Rural News
Dairy support with irrigation
24th Mar 09, 8:55am
by
Michael Chaffey specialises in dairy support farming on a 505ha irrigated farm near Te Pirita, on the north bank of the Rakaia River in Canterbury reports The Straight Furrow. The farm is in the heart of a reasonably new dairying area, where, with irrigation, numerous big dairy farms have been established over the past 10 to 15 years on lighter Canterbury Plains soils. Michael and Angela Chaffey started doing some winter grazing from the mid 1990s when they had excess winter feed. By 2002, as irrigation progressed, they had become winter grazing specialists.
Now the only livestock belonging to the property are between 50 and 300 beef heifers each year.By winter however, there are up to 4000 dairy cows on the farm in mobs of around 300. The big advantage of being surrounded by dairy farmers is that the cows can be walked to the property for winter grazing, which Mr Chaffey said had benefits for animal health. Today the farm is fully irrigated, with irrigation accounting for around 25 % of farm costs. The power bill is around $100,000 a year before any power is actually used for pumping from the six wells, so any land use needs to be high value.
It is well known that winter grazing agreements sometimes come to grief. The responsibilities of both parties need to be very clear and communication open. The Chaffeys winter grazing is charged out on the basis of cents per kilogram of dry matter on the paddocks. To independently assess the amount of grass available, an Ashburton company, Canterbury Feed Assessment, is used."That stops any issues. If they've assessed a paddock and the dairy farmer comes along and says `I don't agree' we get another assessment done and then maybe average the two. I'm in it for the long term so I'm happy with that.''
"I generally work on 15 tonne/ha average for the kale and 2000 to 2500kg/ha available on the grass paddocks.'' This year he has grown 120ha of kale for the cows. The dairy farmers come to the property to feed their cows supplements, move fences and look after animal health issues. Mr Chaffey said that with irrigation he could pretty much guarantee how much feed would be available, but he had baleage on hand to cover if there was a feed shortage before the cows left. He also supplies straw from barley grown on the property.
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