The rural property market remains constrained with no significant rise in either prices or farm sales in the latest market statistics for the three months to April released today by the Real Estate Institute of NZ. “Though there have been lots of inquiries the slow inactive market continues as buyers are being very cautious,” says President Peter McDonald. The national median farm sale price rose to $1,000,000 for the three months to April 2010, fractionally up on the median of $970,000 for the three months to March 2010, but still down on the February figure of $1,045,000 reports Scoop.

The total number of farms sold in the three months to April was 267, almost the same as the 266 in the same period last year but well down on the 786 farms sold in the three months to April 2008. Though it is effectively the last month in the dairy farm sales season, only 12 dairy farms sold in April and the median price for the three month period fell from $3,600,000 at the end of March to $3,550,000. The average price per hectare for the April dairy farm sales was just $34,766, a further decline on the March average of $36,905, and the February average of $43,970. And the average sale price per kilogram of milk solids fell to $36 from $42 in March and $47 in February.

(more…)

Te Pohue farm manager Peter Procter said years of losing thousands of dollars of stock and having to repair smashed gates and fences had pushed farmers to the point where they will fight back reports The NZ Herald. “I’ve had a gutsful – and so has everybody else who lives on Waitara Rd. It’s come to the crunch … if a dog sets foot on my place it will be dead and hanging on my gate for the owner to come and collect.”

Mr Proctor said he had seen too many shot and savaged livestock over the past few years on the property, off SH5, as illegal hunters target private farms and blocks for their shooting expeditions. “I’ve had poachers leave dogs on the farm overnight which have attacked sheep within a short period of time. I’ve had up to 20 ewes at once killed, and if you’ve ever seen a sheep still alive with half its face peeled off you wouldn’t think twice about shooting these kinds of dogs.”.

(more…)

Deer numbers have fallen to levels last seen in 1994 as the sector continues to feel the fallout from record prices earlier this decade.The latest available census, done in 2008, showed a herd of 1.2 million reports The ODT. The kill this year was forecast to fall below 400,000, compared with a peak a few years ago of 750,000. Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) chief executive Mark O’Connor attributed the decline to farmers killing capital stock as venison prices fell, a situation from which the industry had yet to recover.

He believed there was a rebalancing occurring in the industry, and those farmers who remained carrying larger numbers of animals would be more productive. DINZ chairman John Scurr, of Wanaka, said the forecast kill was lower than the board would like, but that was a factor of supply and demand which was beyond its control. The sector had been hit by changing land use, and much of its traditional finishing country was now being used for dairying. That meant deer herds were being pushed into the high country foothills. This was despite deer farming being financially competitive with lamb finishing and wool and dairy grazing, he said.

(more…)

Improved productivity could reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions from sheep by up to 12%, according to the author of a study which calculated the carbon footprint of sheep. Stewart Ledgard, a principal AgResearch scientist, said a higher lambing percentage and faster lamb growth rates offered the best options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sheep, as opposed to reducing fossil fuel use, which was low on sheep farms compared with other intensive agricultural systems.

Dr Ledgard said the 1.9kg of CO2-equivalent produced for each 100g portion of lamb exported to Europe, was “broadly consistent with other international studies of products derived from farmed, ruminant livestock reports The ODT. His study found 57% of the sheep carbon footprint was generated by the natural process of animals utilising pasture and producing methane during digestion, but it was a figure that has been decreasing.

(more…)

A two-day soil management workshop taking place in Cromwell at the end of June will be the biggest event of its type in the South Island in recent times. Co-organiser Cherryle Prew of the SoilFoodWeb Institute said it was a coup for the South Island to secure key note speaker Dr Christine Jones, an internationally renowned soils ecologist and founder of the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme reports Scoop.

“Dr Jones is booked years in advance, so having her speak for a whole morning at the ”Farming Soils – Starting Today” workshop is a real honour,” she said. “She will be talking about the big picture; how the carbon, nitrogen and water cycles are intrinsically linked.  I think farmers will respect her years of experience working with landholders to restore water balance, increase biological activity and improve productivity”.

(more…)

The dairy boom continued in Canterbury and Southland with the South Island dairy herd up 13 per cent last year to 2.1 million, according to official figures. The South Island dairy herd is almost seven times the size it wasy 20 years ago. Canterbury was the South Island’s largest dairying region, recording 10 per cent growth to reach a herd size of 918,000, followed by Southland, where numbers grew 19 per cent to reach 589,000, according to the final results of the 2009 Agricultural Production Survey reports Stuff.

National dairy herd numbers reached a record high of 5.9 million at 30 June 2009, up 282,000 since 2008. The size of the North Island herd remained stable at 3.8 million. Factors contributing to the South Island growth include continued dairy conversions, a smaller number of dairy cows and heifers going to the beef herd, more older cows remaining in milking herds, and the sourcing of dairy heifers from the North Island. “In 2009, South Island dairy cattle numbers were almost seven times larger than 20 years ago when there were 312,000 dairy cattle,” said agricultural statistics manager Gary Dunnet.

(more…)

Nervous and aggressive cattle are a pain in the wallet reports The Weekly Times. That is the finding of a study presented recently to the Midwest American Society of Animal Science, in Des Moines, Iowa. Gary Fike, beef cattle specialist for the Certified Angus Beef brand in the US, said docile cattle in a feedlot graded premium choice and prime at more than double the rate of nervous to very aggressive cattle. Docility in the feedlot paid off with better performance, improved carcass merit and reduced morbidity and treatment costs, Mr Fike said.

Data was collected on nearly 50,000 cattle from 18 Iowa feedlots over eight years, to 2009. Using a six-point scoring system, calves were grouped into three categories – docile (DC), restless (R) and nervous to very aggressive (NVA). Calves in the study had similar arrival weights, but the DC and R calves were on average 10 days younger than the NVA calves. DC calves made up for their age, gaining 1.45kg/day compared with NVAs 1.36kg and outweighing them by 17.69kg in final liveweight.

(more…)

Drought has closed most of Fonterra’s 86 dairy processing plants around NZ this season several weeks earlier than usual reports Stuff. The dry weather has pinched supply to 70 per cent of Fonterra’s factories – most north of Taupo – forcing them to stop processing before the usual winter shutdown for maintenance, said general manager milk supply Tim Deane.

However, the farmer-owned co-operative and NZ’s biggest company, which processes 92 per cent of the country’s raw milk, said national milk production for the 2009-10 season would still be “a fraction ahead” of last season’s collection of about 14 billion litres of milk – thanks to South Island production. Drought in the upper North Island – Northland and Waikato – had cut daily milk production for this time of the year back 45 to 55 per cent on last season, Mr Deane said.

(more…)

A common pasture plant could help foraging ruminants ward off damaging gastrointestinal nematodes, like barber’s pole that can cause illness and death, US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report in the Gisborne Herald. Animal scientist Joan Burke at the ARS Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Centre in Booneville, Arkansas, along with colleagues at several universities, has patented formulations of Sericea lespedeza, commonly referred to as Chinese bush clover.

The plant was introduced in the United States in the 1930s to minimise soil erosion. Adding the patented dry hay and pelleted forms of this plant to animal feed thwarts the reproductive cycles of gastrointestinal nematodes that are in the digestive tracts of goats and sheep. It is particularly effective in controlling the barber’s pole worm (Haemonchus contortus), a nematode that attaches to the animals’ abomasal (true stomach) wall and feeds on their blood. Female worms can produce more than 5,000 eggs per day that are shed in the animal’s manure.

(more…)

Most progressive deer farmers realise the importance of scanning hinds to see if they are pregnant, says Feilding based-veterinarian Barney Askin. The cooler nights signal the onset of the roar in stags, and most should have done the majority of their work reports The Manawatu Standard. “There is only a small window during which time we can accurately tell how many hinds are pregnant. The foetus is sitting high in the pelvis – as the pregnancy progresses, the foetus moves further down and we can’t scan it.”

About 30 per cent of deer farmers pregnancy tested their hinds, he said. Many of the others choose not to do so on the basis of cost, or they ran a few deer in conjunction with sheep and beef. Mr Askin said a good pregnancy rate would be about 90 per cent of hinds.”We did do one lot of about 40 hinds. The farmer had paid $8000 for the stag. They were all dry – the stag was infertile.Mr Askin said the stag was replaced, but the farmer lost a year’s production.

(more…)