2020 Past Year Highlights

Winter 2019

Soon after our 2019 sale we got 100mls of rain in 48 hours – flooded all the gullies.
Cost us a lot of money for full recondition of the Kubota 440 tractor after Kerry
drove it into a flooded creek crossing and got water in the motor.

We only had one more downpour all winter. In the main the winter months were kind
to us. In fact we had so much grass to break feed to the cows that we didn’t use all
the baleage that we had amassed over the previous season.

Calving was a breeze and spring growth got away from us with standing hay
everywhere. In the new season we bought in another 200 bales of baleage and
topped up the barns with small bales of hay.

How lucky could we be with what was to follow... the drought of all droughts.

The Big Dry

After good spring rain, the last shower recorded was 10mls on the 13th January
and then the drought set in, no more rain until the end of March. Those few
showers turned a brown drought into a green drought but no dry matter of any
consequence and no further rain for another 6 weeks. The 20mls on the 15th
May sprung the grass into life and another 24mls at the end of May hopefully has
signalled the end of the big dry.

How Did We Manage?

Kerry Arnolds back packed it in, way back in November and so at 75 years
young with my wife in a rest home, I took on the farm management alone. Our
fantastic spring growth helped provide the cows with lots of dry seed head and
the persisting moisture in the gullies provided some green feed for the cattle. I
took some of the pressure off by not mating any yearling heifers over the last two
seasons and so didn’t need to panic when the grass supply dried up. The two
year old heifers, just in calf, were big enough and fat enough to survive on very
little and there was no need to rush into feeding the yearling heifers as they had a
whole year to grow out. With judicious rotational mob stocking and daily baleage
suplimentation the cows kept milking and the calves did well. As there was no
grass to wean the calves on to, I felt they would do better on their mothers and
delayed weaning until early April. It’s good in these times of hardship to be able to
call on family to help. Kimberley, Mark and family were great. They and my brother
Kevin were able to help when I needed it. So good of them all to be on call – Big
Thank you. I also appreciated a friendly check up call from an M.P.I Veterinarian
enquiring as to my health and well being and a big thank you to Kate Taylor for
dropping in some goodies including a lovely homemade fish pie.

Then in February a blast from the past. Grant Latimer who I had helped set up the
Cornwall Park Simmental Stud in Auckland back in the 1990’s answered my call
for a labour unit. With the cooperation of the M.P.I, Health NZ and the Police, both
my farm and Grant and his partner, Maryanne were declared essential. They were
permitted to move down from the Waikato during the later part of Covid-19, Level 4
and started working for me on the 22nd April. Great to have Grant aboard.

Breeding Programme

Y-Arta’s reign as senior herd sire has come to an end and Hampton Downs AB90
has become our Senior Bull ably assisted by two homegrown bulls Glenanthony
Dakota and Glenanthony Democrat. Dakota is a powerful clean polled sire but sadly
Democrat after appearing polled as a calf has grown big scurs. Although this year’s
sale will be the first for some years with no bulls sired by Y-Arta many of the female
pedigrees have Y-Arta in them.

Shows

Sadly I felt it was necessary to pull the pin on showing this last season. As always
Kimberley and now her son Bradley were very keen to help but show preparation
takes several months to break in and train a show team and I felt it was unfair to put
pressure on Kimberley who has a full time job and Bradley who is at high school.

Given all of two days notice, I was asked to judge the Charolais cattle at last years
Royal Show in Hastings. After a brief hesitation, wondering if I was really up to it, I
accepted and thoroughly enjoyed the day judging Simon and Wendy Collin’s huge
team of Charolais and taking part in the judging of the Champion Interbreed classes
and the Meat and Wool Cup.

Quite a change of space being on the other side of the fence.

Covid-19

It is amazing how the early decision of the current Government to block the
borders and limit social contact by confining us all to our homes, has so brilliantly
eliminated the Covid-19 virus as a health threat. The big test now is to see if the
virus has in fact completely disappeared or if it will raise its’ ugly head when we
go to level 1. I would like to thank Kimberley for making sure I didn’t stray beyond
the Mailbox at the front gate by doing my grocery shopping for me on the days not
already covered by my marvellous next door neighbour Raewyn Greaves. Thank
you to both of you.

As I hope most of you have discovered, we have been able to delay our sale date
back to 12.30pm on Thursday 18th June. In doing this we hoped we would have
more freedom to hold our normal sale and it now looks as if we will be able to
proceed without the restrictions of Level 4, 3 and 2. The delay will definitely help
to put a bloom on our sale bulls in order that they will present so much better on
the day. You are all cordially invited to spend a day out, meet other farmers and
appreciate some good cattle. See you then.