From left: Brad Thomas and Karl Erikson from regional council and regulator, Environment Southland. Photo: Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
The winter months are especially hard on farmers.
Cold, wet weather makes growing grass and other cover to keep their animals fed more challenging. It can also make their paddocks a muddy mess, as farmers shift stock around to where there is feed.
Preventing this muddy mix of sediment and nitrates from running off into waterways is an added challenge.
Country Life paid a visit to a Southland farm with Karl Erikson and Brad Thomas from regional regulator, Environment Southland, to learn more about what farmers are doing on farm to make sure they get winter grazing right.
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At the southern end of the South Island, Erikson explained the region often goes close to 100 days without any pasture growth.
"So to carry capital livestock over the winter, our farmers down here need to put in high density crops, high nutritional crops to carry those livestock through that winter period."
This includes crops like kale, beets and the iconic Southland swedes.
Farmers maximise efficient grazing of this limited feed by getting as many animals in the paddock as the feed allocation allows, and then just grazing those stock within the same paddock throughout that winter period, Erikson said.
Stock are sometimes break fed - where they are fed a paddock broken up into daily allocations through temporary fencing such as hotwire, or increasingly, as Erikson told Country Life, through virtual fencing technology using GPS-enabled cow collars. Once the feed has been grazed down, stock are shifted to their next break.
Well-planned winter grazing of stock helps reduce impacts on waterways and animal health. Photo: Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
However, such practices can cause issues. The heavy animals "pulverise" the soil which can "turn the surface to concrete" - where the vegetation is denuded and water, unable to be absorbed, runs off towards waterways, taking with it sediment and other contaminants.
"Some of the challenges involved with winter grazing is [sic] obviously the soil pugging and the ability for stock to move around on those paddocks," Thomas said.
"In order to manage some of those risks of sediment loss and nutrient loss, some of our rules include requirement for buffers and managing critical source areas, excluding stock from them to limit that risk."
To minimise the risk of this, farmers must comply with rules set by Environment Southland through the Southland Water and Land Plan.
These include: winter grazing must not occur on more than 50-hectares or 15 percent of the farm; 20 metre-buffers must be established between crops and any regionally significant wetland or bed of waterway on a slope of more than 10 degrees; there must be a 10m buffer zone for areas on a slope of less than 10 degrees, and critical source areas (CSAs) must not be cultivated or grazed.
Here a critical source area (CSA) has been left in pasture and will be fenced off from the stock to reduce sediment and nitrate runoff entering the waterway. Photo: Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
CSAs include parts of the landscape where runoff might accumulate such as a gully, swale or depression, which then flows on to surface water bodies including lakes, rivers, and waterways. It can also include other areas where contaminant loss is high, like silage pits, fertiliser storage areas and laneways.
"Planning right up into cultivation time is key to long term success throughout the winter period," Thomas said. "You really want to be planning your next season as early as possible."
Significant compliance issues are investigated, which can result in abatement notices and fines, but often such incidents result in advice and education and managing further crops, Thomas said.
Animal welfare concerns relating to winter grazing are handled by the Ministry for Primary Industries.
A healthy crop of hip high kale has been grown for winter grazing on this farm. Photo: Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
The government has proposed changes to the winter grazing rules in the Resource Management Act, which it is still working through. With this underway, Environment Southland has set up a farm plan advisory team to help farmers through this process.
Thomas said so far it had been a good season, coming off the back of an incredibly wet period last year.
It appears this farm is doing a good job. A crop of hip-high kale is ready for stock and bales of supplementary feed have been placed along the top of the fenceline.
Erikson points to a gap in the crop, showing how pasture has been left where there is a dip in the paddock, which is "ideal".
"This winter grazing paddock does have a slope which is heading downwards towards waterways. So, when the animals are offered this feed, we would expect to see them start from the top here, and then breaks shifted towards heading down downhill. What we're trying to encourage there is leave as much vegetation in between the animals and the waterways as you possibly can for the longest time."
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