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Pre-weaning lamb growth rates on plantain/clover and ryegrass-based pastures.
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Yield and animal performance data from plantain/clover and resident ryegrass-based pastures were collected over several years from six properties on the East Coast of the North Island. This information was used in a FARMAX® model developed for a hypothetical farm based on data collected by the Beef + Lamb Economic Service. The hypothetical farm was...
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Citations
... One of these is narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago lanceolata). However, the change to broad acre use of this forage led to the emergence of two previously innocuous native plantain moths (Geometridae) as significant pests (Gerard et al. 2018a;Muir et al. 2019). ...
... Since the nationwide drought in 2007-08, there has been a decline in performance of non-irrigated perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) pastures in New Zealand, particularly in the northern North Island, which appears to be associated with the increased frequency of summer droughts (Dodd et al. 2018;Woodward et al. 2020). To combat this, farmers have looked to heat-and drought-tolerant forages to enhance production over summer (Tozer et al. 2016;Muir et al. 2019). One of these is narrow-leaved plantain (Plantago lanceolata). ...
It is well understood that damage by insect pests can have serious consequences for pasture resilience. However, the impacts of climate change on pastoral systems, the responses of insect pests, and implications for pest impact mitigation are unclear. This paper reviews pest responses to climate change, including direct impacts such as temperature and carbon dioxide levels, geographic range expansion, sleeper pests, and outbreaks resulting from disturbance such as drought and farm system changes. The paper concludes with a plea for transdisciplinary research into pasture resilience under climate change that has insect pests as an integral component – not as an afterthought.
... In 2011 we planted 7 ha of herb-based pasture. To assess the performance, we joined a project with On Farm Research, a locally based research company, which measured yields of herb-based pastures on six East Coast farms (Muir et al. 2019). On Poporangi, we compared the herb-based pasture and an area sown in ryegrass-clover (cultivar of ryegrass One-50) in March 2011. ...
Farming in the inland Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand with traditional pasture is limited by pasture quality in summer and early autumn. Low lamb growth rates in spring/summer pushes lamb finishing into the late summer and early autumn when feed demand competes with sheep mating and compromises pasture cover entering winter. We discuss our process for investigating and adopting high legume herb-based pastures that thrive within the constraints of our soils. This process involved learning from other farms and trials, small-scale on-farm trials and farm-system modelling. We gain considerable confidence from observing plantain, chicory and clover pastures within a learning group run by Massey University. Our on-farm trial measured by On-Farm Research showed favourable forage production (+20% greater than ryegrass-clover pastures for spring, autumn and winter) and longevity (4–6 grazing seasons). From this we modelled our farm using Farmax software. Farmax calculated an historically poor performance in February, March and April from ewes (-65, -45, -15 g/day respectively) and lambs (55, 0, 35 g/day respectively). Based on six key assumptions, we have calculated the profitability of herb-based pastures. These are compared with the performance we are currently achieving on herb-based pastures. For each value we are achieving better than assumed, i.e. ewe weaning weight 64.0 versus 62 kg, lamb weaning weight 33.0 versus 31.3 kg, ewe lamb growth rate 132 versus 100 g/day, male lamb growth rate 253 versus 235 grams/day and ewe hogget scanning percentage 144 versus 130.
