CANTERBURY MEN ON WEST COAST

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29170, 2 April 1960, Page 9

CANTERBURY MEN ON WEST COAST

Dairy Farming At Rotomanu

A Canterbury couple, Mr and Mrs W. R. Kelly, have no regrets about having gone fanning on the West Coast. In the heart of the Rotomanu settlement the Kellys and Mr and Mrs G. T. Wornall, also from Canterbury, jointly own a 264-acre property on which they milk up to 86 cows and produce up to 300 gallons of milk a day in the peak of the season. The Greymouth town milk supply has first call on their output, but at the peak of the season when town milk producers are turning out more than the borough needs, they separate one milking a day and send the cream to the factory for butter making.

Mr and Mrs Kelly like the district in which they have made their home. “It is a great little valley,” said Mr Kelly the other day. "We have really wonderne*Shbours. For instance the other evening when we were carting in hay several neighbours and friends arrived with their tractors and trailers and made light work of a big job. That is the sort of way that these people help one another.”

Twelve years ago the Kellys or the Womalls would not have dreamed that they would have one day taken up a holding in this fertile but off-the-beaten-track West Coast settlement. Both Mr Kelly and Mr Wornall are returned servicemen from World War II and it was with rehabilitation assistance that they began their farming venture on the West Coast. Opportunities Mr Wornall comes from the Amberley district. After the war he qualified in agricultural farming but as most farms were allotted by ballots with 50 or more applicants chances of success were slight. Told that there were plenty of opportunities on the West Coast and that land there was cheaper than in Canterbury he went to work for a year in the Rotomanu district to qualify himself in a new style of farming. In less than a year the property of Mr William Vallance came up for sale but as it was

too big for one man alone and the purchase price in excess of rehabilitation assistance, Mr Wornall asked his brother-in-law, Mr Kelly, if he would like to come in w.ith him. On Peninsula Mr Kelly comes from Pigeon Bay. At one time he was working with his father blacksmithing and immediately before and after the war he was sharemilking on the Peninsula. He, too, had been unsuccessfully taking part in ballots for a Canterbury farm. So on July 22, 1950, after buying some stock at Mr Vallance's clearing sale, the partnership of Wornall and Kelly began milking that evening. They had purchased a property that would milk about 70 cows on butterfat production, with plenty of scope for increasing production, for the same money that they estimate would have given them a dairy farm in Canterbury milking only 40 to 45 cows. For the last 20 months the Kellys have been managing the farm for most of the time on their own, apart from the help of a young farm worker, as the Wornalls have been forced to leave Rotomanu and live in the Nelson area in the interests of the health of a member of their family, but the two couples are still in partnership and ✓ Mr

Wornall returns for two to three months during the year to help at the busy time with hay and silage making. The property is in fertile mica schist country with a fine sand or gravel foundation. The annual rainfall is of the order of 100 to 110 inches but in the intensely wet year on the coast in 1958 it was up to 167 inches.

With supporting young stock the herd is now up to a strength of 150 and this is regarded as about maximum capacity. Most of the cattle are Friesian and only pedigree Friesian bulls are used. All the cows are under herd test and have recently given a 4.1 to 4.3 per cent. test. The stage has now been reached where all replacement stock are bred on the place. An eight-year pasture rotation is practised. At least every eight years pastures'are broken up and put down to turnips before again being sown to perennial rye, short rotation ryegrass, red and white clover, and timothy. Short rotation is regarded as one of the main grasses in this country, but timothy also does exceptionally well and stock find it quite palatable. Mr Kelly says that if a pasture shows signs of deteriorating before eight years it will also be taken up as young pastures have been found to give a better growth response, particularly in the spring, than older swards. Record Kept A close check is kept on the application of fertilisers on the farm. In a book a record is kept of superphosphate and lime on all paddocks, which have been allocated numbers. It is the practice to apply super at l%cwt to the acre twice a year. About the beginning of the year superphosphate is applied to paddocks just harvested for hay and silage, and young grasses get another dressing in the early spring about six weeks before it is expected that they will be fed. Soil tests have indicated that the annual lime requirement is about half a ton to the acre. Sulphate of ammonia has been used experimentally to boost growth for grazing or silage. Hay requirements for the coming winter looked assured in the first week of the New Year when Mr Kelly remarked: “When I get this paddock in I will have close on 4000 bales of meadow hay.”

This had been cut off about 38 acres. One 12-acre paddock produced about 1400 bales and another similar area 135 a The annual hay requirement for winter feeding is put at about 2500 to 3000 bales. At the same time the aim is to make about 30 acres of pasture into silage. At the beginning of the year 18 acres had so far been turned into silage and it was expected, subject to seasonal conditions, that more would be made in the autumn. For winter feeding 10 acres of turnips and four acres of swedes had also been sown and a further sowing of two acres of turnips was contemplated. Bad Season ( The picture was, however, not so happy two years ago. In that wet year hay crops and turnips were poor and there was only one stack of silage. The result was that in the winter months milk production was at times down to half of the farm’s quota. The current quota for town milk production is 102 gallons a day. To facilitate winter feeding of young stock pampas grass is now being grown on the farm. About 150 plants were put out last October and the intention is to extend the area under the grass to about four acres.

Last year there was a break of autumn-saved pasture for the cows right through the winter with 60 acres conserved for this purpose. The electric fence is used extensively for break feeding. There are five units on the farm, which was one of the first in the district to use this type of fence.

As is necessary on so many West Coast properties the Canterbury couples have had to do some bush clearing and stump removing. On 40 acres on the flat most of the stumps have been taken out and on 87 acres on a hill rising above the main part of the property now less than 20 acres still remain in bush.

Both Mrs Kelly and Mrs Worhall, who were formerly Rona and Rita Thomas of Balcairn, North Canterbury, have helped with work on the farm, such as milking and tractor driving, in the busy season. Mrs Kelly also helps with the sale of petrol, diesel oil and oil and before the introduction of the rural mail Mrs Wornall was the local postmistress.