New Zealand
October 4, 2010

High sugar grass is enabling a hill farm at Mawaro (South Canterbury) to grow lambs quickly to finished weights where previously it took longer on expensive and time consuming brassica crops.

With experience at fattening lambs on flat paddocks under irrigation in mid-Canterbury, Kerry Boon saw the potential at Two Peaks Farm, named after the skyline near Mt Nessing.

Slopes rise from 300 metres to 837 metres above sea level and snow falls each winter but Kerry and his wife Miharu, with the on-call help of Kerry’s father Colin, have worked hard to establish a tidy one-man farming operation that can fatten lambs and cattle in good time in this higher country.

“We thought we could fatten lambs up here and it would give us more options. I can hold stock instead of having to be a price taker when everyone else is selling them as stores,” said Kerry, who bought the property seven years ago.

Pasture renewal is a key factor, as was the purchase three years ago of an additional 80 hectares to allow for more control of grazing options on today’s 729 hectare farm carrying 4,500 stock units, of which 55% are cattle, 30% are sheep and 15% are deer that will be sold as weaners.

Among the new grasses tried and tested at Mawaro, the high sugar perennial ryegrass AberDart has stood out for its ability to fatten lambs and young cattle.

“The AberDart certainly speeded them up after weaning. I was amazed at their weights and phoned the lamb drafter to get him in earlier,” said Kerry.

The lambs are sold at weaning in early January or drafted by weight each week until the end of February and on AberDart pasture have averaged 400 grams of liveweight gain a day, which is the equivalent of any intensive lamb fattening farm in New Zealand.

Kerry Boon and his sons Josh and Ben (right) check on their one-year-old charolais-cross steers and heifers in a AberDart high sugar grass paddock sown last October.

“We used to grow 12 hectares of rape for fattening but we can do this on AberDart instead with just 6ha of rape put in as an insurance if it gets dry,” said Kerry.

Beef steers and heifers are similarly grown to exacting standards – the cattle being grown for a Canterbury grass-fed beef contract for supply to Japan and able to stack on 2kg a day on AberDart pasture.

“Typically the steers will make 1.5kg a day from mid-spring to early summer so they’re putting on an extra half kilo when the grass is at its best quality,” said Kerry, who had 60% of their steers and heifers at target weights at 18-to-20 months old and the rest gone before 24 months.

“The contract requires the right meat colour, a pH of less than 5.8, a fat cover at about 5mm-8mm and the cattle have to be a specific weight so basically we need them well fed and content.”

The mix of AberDart, clover and timothy with the herbs chicory and plantain has proven beneficial to animal health, as evident in lambs that “bloomed and didn’t take a backward step”, said Kerry, who is the head sheep convener for the Mackenzie A&P Society.

“I find the AberDart very good for establishing herbs and clovers in the sward. It gets away and then slows to let the clover grow with it.”

“It’s not a tall grass but it’s certainly dense with fine leaf and there’s a lot there when you grab a handful.”

Kerry said the evenly grazed AberDart paddocks look like a carpet and had proven too tempting for deer that crossed a field of Italian annual ryegrass to get into it one AberDart area that has since been totally fenced off.

Website: http://www.germinalseeds.co.nz/

Published: October 4, 2010