Grahm Butcher been musing on the issue of pasture quality lately in The Southland Times. It's a very important issue as it determines just how well finishing stock grow, especially lambs. Over the past 20 years or so stocking rates have lightened up, cattle numbers on farm have declined and we have certainly improved sheep per head performance and lamb carcass weights. Lambing dates have become a bit later, costs have risen. Twenty years ago, the combination of higher stocking rates and earlier lambing dates favoured the maintenance of pasture quality "” stock pressure was on and quality was easier to maintain. About 10 years ago, as changes to lambing dates and stocking rates took hold, topping became a key element in maintaining quality. I'm sure we don't have the same amount of topping now "” those rising costs have taken a toll. We went through a period of chemical topping as well. Don't hear much about that now either. Today, we have more lambs per ewe run and emphasis on lamb growth rates. We all want heavier lambs that get there quickly because that's profit, or, more correctly, less of a loss. The maintenance of pasture quality is more of an issue today than it ever was and yet we appear to have less of an ability to manage it. Those of you at the M&WNZ Sheep and Beef Council Field-day at John and Gray Pannett's would have heard John say that without the breeding cow there was no way he could produce 17kg lambs. He was, of course, alluding to one of these "tools" for maintenance of pasture quality. I think we should all consider the role that cattle could play in our sheep operations. If you have the ability to top or take paddocks out for conservation then the need is less critical. But on hill country, having a class of animal that can mop up summer surplus and keep quality is quite important. Even for the farmers on the flat, the choice is to spend money (top, conserve) or convert the surplus into cash with, for example, store 2-year-olds bought in the spring. In the next 10 years will we see more cattle on farms? I think on the whole that more cattle can strengthen a business rather than weaken it.
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