Sheree and Dylan Ditchfield do things differently on their dairy farm at Wendonside, Southland. When short, cold days slow grass growth, their cows get hay – so much hay that there’s extra to lie on. What’s more, they’re let into a new strip of paddock while grass remains on the old strip. In contrast, most Southland cattle spend winter on paddocks that are often bare soil. When it rains, soil becomes mud.
Every winter, animal activists release footage of farmed animals in mud, sometimes belly-deep. I wanted to know how widespread the practice was. In August, I drove 200km around Southland and flew over it.
From main roads, I counted that 60% of the 179 cattle herds were fenced into paddocks that were entirely bare soil or mud. Some cattle and sheep were wading ankle deep, and some paddocks had pooling water, although slightly less rain than average had fallen during the previous month.
Is this okay for the animals? It is said New Zealand has the best animal welfare in the world. We lavishly market ourselves as the pinnacle of grass-fed meat and dairy. But there is no grass on these paddocks.
Wintering practices
Federated Farmers animal welfare spokesperson Richard McIntyre explains in a written statement why it happens.
“Feed shortages are more likely in winter, especially in places such as Southland, Central North Island and Canterbury, where pasture doesn’t grow a lot in the coldest months. Crops such as kale, turnips, swedes and beets are great for winter feed as they can be planted in spring, store nutrients through autumn, and can be grazed in winter.”
The animals are then “break-fed”, with an electric fence moved daily to allow them into the next strip of crop. They eat it down to bare soil, sometimes in an hour or two, then are usually held there until the fence is next moved. They also get some baleage, which is fermented grass or maize wrapped in plastic.
This system is known as intensive winter grazing. An alternative is “grass and baleage”, where the break-fed strips start out grassed and all the supplementary feed is baleage. With many animals in a confined area, the grass is often grazed and trodden to bare soil.
The bare-soil paddocks I saw were islands in a sea of green paddocks. Many of these were being conserved for spring and summer milking.
Plus, cows are often moved for winter to steeper, cheaper land, then trucked home while heavily pregnant. Some, however, calve onto bare soil (I saw this happening) or mud.
Why is Southland a particular problem? Not only is it our coldest and darkest farming area in winter, which means grass growth slows dramatically, but dairy farming in Southland has intensified greatly in the past 30 years – from 38,000 to about 600,000 cows. That’s a 16-fold increase over a period when the national dairy herd only doubled. Sheep numbers in Southland dropped by almost two-thirds in that time.
The province is now our third-largest dairying region by cow numbers (12.5% of the country’s total), behind only Waikato and North Canterbury.
Body condition at issue
Most farms in the region use intensive winter grazing practices, says Environment Southland. They allow farms to carry many more animals than grass diets allow.
Intensive bare-soil systems provide enough feed – and good body condition is what some people believe matters most. Associate Minister for Agriculture Andrew Hoggard, who’s responsible for animal welfare, has said the overarching measure of welfare is whether an animal has good body condition.
Karin Schutz, an AgResearch animal behaviour and welfare scientist, disagrees. “Body condition score is a very important management tool to make sure that your animals are getting enough food, are healthy, and to optimise production,” she says. “But there’s no doubt that animals can be miserable and still be in a good body condition. If the animals are up to their knees in mud, even if they’re in good body condition score, they’re not going to be happy cows.”
Schutz has been involved in several studies assessing the welfare of cows farmed on bare soil. Her most recent stated: “There is abundant research that has demonstrated that cows find muddy surfaces aversive with dramatic reductions in lying time on muddy surfaces.” Cows are highly motivated to lie down, and it’s particularly important for cattle welfare, she says. Cows typically lie for 10 or more hours a day if they have a comfortable surface.
She doesn’t know if dry soil is worse than intact pasture if the surfaces are equally soft, but bare soil easily becomes mud. One of her studies in crop paddocks, co-funded by farmer group DairyNZ, showed lying time declined with 4mm of rain. The day after the heaviest rainfall, cows lay for just 2.5 hours on average, and a third stood for 24 hours straight. When cattle are averse to lying down, she says, “it seems to be very much driven by the moisture content and the wetness of the surface”.
Mud can last for weeks in Southland. Schutz says sufficient lying time is a behavioural “need” for cattle. “When we see reduced lying time, we get a rebound effect afterwards when conditions improve,” she says, referring to how cows lie for longer than usual after not doing so, much like someone eating or sleeping more after fasting or sleep deprivation. That marks a need, not a want.
Then there’s Southland’s sub-zero winter nights. “The clean, dry coat is much more insulating than a wet, muddy coat,” says Schutz. “There’s also [cows’] motivation to use shelter in bad weather. There’s plenty of evidence on that.”
Bale-grazing alternative
Schutz teamed up with soil scientist Ross Monaghan (see sidebar) to explore the Ditchfields’ pasture-preserving bale grazing method, calling it the “soil armour” project. For a comparison, the Ditchfields grew kale crop, too, which they used to do exclusively.
Dylan Ditchfield notices the differences in the animals. “As a farmer noticing and observing the animals, they are so much more content [on bale-grazing paddocks]. They’re ruminating all the time. That creates body heat like an electric blanket. We’ll see cows in hail, snow, sleet, sitting there ruminating looking relatively okay. They sit on the hay, which is like an insulation. Whereas cows on crop are standing in mud, looking for any food, not happy at all.
“The data AgResearch collected aligned with our observations. Their skin temperatures were higher than the cows on kale.” They also lay in more comfortable positions, ruminated more and had cleaner coats.
Holes in The fence
Muddy ground and lack of shelter, it seems, should be illegal under the Animal Welfare Act. Good welfare includes meeting behavioural needs, so the act requires “owners of animals, and persons in charge of animals, to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the physical, health, and behavioural needs of the animals are met”. It overtly states animals must have adequate shelter, which is a tricky standard to meet when they’re fenced into a strip in the middle of a paddock.
That’s reassuring legislation – except the risk of being caught and penalised for breaching it is extremely low, according to Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere, an animal law expert at the University of Auckland. He says clarity of the overriding act is often diminished by the codes of welfare for each species that sit under the legislation.
For example, the dairy code of welfare describes how “dairy cattle prefer and spend more time lying on soft, dry and clean surfaces, and are reluctant to lie when surfaces are hard, muddy, slippery and/or wet”. That, says Rodriguez Ferrere, “is the introduction to [what’s called] a minimum standard, which is that dairy cattle must be able to walk, turn around, lie in a natural position and rise freely. The problem with that introduction and the [wording of the] minimum standard it leads to is that there is a disjunct. It doesn’t say there is a requirement that dairy cattle should have access to soft and dry conditions. It simply says that dairy cattle must be able to walk, turn around and lie in a natural position. They can technically do that even if they’re standing in two feet of mud.
“It’s difficult, therefore, for an inspector to see a Southland dairy farm with a bit of kale in there, but mostly mud and a whole lot of cows, and for them to say you have breached the minimum standard of the code of welfare. It’s even more difficult for them to say that is evidence of a breach of the main act.” Plus, he says, there are too few welfare inspectors.
There are also no animal welfare regulations relating to mud. Rodriguez Ferrere explains that animal welfare regulations are more clearly enforceable than minimum standards and can attract a fine when breached, like a speed limit instead of a directive to drive at a safe speed. He says it would be sensible to have regulations for dairy cattle addressing the problems with intensive grazing.
“We become aware of these sorts of things when there is an acute failure. But often that will be presented as an isolated incident and not representative of the industry generally, so you lose the broader message about why systemic reform is needed here.”
Glen Burrell, director of compliance and response for the Ministry for Primary Industries, says there has only ever been one mud-related prosecution, for cows in Tuatapere mired belly-deep. The grazing company pleaded guilty. The prosecution was about the failure to meet the animals’ physical health and behavioural needs. Burrell says mud was “an aggravating factor. Mud’s a hard thing to define.”
Prosecution is also likely in a case this year of 2000 cows near Riverton in deep mud with insufficient drinking water. Like the Tuatapere case, it was reported by activists. After four complaints about the farm during May, an investigation was announced on June 20, hours after associate minister Hoggard was publicly shown an image of the cows and asked if it was okay. “Not that much mud, no,” said Hoggard. The cows were eventually moved in late July.
Inspectors use “voluntary” and “assisted” interventions before progressing to directed intervention and then enforcement, says Burrell.
Taskforce blocked
The compliance tools to manage issues arising from winter grazing are adequate, he says. That’s in stark contrast to a conclusion of the Winter Grazing Taskforce launched in 2019 by then agriculture minister Damien O’Connor. Members included DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand, farmers, veterinarians and scientists.
MPI’s then national manager for animal welfare Gray Harrison and Southland animal welfare compliance manager Peter Hyde addressed the taskforce at one meeting; the minutes record that “the current wording in the codes of welfare and legislation, makes it difficult for MPI to prosecute animal welfare offences involving mud”. The code’s wording hasn’t changed.
The taskforce concluded that “enforcement activity is hindered by a lack of clear, enforceable rules and further tools are needed”. Two of its absolute bottom lines were provision for animals to lie comfortably (on a soft, dry substrate) for as long as they want to, and continuous convenient access to fresh, clean water.
So the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (Nawac), which drafts animal welfare codes of practice for MPI, swung into action. In 2022, it proposed a revised dairy code, plus regulations that cows could access a well-drained lying area and clean drinking water at all times, and be moved to a suitable area before calving so calves are not born into surface water or mud.
But in its submission on the proposed code, DairyNZ said no to these regulations. It also said no to a proposed minimum standard that stated, “Dairy cattle must have access to a compressible, well-drained surface so they are able to lie and rest comfortably for sufficient periods each day to meet their behavioural needs.”
Dairy NZ, which advises farmers on cow wellbeing and intensive wintering practices and surveys them on their wintering plans, supports the existing code. It refused to explain its about-face from the taskforce position or be interviewed.
A written statement from senior animal care specialist Penny Timmer-Arends addressed one of the Nawac proposals, saying well-drained lying space would be “extremely challenging for farmers to put into practice” and that science doesn’t support a need for so much space.
Nawac’s ex-chair, Gwyn Verkerk, says the space allowance has been standard guidance overseas for indoor dairy cows for decades. It is equivalent to 100 cows weighing about 500kg each having ground the size of a quarter-acre section that is free of surface water pooling.
Federated Farmers also submitted on the code, including that “all standards and regulations under intensive winter grazing be removed. Including this section is virtue signalling …” It wrote to O’Connor in May 2023 requesting the proposed code be rejected. It denied my request to see the letter and would not be interviewed. A written statement by Federated Farmers’ animal welfare spokesperson skirted or ignored difficult questions, such as whether making rules “outcome-based”, as it wants, means they would be too subjective to enable prosecution, and whether the lack of prosecutions sends a message that mud is okay.
I also asked why it opposed a regulation for intensively winter-grazed animals to always have access to clean drinking water. Its submission had stated “there is very little evidence to support that water needs to be always available”. The organisation responded that portable troughs are used by farmers all the time to ensure there is adequate access to water, but “our submission to the code was on the basis that it is impractical for stock to have access to water every moment of every day. For example, when moving animals between paddocks or when they are on a feed pad.” This response is hard to reconcile with the proposed regulation, which specifically referred only to water in the grazing area.
Nawac now has some different members and has revised the proposed code, but it’s not publicly available. Associate minister Hoggard, who was Federated Farmers’ president from 2020-23, has directed Nawac to reconsider aspects of the revised code, taking into account “economics and practicality as well as available science and good practice”. Once that’s done, says an MPI spokesperson, Nawac will consult industry bodies the Veterinary Association and Veterinary Council. It’s unclear whether any of the regulatory improvements called for by the winter grazing taskforce will remain.
Greener pastures
Meanwhile, some farmers are forging a way forward for animals, people and land. “I’m just finding a solution for something we all know isn’t ideal,” says Dylan Ditchfield. “But it takes courage to do something different. And it takes a mindset change to manage it into your system.”
He keeps an eye on the numbers. Bale grazing uses the same land area as kale crops across a year, and it avoids the costs of resowing grass and the delay until paddocks can be grazed again. Milk solids are unchanged. And as for body condition, “every year the cows were condition-scored pre- and post-winter and there was literally no difference [between the two systems]”, says Ditchfield. “Bale grazing comes out on top. There’s no disadvantage.”
Clear as mud
The decline in Southland’s waterways is linked to nitrogen run-off but good grazing practices should limit the damage.
Where the upper reaches of Southland’s rivers flow through sheep and beef farms, their water is clear but their rocky bottoms are dusted with brown sediment. As they flow over the plains, where farming intensifies, the sediment thickens. Now, algae grow, coating the riverbed and waving brown filaments in the water. Nearing the sea, the rivers are increasingly murky, lined with muck and algae-rich.
As Environment Court judge Jane Borthwick pronounced in 2022, “… water quality in many of Southland’s water bodies is, or is highly likely to be, degraded.” Among other evidence, she heard just six of its 40 rivers were swimmable and that lowland waterways were unlikely to be drinkable without treatment in one witness’s lifetime.
Rivers often converge in estuaries. A 2022 report stated that Invercargill’s New River Estuary has “some of the most extreme and widespread estuary degradation ever recorded in New Zealand”. The estuary’s inner arm features nuisance algae beds that expanded – fertilised mainly by the nitrogen flowing in – from 10% cover in 2007 to 80-100% in 2018. The algae rot. Large areas are oxygen-deprived, algae-coated, soft black mud, some with bacterial films emitting hydrogen sulphide gas. Some is ankle- or knee-deep.
In such dire conditions, most sensitive estuarine animals and shellfish are lost. Furthermore, stated the report, “the high level of hydrogen sulphide and extent of rotting [seaweed] is such that there may be human health risks from any prolonged exposure …”
The Ōreti and Waihōpai rivers feed the estuary after draining intensively farmed catchments. Several studies show they are the biggest nitrogen source: roughly half comes from dairy; urban runoff, wastewater and meatworks discharges are much smaller contributors.
The estuary’s ability to flush away contaminants is handicapped by reclaimed land.
Farming animals anywhere on bare soil doesn’t help waterways. An AgResearch report stated that “Intensive winter grazing practices pose the greatest challenge for losses of sediment, nitrogen and particulate phosphorus, despite representing a relatively small proportion of the farmed landscape”.
Ross Monaghan, a soil scientist at AgResearch, agrees it’s a problem. “On a per hectare basis, the [contaminant] losses from the intensive winter forage cropping practices are generally at least double what we’d get on a per hectare basis from the pastures that are grazed during spring through to autumn.”
The expansion of the dairy herd in Southland has driven the need to find areas to keep animals fed over winter, he says. “Inevitably, grazing pressures are high relative to what we experience at other times of the year, and they’re often too high to have a chance of keeping a surviving plant. But there are some design principles that really help maximise successful outcomes. One of those is matching grazing pressure to landscape suitability, and providing hay litter or some surface that the animals can lie on and not just roam around in the mud.”
If pastures can persist – as on the Ditchfields’ farm – the nutrient and sediment losses to waterways are greatly reduced, Monaghan says.
Buffers of pasture between paddocks and near-stream areas also reduce harm, and Environment Southland’s Water and Land Plan requires these. Farm animals must be excluded from ephemeral watercourses that can run into streams, and a resource consent is needed for intensive wintering practices on slopes. These are similar to national winter grazing regulations for water quality effective since 2023, except the Southland rules apply to the grass-and-baleage system as well as fodder crops.
Southland will keep its rules, but the two-year-old national ones will be axed under the government’s planned amendment to the Resource Management Act. When the amendment bill was introduced in May, that aspect of it was read by Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard, who is also Associate Minister for the Environment.