| 47 • to page 48 MEAT & WOOL » Parawa - Maurice King ‘The seasons seem about a month behind’ One change for this season in stock management is to reduce ewe numbers. Sue Russell Maurice King and Rosie Hore own and operate Parawa Station, a sprawling block of land, straddling 1800ha half-way between Lumsden and Kingston in northern Southland. Rosie runs the stock management day to day and has a strong interest in the station’s sheep breeding programme while Maurice coordinates the running of the business and growing of the supplements and dealing with the day to day tasks of keeping the farm on track. The station is divided in equal measures between flat, rolling and steep hill country in a beautiful part of the country, Rosie’s family has called home for three generations. Parawa carries sheep, beef and a small number of deer and the uses of the land are dictated by the interplay and movement between these three stock units. It’s about a year since Rural South caught up with Maurice in February 2024 and the first frost had arrived that month. Commenting on this year he says the seasons seemed about a month behind where they would normally be. “We had an exceptionally wet cold spring but the crops have done really well however the result of that amount of rain at that time of the year is that there aren’t so many lambs around. That weather in fact has taken a huge toll on Southland. We’re just extremely lucky with the balance of the property and had the space to move stock around onto different aspects and topography.” One change for this season in stock management is to reduce ewe numbers. As Maurice puts it ‘the sheep aren’t stacking up for us any more in our system’. “The intention is to drive more efficiency out of what we are producing and to increases beef finishing outputs. The lamb simply aren’t cutting the mustard in terms of higher input costs now vs the weights we’re killing at.” The introduction of Halter to the Angus herd on the rising 2 year stock has had a profound impact on the beef finishing and labour costs attached to moving stock. “I found Halter excellent to deal with. Showed real interest in coming on to the farm and seeing our situation and explaining how introducing this technology could improve our efficiency and costs. Their service and support is exceptional.” Admitting to being somewhat nervous for the first month after the collars were introduced, Maurice says understanding how the collars and the computer work together and combining this with cattle behaviour and intensive pasture management has been a very productive learning curve. As an aside, he says when it comes to new technologies being created to improve farm management, the adage ‘if you can dream it, they can make it’, seems to be very much the way the world of technology is evolving. “Collars have been around now 15 years or so in the dairy industry in one form or another, and it won’t surprise me if there’s a new technology just around the corner that will replace them in time.” The biggest and most important learnings has been how to determine how to integrate natural stock behaviour and best feed management systems together for us in our systems, the shape of the break-fencing lines. If they are too long and narrow, the gps drift has an impact, so Maurice tends to create areas of more of a square shape for stock to move within. “Once you understand how it works its really easy it’s just a little different from the electric fencing system I’ve always used.” Asked how long the stock took to learn to react to the sounds vibrations and pulses the collars emit Maurice says the majority had it sussed within two days. “They are incredibly clever animals and just adapted to the new technology on board and how it worked. There wasn’t any real problem at all, so I was very impressed. I think we underestimate how smart stock are at adapting to change.” Ewe numbers are now at 6,500, with the aim of grazing everything at home in the future to keep expenditure down, and extracting more kg per animal is the goal going forward. Being at a higher stocking rate hasn’t been the most efficient Maurice says, putting a lot of pressure on the basic KPI’s and younger stock weights specifically. Silage and Baling contractor servicing the Northern Southland District EWL Limited Brent Eaton 027 485 5994 | Office 027 428 4328 | Email ewl.balfouroffice@gmail.com Parawa - Maurice King Tabula GPS Guidance
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