Spring has well and truly arrived at Puketira Deer – a post winter weighing shows that all three weaner deer mobs are now growing at 300 grams/day and the top mob averaged 146 grams/day through the winter months, twice what the bottom mob was growing at. Is this better genetics showing through?
With a rising schedule a decision is made to kill 50 yearling stags in Mid September. We endeavor to take out slow growing animals and retain those growing at over 300 grams/day. Tailing of lambs has started with one block of set stocked ewes achieving 199 lambs from 102 ewes = 195%. Other twin mobs are around 183%. September proves to be wetter than normal with some drizzly Easterly rain. At the end of the month a further 10ha is drilled into barley for cereal silage. Nitrogen applied in early August ensures pasture covers are sufficient for lambing onto in late August. Set stocking of twin bearing ewes takes place on 22nd August but already a handful had lambed while on the Kale.
Again it is a very condensed lambing, the weather is kind and lamb survival has been good. As we start the task of rebuilding our feed reserves 10 hectares of triticale is drilled for cereal silage. Rainfall for the month is only 22mm. We have now had a total of 289mm to the end of August. Has the drought broken? No, because we are only at 70% of average rainfall and there is no subsoil moisture in the ground. However, we are getting a spring. End of August see the end of feeding out and surprisingly, as growth has been good, we have a paddock of regrowth rape we can offer to the stags. One mobs of the hinds is able to go onto the Kale that was not required by the ewes. It makes a welcome change to have adlib feeding after months of a diet of barley straw and palm kernel. We received some rain this month – 62mm. Pregnancy scanning of deer was the key event. Mixed Age hinds scanned well with negligible Dries but the season was too tough for Maiden Hinds. Disapprovingly they only scanned 50% so sadly a number of high genetic worth animals went down the road. On the flipside – it was encouraging to see those that remain. Our hind numbers are now back 33% on other years. This will significantly on next season’s production. We have one paddock of reasonable winter feed – a paddock of direct drilled Kale which has continued to grow over the winter with every shower of rain. This paddock of Kale allows us to fully feed the ewes for 6 weeks prior to lambing, and still have some Kale left over at the end. (It was never intended for the ewes in the first place!)
Two weeks of strong Nor-west wind and no rain forces us to make decisions for the winter. We try to find grazing for our hoggets which we hope will be in lamb. After enquiries to Mid Canterbury it becomes clear that that they may not be fed as well as they need to be so a decision is made to keep them at home and we purchase standing grass from Mid Canterbury to truck back to our farm in North Canterbury to wrap as balage for the winter. We think we can do this for about 45 cents/kg dry matter – a rate not too dissimilar to what we would have had to pay for the grazing. This is expensive feed but we are able to purchase on a dry matter basis so no guess work as to what weight is in a bale. Its quite a logistics exercise to co-ordinate the mowing, baling, transport and wrapping to all happen on time. We are very pleased with the professionalism and service of Quigley Contracting, GVT transport and Hoban Bale Wrapping.
Meanwhile we continue to cart in barley grain, barley straw, meadow hay, cereal silage and palm kernel. Not a week goes by than another 2-3 unit loads roll into our farm. You don’t appreciate how much feed your farm grows until you have to purchase it all in. When will it rain? May passes as another low rainfall month with only 16mm for the month, and the 2 weeks of Nor-west wind at the start of May negated most to the 25mm rain received at the end of April. It seems like nothing works this season. We are able to get our sheep shorn towards the end of May, the wool is bright , of good colour, and surprisingly little vegetative matter despite all the straw and hay fed to them. For the first time in 20 years the wool is strongly sought after and the price received even exceeds what we used to get from mid micron corriedale wool. It makes a nice change. This was the month that we expected the autumn rain to arrive, but sadly it remained elusive. Early April saw the completion of our AI programme with 75 hinds inseminated. A decision was made not to artificially inseminate the 2yr old hinds due to the continuing dry conditions. All weaners were brought through the shed, drenched and weighed. We were pleased to find that they have been averaging 240g/day since weaning – on a diet of predominantly grain and balage.
We took delivery of a second hand Prattley 3 way autodrafter with weight scales and Electronic Identification (EID) capability. This became a project for the younger members of the Puketira Deer team – to redesign and rebuild the sheep yards to accommodate the new drafter. After much planning part of the old yards was removed and a new race and gates constructed to feed the sheep up to the drafter. But would the sheep run? Ewe hoggets were initially tried as they had already been given EID tags. Surprisingly after about 3 runs through they began to go “too fast” and were trying to get into the drafter two at a time! Anyway the new technology allows us to quickly gather information of individual animal and whole mob performance. By the end of April it was quite clear that it was getting too late to achieve any significant growth before the winter as there had been no moisture, A decision was made to sell down the lightest 100 of our ewe hoggets, As these weighed less than 40kg is was unlikely that they would get in lamb. The other 350 are holding their weight at 42 kg but are not gaining. A decision is also made to kill 100 capital stock yearling hinds – the potential of the future sent down the road to get their heads chopped off because there is simply no feed and something must go. We received 25mm rain the day they leave, the most significant rain since the 13mm we had received 5 months earlier. We have taken delivery of our first load of palm kernel and the hinds quickly adjusted to this , a welcome addition to their diet of barley straw and barley grain. One silage pit is finished and now into the second one, made only 8 weeks earlier. 154 cull hinds have now gone to the works , getting us back to capital stock numbers. Although our base stocking rate is probably still too high. We should be farming at 20% less capital stock and doing them better (and easier on us and the farm). Its been a busy month for our manager Mel, vaccinating ewes and ewe hoggets prior to the ram going out. In addition to a daily ration of cereal silage the ewes are being fed grain for a period of 10 days prior to the rams going out on 28th March. The 2015 AI programme for selected deer commenced with CIDR’s going in for synchronisation on 18 March.
Mid March was spent drilling Greenfeed Oats for Winter Feed. It even tried to rain while we ere drilling but rainfall remained elusive with only 18mm recorded in March. We have now had 5 months without any significant rain, recording only 110mm for the period November – March. By the end of March it is clear there will be a significant feed deficit for the autumn/early winter and a decision is made to purchase 200 medium square bales of meadow hay and barley straw as well as 16 ton of barley. We have already fed out 16 ton of barley harvested ourselves at the end of January. Thankfully we were able to source hay and straw reasonably locally – from Rangiora. Once the feed had run out by 6 February 158 of the lambs were sent to the works averaging 15.28kg carcass weight, lighter than we would have liked but the decision was made to “go deep” as there was no finishing feed left. Thankfully they were killable leaving us with only 70 lighter ones left and no one wanting to buy store lambs so we turned them out to the back of the farm for what little remained outside of the deer fenced area. All fawns have now been tagged and weighed. DNA profiling of the AI fawns has been carried out, samples sent away and we eagerly wait to see who our future stars may be. One stag fawn weighed 69kg on 6 February, significantly heavier than his peers. With one mob of hinds on fawns with nothing other silage and grain for two weeks a decision was made to wean them early to preserve hind condition. On the 14th February they were weaned at 46.64kg lightweight, considerably lighter than previous years but it was interesting to see they had still been growing at 250grams/day whilst on a feed pad situation. Our best mob of weaners still managed to grow at 371 grams/day while on Mum in February – on a paddock of stalky cocksfoot!. By the end of February the remaining three mobs of weaners had all been weaned as feed for the lactating hinds ran out. At least the weaners all had new Lucerne to go onto and settled quite quickly despite not having Mum anymore. February also saw up selling 4 2yr and 3 yrs old sire stags to our regular buyer and the sale of 60 of our lightest yearling hinds to the works. These averaged 49kg carcass weight which was similar to last year, but a month earlier due to the dry conditions so we were quite pleased under the circumstances.
Early January saw us weaning hoggets from their lambs. With the continuing dry conditions we were pleased to be able to wean 35% off mum and send straight to the works, averaging 16.14 kg carcass weight. The remaining 228 lambs went onto new Lucerne then on rape for the remainder of January.
As a significant number of 2ths are sold as replacements to a neighbouring farmer the challenge for us after weaning is to get these animals (hoggets/rising 2ths) up to weight, in good condition and ready for sale by the end of January. We were pleased that this year they averaged 60kg live weight, condition score 4 at the time of sale. It is also very pleasing to hear the performance our neighbour is achieving with weaning drafts and meat yield using our genetics. At the end of the month we started bringing in the hinds and fawns into the deer shed for the first time, to tag the weaners and remove any hinds that are not rearing a fawn. The older hinds again performed very well with minimal dries however the first fawners yielded a disappointing 80% despite scanning 94% and appeared to be quite late in fawning. By the end of January all pasture has run out for breeding stock and we have opened a pit of silage that has been down for five years. We only recorded 5mm rain in January Well its all happening – with 100 yearling stags gone in the first week of December then its into weaning lambs. We were very pleased how the lambs went – weaning at 36.3kg liveweight and dressing out at 18.5kg carcase weight, 51% yield. 90% of the male lambs went to the works off mum, the remaining 10% we sold as stores, averaging 30kg liveweight. A very pleasing result for our lamb breeding/finishing operation in a year where you only get one chance! After weaning its time to sort out the cull ewes for the works and to crutch and jet the ewes we are retaining. Thomas did a good job of the crutching in the race and Eldon jetted them all, finishing up with half the solution left over so it remains to be seen how effective the jetting for flystrike will be!
We are busy velvetting our 40 2 and 3 year old stags – they too seem to be late however we haven’t been able to offer them the feed we would like in November. In December we have had to supplement them with some Barley as their paddocks have been short of feed (hinds are getting the best pastures). Yearling hinds were weighed again at the end of December, averaging 192 grams/day throughout December. They now average 91kg, however we will cull the bottom 30% so the animals to be retained will now average 100kg liveweight. As the new year approaches hinds have now finished fawning and fawns are very active running around early morning or evening. The paddocks that they fawned into are now past their best with little legume left and the grass all gone to seed. Feed quality is falling and we have introduced two mobs to barley in Advantage grain feeders. The remaining mobs we will start grazing on Lucerne paddocks. So much for plans!
It seemed to blow Nor-West throughout November with daily evapotranspiration rates exceeding the little rainfall we did receive. The deer that we were intending to carry through to January ended up grazing a Lucerne paddock intended for balage before going for the venison processor early in December . This was 5 weeks earlier than intended, thankfully our co-operative Alliance was able to find space for us and the animals were up to weight, averaging 100kg liveweight. With the tightening feed situation we would have only one opportunity to get lambs up to killable weights – the period leading up to weaning. So the ewes and lambs ended up going onto the remaining paddocks of Lucerne that had been earmarked for balage. They are looking good and doing well (see photo of ewe and her two lambs on Lucerne). On the 12th of November we had the privilege to host a delegation of 20 Swiss farmers to view our property and enjoy a delicious meal of venison prepared by Waikari School. The fact that the people serving the food also spoke Swiss was an added bonus! Fawning is now underway but is appears to be a slow start – perhaps 10 days later than we would have expected (or liked) so it seems mid point of fawning this year may not be until 30 November. It seems strange given the hinds came out of the winter in good condition and went onto good cover for fawning. Perhaps it was the cold October that caused them to be slow. |
AuthorLyndon Matthews is the farm manager and one of the directors of Puketira Deer. |