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 completed our summer pasture botanical composition assessments and have observed a smaller difference in clover content between the Std and LI farmlets following the re-randomisation of paddocks at the start of the season. In the previous study there was on average a 10%-unit difference in clover content with paddocks receiving 50 kg N/ha having approximate 18% clover, compared with 8% in the farmlets receiving up to 180 kg N/ha. This year the LI farmlets averaged 14% clover and the Std farmlets 10.4 The LI farmlets had a higher proportion of dead material than the Std farmlets (see notes for more details).
