Cropping.

Our cropping programme has to provide for winter feed for our housed cows, baleage for our outside wintered animals, winter crops for rising two year old heifers and some cows and pasture for our rising one year olds through winter.
To do that we employ a five year crop rotation
- After ploughing or discing a mix of barley and tetraploid grass is sown in September and harvested in January.
- After that only the grass comes back and lasts for another four years
- When the sward opens up too much Turnips are drilled for winter grazing and the cycle starts again.
The cows from WW4 and WW5 are still wintered outside. They are mainly grazed on fodder beet and brassica crops, supplemented with baleage.
On the dairy farms grass to grass pasture renewal is undertaken.
All ground work, mowing and slurry transport and application is done by the crew from Woldwide Farm Support.

Winter crops:

The wintering of cows and young stock on brassica and fodder beet crops is common throughout Southland, Woldwide farms cultivates about 80 hectares of winter crops. These are strip grazed in winter. This system is not friendly to the environment due to N leaching and soil damage and our aim is to phase it out in future years.

Slurry:

Pivotal to our operation is the proximity of the dairy farms and the support land. This makes transport of silage and slurry achievable. The silage is cut, fine chopped and ensiled on concrete pads by the free stall barns. After silage removal slurry is applied to the silage paddocks at a rate of 20 m3 per hectare. This application contains 58 N, 8.8 P. 60 K and 7.7 S. We do this before the first, second and third cut. We do not apply slurry after February to avoid Nitrogen leaching. On top of this slurry application more nitrogen is applied to match protein removal. Total nitrogen use on the support land is about 350 kg N per hectare (following Dutch recommendations).
The nutrient exchange of silage for slurry has many benefits:
- Nutrient over- loading of the dairy farms is avoided
- Fertiliser costs are reduced
- Carbon is sequestered in the soil
- Soils are improved and hold more moisture
- Nitrogen loss is reduced