Rain flattens milk production

Milk production is down because farmers have been unable to make full use of pasture.

Federated Farmers Manawatu/Rangitikei president James Stewart is one of many dairy farmers badly hit, the rain being among his biggest challenges in 20 years on his farm.

Stewart farms on heavy clay soil so he expects a challenge at this time of the year, but this is as bad as he’s seen. The wet has put a lot of pressure on feed levels -- a long, miserable time.

“Utilisation has been harder and we have lost a lot of the value out of the pasture because of pugging damage. The guts of the grass hasn’t been as good either because of the wet,” Stewart told Rural News.

“The cows are not getting the same value out of the grass. A neighbour did some pasture analysis tests and the results weren’t as good as last year. This is partly due to the lack of sunshine because we have had a lot of cloudy days.”

The soil got saturated and has remained saturated most of the time, he says. The big downpours included one day when 13mm fell in 30 minutes.

“It’s not constant rain, but the shear amount of it saturates the soil.”

Stewart says the “kind” winter they hoped for hasn’t happened, pressuring his operation at a crucial time of year – mating.

“We are focusing on keeping the cows in good condition but they are lighter. We used a lot of supplementary feed in the dry summer so we got a bit tight with feed as well; we’ve been relying a bit more on PKE to keep the cows in condition.

“The lower payout from last year has meant we weren’t enthusiastic about stocking up with too much supplement.”

Stewart grew less maize last season and the wet winter has prevented him building up any surplus feed. Now time is against him; he had hoped to grow maize, but it’s too wet to get a tractor on the ground.

For Stewart and others the season is running about a month later than normal.

DairyNZ’s Andrew Reid says the problem of wet weather extends from Northland to Waikato, Manawatu, Taranaki and Bay of Plenty. Even the pumice country in the central North Island has been challenged.

Few regions in the North Island haven’t received much higher rainfall than normal during the last two-three months, Reid says. But in contrast the South Island has had a reasonable start to the season, except for Canterbury, still affected by drought.

The problem in the North Island is pasture utilisation: farmers simply cannot get enough pasture into cows.

“In the North Island, pasture residuals have been higher than ideal because they can’t physically graze low enough to get feed into the stock, and supplement use has been justified even though we have passed balance date on most farms,” Reid told Rural News.

“Milk production is down for that reason and many farmers have reduced cow numbers based on what the milk price was doing last season, so it’s a combination of both.”

The increase in the forecast milk price has lifted some farmers’ confidence to use supplementary feed as an option. But the sector is not out of the woods yet.

“DairyNZ has been focusing on the pasture-first message and encouraging farmers to use pasture the best way they can. That has been challenging given the mud lying around paddocks, and then of course there is the need to watch the cost of production.”

It doesn’t help when farmers are forced to buy supplement, Reid says, but hopefully this is a short-term issue.