Addie’s Blog #11 – Chasing the sun

Chasing the sun

Well it’s been a crazy busy few weeks on farm! Still very wet and soggy everywhere. We are about to fly on our 4th load of fertiliser which is proving to be expensive and not planned in the budget for this season but neither was the feed that we had to buy in either to keep the weight on our cows. However it is starting to warm up a bit and the sun we have had is starting to grow the grass. The cows are producing well at the moment (doing 2-2.1 milk solids) and are looking good coming in to mating. 

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We have a meeting coming up with CMK accountants in Christchurch to discuss last year’s financials and planning for the next few months which I am looking forward to. We are a little bit nervous about what our tax is going to be as being our first year owning the farm it will be an interesting discussion but hopefully it will help us to plan for tax after this second season.

Kip has been busy on the digger trying to get some cultivation done on last years crop paddocks so we can get them back into grass asap. We are a month behind on everything due to the horrendous wet weather. This time last year we were locking up silage and getting our crop paddocks ready to seed 🤯🤯 this season is completely opposite and to be honest makes things on farm stressful due to being so far behind. The worry of not having enough silage and feed for next winter plays on our minds.

We have had an amazing opportunity to work with WINGMAN. They approached DWN asking if they could work with us. Which of course we said YES! They offered us a complimentary WOF. Which meant they went into our MINDA records and fully went through our herd to produce a report. It was an interesting experience, and we met online with Mark from WINGMAN to discuss his findings. Our 3–5-year plan now is to breed an amazing Once a day herd as from his findings we already have good bones for this. We decided to carry on working with WINGMAN and have now totally rearranged this year’s Artificial Insemination plan with the help of Mark. I am excited for mating to begin and to see the breeding coming through our herd.

The recent payout increases have been a huge relief and turns out we really needed them this season. Unfortunately at this stage our budget will stay reasonably the same due to the extra feed and fertiliser we have had to purchase because of the terrible weather so far this season. I’m sure when we meet with CMK in chch we will have a look at the budget, update it and see how we are placed right now with it. Interest rates dropping is also very helpful at this time 👏👏

Next few weeks will include herd test, drenching calves, spraying weeds and hopefully planting new grass paddocks 🤞 and then into mating on November 1st!

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