Farming with Halter During El Niño
What is El Niño, how it could impact your farm, and how you can put some plans in place to minimise its impact.
What causes El Niño?
El Niño is caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the Pacific Ocean, which influences rainfall, temperature and wind around the world, and occurs every 2-7 years on average. During neutral (or what we would consider ‘regular’) conditions, the east to west trade winds blow warm water towards the Western Pacific.
During El Niño, the east to west trade winds weaken or even reverse causing the waters in the western pacific (NZ) to cool. These changes in ocean temperature influence the atmospheric Walker Circulation and the weather patterns around the Pacific.
Figure 1. The Walker Circulation in neutral conditions
Figure 2. The Walker Circulation in El Niño conditions
How could El Niño impact me and my farm?
For farmers in Australia and New Zealand, El Niño could mean a handful of challenges:
Drought conditions and water shortages, including decreased soil moisture that impacts growth and water availability for your herd
Shortages in feed and increased costs
Warmer than average temperatures that could lead to heat stress and a decline in milk production
Planning for a summer deficit
Because of the negative impacts El Niño could have on your farm—and the fact that it could change so rapidly depending on the weather—we recommend that you have a plan that’s fluid, regularly reviewed and updated. This shouldn’t be too much effort if you’re a Halter farmer and using Pasture Pro, because the data and insights update automatically. With the right insights and information, you’re more than halfway there when it comes to putting together a plan that’s best for your farm.
On the Halter app, you can use the forecasted feed wedge to look at hypothetical future scenarios and plan in advance. For example, what happens if you finish feeding your summer crop early, your baleage runs out sooner than planned or the growth rates don’t pick up until 3 weeks later than you originally planned?
Or if El Niño leads to a dry period and you shorten your round length, you risks damaging pasture persistence if you haven’t planned what you’re going to do. Ideally in this situation, you put a plan in place to keep your round length longer to better protect your pasture. This increases pasture quantity as the leaf stage grazed increases. Keeping pasture covers higher also means your soil moisture losses to evapotranspiration are minimised.
More than a handful of different things could happen on your farm, and forecasting these scenarios can help you be better prepared by assessing and validating different options on the go.
Timely decisions and Trigger points
By making decisions earlier, it gives you more time to adapt and change if required, not to mention increased peace of mind! If you have some set trigger points that are cues for action, this will help to reduce the stress and uncertainty. Average pasture cover, pre grazing covers, growth rates, round length, milk production and climate forecasts are all examples of good trigger points.
Make a Plan for Nitrogen
When the conditions are suitable for nitrogen, every other farmer in the area is also going to want to be applying it, so take cartage and spreading delays into consideration. If you have some trigger points set in place, you can make the decision earlier, and improve your chances of getting it in the right place at the right time. In the Halter app, use paddock performance insights and the nutrient heat map to help make sure nitrogen is applied in the right place at the right time and get the best bang for your buck.
Options for Feed Deficit
If you’re faced with a feed deficit, you have two options.You can increase supply, or decrease demand. Like any decision, there are pros and cons to both, and every farm is different.
When you’re assessing the trade offs, use the Halter app to get the most accurate data you can, plus actionable insights to help you execute more precisely.
Increase Feed Supply
+ Use supplements and summer crop
Does the benefit of buying and feeding out supplements outweigh the cost?
During a period of drought, the cost of supplements naturally increases as demand increases. By having a plan, you can make the decision on supplements earlier, purchasing before the demand peak.
Alternatively, you might consider putting in additional areas of summer crop. There are the benefits of having the crop available during the dry times when pasture growth has stagnated, but this might impact your pasture availability in the short term.
+ Try deferred grazing
There are significant costs associated with not just making silage, but also then feeding it out again. If you’re thinking about making silage to feed it out again later in summer, deferred grazing may be an option. There are proven pasture persistence benefits and the quality difference between a deferred grazing paddock and a summer dry pasture paddock are minimal.
+ Focus on residuals
Harvesting every blade of pasture is crucial year round, but even moreso when faced with a feed deficit. Ensure target residuals are being met consistently in the period leading up to the feed deficit. This increases pasture harvested, and also sets up pasture quality for the next grazing. While we normally avoid over-grazing paddocks, if the situation is tight and you need to fully graze out a paddock, use the paddock performance insight in your app to help decide which paddocks are best to do this to.
Reduce stock demand
- Decrease milking frequency
Reducing the feed demand of your herd by putting them on a reduced milking regime is an option. There’s a range of options to look at now, including once-a-day, 10-in-7, 3-in-2, and 16 hours. You might choose to put low producers, first or second calvers, or the whole herd on a reduced regime. With Halter you can run multiple smaller mobs on the farm, so you can make the decision best suited to your farm’s situation. Making the decision to change your cows to a reduced milking regime should be done early, prior to the feed deficit happening, to help the cows adapt as best as possible.
- Avoiding Heat Stress
Cows will start to experience heat stress at temperatures above 20 °C, which can cause discomfort and reduced milk production. Halter pauses collar cues when cows are near troughs, ensuring they always have access to water. This is why it is important to make sure all troughs are correctly mapped in the Halter app. With Halter, you can also minimise the amount of time cows spend walking in the heat of the day, by scheduling shifts during cooler times, further reducing heat stress.
- Reduce milking numbers
Is the milk revenue worth the cost of production and the potential negative impact on next season? Drying off the low producers, low condition score cows, or the ones likely to suffer most, such as first or second calvers, are good options to look at. Are there cows on the farm you already know you won’t be carrying into next season? These cows could be sent away early, reducing total feed demand on the farm, allowing for more feed for the rest of the herd, and making the most of earlier season prices.
Connect with People
Connect with subject matter experts and schedule in regular catch ups with your trusted advisors. These people are all there to help you. And don’t forget that the Halter Customer Success and Customer Support team can help to connect you with the right people!