Spreading the risk in uncertain times
Velvet, venison, lamb and beef are all on the menu for a fifthgeneration farmer in Central Hawke’s Bay. Kate Taylor got a taste of diversification.
DIVERSIFICATION is one of the keys to success for Central Hawke’s Bay sheep, beef and deer farmer Matt von Dadelszen on Mangapurakau Station.
Combining breeding deer, velvet stags, bull beef, breeding ewes and finishing lambs gives the von Dadelszens a mix of stock classes on the property at any time of the year… and a buffer when prices drop in one sector.
‘‘The way we’re set up it’s easier to react,’’ he says. ‘‘Changes can be made quickly for different markets. Every year is a good solid year thanks to the diversity of the farm. We’re not at the mercy of one market.’’
Matt and Paula von Dadelszen farm in partnership with Matt’s parents Ponty and Jane on the 1000-hectare property in the Flemington farming district, south of Waipukurau. They are on the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s southern boundary with Horizons Regional Council with two-thirds of the farm in Hawke’s Bay. It is a summer-safe farm with an altitude of 370 metres above sea level up to 620m and an annual rainfall of about 1250mm.
It is about half sheep with a quarter each of deer and beef.
Even with last week’s rain, Matt is monitoring the season closely with an El Nino weather pattern forecast for Hawke’s Bay this summer. They have had 739mm so far in 2015 compared with 1004mm for the same period last year.
‘‘When stock comes ready to be killed, then it will be killed. We won’t muck around this year. We’ll dock early and be proactive,’’ he says.
‘‘We’ve just put a flexi-N sulphur super mix over the twinning ewe country and the deer and bull block. That’s about 30 units of nitrogen and 15 units of P to give it a bit of a kick as the pasture covers are lower than they should be.’’
He says high carcassweights are unlikely to be an issue this year.
‘‘We won’t be looking for high carcassweights if the grass isn’t there. If the season transpires as the weather forecasters predict we won’t be buying replacement yearling bulls until late summer. Normally we would buy in 20 or 30 per month from now on. But we know it’s just not worth the risk currently. Normally we’d be looking for an 18kg lamb but if it’s ready to go at 17kg then it will go at 17kg. ‘‘
Mangapurakau Station is 940ha effective – several pine plantations are one aspect of the von Dadelszen succession plan to help Matt buy his sisters’ share of the business. The harvesting of one block has already helped with the development of Matt and Paula’s home, which is down the road from his parents.
Matt did an agricultural commerce degree at Lincoln University, worked for a year in Taupo and travelled for a year before returning to the farm in 2000 when Ponty was elected a director of Meat New Zealand.
Matt says the father-son partnership works well on the farm with Matt doing most of the daily farming, with Ponty in charge of the velveting stags. Ponty is a director of velvet company ProVelco. Matt would not like the comparison, but he is also willing to step up for roles in the industry – he is chairman of the TB Free Hawke’s Bay committee and chairman of the Hawke’s Bay Deer Farmers Association.
Ponty and Jane made the move into deer in the early 1990s with a focus initially on selling store venison weaners. The deer farm now focuses on both velvet and venison with half the hind herd producing replacements for the velvet herd and the remainder producing crossbred weaners for sale in autumn.
The velvet herd consists of 235 MAstags and 65 R2 stags. Due to a lift in the market, this year’s velvet averaged $126 a kg compared with $109 a kg last year. The top price for spiker grade-one velvet was about $200. About a third of Mangapurakau’s velvet is sold through ProVelco on a fixedprice contract.
Genetics have been introduced over the past 10 years from the Netherdale Stud in Southland. In that time the R2 stags have increased velvet production by more than 1kg a head and the farm now produces a total of 1700kg of velvet compared with around 1100kg in 2010.
The amount of velvet produced on the station has been growing every year due to a combination of ‘‘genetics, better feeding and a handful more stags’’, says Matt.
‘‘While we’ve previously fed them on balage over the winter, the past few years we have fed them on a crop of kale and swedes for 80 days. This has helped lift their body condition score in the lead up to button drop.’’
About 35ha is put into winter crops, either kale or rape, as well as titan in spring for lambs, plus 20ha of plantain.
The use of kale was part of an Advance Party winter cropping trial, which aimed to help with a regional issue of being able to feed stags efficiently over winter using different varieties of brassicas, oats and swedes.
The Hawke’s Bay Advance Party, which has nine members, operates under the umbrella of the deer industry’s Passion2Profit primary growth programme delivering feed, genetics and animal health solutions to farmers. Nine groups involving more than 80 farms are part of the three-year trial (2014-2016) funded by Deer Industry New Zealand and the Ministry for Primary Industry’s Sustainable Farming Fund.
‘‘It’s about farmers learning from and helping other farmers. We all had to say what we needed to improve in our own operations and at the same time also help the other farmers improve what they’re doing. It keeps people focused on their farms and adds a competitive nature to it at the same time.’’
Matt says the Advance Party meetings and field days offer a gold mine of small ideas to help increase production in many different ways.
Just over half of the 510 mixedage red hinds go to wapiti sires bought from the Steinvale Stud in Tauranga with their progeny sold locally as weaners in April.
Matt says changing the feeding management of the R2 stags contracted to Silver Fern Farms resulted in a 4kg lift to a 66kg carcassweight this year.
‘‘With an $8 schedule this gave us an extra $32 per head.’’
The remaining 250 hinds are single-sire mated to stags with velvet genetics with progeny kept as replacements for both the breeding and velvet herds. Rising two-year hinds are mated to red stags with progeny kept as replacements.
On the sheep side, Mangapurakau has 3350 ewes and 1000 hoggets based on Kelso and Wairere composites of romney, texel and finn. Hybrid vigour has been added in the past three years through coopworth rams from nearby breeder Steve Wyn-Harris.
Matt says his target average lambing percentage is 145 per cent and he aims to get as many lambs as possible away straight off mum.
About 850 hoggets are mated this year. The five-year ewes go to poll dorset rams three weeks before the main flock with the aim of having the ewes and lambs killed by early December to create more room for twin ewes.
Breeding cows were dropped from the station six years ago after three consecutive dry summers and autumns and replaced with bulls for more flexibility.
Matt buys 160 friesian calves on contract at 100kg in October/ November. They are finished at an average of 290kg carcassweight at 18-20 months. Depending on the season, 200 R2 friesian bulls are bought from October onward as feed allows and killed at about 320kg carcassweight.
Matt sometimes has the company of four-year-old Oscar on the farm. But Oscar will soon join his sisters – Hannah, 10, Ella, 9 and Zara, 7 – at nearby Flemington School where Paula teaches two days a week and Matt is on the board of trustees. Matt works alongside full-time shepherd Brad Stafford and parttime fencer general Wayne Lomas, who also works for the neighbours, as well as Ponty, who works as required.