Kikuyu Management for Northland Beef Pastures

Lindsay and Erica Whyte are developing a sustainable management system for their beef cattle breeding and finishing business. Fencing and subdivision have been the keys to controlled grazing of kikuyu dominated pastures and protecting gullies, streams and wetlands from erosion, runoff and nutrient loss. Purchase of baleage making equipment has meant that supplementary feed can be made immediately it is available in any quantity, and this has allowed closer control of kikuyu as well as providing winter supplement. Focus on base saturation in soil analyses has led to their avoiding high analysis soluble fertilisers and instead concentrating on lime and a range of trace elements as finances allow. Soil condition and productivity has improved.

Farming in the Far North has unique challenges. The warm climate means lush growth in spring and autumn and some growth even in winter. However, heavy clay soils or pans can mean severe problems of soil damage in winter or leaching and erosion, while the summers can sometimes be very dry. Pests and parasites can thrive, and in many places kikuyu rules.

Lindsay and Erica Whyte’s 320 ha property at Taupo Bay is no exception. Kikuyu covers about 85% of the pastured area, and extreme wet or dry weather is common. However, over the 20 or so years they have farmed there, they have developed a management regime that maximises the value of kikuyu, improves soil productivity, reduces runoff and nutrient loss and enhances the natural beauty of the area.

The farm has an effective area of about 280ha comprising 120 ha of easy flats, about 140 ha rolling hill country that you can get a tractor over, and the rest is quite steep. On this they run breeding herd of about 280 Friesian X Hereford and Angus X Friesian cows and use Angus bulls over them, gradually moving towards an Angus herd.

Cows start calving about the first week of September and the calves are weaned usually in April. All calves are kept, the heifers for replacements or for finishing, and the bulls for finishing. The only stock brought in are service bulls.

“In the past we always left the bull calves entire but in the last two seasons we kept them as steers. It has been a good experience but we’ve found the steers are very slow growing compared with bulls,” says Lindsay.

“They are easy to farm but then you’ve got them for a lot longer to get any weight on them. Luckily we have had two good seasons but the bulls do way better in the dry so we will go back to our previous system where we used to kill the bulls at around 16 months in December and January.”

The weaner bulls are “spoiled” especially in winter to keep them growing, with the herd following on behind. Typically the bulls kill out at about 300kg, or better in a good season. Bulls are more flexible, says Lindsay, because they can be sent off early in a really dry season or held until the end of February in a really good one.

Since they arrived in 1989, the Whytes have put much effort and resources into fencing for two main reasons – subdivision of paddocks to give better control of grazing, and protection of waterways, wetlands, swamps and native bush to reduce erosion, runoff and nutrient loss and to preserve some of the natural features of the area.

Down on the flats, paddocks are about 1.4 ha. On the hills they are a bit bigger, all post and two-wire electric fences. Movable electric fences are also used for break feeding when appropriate, and although it involves a lot of extra work the cattle are generally shifted every day. This is important, says Lindsay, to ensure the even spread of manure over the paddocks rather than where cattle camp and to help control kikuyu.

Along with subdivision, there has been the expense of putting water into each paddock, but it has paid off with the additional control it has given them.

Until about four years ago they made no hay or silage but then, says Lindsay, he “went a bit crazy” and bought a hay baler and rake, and now when there is some surplus feed he can cut, bale and wrap it immediately.

“Because most of our paddocks are small, I might just go out and cut two or three, just small amounts when we get a surplus, and because we have our own gear we can do that. It is critical to cut it before it gets too long, and then the paddock bounces away again. Although it has created more work it means we can make the most of whatever we grow,” he says.

“One of the problems here is wintering cattle because it gets wet and they can do much damage. One year it was so bad, we had to sell most of the breeding cows and replace them with a lot of small cattle, but now we feed the cows the baleage we make. We use a high wide ridge where we have stored the bales. It works quite well and it keeps the cows off the good country when it is wet, and that’s a big advantage. We used that last year for about a month on and off when it was wet.”

Winters are usually wet, and the Whytes expect to have a month or two of dry in the summer. Only once have they had what Lindsay considers to be a drought during which they fed palm kernel. Having the hay baling gear helps them to manage the risk of extremes in weather.

“It is a bit of an insurance policy and gives us another string to our bow. It also allows us to get rid of poor pasture,” says Lindsay.

“If we make baleage in the autumn we are doing two things – we are chopping off the kikuyu and getting it off the paddocks, and also giving us some feed for later on. It may not be high quality baleage but the cows love it, it keeps them going.”

Autumn is the critical time for kikuyu, says Lindsay.

“In good autumn weather the kikuyu grows like crazy and it is absolutely critical to have it cut really short before the winter. If it gets long and straggly with a high stolon content it has a very low feed value. Also, if it is long and you get a frost it goes all yellow and slimy and nothing will eat it, and it stops all the good grasses coming through,” he says.

“So once we have weaned the calves and the cows are in one big mob, we run them behind the finishing cattle to clean up the paddocks and then mulch the kikuyu. Sometimes I put on some biannual seed with a spinner before mulching, which is really successful.”

“The mulcher goes right down to about 25 mm and spreads all the manure and grass, and the paddock sometimes looks quite black after you have done it but it comes away really well. We mulch just once a year. Some areas we don’t do at all, in fact we generally do about 50% of the flat area and only a tiny percentage of the easy hill country. We try to use the breeding cows instead of the mulcher when we can.”

Some years ago the Whytes became uncomfortable about using soluble high analysis fertilisers and started looking at alternatives. Fertiliser was (and still is) a major expense and it seemed too important to leave decisions to a sales rep and there was no point in topdressing with something that was just going to be leached away.

Erica says that Lindsay read a number of books on the subject and would read out parts to her, and they became quite enthusiastic about making changes. The worm count in the soil was almost nil, they were concerned about runoff and nutrient losses and Lindsay felt that using urea just went against the grain.

“I didn’t like the idea of it, so we stopped and the wheels didn’t fall off. We also stopped using superphosphate and instead used quite a lot of serpentine super. We pay a lot of attention to base saturation and we’ve got that near perfect in one area of the farm. The soil doesn’t seem to retain potash so we put on small amounts twice a year because it leaches away and the same with sulphur, because it doesn’t seem to hold either,” he says.

“We’ve put a lot of lime on but we don’t put on more than a tonne per hectare at one time now, because our adviser tells us not to put on too much at once. We have also put on copper, zinc and boron in small amounts and way less than what was recommended, but the main change is that we are not just looking at the phosphate levels any more. We are looking at the base saturation and all the other 16 different elements that a pasture needs when we are doing our best to supply as much as we can according to what we can afford.”

“The changes we have made to fertiliser and pasture management seem to have improved the soil and we are certainly not growing any less grass. We try to look after what is under the ground as well as on top, and Andreas Kurrman who does our soil testing, says we have a very high humus content. It is certainly noticeable – the areas we subdivided when we first came here have really improved.”

”When we first came here we had absolutely no worms at all, now we can get around 16 out of the spade cube. When there was a field day here we dug a big hole and the soil looked beautiful and the roots were going way down more than a metre.”

Erica has always been very keen to plant trees, and after they first arrived on the property they fenced off an “ugly” area and planted pohutukawas. Since then they have steadily fenced off and planted more areas.

“We just chose ugly areas, gullies and creeks and the regional council offered help so we thought we would use that and we have always felt that eventually everybody will have to do it anyway,” says Lindsay.

“The results are really neat. It is really awesome to go out when it is raining heavily and see that the water coming out of the gullies we have fenced off is really clean whereas the few places where we haven’t fenced off it is coming out dirty, so it’s really obvious. Fencing of all these places hasn’t reduced our stocking rate – I think we have actually improved our production because we are using nutrients better. The cattle aren’t down camping under trees any more or down in the creeks and those sorts of places, they are out on the paddocks, so we are getting a more even spread of fertiliser over the pastures.”

“The farm responds really fast after a dry spell and you get a bit of rain it just really goes for it, it always looks good. Fencing off the wet areas makes the property look better. There was one really ugly area that we fenced off and Erica filled it up with trees and it looks really beautiful now.”

Lindsay views their farming style as still fairly conventional but he feels good about the changes they have made.