Farming on fringe of wildlife refuge
Dan Lyders has learned to live with the constant threat of flooding, Rob Tipa reports.
Dan Lyders has lived on the family’s Lakes Farm at the southern end of the Taieri Plain virtually all his life. ‘‘I did a year on the Lincoln College farm and then a diploma of agriculture at Lincoln and took over the farm at 20 or 21 and I’ve been here ever since,’’ says Lyders who was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal for his services to conservation and farm forestry in the last New Year’s honours list.
The 250 hectare farm has been in the Lyders family since the 1920s when his grandfather bought the property. His father originally milked dairy cows to supply Cadbury’s in Dunedin then converted to sheep farming when he was five or six years old.
The farm is now owned by Lyders’ daughter Trish Lyders, but he still owns the stock and trees.
Farmers on the lower Taieri flood plain have long memories of the biggest floods in recent history (1923, 1957, 1980 and 2017) and compare the magnitude of every flood to these major events.
‘‘We have to be prepared to be flooded at any time but the floods usually occur in winter. Part of the property on the Meggat Burn goes under water at least three times a year,’’ he says.
Lyders, 80, recalls the story of his uncle rowing a boat from the family farm at Berwick across the Taieri Plain to the railway station at Henley during the 1923 flood.
The 1980 flood that put Dunedin Airport at Momona out of action for weeks was the worst in his memory. When you live with that risk every day, he reckons you get used to it.
‘‘Anyone who lives on a flood plain can expect to get flooded,’’ he says. With more than 100ha of the farm on river flats protected by flood banks, he is always aware of the risk of losing crops. In July last year a late winter flood put all the green feed on the farm’s river flats under water and there was nothing left for 1800 ewes that had been wintered on the farm’s hill country. That was followed by a dry November.
‘‘It’s the first time we have ever had to send stock away for grazing,
600 to Patearoa, 300 to Macraes and
450 ewe hoggets to Moa Creek,’’ Lyders says. ‘‘It was just because the flood was so late and we were so close to lambing.’’
It was an anxious time for him sending heavily pregnant ewes away on trucks, but also a heartwarming experience when farmers who grazed his sheep declined payment. Lyders has endured several legal battles with firstly the Otago Catchment Board and more lately the Otago Regional Council when he took action to protect his property from floodwaters by raising flood banks on the Waipori River and the Meggat Burn.
Although he was convicted in the first case, the judge declined to impose a penalty. In the second case he was discharged without conviction but had to pay out $7000 in costs. In the third case, where he took the ORC to court, the two parties hammered out a settlement the night before the case went to court. In each instance he stood firmly on a point of principle but he says it was a costly exercise.
‘‘I won’t fight unless I’m right, unless I know I’m right actually,’’ he says. ‘‘I’ve had three fights and three wins, so I think I’d better give up while I’m ahead.’’
Ironically, Lyders believes droughts are far more damaging than floods. He recalls at least three years of drought in a row during the 1950s when a peat swamp caught fire and burnt for three years before there was enough rain to put it out. These days Lyders, his partner Sue Hutt, daughter Trish and her partner Nick look after 1800 breeding ewes run in three flocks two romney flocks and a dorset down flock that are all registered with Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL).
When he took over Lakes Farm, the romneys were lambing at 108 per cent and are now lambing at a five-year average of 154 per cent, peaking at 160 per cent in 2016.
Generally the farm only needs about 400 replacements for its commercial ewe flock but Lyders keeps between 700 and 800 each year and sells off the surplus.
They are looking for the best sheep they can breed that can look after themselves and lamb well.
They also select for parasite resistance and have worked closely with AgResearch scientists over the years on body condition scores, lamb survival and more recently DNA testing. They have been scanning for eye muscle score for a long time and were pleasantly surprised when their stock produced the highest lean meat score in DNA tests of all flocks and breeds tested by Zoetis. ‘‘We’re not looking for more than 170 per cent lambing,’’ Lyders says. ‘‘I think the laws of diminishing returns start to apply after 170 per cent.’’
Lyders’ other great passion beside sheep breeding is farm forestry, a family passion he shared with his father and uncle. His interest in trees started at high school and he is still harvesting trees that he planted on Lakes Farm more than 50 years ago.
‘‘Basically I saw farm forestry as good land use of otherwise unproductive pockets of land, particularly steeper slopes and gorse-filled gullies,’’ he says.
Forestry blocks also contribute to stock health during storms when newly-shorn ewes have been run under the trees for shelter or fed there in winter when it was too dangerous to feed out on the hill.
In his spare time he has his own portable sawmill which he uses to mill timber for the farm or for processing into furniture or joinery. In recent years Lyders has moved on to collecting self-sown native tree seedlings from the local district and transplanting them into pockets of native trees around the farm. This restoration work has been very rewarding and is complementary to the conservation work he and Trish have done around the farm.
Part of their privately-owned wetland is now designated as part of the Waihola – Waipori wetlands and comes under the Otago Regional Council’s protection.
‘‘It has always been there and it has always been a swamp, so I can’t claim any credit for it,’’ Lyders says. ‘‘I can claim credit for getting rid of the willows that were starting to encroach on it and I made some ponds for duck habitat.’’
He and Sue get huge pleasure from an extraordinary range of 60 different species of birds that visits their wetlands.
I've had three fights and three wins, so I think I'd better give up while I'm ahead. Dan Lyders