Record hay and baleage crops
Golden Bay Contracting operates two John Deere Tractors coupled with Vicon Balers. The one pictured here at Mark Manson’s farm in East Takaka is ready to bale paddocks for the second time around this season. Driver/operator is Tristan Strange. Photo: Ge
This summer season has seen agricultural contractors and farmers struggling to bring in some of the heaviest hay and baleage crops in the Bay for years.
The amazing growth, caused by a wetter-than-usual spring coupled with mild temperatures, has been followed by unseasonal weather with regular, heavy rainfalls. Grass has not only kept growing into summer, but there have been fewer long, fine periods available to get it in.
Darryl Hill of Golden Bay Contracting, who employs three full-timers and operates two John Deere tractors coupled to big Vicon balers, says they were getting through it now but it had been a chaotic season.
“You just can’t be everywhere helping everyone at once. We’ve done 7,000 [medium-sized square] bales so far from around 50 farms all around the Bay. That’s heaps more grass than last year, some of it from the same paddocks second and even third time around. Hopefully the next two weeks should see us on top of it.”
Garth Strange of Collingwood says his hay crop this season had been roughly twice what he got last season.
“And I’ve still got a bit more to bring in. It’s been quite incredible. Once we used to have haymaking over by Christmas and New Year. Now it seems to go on till February.”
It’s been the same over the Hill. Steve Sangster of Appleby was reported in The Nelson Mail recently as saying it was the heaviest grass crop he’d coped with in his 18 years of contracting. “It is so heavy that, even though we’ve done the winter maintenance on our gear, it has been breaking under the load.”
The big crop will be welcome relief to Bay farmers largely cleaned out last year after a very dry spring produced little baleage or hay and forced many to buy in extra supplements. Overall, the quality of hay has been excellent, although the stop-start nature of the season reportedly made for a “shocking” December, which did affect the quality of some standing grass paddocks that needed to come off quickly.
Good-quality hay, recognised by having lots of leaf and a sweet smell, is typically made from grass cut six to eight weeks after animal grazing has finished. After cutting, it is turned and thoroughly dried out for up to several days before being baled. The quality of hay declines if rain falls on the cut grass or if the hay is stored with no rain protection. Once, all excess grass was made into hay. Nowadays, baleage makes up at least half the supplementary feed on most dairy farms. Conspicuously wrapped in big, light-green plastic-covered bales and stored outside, baleage is wilted grass between the hay and silage stage, and has a much higher food value than hay. In New Zealand, grass is normally harvested for baleage when its moisture content is between 30 per cent and 60 per cent.
Silage, on the other hand, is freshly-cut plant material which is then stored in oxygen-free conditions, typically in a pit under black polythene weighted down with old tyres. The acids produced during fermentation of plant sugars act as preservatives. Silage is a high-quality feed with a low dry-matter yield, but there are a number of factors that can reduce potential quality, including temperature, pH level, moisture and the amount of air in the stack or bale. If you’re game enough to try it, well-preserved silage should taste like pickled onions and not smell unpleasant. All grasses, clovers and other plants should be recognisable and be of a yellow-green colour. If the temperature of silage has reached 50° Celsius or more, the silage will be dark brown and dry but quite palatable to cattle; however, digestibility will be halved. Silage that is slimy, dark brown and foul-smelling is rotten and will be mostly rejected by stock.
Gerard Hindmarsh
