Business Rural North Spring 2021

20 | Hill country farm flourishing 33 years after cyclone Hugh de Lacy RURAL PEOPLE » Tutamoe Station: Tim Lamont T hirty-odd years after Cyclone Bola devastated the Gisborne hill country, Landcorp’s Tutamoe Station has stabilised its hill-sides, redressed the damage and these days is sending 15,000 lambs a year off to the state farmer’s finishing properties. Harvesting is yet to start on the 600ha of slip- prone, yellow-brown pumice soils that was planted in pines in the wake of the 1988 cyclone, but that leaves an effective 1966ha of high-performing, medium-to-steep hill country carrying 20,000 stock units – 10,000 ewes, 3,250 hoggets and 850 mixed-age cattle. Tutamoe was by no means the worst-hit of the farms in the East Coast hinterland that felt Bola’s fury, but it was bad enough that the then owner was happy to sell the place and let Landcorp make good the damage. “We’re an all-grass wintering outfit that aims to get good weaning weights for both our calves and our lambs before passing them on to the Landcorp finishing blocks,” Tutamoe Station manager Tim Lamont says. “Our lambing percentage averages 140 to 150 percent of ewes to the ram, with weaner weights averaging 29kg and nothing taken off the mums.” The ewes are Romneys that thrive on the all- grass wintering on Tutamoe, about 50km inland from Tolaga Bay, at an altitude ranging from 260 to 700 metres. The Romney ewes are mostly put to rams bred by Landcorp, but every year 20 per cent of them go to a Texel ram with the progeny raised on a feed block in a normal season before they go away. “We use a terminal sire over about 2,000 of the ewes which gives us the option of sending them off the farm or finishing them out a bit if the weather permits,” Tim says. “It’s a class of stock that we can unload if neces- sary as the season progresses. We’re usually fairly summer-safe up here but we can get extended dry periods, and when they occur we can off-load the Texel lambs to conserve feed for the main flock. “It’s good farming country, and being that high up we’re not bothered by nitrate leaching or those other downland environmental problems.” The Romneys shear about 5.5kg of wool for a to- tal annual output of around 60,000kg, and guidance in ram selection comes from Merino NZ, with which Landcorp has a mutually supportive relationship that extends to strongwool genetic profiling. Tutamoe runs Angus cows that produce around 780 weaners a year for the Landcorp fattening blocks, with the parent company providing the bulls from its Rotomahana Focus Genetics subsidiary. Not all the beef progeny goes straight off the farm as weaners, about 120 steers being raised on a small dedicated grazing area for 18 months, while the heifers are sold before their second winter. Tim Lamont grew up on the family sheep and beef farm near Lake Mahinerangi in Otago, and after working on various South Island farms he Landcorp’s Tutamoe Station has stabilised its hill-sides. Mixed-age (MA) ewes and cows (below). Luke Bates, Ross Mitchell, Deano Brenssell, Daryl Fergus, Rob Fergus & Tim Petro www.fergusrural.co.nz Gisborne: Wairoa: Rob Fergus 027 4496007 Deano Brenssell 027 8638923 Luke Bates 027 4211653 Daryl Fergus 027 2092787 Ross Mitchell 027 4048965 Environmental Solu ti ons Consultant: Tim Petro 027 3390400 Supplying Livestock throughout New Zealand AGRIBUSINESS GISBORNE | 743 Gladstone Rd | 06 867 9405 | gisborne@evs.co.nz WAIROA | 46 Freyberg St | 06 838 6099 | wairoa@evs.co.nz www.evs.co.nz Proud to be supporting Tutamoe Station Phone 0800 668 342 / 24 Hours FOR ALL YOUR RURAL TRANSPORT REQUIREMENTS We provide Livestock, General/Bulk, Logging and Ground Spreading services Proudly Supplying Quality Shearing Services to LANDCORP , previously Lands and Survey, for 52 years We support all that is best in shearing moved north and joined Landcorp on one of its Wairoa blocks before taking on the manager’s role at Tutamoe five years ago. His brother Ben Lamont is also a farm manager nearby, though on a private block, and Tim says Landcorp gives its managers a clear mandate. “The big policy decisions are all made by the executives in Wellington, so we’re able as individual managers to focus on the day-to-day running of the farms,” he says.