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Weekly Farm Summary - 24 January 2024

Good soil temperatures and adequate soil moisture has seen strong growth across the farm again this week. Grazing of the new grass paddocks has been a bit challenging due to the rain and our desire not to damage them on their first grazing, but we now only have a couple left to graze. Interestingly we have seen a jump in milk urea when the cows have been grazing these paddocks. The tech team are busy taking pasture samples from every paddock before it is grazed and separating it into ryegrass, o...

Weekly Farm Summary - 17 January 2024

This week the team have been busy moving the recently made baleage out of the paddocks, replaced all the rubberwear in the plant and pregnancy tested the 2022 born heifers at grazing.Good soil temperatures and moisture are making pastures grow well which enables us to reduce the supplements being used.  Grazing of the new grasses has been a priority so we can now have them back in the round.   It appears that we are getting on top of the lameness that has been an issue over the la...

Weekly Farm Summary 10 January 2024

The start of the 2024 year sees us with a full farm and technical team for the first time in over 6 months, so everyone is pretty excited with what lies ahead. As Billy takes a month off to spend with an eagerly anticipated new addition to their family Venura and Ravee are stepping into the decision-making roles. On the feed front we have been able to signicantly reduce the amount of supplementary feed to all the herds and we are strategically topping a few paddocks to either reset residuals or ...

Weekly Farm Summary 20 December 2023

With the countdown on to Christmas we spent extra time this week working through the feeding regimes for each herd for the next couple of weeks to make things are as streamlined as possible for those on farm. With the dry starting to bite and us getting through our contracted inshed feed we have recalculated the amount of silage remaining in our two stacks and have made a plan for inshed feed use as well. We will continue with weekly farm walks through the holiday period, just at a slightly diff...

Merry Christmas from Southern Dairy Hub 🎄

Thank you to everyone for their support of the Southern Dairy Hub in a year where we celebrated our five-year anniversary in June. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the support and generosity of our sponsors and the farming community. Whether it was sponsorship, attendance at the field days or just taking an interest in the things that we do at the Hub and using the research to improve productivity we thank you. ...

Weekly Farm Summary 13 December 2023

The weather is definitely keeping us on our toes with feed planning and management at the moment. It is hard to believe that a hot dry summer is in the forecast with what is being thrown at us at the moment. However, in saying that the tech team noted that things are definitely drying out across the farm when they did the farm walk this week (while trying to dodge the rain squalls and strong winds!!!Our priority is getting all the necessary silage and baleage finalised for winter to avoid the si...

Weekly Farm Summary 6 December 2023

Hard to believe it is December already and the countdown is on to the festive season. This week we welcomed Redson to the SDH farm team as a herd manager. It will be great to have an extra pair of hands over the holiday season so the team can all have some time off to spend with family and friends. There has been lots of activity on farm getting a few areas tidied up now that all the calves are weaned and mating has slowed down. We have been focusing on our summer, autumn and winter feed budgets...

Andrea Dixon chats to Andy about the newsletter, the upcoming field day and the projects currently underway.

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Weekly Farm Summary 29 November 2023

There have been a few milestones this week:1. the first herd hit 100% submission rate2. all our spring ground-work has been completed (just before we rolled into summer!!)3. we have finalised the plan for broadcasting plantain seed onto 2x Standard and 2x LI farmlet paddocks, now we just need to implement the plan4. our summer student started 5. the last calves were weanedOn a not so positive note, we got caught out with the and didnt get all our baleage made as planned last weekend. The bales ...

Weekly Farm Summary - 22 November 2023

Weekly summary 22 November 2023: What a week for weather extremes - hot and sunny one day, squally showers, cold and wet the next! No wonder growth rate is all over the place!! Topping and strategic baleage making over the last month means pasture quality across the farm is good with only a few paddocks left to tidy up.We have just ticked over 3 weeks of mating and are pleased with the submission rates. Looking at the number of cows sound asleep in the paddocks today I think they have been party...

Summer Newsletter

I’m four months into my new role and I’m loving it. It’s really busy – but in a good way. We’re set up for a good season with grass growth and we’re making gains in production.Cultivation has gone well and Fodder Beet went in last week. We’re busy testing the quality of the grass (ME and crude protein) we’re looking to purchase for baleage as we need to make sure the quality of the baleage that goes into the system is top notch. Staffing and recruitment is a challenge, much ...

Weekly Farm Summary - 15 November 2023

Things have been a bit quieter on farm this week with the priority being on fine tuning the pasture allocation, getting the baleage made and picking cows for AI. Last Friday we farewelled Tolu who has chosen a career change to allow him to spend more time with his family. We have had a new relief milker start who is getting up to speed with our milking regimes and are looking forward to our new permanent staff coming on board. The team are working together really well to ensure everything gets d...

Weekly Farm Summary - 8 November 2023

Another busy week across the farm this week- calves weighed and another 68 weaned; R2's weighed and a few busy days at the start of mating. Our fodder beet crops have been sown and pre-emerge sprayed. With growth well above demand all farmlets have had paddocks mown for baleage and topping is occuring as required. This will help reset residuals in a few paddocks that were left untidy after the last grazing and hopefully set us up for good quality pasture next round.Third round pasture quality is...

Weekly Farm Summary 1 November 2023

Weekly summary 2 November 2023: And just like that we are into mating for the 2023-24 season. It has been a busy week on the farm making sure we have all our systems and processes in place to make sure mating goes as smoothly as possible. With 4 different participant codes and sexed, jersey, crossbred and beef semen that needs to be used equally across the herds good planning is critical for success. On the wintering preparation front our crop fertiliser is on farm and will be spread at the week...

Weekly Farm Summary 25 October 2023

It is definitely four seasons in one week (and sometimes one day!!!) in Southland at the moment! Fingers crossed for some more settled weather as we head into mating and baleage making.Our first group of calves were weaned after weighing, drenching and 7n1 vaccination last Friday. With another group close to weaning weight there will be another weigh and wean late next week.This week we used our Allflex collar data to identify non cycling cows for treatment prior to the start of mating. 80 anima...

Weekly Farm Summary - 18 October 2023

Calving has finally finished - 16 days earlier than last season thanks to the use of short gestation semen at the end of mating last year . The farm team are having a catch-up with their families tonight to celebrate this milestone for the season. It has been full steam ahead with groundwork over the last 10 days, preparing paddocks for regrassing and winter crops.Growth is above demand for the lower impact herds, so paddocks have been dropped for conservation this week. With 5 paddocks aerated ...

October 2023 Field Day Update

For those of you that were able to make the SDH Field Day last week, it was wonderful to catch up and thank you for being so engaged and asking such great questions....

Weekly Summary - 12 October 2023

Its been all go at the hub this week, from the field day, to herd testing, aerating, ripping, fixing the calf shed roof- the team have certainly not been bored!For those who didn’t make it to our field day we will get the notes up onto the website early next week. Thanks to those who joined the day to hear from our four great speakers.  With soil temperatures nearly at 12 degrees, its been no wonder that growth rates have lifted and the cows are struggling to hit residual in some paddocks...

Weekly Summary - 4th October 2023

This week we have started to see the impact of high first round pasture covers and the flood on pasture regrowth, with growth not lifting like we would normally see at this time of year. The rest of the first round N will be applied in the next week and additional supplementary feed will be offered to fill any gaps. Thankfully we have a good supply of silage in the stack so will not have to rely heavily on inshed feeding. We had good results from our shed inspection last week which is testa...

October Newsletter

Firstly, hello! I recently started as the new General Manager at the SDH in July and it’s been a big few months of learning about the Hub and the amazing research work on the working and fully operational farm....

Weekly Summary- 27th September 2023

Its been another topsy turvy week of weather for us this week which has had flow on effects with both pasture utilisation and milk production. The flooding over the weekend subsided quickly however we have been left with a lot of silt contaminated pastures that the cows aren’t too excited about eating, as well as a number of laneways and fence lines left a bit worse for wear. Thankfully the team from MDS Contracting have been on farm this week assisting in the tidy up.Under 20 cows now left to...

Weekly Summary - 20 September 2023

 4 seasons in a week sums up the last week well! From sunshine, to howling winds and crazy rain all in a matter of days, this week has had it all!Growth rates have continued to hold in the 40’s and there is still plenty of grass around as the end of the first round comes to a close in the next few days. All farmlets are requiring slightly different management this week as we navigate matching break sizes and area allocation with target intake. The green and blue wedges are starting to sho...

Weekly Summary - 13 September 2023

The end of calving is coming……. very slowly but surely this week, with a couple of days with 1 or 2 new calves on the ground. Having reached our heifer replacement number, we had the team from VetSouth in this week to disbud 180 calves while the farm team took the DNA samples. 40 are still to be done.Again this week we are fighting against high pasture covers at the top of the wedge and with good growth rates over the past week, the covers aren’t quite on the downward trend yet. Pasture qu...

October Field Day 2023 - SDH

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Weekly Summary - 6th September 2023

Grass and plenty of it around the farm this week. With soil temperatures hitting 10 degrees this week, growth continues to trend upwards. With the combination of this and the slower than predicted calving rates, APC is still challenging us and not reducing as quickly as we would like for this part of the season.  Balance date seems to have come early this year but then we are only in the first week of spring so things could still change!!?? Springers and dries will be used to tidy up behind...