Friday, 20 July 2018 10:13

Good calving conditions for Lower North Island

Written by 

Conditions look promising for the start of calving in the Lower North Island.

DairyNZ’s Rob Brazendale says the conditions are pretty favourable and overall pasture covers are on target as is cow condition. He says the area has had a much better winter than last year which saw a lot of pugging damage and notes this hasn’t been the case so far.

Brazendale farmers are generally pretty comfortable and most things are on target and everyone is looking forward to a good spring. He there has been a lot of rain in Central Hawkes Bay and there has also been quite a bit of rain in the Manawatu.

“But it’s the middle of winter so that’s what you expect,” he says.

While things are looking good on farm, Brazendale says farmer morale is mixed. He says farmers are quite positive about the physical things such as the milk price, but says they have concerns about the environmental challenges and some of the other issues such as the restrictions on the use of PKE.

“These latter things have taken a bit of an edge off the other positive factors. I wouldn’t say the mod was really buoyant but it not depressed either - it’s kind of flat. There is a lot of uncertainty around land values across the country and there are lot of farms for sale,” he says.

More like this

Come and chat to the DairyNZ team

DairyNZ's team is looking forward to catching up with Southland and Otago dairy farmers at the Southern Field Days in Waimumu near Gore next month.

Featured

Global Trade Uncertainty 'Likely To Remain'

Global trade has been thrown into another bout of uncertainty following the overnight ruling by US Supreme Court, striking down President Donald Trump's decision to impose additional tariffs on trading partners.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Disunity is death

OPINION: Staying with politics, with less than nine months to go before the general elections, there’s confusion in the Labour…

Indian FTA

OPINION: Winston Peters' tirade against the free trade deal stitched with India may not be all political posturing by the…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter