October 2014

With 12% of our land out of production for pasture renewal feed levels are well controlled.  Its been a cool and dry spring.  The dry is not affecting our lucerne but to our surprise the available feed at second rotation of the lucerne is significantly less than we were expecting.  Its just too cold for the lucerne.  Mid October sees half of our yearling stags gone at an average 100kg liveweight, 57% yield.  The remaining stags recorded 600 grams/day live weight gain in the first week of October grazing on lucerne.  We plan to carry this second cut through to heavier weights to be sent to the venison plant in January.  A contractor came in with an air seeder to drill our paddocks of new lucerne, lucerne and prairie grass mixes and red clover/chicory mixes.  We hope to have these paddocks back in production by December.