Ashley Dene field day highlights lucerne silage and winter barley

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 23

Ashley Dene field day highlights lucerne silage and winter barley

Lucerne silage for light land sheep fanning was endorsed by the manager of Lincoln College’s Ashley Dene farm, Mr Bob Simpson, at a field day on the farm last week.

The college authorities responsible for Ashley Dene also presented early results from trials with winter barley in the light soils of the farm.

Lucerne has been a major part of fanning on Ashley Dene for many years and now forms the bulk of summer and autumn feed for 3000 mixed ewes and their lambs and replacements. Watering the lucerne' was also the first priority of the irrigation system installed over 68ha in 1980, but the emphasis for first use of water has now switched to a mixture of lucerne, pasture, summer forage crop and malting barley, the supervisor of the farm for the college, Mr Rod Plank, explained.

Silage had also been made on Ashley Dene on a number of occasions in the past but before 1983 it had never become a permanent part of the supplementary feeding programme. Last spring and summer 84ha of lucerne and lucerne plus oats was made into silage at a cost of $10,900, or $12.82 a tonne for 850 tonnes approximately. Mr Simpson explained that despite some problems with forming the largest “bun” silage stack, the sup-

plementary feed had all stored well and proved very palatable for stock. Only 250 tonnes was required for winter feeding and because of the wet summer and autumn none was required for flushing, which is its main purpose.

“After one year’s experience it appears that silage will have a permanent place on Ashley Dene,” said Mr Plank, “as it is a good quality, relatively inexpensive supplement that can be stored for long periods at low cost.

“It is an ideal pre-tupping and pre-lambing feed and although feeding out was a problem in the past, now feed-out wagons, frontend loaders and silage grabs have made this part of the operation a one-man job.”

Mr Simpson explained, against a background noise of the contractors’ front-end loader piling up and consolidating another stack, that paddocks were being cut this year at 15 tonnes a ha, compared with around 20 tonnes last year.

He wanted to use the silage in summer and autumn and not as a winter feed and his objective was to get 3000 tonnes down, as insurance against three years of drought. Another 800 to 900 tonnes is being packed away this year. Lucerne was cut by the college staff in the heat of the day so that maximum

sugars had risen in the plants, and was wilted for about 24 hours. It was then fine or precision chopped, not double chopped. When the contractor, B. A. Murray, Ltd, of Christchurch,. moves in with the chopper and pick-up, trucks and front-end loader, huge 200 or 300-tonne “buns” are built in paddock corners and consolidated as much as possible. They are covered with 200 micron A.H.I. plastic and tyres, although Mr Simpson is going to use some old deep sea trawl nets this year and stretch them tightly over the buns and weight down the edges. The tyres and nets are to cut flapping of the plastic, which tends to drive air into the silage stack.

The contractor is this year charging $ll a tonne for chopping, carting and rolling.

When explaining the policy change over the irrigated area of Ashley Dene, Mr Plank said that the future rotation in this area would be pasture, summer forage, tama ryegrass, barley, pasture (two years).

An alternative would be pasture, barley pasture (two years).

The changes would provide for greenfeed for prelamb and lambing ewes, summer forage for fattening lambs, autumn feed for flushing ewes and barley for stock feed or extra revenue.

By

The farm had a budgeted and actual deficit for the' financial year ended June 30, 1984 of $3500 on a turnover of $123,000. Mr Plank said that he was in no doubt that this reflected the financial position of many light land sheep farmers in Canterbury during that year, although the Ashley Dene loss was aggravated by income forgone because of research work.

However this year the farm was budgeted for a $12,700 cash surplus, an improvement almost entirely due to the income from irrigated and dry-land barley.

“The removal of wool S.M.P. payments and an estimated 8 per cent increase in farm costs has eliminated any benefits that might have been obtained from the devaluation of the dollar,” said Mr Plank.

Mr Plank also observed that Ashley Dene was not alone among light land sheep farms in diversifying into barley to try and generate a cash surplus. But there must be few farms' with such unpromising soil trying to coax a barley crop out from between the stones.

The 1983 autumn barley trial confirmed that yields of up to 5 tonne a ha were

HUGH STRINGLEMAN

possible on the non-irrigated parts of Ashley Dene, but as most Canterbury farmers will know, 1983 contained a wet spring and summer. Barley would find a permanent place on Ashley Dene, said Mr Plank, provided yields could be maintained at realistic levels. Autumn barley would be grown as part of the lucerne replacement rotation of six years lucerne, barley, tama, turnips and new lucerne. Dr Warwick Scott, of the plant science department, explained that the college was in the second crop year of a research programme devoted to autumn-sown barley on light to medium soils.

Along with Drs Nick Gallagher and Ray Gaunt, he explained that the main benefit from bringing forward sowing times was consistently heavier yields of better-quality grain arising from better root growth enabling the plant to tap more soil water (barley could grow down 2 metres); greater proportion of crop development occurring under favourable conditions; early maturity so that grain growth is complete before severe drought bites; longer period of tillering and crop growth; and the possibility of a summer fallow before the tama crop.

But associated disadvantages included the loss of spring grazing, perhaps balanced by some spring grazing of the autumn-sown barley, higher variable costs and associated capital tied up for a longer period; possibility of aphid and disease attack which may be expensive to control; possibility of frost damage in some seasons and bird damage.

Last year the college demonstrated a steady decline in crop yield from Triumph

sown on April 13 (5.3 tonnes a ha); to May 5 (4.3) to July 5 (3.7) and to August 12 (2.7). Thus an advance of five months in sowing date, leading to an advance of one month in harvesting date, doubled yield. But Dr Gallagher expected that this year Ulia barley, the true winter sixrow barley, would probably only return about 3 tonnes to the hectare, despite being sown in autumn.

Dr Gaunt said that on current evidence scald seemed to be the main disease problem in autumnsown barley, mainly because of the long growth season and cool, moist conditions during the winter. Leaf rust may also be a problem and barley yellow dwarf virus could be prevalent His recommendations were to select resistant cultivars, such as niia and Priver, use treated seed, use an insecticide at drilling to control aphids which might introduce B.Y.D.V. and monitor disease levels carefully in susceptible cultivars and spray with Tilt or Bayleton to control scald and leaf rust up to flowering. Dr Scott reported that he had been able to force ewes to eat about 2000 kg of dry matter per hectare from autumn-sown winter barleys, niia and Priver, which were the only cultivars which recovered adequately from a sharp, two-day grazing in early August. He estimated this was worth about one tonne per hectare in grain yield. If yields could be maintained compared with ungrazed crops then obviously grazing was financially worth while. His research would continue, he said, and among his early recommendations were lead prills at a high velocity for bird control.

But like kicking the cat, it gave immediate farmer satisfaction and didn’t achieve anything much in the longer term.