At the end of May, Bella and Anna O’ Sullivan (our landscape architect), joined a judging panel for students in the LASC211 and DESN697 courses. The students had visited the IHDF in mid-March to learn about our tunas, the benefits of the species we have planted and things we had to consider when planting in paddocks- such as palatability, cow safety and maintenance. The students presented their design for another Lincoln University dairy farm, and Bella and Anna provided feedback. Some of the students used plants that we use in our pastures and plantings such as chicory, sage, clovers and yarrow in their designs.
The cows have been on the winter paddocks, eating kale supplemented with maize silage and pasture baleage.
We had Soil Food Web come and take soil samples for analysis of the soil microbiome on our milking platform and winter block at the end of June. This will provide a baseline for future monitoring to see how our management practices are affecting the soil.
We have been busy freeze drying, grinding and preparing pasture samples from the season to be sent away for metabolomic analysis along with the milk samples collected from herd tests. We have also been working on modelling and summarizing the data from the last lactation.
