Beef + Lamb New Zealand has a number of resources to help manage extremely dry weather conditions.
While no one can make it rain, there are management strategies that farmers can put in place to protect the future performance of their capital breeding stock, such as early weaning, body condition scoring and feed budgets.
Most importantly, farmers need to look after the well-being of themselves and their families. As well as making use of networks (friends, family and neighbours, rural professionals) there are local agencies, such as the Rural Support Trust who are there to support farming families. Please don’t hesitate to seek assistance.
Below is a list of ideas, resources and decision-support tools to consider, to help you and your staff manage the dry.
- Web link – NIWA daily climate maps
- Web link – NIWA outlook for seasonal climate conditions
- Web link – Take extra care with fire
Check the Rural Fire Season status for your location on the Fire & Emergency New Zealand website. For tips around reducing fire risk, check out the Rural farm and business fire safety checklist. - Download – Drought Risk Indicator app
This app covers the Hawke’s Bay region. It collates regional council weather monitoring information to indicate drought risk at sites across the region.
Regional Council Water Use Advisory
- Northland Regional Council
- Auckland Council
- Waikato Regional Council
- Gisborne District Council
- Hawke’s Bay Regional Council
- Taranaki
- Horizons Regional Council
- Greater Wellington Regional Council
- Bay of Plenty Regional Council
- Tasman District Council
- Marlborough District Council
- West Coast Regional Council
- Environment Canterbury
- Otago Regional Council
- Environment Southland
Collected here are tips and tricks from farmers and farming industry people, that might help in your situation
- Factsheet: strategies used by farmers in drought (PDF, 173 KB)
- Start by creating a priority list for the different stock classes on your farm, which mobs have the highest priority and highest feed demand?
- How big is your feed deficit and what can you do to address this? What is your current pasture cover and what do you think your pasture cover should be at this time of year?
- Create a plan of action to address the feed deficit. Big feed deficits will require big decisions. A proactive grazing plan will be essential once the feed deficit is addressed.
- Use your farm paddock map as a planning tool to create a practical grazing plan. By forward thinking to lambing and calving, you can allocate paddocks to each stock class at that time.
- Once you have determined the allocated areas for all stock classes as at lambing and calving you can then work back to the current time and start planning the autumn/winter rotational grazing programme.
Lessons from past droughts
- When pasture covers are low then pasture-growth rates are also low and so it’s worth remembering the old adage that ‘grass grows grass’.
- Consider what rotation length is required to build pasture covers. In practice, it can be tough on livestock in the short-term, so you need to keep the long-term goal in mind i.e. creating feed for lambing and calving when ewes and cows will recover quickly and productively.
- Rotational grazing allows you to ration your feed far more effectively than set stocking.
- Temporary fencing is a cost effective, practical method of controlling pasture intake for cattle.
- Nitrogen boosted pasture is the most cost-effective supplementary feed but obviously requires moisture to activate. Theoretically, there should be plenty of nitrogen stored in the soil following drought conditions, but practical farmer experience has shown nitrogen application is a valuable way of getting pasture covers back sooner.
- The only way for nitrogen to work is when it’s on the ground and not in the fertiliser bin. If you need nitrogen book it in and get it on ASAP.
- Breeding stock are very sensitive to underfeeding in early lactation, so it is important to plan early. When feed is short, it is better to ration feed before lactation than during lactation.
- Post-calving feeding is much more important than pre-calving feeding.
- Once calved or lambed, breeding stock need to be fully fed and will recover quickly and productively.
- Finishing and trading stock are a flexible stock classes and can take some short-term reduction in feeding or alternatively could be sold store.
- Once ewes and lambs have been set-stocked for lambing you will have little opportunity to manage feed, but you can manage other classes of stock:
- Allocated areas for cattle which can be block grazed.
- Maybe set stock young cattle on the lambing platform.
- Set-stock single scanned ewes at higher stocking rates or add more cattle to their paddocks.
Quick tips for feed management of breeding cows
- Early weaning of calves is a good option and especially when combined with yard weaning where weaned calves can be supplemented and cows put on sub-maintenance rations.
- Pregnancy scan cows ASAP to determine empties for sale and late calvers for sale or extra rationing if required.
- When planning for saved feed for calving, lock-up 0.4 ha per cow of saved feed by the end of May to achieve pasture covers of around 3,000 kgDM/ha at calving. This will get them through calving up to the inevitable spring pasture surplus. Good planning here will secure good in-calf rates and bigger weaners for next year.
- Restricted feeding of late calving cows will help you build a feed wedge ahead of the cows.
- Break-feeding calving cows helps to manage feed and allows you to shed calved cows onto fresh pasture.
- Underfeeding breeding cows after calving will have an impact at mating – this is especially true for dairy-cross breeding cows.
- Target pre-graze >2,800 kgDM/ha.
Useful links
- Richmond Beetham, BakerAg: "Once it rains …. What happens to my grass?"
- Tom Fraser, Fraser Pastoral: "Careful management of drought-affected pastures after rain"
- Strategies used by farmers in drought (PDF, 173 KB)
- Hawke's Bay Feed Management Case Study update: May 2022 (PDF, 386 KB)
- Hawke's Bay Feed Management Case Study update: 20 July 2022 (PDF, 257 KB)
- Drought decisions (video)
Case studies
- B+LNZ Drought Management Regional Case Study – Dargaville, Northland (April 2020) (PDF, 3.3 MB)
- B+LNZ Regional Case Study – Southland (April 2020) (PDF, 1,062 KB)
- Hawke's Bay Feed Management AgFirst Case Study (April 2020) (PDF, 8.9 MB)
- Future Farm Feed Management Case Study (April 2020) (PDF, 456 KB)
B+LNZ have a number of tools and resources that might help with your feed planning.
- Web link – Feed budgeting
A summary of all Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s tools and guides for feed planning in one place. - Request – Sward stick and factsheet
A sward stick is a simple but effective tool to measure pasture height. Email resources@beeflambnz.com and we’ll send you a sward stick as well as a fact sheet on how to use it. - Download – Extreme dry management toolkit (PDF, 2.3 MB)
- Download – Guidance on extreme dry management (PDF, 1, 571 KB)
- FeedSmart is a free web-based tool to help you calculate feed demand of stock. It can be used on your computer or device and once installed it works offline.
- FeedSmart user guide (PDF, 805 KB)
- Resource book: A guide to feed planning for sheep farmers (PDF, 2.7 MB)
- Supplementary feed guide (PDF, 68KB): feed shortages has meant farmers have been forced to consider a wide range of supplementary feed options. This recently developed feed guide will help them make informed decisions about the best feed for their budget and stock requirements.
- Feeding grain to sheep (PDF, 205 KB)
Feed Budget templates
- Feed budget spreadsheet (Excel – to run on your computer)
- Feed budget worksheets (PDF – print out and fill in by hand)
Courtesy of Scandrett Rural.
Simple Feed Budget software tool
Helps farmers consolidate their thinking and gives them actual numbers to inform their decision making around the management of stock and feed and the use of supplementary feed.
To access the Simple Feed Budget, email resources@beeflambnz.com and request the Simple Feed Budget. A USB-drive will be sent to you.
- Simple feed budget user guide (PDF, 727 KB)
Some useful podcasts
- Steve Wyn-Harris – "Farming for more than just money"
- Peter Young – "More Profit from Sheep"
- Jack Cocks and Joanne Stevenson – "Thinking outside the box: Resilience in the farming business."
- Paul Kenyon – "Successful early weaning of lambs"
- Jeff Morton – "Successful soil and fertiliser management"
- Podcast – Feed quality San Jolly, a well-known farm consultant from Australia, talks to us about feed quality on this podcast.
- Will Halliday – "Protecting your patch – the key biosecurity actions for your farm"
- FarmStrong – Coping with stress on the farm?
- Rural Support Trust – Rural people helping rural people
Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is one of the best and easiest tools to consider to help manage a feed shortage. It helps target feed and make sales decisions.
- Online learning module – Body Condition Scoring – sheep
Know why BCS sheep is important and learn the basics of how to BCS your sheep. - Online learning module: Principles of feeding: from mating to lambing (sheep)
- Download – Body Condition Scoring - beef cows (PDF, 3.0 MB)
This resource book covers the “when”, “how” and “parts to consider” when BCS your beef cows. - Download – Shelter- maintaining the welfare and productivity of sheep and cattle (PDF, 4.5 MB)
- Download – Managing stressed stock (PDF, 157 KB)
- Download – Flystrike (PDF, 672 KB)
- Download – Trace element nutrition of cattle (PDF, 309 KB)
- Download – Facing Facial Eczema (PDF, 3.9 MB)
- Download – Worm management (PDF, 1.169 KB)
- Video – Body Condition Scoring beef cows
Dry stock sector – Beef + Lamb New Zealand: 0800 BEEF LAMB (0800 233 352). Email: enquiries@beeflambnz.com
- Dairy sector – DairyNZ or phone 0800 4 DairyNZ (0800 4 3247969)
- Federated Farmers
- Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)
- Rural Support Trust