38 | Opportunity to grow their farm taken Ross and Ruth Richards did a couple of seasons of 14 stock units a hectare but reduced it in response to seasonal pressures. Virginia Wright Ross and Ruth Richards farm 660 effective hectares spread over three different sites that run 11 kilometres from one end of the farm to the other via the road. Under the name Romani Farms they own 260 of those hectares and lease the other 400 from six Maori Trusts. Ross describes the land as medium hill country with not much that is cultivatable, but which has its compensations. “One of the great things about Taumaranui is that although we can be the hottest place in the country sometimes or the coldest place in the country sometimes, we don’t generally get floods and we don’t get extremely dry, we don’t get a lot of wind, so it’s quite a good climate generally for farming.” They took the opportunity to grow their farm by leasing the different blocks as they became available. Taking up the lease blocks some of which were quite small allowed them to expand the farming system they’d been developing since first working the home farm which they bought in 1993. In the first few years as they concentrated on improving their soil quality they also did a lot of subdividing of paddocks. Ten years later their stocking rate had improved from five or six a hectare to the current 12 a hectare (the district average is 9.9), with a total of 8000 stock units: 3000 ewes, 1000 of which are recorded stud ewes; 1300 hoggets, 900 of which are in lamb this year; around 500 ram hoggets ready for sale, and the remainder are cattle. They did a couple of seasons of 14 stock units a hectare but reduced it in response to seasonal pressures. For Ross it’s all about the way you graze your paddocks. “We run 130 paddocks across the 660 hectares whereas most farmers would have between 30 and 50 probably. We use them to control the feed supply and demand, and to avoid overgrazing,” says Ross. Simple enough to say but what it translates to is careful attention paid to the way they graze those paddocks. The grazing of the cattle and sheep is carefully controlled so that the cattle maximize pasture quality for the sheep. The sheep are then generally moved on from a given paddock within a couple of days, working on the principal that the pasture will recover quickly although even less time would be better in Ross’s ideal regime. “The perfect scenario is to be moved on within RURAL PEOPLE » Romani Farms Ltd At Romani Farms Coopworth tolerant, high growth, meaty, quality wool, robust Coopworth genetics. • Fully SIL recorded under true commercial conditions. • Selected for top growth and muscling, less dags, parasite tolerance, minimal drench. Not dipped since 2013. Competition Large Flock Award. 2018 winner Coopworth section. • NZ Sheep Industry Awards Maternal Trait Leader Parasite Resistance. • Romani Sires are consistently top performers in the B+LNZ Low In-put Progeny Test. romani@farmside.co.nz 07 895 7144 www.romanicoopworths.co.nz • Romani commercial hoggets winner of 2017 NZ Ewe Hogget Totally Vets Taumarunui, proudly supporting Ross and Ruth Richards and Romani Farms Ltd by providing all aspects of animal health care @ taumarunui@totallyvets.co.nz totallyvets.nz less than 24 hours and then left to rest for say three weeks in spring or summer and up to three months in winter. Grazed correctly and leaving plenty behind, grass can grow twice as fast as grass that is kept very short.” 300 of these well-fed stud rams will be for sale on farm this November as usual. The result of years of careful selection for eczema tolerance, high growth rates, meat confirmation, lamb survival, fly-strike and worm tolerance; with shorter tail length added to the mix in the last few years to reduce the workload around docking and dagging; and for the last three years they’ve been collecting the data to enable selection for low methane production animals. With the progeny of two studs for sale, around 200 Coopworths and 100 of their best Wiltshire shedding rams, Romani Farms have plenty of animals for those looking to lift the quality of their flocks.
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