Christmas and New Year in New Zealand (NZ) can be a strange experience for someone from the northern hemisphere, with warm summer days and meals consisting of BBQs, as opposed to the typical turkey and ham.

However, this year in Canterbury, we’ve been greeted by a lot more wet weather over the holidays, which can be very welcome as it results in much less work trying to keep the ground irrigated.

Even with significant infrastructure to irrigate fields during the summer, natural rainfall is the most efficient type of irrigation system we have.

The holiday period is also a time for the staff to get together and reflect on the busy part of the season, with calving long behind us and mating complete.

We always try to ensure everyone on the farm has either Christmas or New Year’s Day off. With soil moisture in a good position and irrigation turned off, it was an opportunity to run extra lean on staff, allowing some unplanned time off for those who wanted it.

In my own situation, I worked over the Christmas and New Year holidays this year, as I’ll be heading home to Ireland for a few weeks in mid-January.

One of the issues we can get when there is a lot of rainfall at this time of year is lame cows, mainly due to soft hooves caused by constantly wet lanes.

This often means we end up trimming a handful of cows after most morning milkings, with these cows then milked once a day until their mobility improves. This can be time-consuming, but I often find it satisfying to get cows walking correctly.

Most hoof problems we find in NZ are stone- or white-line-related. We don’t often face issues such as dermatitis, as cows spend minimal time on concrete.

Grazing

Grass on the farm has taken off following this wet weather.

We started December slightly behind on grass, with warm and windy weather drying land out quickly. However, moving into January, it is almost like a second spring, with growth rates of up to 70 to 85 kg of dry matter per day.

This will put the farm in a good place for the rest of the season and help set us up for the next grazing year. The current aim is to increase our pre-graze covers and overall farm cover. By planning ahead for grass, it also allows us to increase days in milk.

In NZ grass-based systems, the tools used to manage grass can be very different from what would happen at home. For example, farmers in NZ will cull early to reduce demand for grass following scanning.

Being here has been a great learning experience and taught me that the answer in the long run is not always to ‘put in more feed’.

Pay-out

Currently, we’re seeing record ‘pay out’ from Fonterra (the largest processor in NZ), and this is obviously very welcome for farm owners and share-milkers.

Although I am yet to be at a point where this impacts my own bank account, it is always interesting to see what farm owners choose to invest in when they are making profits. Some go for technology such as collars and drafting gates, while others opt for infrastructure projects such as irrigators or milking parlour upgrades.

This was also a topic at a recent discussion group I attended, with the farmers making the point that having a plan for a cash surplus is almost more difficult than you expect.