Winter Feed Field Day Topic

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30454, 30 May 1964, Page 9

Winter Feed Field Day Topic

Eking out of winter feed supplies was again much in mind when the Foothills branch of Federated Farmers held a field day in the Mount Somers and Alford Forest districts last week.

Mr J. H. Oldfield, a farm management consultant, suggested that three alternatives faced the man whose ewes were now in the position where they were losing bodyweight and he was not prepared to start feeding his winter roots until, say, late June.

He could do nothing apart from what he had done in previous years. His ewes would lose body-weight affecting wool production and also possibly the milking ability of the ewes with a subsequent effect on lamb production. The second alternative was to start feeding swedes on June 1, rationing them on the basis of a half-hour a day with a rough bale of hay per 100 sheep. The prospect was that his listeners would come to the end of the winter with' more feed in root crops than they had at first anticipated. The reaction of some of his listeners, however, was that they were reluctant about starting into their winter root crops prematurely lest they should be left without any feed in August. The other alternative was to buy barley at 10s a bushel and start feeding it at 2 ounces a day building up to 11b a ewe a day, together with 1 to 1J bales of rough hay a day until the shortest day. Cropping On the 500-acre property of Mr J. E. McKenzie at Mount Somers, there was considerable interest in the extent of his cropping programme and small seeds harvesting. Mr McKenzie took over the holding 18 years ago. His land varies quite a bit, with a good strip running through the middle. At the outset it was in sweet vernal and improvement was achieved with a three-ton application of lime being progressively given to the whole holding. From 504 ewes lambed down in the first season, the ewe flock was taken up to 1300, but with an ill-thrift problem it was reduced to 1000 and has now been built up to 1200 again. At first flock replacements were bought in, but because of the difficulty of securing a good class of stock a straight Romney flock is now run. Lambing begins on September 1 and while Mr McKenzie said that he had a lamb survival of 110 to 120 per cent on ewes put to the ram, from 8 to 20 per cent of lambs were found dead or died in the first two days of life. All lambs are shorn in January, and wether lambs are subsequently taken to relatively heavy weights on regrowth white clover and regrowth

after taking meadow nay. With a lack of regrowth the current season has not fitted too well into this pattern. Normally 30 calves are bought in in the autumn and carried through to January or February, £8 to £lO being made a head, but this season with the poor winter feed outlook no calves were bought. At one stage Mr McKenzie had up to about 100 acres of lucerne but he has none now though it was his intention to have as much as a third of his farm in the crop. He suggested that he had not been successful in fattening stock on it and that in his 35 to 40-inch rainfall region making of hay was difficult. Meadow hay is now made but no red clover has been included in pasture mixtures to this end. Mr McKenzie maintained that white clover was hard to beat as a fattening feed but while acknowledging the excellent fattening qualities of this legume, Mr Oldfield suggested that in a dry summer less bulk was obtained from this feed. Visitors to the farm were told that about half the area was under cultivation for cash crops or for forage. In the most recent season 45 acres was harvested for white clover seed and Mr Oldfield said it was likely that this would dress out at about bags to the acre. In discussing white clover Mr Oldfield said that he did not know of a more profitable enterprise than where white clover could be taken at 1| to 2 sacks to the acre and could be sold at 3s to 4s a lb. Mr McKenzie said that in sowing down pastures he had in mind the harvesting of white clover. White clover may be taken following swedes and barley with the barley being undersown with a bushel of short rotation, 41b of white clover, 31b of cocksfoot and 41b of dogstail. The rotation may also consist of linseed, wheat and greenfeed to new grass with 151 b of short rotation, 51b of perennial ryegrass, 31b of cocksfoot, 41b of dogstail, and 41b of white clover, or again swedes may come in followed by under-sown barley and white clover.

Mr E. Delahunty, a farm advisory officer of the Department of Agriculture in Ashburton, who was making one of his last appearances in Mid-Canterbury before being transferred to Invercargill,

suggested that white clover cropping could have the effect of reducing the productivity of a pasture by 20 per cent throughout its life and its total life by two years.

Last season there were 45 acres in wheat, half of it Fife Tuscan sown in an endeavour to get round the yellow dwarf virus problem, and half in Arawa. The Fife Tuscan yielded slightly better but the Arawa was fed off. Wheat yields on the property average about 45 bushels to the acre. There were 25 acres in barley which averages about 60 to 70 bushels on this farm and in the last two years Mr McKenzie has gone back to growing linseed which yielded 11 to lljcwt to the acre last season and one tone a year earlier. .