Business Rural North Autumn 2021

30 | Sustainability and profit key drivers Virginia Wright B ecks and Richard Tosswill have been running their sheep and beef farm in the Wairarapa since 2009, and their strong drive to look for ways to improve their farm’s sustainability, com- bined with profitability, remains unchanged. About ten years ago they made the switch from straight Suffolk to Suff-Tex cross terminal sires when they were looking for a high yield breed that would make the most of their 646 hectares of genuine hill country with 622 effective and 10% cultivatable. From the start they sourced these rams from Stuart and Andrew Morton of Paki-Iti Genetics, in Manawatu and the fact that they happen to be cousins wouldn’t be enough to keep them there if the rams weren’t performing. “Their studs over a 100 years old, “says Richard, “so we buy two or three good rams a year and just keep rotating them. As long as the old boys keep turning up each year they get another crack at it,” says Richard with a smile. “We put them across our B flock early and then we try to finish as many of those as we can off mum.” More recently they took part in a three and a half year clover trial with Ag-Innovation and sponsored by Beef and Lamb NZ. The trial is part of a push encouraging farmers to increase the legume con- tent on what is otherwise uncultivatable hill country – the sort of sub-country where you have to either broadcast seed via helicopter or work with what’s naturally there. Although Richard says he’d do it again if he had the opportunity, he was pleased when it came to an end. “It took a bit of planning for the timing of shut- ting up the five or six hectares being trialled out of RURAL PEOPLE » Richard & Becks Tosswill For anyone wanting to see what they’ve got already it’s as simple as protecting some pasture from grazing by putting it under a cage and seeing what grows. Stewart Morton 06 328 5772 • Andrew Morton 06 328 2856 R D 54 Kimbolton, Manawatu • pakiroms@farmside.co.nz PAKI-ITI SUFFOLK PAKI-ITI SUFTEX Visit paki-iti.co.nz to view our breeding programs Growth with Meat – breeding a Suffolk like a Suftex with meatier, high yielding carcasses • 500 Suffolk and Suftex rams sold and leased last season • 12 years of wintering all Suffolk and Suftex ram hoggets on steep hill country • 97% of sale rams fully SIL performance recorded LONGEVITY, STRUCTURAL SOUNDNESS, CONSTITUTION AND PERFORMANCE Meat with Growth – breeding a Suftex like a Suffolk with dark coloring and high growth PAKI-ITI SUFFOLK PAKI-ITI SUFTEX Wairarapa farmer Richard Tosswill knows a lot more about maximising clover growth on dry pastures following a 42-month trial with Ag-Innovation. 620 hectares of farmland, and measuring the clover content in the paddocks and so on, plus I was doing some monthly videos of it all for Beef and Lamb NZ which they’ll put up so everyone can see what we were dealing with.” Richard admits that he thought he knew about clover before the trial began, but now he knows a whole lot more about how to maximise its growth on his dry, north facing pastures. “Making sure that your sub-country’s been cleaned up, so using your cattle to graze the thatch and long grass so you’ve got nice open pasture letting in plenty of light to germinate the seed that’s there.Then you wait for the rains and the germination, and then you have to manage that clover over the next month until it gets three tri-folate leaves.” They learnt that the hard way when they put their ewes in too early one year before the tri- folate leaves had set. “If they take those leaves off before then they’ll either stunt or kill the plant,” says Richard. Another thing they learnt by trial and error was the importance of getting the timing right when you’re broadcasting new clover seed with a heli- copter. It’s a juggle between needing the moisture in the soil for germination and having enough time between germination and lambing. “We left it too late one year and had to just shut the paddock up and let it go to seed because it wasn’t far enough along. It was a bumper crop but in future we’ll just hold off a year,” says Richard. For the Tosswills any innovation has to make sense financially as well as environmentally and this work with clover certainly fits the bill, as Rich- ard explains. “You’ve got an initial outlay of let’s say $140 - $150 for 10kg of clover seed per hectare, plus the $1000 - $1500 fee for the helicopter to broadcast it where you want it. “You then let it strike, graze it, shut it up in October once the lambs have done their thing and let the clover express itself as far as it can. So it’ll flower and drop its seed in burrs and then it’s got the potential to drop another 300 to 400 kgs of seed into your soil.” For anyone wanting to see what they’ve got already it’s as simple as protecting some pasture from grazing by putting it under a cage and seeing what grows,” says Richard. He’s looking forward to the videos being available for those that want to know more. In the meantime, while he and Becks are looking at ways to diversify off farm, he’s simply enjoying having the time to enjoy coaching his children’s cricket and playing a bit of social football with his ex rugby-playing farming mates in town.