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 quality in those high mass paddocks is variable depending on pasture age and cultivar. It is tempting to top the cows up with high quality inshed feed but at this stage we are staying strong and only offering the 1 kg/cow of mineral mix feed. Residuals will be managed by springers behind the cows where possible, and any paddocks that we can’t utilise the springers in will have to be tidied up in the next round.
We are excited to have our spring field day locked in the diary! With a great range of guest speakers joining us including Ryan Luckman talking all things collars, Kirsty Verhoek discussing heat stress and Ross Monaghan and Dylan Ditchfield sharing the findings of AgResearch’s bale grazing work- it’s a day not to be missed!!
