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N.Z.’S DAIRY PASTURES

“Stemmy, Weedy Swards”

SOMERSET MAN’S IMPRESSIONS

Mr E. M. Owens, a Somerset farmer, who recently attended the International Grasslands Congress in New Zealand, told the Farmers’ Club in London about his impressions of New Zealand’s dairy farming. He said he found dairy pastures generally stemmy apd weedy and low in available nitrogen by British standards.

According to the agricultural correspondent of “The Times” Mr Owens was “shocked” by the look of New Zealand cow pastures, although “he was quick to say that having judged a great many competitions in Britain he was doubtful whether visual judgment was a sensible way of judging pasture —it might be silly to look for purity in the sward of a ley.”

Yet, said Mr Owens, production was high from these New Zealand pastures with their mixed botanical content.

The sole food given to cows came from grass whether it was as grass silage or hay and so it was much easier to record pasture production in New Zealand than in Britain, where almost everyone fed some concentrates and where most farmers also ran sheep or some other enterprise to complicate accurate recording. Old Pastures Many of the dairy pastures were old with indigenous grasses still in them and there was no general practice of regular ploughing up and reseeding of grass as British farmers knew it. In the equable conditions of New Zealand, with no winter period of frost and excessive wet, and long summer sunshine grasses got all the encouragement they so lacked in

many grassland areas in Britain. The correspondent of “The Times” says that Mr Owens thought that dairy pastures looked poor because they were starved for nitrogen. The correspondent adds that the New Zealand farmer relies on clovers to provide nitrogen for grass in his sward and he applies superphosphate at the rate of three to four hundredweights to the acre each year. “Autumn sowing gives the best response and a rest period after autumn sowing gives especially good results when the field is destined for ‘green storage’ of autumn growth for winter grazing. Potash is used where wanted, but no bag nitrogen is applied in general farming practice.” High Production Mr Owens suggested several reasons for the high output of butterfat in New Zealand, said the report. “The calves are reared on grass almost from birth, and it may be that they learn to deal with bulky food better because they get it at such an early age. “Do they develop a better stomach flora from doing so?.Does the cow herself maintain a more suitable stomach flora from living entirely on grass or grass silage and hay? By comparison do we damage our cows’ digestions by giving them so many concentrates?”

Then Mr Owens suggested that the New Zealand farmers automatically selected the best grass utilisers in selecting the best producers. He went on: “If this is so we have only ourselves to blame for the fact that we have a national dairy herd selected to produce from very expensive concentrates, and we have a big job of rebreeding our cows to do a sound job on cheap, good grass. “If the dairy industry of this country could halve its concentrates fed tA cows, perhaps at the cost of a slight reduction in sales of milk a cow, it. might ease the present pressure on milk selling and, cutting costs more than yields, improve the present level of profitability? ”

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19570427.2.91.2

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 9

Word count
Tapeke kupu
573

N.Z.’S DAIRY PASTURES Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 9

N.Z.’S DAIRY PASTURES Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 9

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