Getting a head start on winter grazing
Dairy Holdings Limited is the first farming operation to be granted a winter grazing consent in Southland, which is unsurprising, given the company likes to stay ahead of the curve.
Chief executive Colin Glass says a pro-active strategy to ensure the company’s operations are set up for the future is crucial and gives the company certainty. “Our planning is always 12 months in advance. We try to be ahead of the curve.” As a New Zealand majority owned and operated company, the operation comprises 60 dairy farms, producing 17 million kilograms of milk solids from 50,000 cows. With all of its assets in the South Island, there are nine farms and one larger support block in Southland, mainly in the Gore-Mandeville area of the Waimea Valley, with another property north of Winton. As a big player with a big footprint, they want to ensure consistency of practice across their farms.
The consent was granted to Dairy Holdings Limited for their winter grazing activities with a series of conditions to ensure the best outcomes for water quality. All of Dairy Holdings’ farms are self contained, meaning they don’t send stock away to graze on someone else’s property. Across the South Island they include 20 support farms that provide for the rearing and supply of 13,500 in-calf heifers each year to the dairy farms and grazing of all non lactating cows during the winter months. Although computer modelling shows wintering has the most potential for nutrient loss, it is a necessary part of the business. “While farmers might be able to choose to winter-off in another area, all that does is transfer the issues,” says Colin. “We take full responsibility for the grazing blocks as well as the dairy farms." Dairy Holdings owns, leases and controls the farms that supply all its pasture feed requirements.“This enables our operations to be New Zealand’s pastoral environmental and animal husbandry leader.”
Careful planning of how and where stock is winter grazed is important as it helps to reduce negative impacts on waterways and animal health. Colin says what was regarded as good practice in the past is now the minimum requirement. Wintering strategies include growing more fodder beet, a lower nitrogen feed, which has a similar nitrogen level to kale, but the crop yield is double. Catch crops are planted after winter feed crops, including oats and kale, to take up nitrogen left in the soil so it’s used up by plants rather than picked up by rainfall to travel to rivers or groundwater. These and other mitigations also lead to reductions in phosphorus, sediment and E.coli getting into streams, rivers and estuaries. Changes to national legislation around water quality had given the company more impetus around the planning and the path it was already heading down, he says. “We recognised the need to account for our footprint some years ago.” Dairy Holdings has been reducing its nutrient application rates for several years and was confident it would be within limits and therefore comply with the new regulations.
It had taken the lessons from the limit setting process in Canterbury, which put it in a good place to be able to approach the process in Southland, he says. With consents in place in Canterbury in 2017, the company had now been through three or four audits of its farms there. A lot of dairy operations were on the same journey and everyone’s experiences were different and reflective of their own farming systems. Dairy Holdings did not put its head up as some kind of gold standard, “we’re just realistic”, says Colin. “We acknowledge that some reductions in future will be required. We’ve now started that journey in Southland and it’s positive to be ahead of the game.”
