FOR Denman district hay producer Richard Hordern, having some regular, “bread and butter” type clients has proven handy during wet seasons such as this summer.
He runs the 76-hectare hay and beef property, “Carrinton Park”, with his wife Fiona and son Andrew, 14.
The unusually wet “Carrington Park” has had 400 millimetres since September – and cool weather the Hunter Valley experienced this summer meant the Horderns were one cut behind for this time of year.
Mr Hordern said he was approaching his fourth cut and wasn’t expecting to make the usual six cuts per season.
This had been offset somewhat by heavier cuts, but then the quality was reduced slightly becuse he couldn’t get onto the paddock to cut his stands at their optimum stage, he said.
The farm is entirely Hunter River alluvial flats, which along with the lucerne produces oaten hay, the occasional grain crop and vealers from a herd of 50 cows for the local trade.
The lucerne is mainly Aurora, which they found to be among the best they’d tried cost-wise, as well as having better longevity than some of the finer, leafier varieties, Mr Hordern said.
The oats varieties they grow include Coolabah and Coobah, with the Coobah grown from their own seed.
Mr Hordern said the Coobah variety yielded high volumes when producing hay.
“We cut about 170 to 180 (25 to 27 kilogram) bales a hectare of lucerne, so the oaten hay will be a good 40 to 50 bales a hectare more,” he said.
Some of the farm’s production is sold to the horse industry, but this was not neccessarily the business’ main target market, he said.
They sell regularly to Sydney, including some merchandise stores which resell, but also to horse owners and beef and dairy farmers as far away as Wagga Wagga and Ballina.
However, he did have a few regulars who – regardless of the season – always needed hay, and it was in seasons such as this summer when they kept things ticking over.
Mr Hordern said demand at this time of year was often slow, but this year he said it was definitely due to the season.
First grade hay he estimated was making about $400 a tonne – “with your costs these days, it’s got to be up to that”.
He also had a small market for garden mulch hay which absorbed most of his weather damaged cuts too far gone for stock feed.
He sows his lucerne at a rate of 15 to 20kg of seed a hectare on the surface and then harrows it in.
“We’ve got our small seed box and basically sprinkle it on. It’s then harrowed with light covering harrows and rolled,” he said.
The oats has been direct drilled into old lucerne stands or sprayed out paddocks in a two-year rotation before returning to lucerne.
“We’ve had fairly good results with direct drilling.”
Most years the emerging crops would be watered with their two Briggs rotary boom irrigators from their 300 megalitre licence to the Hunter River, but this summer has been so wet this hasn’t been necessary, Mr Hordern said.
Each of these booms cover 25 to 30 hectares and are supplemented by some handshift pipes used to water areas not suitable for the bigger gear.
Find tips on growing good lucerne on p40 of this weeks The Land.
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