Rain gauges – why they're a powerful tool for your operation

Do you know how much rain has fallen on your farm?  Or on your block of land down the road?  Do you sometimes forget to tip out the rain gauge?  Accurate rainfall figures for farm records are becoming more and more important in this age of transparency.  Knowing how much rain fell on any given day on your own farm or on a particular crop will give you the ability to make more accurate decisions.  Telemetered rain gauges save you the hassle of manually reading the rain gauge and provide up to date data straight to your phone or computer. 

Rain gauges can be installed along with your soil moisture probe and positioned under the irrigator or installed in a dryland area.  Positioning the rain gauge under the irrigator enables you to monitor exactly what application depth the irrigator is applying.  Application depths can change as a result of adding extra irrigators to the system, blocked or broken nozzles and changes to system pressures to name a few.  Excessive application depths are expected to account for on average 10% of water losses on an average irrigation system, that’s wasted power, water and most importantly money.  Not applying enough water may result in yield losses and shallow rooted plants.    

A telemetered rain gauge installed under the irrigator will also enable you to see the application rate applied.  If it is above the rates described for your situation in the table below you may be wasting water.  

Agri Optics can add a rain gauge to your soil moisture system to help your decision making.  Ring us today to talk about the options for your farm. 

Agri Optics office: (03) 302 9227

Cindy Lowe 021 796 834 or cindy@agrioptics.co.nz

Email: info@agrioptics.co.nz

Winter Grazing

It always amazes me how quickly time flies – as I write this, we are in June of 2018 already and winter is upon us.

With the onset of winter comes the slowing (or stopping) of pasture growth and the need to supplement feed with crops or imported supplements, so it is timely to discuss winter feed management and the environmental perils associated with feeding winter crops and supplements.

It’s a hard road finding the perfect paddock to plant your crops in, if the soil is too heavy the chances of pugging and the loss of soil and faecal matter is higher and if the soil is too light, the drainage is great but with more drainage comes higher nitrogen leaching, particularly in areas of high rainfall.  Planning ahead and selecting the right paddock or even the right areas within a paddock to grow crops can reduce the environmental risk.

 

There is a lot of information about good practice for feeding winter crops available, but as for any farming practice there is no one size fits all and it is a matter of taking those good practices that apply to your situation and putting them in place.  The key issues with the intensive grazing of stock over winter are the loss of soil and faecal matter through run off into water ways and the leaching of nitrogen into groundwater from intensive stocking. 

Any management practices that can be implemented to reduce run off into waterways are beneficial, this can help to reduce the soil/ sediment and faecal contamination of waterways.  These include grass strips or margins not planted in crops alongside waterways and planning the direction of cultivation so that it doesn’t lead to a flow path into a waterway carrying contamination with it.

   

Planning ahead and having a back up option such as taking the animals off the crop, allowing animals access to another paddock or grazing for only a few hours can make all the difference when the weather is too wet for intensive grazing.  Troughs and supplementary feed can be placed strategically so that pugging is minimised in these areas and so that if there is pugging it won’t run off into a waterway.

Some regional plans include rules with regards to the wintering of stock including requirements for intensively grazed stock and stock on winter crops to be excluded from waterbodies.   There may also be rules around standoff areas and feedpads to minimise the environmental impact of these.  In my view these rules constitute the absolute minimum with regards to the good management of stock in winter. 

For information on industry good practice, see the Beef and Lamb website, Deer Industry NZ or the DairyNZ website, in particular the following link provides some useful information which can be applied to beef cattle and deer also -
https://www.dairynz.co.nz/media/5786508/wintering-on-crops-in-the-south-island.pdf

Post grazing, following the crop with a whole-crop cereal silage crop, before putting the block back into winter crop, can greatly reduce the nitrogen in the soil and therefore, leaching. 

So, with winter already here it is not too late to do some research and plan how you will manage your winter grazing this year.

Lilian Sherman, Irricon Resource Solutions Limited (NI).

Phone: (021) 378 308

E-mail: lilian@irricon.co.nz
www.irricon.co.nz

ANNUAL VOLUMES NEED TO BE USED JUDICIOUSLY

In an El Niño spring and summer water for irrigation is a precious commodity.  As expected irrigation started earlyish – like September - and with current predictions is likely to continue through to April.  That means irrigation will be required on a regular (aka daily) basis and will likely result in two potential issues for irrigating farmers:

a)     Groundwater users could have self-limiting bores.  This occurs when water levels drop to the point where cavitation (sucking air) occurs and/or the head required to lift water to the surface falls outside the optimum for the pump.  Both circumstances result in a reduction in L/s that can be pumped.

b)     Of greater concern is that the season is likely to be greater than the 9/10 (or 90-percentile) demand season and annual volume could be exceeded.  Therefore it is essential every effort is made to use water judiciously.

Judicious use does not include irrigating hard surfaces (aka roads).  I thought we had left the “cleaning of roads” behind – it is such an obvious waste of water and is a misdemeanour, in some cases “fineable”.  All in all not a bright use of water!

My first example is an old one and is thanks to a colleague in Hawkes Bay.  It dates back to early 2000’s, maybe 2006ish.  We have used this photo endless time to emphasise this is not the wisest use of water, and in this case a dangerous use of water.  Can you imagine riding a motorcycle and being hit by the stream of water from the high pressure gun!!  It will wash your windscreen though you could run off the road by the time you recover from the shock of the water hitting the windscreen and the wipers have been able to clear 25L/s of water.

My second example is very recent – November 2015.  No doubt the lane closest to the hedge has been well washed.  While this irrigator is less likely to result in a deluge of water on a windscreen or affect a motorcyclist as badly. It is nonetheless a waste of irrigation water.

The volume of water irrigated onto the roads is relatively small in the scheme of things.  But in a season where every drop will undoubtedly be worth $$$ in return, cleaning roads is not an effective way to make the water pay.  Quite the contrary, in both examples the water has been pumped from bores (a lost cost) and has not added any value to crop intended.

Dr Anthony Davoren, http://www.hydroservices.co.nz

Good Old Spring Weather

In the past seven days we have had a bit of everything, 10 to 29 degree days, 100km per hour NW winds, rain through to hail and bitterly cold southerly winds reminding us that spring is upon us!

Whilst forecasters don’t always get the rainfall amounts correct, they are pretty accurate when it comes to predicting strong winds.  After the wind on Sunday, it only took two minutes after leaving home to see some damage caused by the strong NW winds.

With a long dry irrigation season predicted, a broken irrigator can take a long time to fix leading to reduced yields in crops and lost dry matter in pastures. This can be avoided by having a simple plan in place for windy conditions, whether it be securing pivots to a heavy roller or parking a Rotorainer in a sheltered position on the farm.

Rainfall

Measuring and recording rainfall through the season is also key, rain gauges are cheap and may help save valuable water, especially in the shoulder seasons.  Turning irrigators off for a couple of days here and there may not seem like it making a big difference at the time, but those days all count at the end of the season if water allocations are getting tight.

Weather forecasts

The forecasters are predicting cold and wet weather on Tuesday this week, perhaps an opportunity to save a round or two with the pivot if they are correct.

http://www.yr.no/place/New_Zealand/Canterbury/Ashburton/

Happy Irrigating!

Mark Fitzgibbon

Hydroservices