| 25 Flexibility the focus at Edenham Shearing at Edenham Station, a 1780ha sheep and beef unit, running 6000 mostly Waihora Romney ewes and 200 Pamu Angus cows. Photos: Bryan & Susan Lorenz. Now Farm Manager at Pamu’s Edenham Station Bryan Lorenz started his farming career as a general hand with Pamu (formerly Landcorp) and has worked with them off and on for many years. He’s mindful of the support they offer their staff, encouraging them onto courses to help them move up through the system, and generally “putting people rst”. After a stint out of both Pamu and out of farming all together it was also the family lifestyle it offers that he and his wife Susan decided farming was what they wanted to do and being able to take a position back up with Pamu sealed the deal. That was 12 years ago and these days Susan does a lot of the admin work which is part and parcel of farming with Pamu, as well as helping out casually on the farm, and their two children Alex (12yrs), and Zoe (9yrs) take helping out with docking and drenching in their stride. Edenham Station is a 1780-hectare sheep and beef unit, breeding and nishing, in Central Hawkes Bay currently running 6000 mostly Waihora Romney ewes, 200 Pamu Angus cows with another 50 in-calf heifers, and the balance made up of trading R1 and R2 steers and heifers. It has 480 hectares of at with the rest hilly to steep. The at land permits some cash cropping including leasing land to Brownrigs for squash production, growing some of their own cash crops when it ts in, and planting 60 hectares of summer forage for nishing lambs. They’ve had an unexpectedly good late spring/ summer this year, with plenty of rain meaning they didn’t dry out over summer and didn’t have to destock but were able to carry everything through and with more weight. The two previous droughtaffected summers were “character-building” as Bryan puts it. They’ve inspired a rethink of how Edenham Station can best make use of the exibility offered by being part of the wider Pamu network of farms, and Virginia Wright RURAL PEOPLE » Edenham Station For all your Aerial Agriculture and Horticultural Services. SMS CERTIFIED CONTACT: John Chittick - 027 224 9039 Matt Wilson - 027 330 0482 at the same time maximise its assets, rather than having to suffer the effects of droughts that it can’t control. The plan is to transition Edenham Station into being a nishing block only, thus avoiding being locked in with cows and their calves through the October to March period which is trending towards being increasingly dry. “This year we’re putting a terminal Simmental over 80% of our Angus herd. We’ll end up at a 100% and we’ll get our replacements transferred in from another Pamu farm. That way we can go all terminal sire and don’t have to breed at all.” That’s not the only change with the cattle this year. The 50 in-calf heifers are Dairy-Stabilizer Cross, bred on another Pamu dairy farm. “We’re looking to get a beef-dairy cross cow which we’ll put the Simmental across so we should end up with increased weaner calf size. We’ll nish all progeny on-farm and they should be bigger and quicker to nish. “The idea is to have more exibility in the system and more levers to pull and if we have more droughts we’ve got some nice forward animals that we can move,” explains Bryan. “The plan is to transition totally to a herd of Dairy-StabilizerSimmentals over the next ve years.” With plans also underway to a put a less wool/ shedding sheep over their Romney ock which will bring hybrid vigour and should also reduce their labour costs, it’s clear that looking for ef ciencies as well as future-proo ng is part of the Pamu philosophy that underpins their farms’ successes. “The idea is to have more exibility in the system and more levers to pull and if we have more droughts we’ve got some nice forward animals that we can move.” John & Raylene Kirkpatrick 021 887 844 | 021 887 843 kirkpatrickshearing@gmail.com
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