The last few days

I have covered a lot of distance this week in terms of learning as opposed to geography. On Monday morning I visited the Allflex tag printing facility near Feilding where they turn out 12million cattle and sheep tags annually. I now know why tan order sometines takes a little longer than expected! All the tags are loaded manually into the machines. There is a logical swing to a visual /EID set which although voluntary is proving very popular. We also visited a facility that extracts chemicals from cattle bile which is ultimately used as an ingredient in treatments for liver disease in humans.Next was a visit to a 20,000 stock unit cattle and sheep farm. A stock unit is equivilant to one 55kg ewe and lamb which is the equivilent of 550kg of forage dry matter. Nearly all livestock systems are referred to in terms of requirement or production, ie milk - milk solids per ha. The cows are Hereford X Friesian an then run with mainly Charolais or Simmental bulls. The same tough selection is applied here just like the pedigree herds I have seen. In that matter there is no difference wether they have a piece of paper with their name or not.

Wednesday took us to the Koanui Poll Hereford herd near Havelock North . I had been prepared for drought conditions but although it can be tough the farm has a micro-climate of it own which brings a lot of rain. It probably helps that they are so close to the see and get rain before the clouds have to pass over the mountains. It really is a great herd, we were pushed for time but got a quick tour and saw some tremendous cattle. The next thing we need is the export certificates sorted out between NZ and Europe to get some of these cattle working for us. That is a similar story for my final visit of that day to Rissington Breedline. The same problem exists here with the flow of new bloodlines to their Highlander and Primera sheep flocks in the UK. We are now 4 years behind them in terms of genetics, during which time they have made tremendous advances in their breeding programmes and stock. It is a real success story. The effort and control placed in the breeding programme here is intense to say the least. This has been a brief summary of what has been going on I was also at Progressive Beef Breeders which is an amalgamation of several breed societies sharing staff and resources with the societies individual size determining their share and with MWNZ as a partner too. Yesterday afteernoon I visited the HQ of MWNZ in Wellington , finding out about their role and the services they provide. To sum them up they are like the NBA, NSA, LMC, AHDB, QMS all rolled into one. Im off to Australia now. I had hoped to have a bit of a summary done on m thoughts of NZ farming before I left but it looks like thats going to be a job for the airport later. Thanks to everyone who helped and accommodated me along the way. I have had an absolutely fantastic time and cant wait to see many of you again down the road.