Farming on difficult peat soil with a focus on pasture renewal and management, they are the Pasture Improvement Focus Farm for Waikato.
Wayne told the recent BERL report launch that before he went farming he worked in dairy genetics, but quickly concluded animals were best looked after by making pasture the centre of the business. He says pasture is "close to the ideal feed" – cheap to grow and feed, safe and of good quality.
Successive droughts and black beetle damage had been recent challenges leading to huge variation in performance, some paddocks doing 11.5 t DM/ha/year while others managed 18.6 t DM/ha/year.
Reynolds's deploys various policies (see panel) to protect pasture productivity and renews 10% of the farm every year. Paddocks for renewal are selected by using DairyNZ's pasture condition scoring tool and on DM production.
Rather than just resowing a permanent pasture, a programme approach of an annual ryegrass, chicory, and then back to perennial ryegrass, is used. Coated seed and endophyte minimise pest damage and optimise establishment.
Reynolds says he gets an average 2.4t DM/ha gain from renovation in the first year, and spreading the cost of renovation over three seasons estimates the extra feed grown costs no more than 14c/kg DM, comparing favourably with supplement such as PKE at 29 c/kg DM.
