On the 12th of May, the Integral Health herd were dried off. On the 13th of May, the heifers joined the Integral Health herd. The Integral Health herd will move to the winter kale crop in late May, and will spend approximately 60 days on the crop, before coming back to the milking platform before calving starts in early August. On the 18th of May, we checked on the Health farm and Main farm R1’s to see how they are growing. Our Fleckvieh R1’s are looking good, and are much taller and bigger framed than the other calves (which include Kiwi Cross, Hereford and Angus).

The team also celebrated the graduation of our summer scholar, Chan Tian En Joel, who did insect monitoring using pitfall (to measure crawling insects) and pan traps (to measure flying insects) across the Integral Health farm and the Main farm at 12 different sites, and set up 6 mammal tracking tunnel lines across both farms, baited with peanut butter and rabbit meat, with the help of his supervisor Elysia Harcombe, post graduate fellow Elizabeth Elliot-Noe and research technician Bella Orellana Howe. Joel found that the IHDF pan traps had an average of 96 individual species, ranging from 34 to 125 species, while the Main farm pan traps had an average of 65 individual species, ranging from 32 to 83 species. The IHDF pitfall traps also had a larger average number of species (36 species, ranging from 21 to 70 species) than the Main farm (34 species, ranging from 26 to 44 species). The peanut butter baited tunnels attracted house mice and common hedgehogs, with 14 out of 30 tunnels across the two farms visited, while the rabbit meat baited tunnels attracted house mice, common hedgehogs, mustelids, old world rats and possums, with 25 out of the 30 tunnels visited. Joel’s work has given us a good baseline of biodiversity across the two farms that we can compare our annual monitoring to.

The team also hosted several visits on the farm.

  • Wed 6th May - Hon Damian O'Connor visited the farm for a catch up Pablo and the team.
  • Tues 12th May - The entire MainFert team was on farm to meet the team, learn about the IHDF and have a walk of the paddocks to see the tunas.
  • Fri 15th May - a group of students and academics visited from the University of Virginia.