Farmer Focus: Big business change sees breeding flock go
David Clark © Emmily Harmer We are taking a very hard look at all parts of our business, with an open mind to making change.
Change became reality here last Monday when we sold our breeding ewe flock.
It was a hard decision to make, with a lot of time, effort and care given to breeding a flock of Romney ewes over the past 32 years.
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We began here at Valetta in 1994 as a run-down dryland farm, initially farming 3,200 ewes, 150 cattle and 40ha of crops.
Our journey, with constant reinvestment and hard work, has seen the entire farm irrigated, soil fertility dramatically improved and infrastructure built that allows us to grow high-value arable crops and finish 8,000 lambs.
We have now developed the farm to a stage that it is no longer appropriate to run a breeding ewe flock.
We believe that reintroducing cattle onto the farm will be complementary to our lamb finishing enterprise and improve both pasture growth rates and lamb conversion of feed eaten to meat sold.
That is positive, but standing in the sheep yards with my father and my sons actually selling the ewes was pause for thought.
We are delighted that they sold as a complete flock to a young farmer starting his career on a new farm with family support.
While this is an arable column, livestock are vital to the New Zealand arable system, and if we are going to remain as arable farmers, we must sharpen up everything we do.
We need to make the boat go faster with less paddling. One of my staff suggested that we could get a bigger motor.
It may be that the number of motors we have around this joint, and the cost of buying new motors, is part of the problem.
We are embracing change and that is exciting, but it remains to be seen just how radical our journey of change will be. Â