairyNZ site 89/90 at the Southern Field Days - Waimumu this week. She is there again today for anyone who is heading out that way. With a number of new staff joining SDH in recent months the team are taking the opportunity for some upskilling. This week the farm team completed Hazardous substance training with Ant Sutherland. A key learning for all of them was the importance of identifying the correct PPE required from a ...

Weekly Farm Summary - 7 February 2024

Well, who would have thought we would be in our current feed situation given the earlier predictions of a hot dry summer, not that we are complaining.Like many we are struggling to get a decent weather window to get silage and baleage made, which is likely to impact on the quality of the final product. We will be taking quality samples from different batches of supplement and allocating the appropriate quality for different livestock classes and feeding time. We have abandoned our plan of making...

Weekly Farm Summary - 31 January 2024

This week we got the first indication of how well our mating has gone for this season with the first scan of the cows. Six week in calf rate across the whole farm averaged 77% with the range between farmlets from 74 to 82%. We will do an indepth review of mating and differences between treatments once we have the final in calf rate.Another week of strong pasture growth has seen us drop the inshed feeding back to a minimum and step over paddocks at the top of all the wedges so we can get herds go...