Livestock report: A green drought, land use changes, and avocados in Northland

PGG Wrightson regional livestock manager Bernie McGahan says land use changes in Northland have led to fewer dairy farms. Photo / Mark Mitchell

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Northland is experiencing a bit of a green drought despite recent rainfall, according to PGG Wrightson regional livestock manager, Bernie McGahan.

For the uninitiated, a green drought is when there is just enough rain to keep the grass green, but not enough for it to grow.

There had been 20-25mm of rain since the weekend, McGahan told The Country’s Jamie Mackay.

“That juice is going straight into the ground, and it’s an absolute godsend but we’ve certainly had a real dry autumn, and the further north you went, the worse it got.”

McGahan said it wasn’t too bad around Wellsford but that wasn’t the case further north.

“Certainly north of the Brynderwyns into Whangarei and both sides of the coast, up to the Far North, she was a doozy - right to late autumn.”

McGahan said the conditions had affected the region’s kikuyu grass, which normally thrived in summer and autumn.

“We’ve got a lot of kikiyu here ... and the farmers rely on it over summer.

“As soon as we get a frost, unfortunately, it doesn’t look too good, it goes yellow and dies.”

However, the grass never really got going over the dry autumn, despite looking lush from above, McGahan said.

“It looked good from the air, if you’re in an aeroplane or a helicopter, it looked real good but if you got down to the nitty-gritty, it wasn’t that sharp.”

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Moving on from the weather, Mackay asked if Northland had any sheep left.

“We’ve got a handful,” McGahan said.

There was a sale happening in Welsford, with up to 400 sheep and 30 to 40 vendors in attendance, he said.

Mackay asked if they were lifestylers from Auckland.

“Auckland is getting very close to Northland and the land use change up here is incredibly significant,” McGahan said.

“There’s still the old subdivisions going on but now we’re part of Auckland here, we pay rates to the Auckland City Council.

“So we are part of Auckland, and it’s growing all the way - even to the ports of Waipu and Ruakaka - it’s all go.”

As for cattle, McGahan said the bull sales had just got going.

“We’ve got a Limousin sale on Friday, hoping that goes well, lovely bulls there at Snake Gully, and we had the Waitangi Angus sale last Thursday.

McGahan said most of the bulls went at the Angus sale “except for a couple” with the sale slightly back on average compared to last year but “quality stock always sells”.

He said there were only a couple of sales to go.

“Our cows have disappeared from Northland due to the trees coming in and other land use change but we’ve got a few cows.”

Dairy farming was dwindling as well, he said.

“There’s a few fellas getting out of the dairies.

“A lot of guys that are milking 100 and 60 to 200 cows, now they’re saying ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this, we’ll put the farm on the market’.

“Not that they’ve sold - they haven’t been that prevalent - selling dairy farms this year.”

McGahan said avocados were turning up where the dairy farms had been.

If you want to take a trip to Cape Rianga and head north of Kaitaia, you’ll see avocados on both sides of the road just about all the way up there.

“West of Welsford here, in a little area called Tāpora, there used to be 27 dairy farms out there.

“Now there’s about seven and the rest of it’s in avocados.”