Good feed is the fuel for animal growth and performance – so how do you know if your paddocks are performing?
When Otago farmer Mark Giles of Hunter Hills Station met with his seed rep recently, he had in mind 10 or 12 paddocks for spring planting. He’s developing some country out of native and also working developed areas. This season some paddocks are coming out of two years in rape and are going into pasture, and others with run-out pasture will be cropped for a couple of years.
With brother Nelson doing the tractor work, 150-200 ha of rape and ryecorn are grown each year. The rape helps fatten lambs in summer then is used as a winter crop for the ewes.
Mark and Nicky Giles are building up an online record of their paddocks to help with their planning and ensure they’re getting the production they need for their 6000 ewes and hoggets, and 210 beef cows and heifers. It works like a notebook, but it also sorts information and produces reports.
With the record building up, Mark’s looking forward to being able to easily find histories of individual paddocks. “Rather than having to go to different places to see things like the fertiliser, soil test results and cropping history, I will get it at the push of a button. It brings it all into one spot. I’ll be able to look at them with the rep and we will see what’s been happening in that paddock over the previous five or 10 years.”
The 2800ha property is subdivided into 90 paddocks and Mark says it can be hard to keep track of them all sometimes. For example, he’s wondering if one of the paddocks might have been in rape for three years now, rather than two.
Because the paddock records can be linked with animal performance, he can check how well the pasture or crop is going by looking at sheep or cattle growth rates.
“What I’m finding here is that some paddocks are just not performing. The soil tests are saying they’re reasonably good, but they’re not growing the same as other paddocks at some times of year – like spring - and the stock don’t do so well.”
A further advantage of the accurate paddock record is it will be easy for the Giles to show what chemical or nutrients have been applied for farm assurance. It will also indicate any withholding periods. They’ve got the choice of entering information through their desktop computer or by mobile phone - so it can be done while out on the farm.
Want to get started with paddock recording for your farm? To get more information on how the FarmIQ System can help.
