Poulton Monitor Farm revisited

01-01-2010 | Richard Gavigan

Farming has proved challenging for Tararua sheep and beef cattle farmer Mike Poulton since the heady days of high prices earlier this decade.

It was also when Mike and his wife, Mel, were the region's Monitor Farm owners.

The couple, with help from long-time stock manager Ian Taylor, farm Wairiri, 940ha (800ha effective) of summer safe medium to steep hill country at Kumeroa, 20km east of Woodville. They also run a further 30ha of flats as an intensive bull-beef finishing unit 7km back towards town. Mike and Mel are proud custodians of land that has been in the family for 90 years.

"My grandfather bought the first part of Wairiri back in 1919," Mike says. "Dad bought a neighbouring property in the 1960s and set up a family trust in 1973. The trust bought the bull block in 1974 and I started leasing the farms from the trust in 2004.

"Times have been pretty tough since we took on the lease, but Mel and I are just concentrating on trying to do the basics well while keeping spending to a minimum. It's frustrating not having the dollars to do more but everyone seems to be more cautious these days."

The Poulton family were Meat & Wool NZ Monitor Farm owners from 1999 to 2003. It was a period of considerable excitement and rapid intensification for the family, as stock prices rose alongside significant increases in stocking rate and animal performance on Wairiri. The times were a testament to the ability of sheep and beef cattle farmers in general to apply farming technologies and respond to price signals when financial rewards were forthcoming.

Between 1999 and 2004 the Poultons raised their winter carrying capacity from 7044 to 8321 stock units (an 18% increase) and a stocking rate of 10.2su/ha, all the more impressive given the contour of the country they had to work with. Ewe liveweights at mating were lifted by 10kg to 65kg, and the scanning potential in the mixed-age ewes increased 36% to 180%. These gains in productivity were underpinned by regrassing (mainly on the bull block), capital fertiliser application and improved soil fertility, subdivision with three-wire electric fences and more intensive grazing management and targeted feeding of livestock.

Pasture quality on the farm was transformed during the period (the Poultons won the Grasslands Pasture Management Award in 2001) with the result that animal performance took off. For example, docking results increased to over 130% and total tonnes of lamb weaned rose accordingly (117t in 1999, 177t in 2002, 163t in 2003).

Now, like many farms during the past four or five seasons, Wairiri's stocking rate has turned almost full circle, down 13% on 2004's peak to 7253su wintered this year.

This reduction in stock numbers is the result of several factors inducing the Poultons to take a more risk-averse approach to stocking their Kumeroa property's steep hills.

"The stocking rate has come back in line with a reduction in inputs," Mike says.

"There's been less fertiliser go on and a lot less nitrogen used in recent seasons and we're just not growing as much winter feed as we used to. We got hammered with the 07-08 drought and have also had some tough winters and some difficult springs in recent years, and all these things have conspired to make us more conservative with our stocking rate."

The Poultons have also geared their stock-management policies to reduce risk and better suit a lower input farming system. For example, ewe mating dates are staggered to spread the lambing risk on country exposed to strong westerly weather. They are also timed to suit the
onset of spring pasture growth on blocks with different contour, altitude and Olsen P levels, particularly now that nitrogen use to manipulate late winter-early spring pasture growth rates is not so cost-effective.

Some ewes were mated from March 27 this year to lamb on the lower, earlier country at the front of Wairiri. Another group were mated from April 10 to lamb on the hills at the back of the property, while a third group was mated from April 20 to lamb on steep, late hills with Olsen P levels of six through the centre of the farm.

The Poultons also find staggered mating and lambing a useful way of spreading the labour requirements around vaccinating, set stocking and docking, a significant factor now that reduced labour inputs are the norm.

Despite running a "leaner" system these days, the sheep on Wairiri still receive a full range of vaccinations for toxoplasmosis, campylobacter and clostridial diseases.

The ewes are drenched according to faecal egg count results (Mike and Mel use a Fecpak microscope) and body condition, and not all ewes are drenched at any one time.

Ewe hoggets are still mated when the season allows, with 500 hoggets mated at 40kg-plus from April 20 this year for an 86% in-lamb result and docking of over 300 good-sized hogget lambs this spring. Overall, the ewes on Wairiri docked just shy of 130% this season.

The lambs on Wairiri are weaned according to pasture covers, ewe condition and lamb growth rates - the trigger being when Mike considers the lambs are starting to compete with the ewes for feed. Weaning often takes place early in January, with as many lambs as possible killed down to a 14.5kg carcaseweight and the remainder sold store within a month of weaning.

Mike considers that breeding cows still have a place as a pasture-management tool on Wairiri, despite the farm being well subdivided now and the need for a mid-winter tidy up not such a necessity. The cows calve in mid-October and the calves are weaned early in April at around 200kg. All female calves are retained and sold as dry heifers (around 200kg carcaseweight local trade) after pregnancy scanning in March. All steers are farmed for two winters and sold store in January.

The bulls at Burnside are wintered at 2.5/ha then topped up to 3.5/ha in the spring using bulls wintered on crop at Wairiri. They are bought as 100kg weaner bull calves in November and killed from the following December onwards at around 270kg carcaseweight.

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