Your weekly glimpse into research in action at Southern Dairy Hub.
Insights
2025 Born Animals: We're stoked with the growth weights in our young stock. The grazier has separated the slower-performing animals and is preferentially feeding them. They're looking in great condition as we head into winter. The graph below shows the group are, on average, 7kg ahead of target, a great result.
Dry Off: We dried off our first group of animals this week (approximately 30 animals) based on current BCS data and the gain required ahead of the planned start of calving. While we're still four weeks out from full dry off, it's important we protect cow condition to help optimise health, reproduction, and production next season.
Rotation Length: We've received a number of questions regarding our current round length being quicker than normal at this time of year (this week it averaged 26 to 27 days, whereas you'd normally expect 30 to 35 days). This has resulted from higher average pasture covers over the last six weeks, dropping springer paddocks out of rotation, and continued good grass growth.
We've cut surplus paddocks for baleage and delayed exiting cows from both herds to manage average pasture cover and residuals. Residual management is critical at this time of year and becomes more challenging as we head into the wetter months. Continuing to exit cows from the herd and drying off cows with high BCS gain requirements will help push the rotation out.
We removed the in-shed feed from the Future herd, which has upset cow flow into the shed (sorry farm team), but they're just not hitting the residuals we need to set the farm up for next season.
Grass Growth: We've had another week of great growth this late in the season at 43kg DM/ha. You can see from the graphs below we're more on track than in recent weeks to achieve our dry off targets of 1900 to 1950kg DM/ha. We still have about 90 cows to exit the farm over the next four weeks. These have been held on later than in other seasons given pasture covers.
Grass Quality: We've received another set of pasture results this week and continue to be surprised by the dry matter levels given the time of season. This week we saw our first frost, so would expect this to impact DM% in our monitor paddocks over the next few weeks. There's still some great quality grass out there.
Note: the sample for the paddocks below was taken on 22 April 2026.
Standard herd
Average BW Southland herd stocked at 3.2 cows/ha at peak, up to 180 kg N/ha and wintered on swedes.
Future herd
Higher genetic merit herd (127 BW difference) stocked at 2.5 cows/ha at peak, up to 180 kg N/ha and wintered on baleage.
If you have any questions about this week's HubWatch, please contact our team.
