It's getting dry...lawns look like shit!

[Bren]

Just mowed my lawns...man its starting to dry up down here...grass is going all brown and ugly...I don't like watering lawn in summer as it seems a waste just to have a patch of green....

How ya all doin with your lawns?
I feel sorry for all the cockies out there, especially since I used to work on farms and know how hard it is to keep it together in a drought.


PS...no rusted out car bodies on my lawn...wife dont take too kindly to that

[cowboyz]

dont feel sorry for farmers at all. if they havent made target by now then it isnt gonna happen. cows would have given up eating grass by now anyway and an excess of $7 payout isnt hurting anyone.
sick of hearing about how poor off farmers are EVERY year.

Now golfers on the other hand. Hate playing off hard ground. That is where the real trouble lies.

[Mental Trousers]

Getting dry?? The brother inlaw was looking at drying off 1.5 months ago.

[chanceyy]

hmm its pretty dry but still a fair bit of green at the base .. my horses are not complaining since i strip feed there is still plenty for them to eat

[Bren]

dont feel sorry for farmers at all. if they havent made target by now then it isnt gonna happen. cows would have given up eating grass by now anyway and an excess of $7 payout isnt hurting anyone.
sick of hearing about how poor off farmers are EVERY year.

Now golfers on the other hand. Hate playing off hard ground. That is where the real trouble lies.

i understand what you are saying...my concern isnt that the farmers aint gonna make enough money, it's more targeted towards the lovely bovines who do get distressed in these climes, and subsequently lose condition. Hay and silage is not as good on the animals as the natural green stuff, and to see cows lose condition is not nice, especially if it is a cow that you see twice a day on a regular basis.
No, Drought is hard on the animals and also on the farmers. As food dwindles it gets more and more expensive to buy more in...the laws of supply and demand see to that.


Another thing you need to remember is agriculture is one of this countrys backbones. generally if farmers are doing well then the aveage joe blo is as well, but if the farmers start to get pinched at the wallet then they spend less...the small towns are the ones that mainly suffer through that...

[Bren]

Getting dry?? The brother inlaw was looking at drying off 1.5 months ago.

poor bastard...i feel sorry for him, i really do...waikato is usually so green

[Steam]

I hear there's a couple of feed companies in Christchurch that are doing the best business they have ever done. Ever.

[yungatart]

It dries out here almost every summer. The lawns crackle underfoot.
Tis only lawn and it greens up as soon as you get the first shower. I've got better things to do than water my lawn.

[bucket boy]

"Dont feel sorry for farmers at all. If they haven't made target by now then it isnt gonna happen. Cows would have given up eating grass by now anyway and an excess of $7 payout isnt hurting anyone sick of hearing about how poor off farmers are EVERY year"..

Thats the typical towny answer as a farm manager I haven't had a pay rise in 6 years due to low pay out ,as soon as they announced this years pay out ,every company that the farmer deals with double if not trippled there prices ,then we have a drought.But they don't put prices down !As for having done targets in the start of Feb what a joke .And as for pay rise it will be the same this year as every other year..not happening. Nothing worse than looking at hungry skinny cows.

[skelstar]

Most farkin boring thread ever LOL! We had 'watching grass grow', and now we have 'watching grass not grow'?

[Dooly]

My area is known to be the dryest in Hawkes bay, and its pretty baren around here.
Just seemed like a few weeks ago we got a few extra nags in to help eat the grass down.
Got rid of them last week.
Our 6 horses have grass still up on the top of the hills.
This year I brought 200 bales of hay a while back, before the demand hit as I left it a bit late last year and paid mega.
Not feeding out yet, hopefully not for a month or so.

It can rain all week as far as I'm concerned, just be fine for the bikes on the weekend!

[cowboyz]

"Dont feel sorry for farmers at all. If they haven't made target by now then it isnt gonna happen. Cows would have given up eating grass by now anyway and an excess of $7 payout isnt hurting anyone sick of hearing about how poor off farmers are EVERY year"..

Thats the typical towny answer as a farm manager I haven't had a pay rise in 6 years due to low pay out ,as soon as they announced this years pay out ,every company that the farmer deals with double if not trippled there prices ,then we have a drought.But they don't put prices down !As for having done targets in the start of Feb what a joke .And as for pay rise it will be the same this year as every other year..not happening. Nothing worse than looking at hungry skinny cows.

actually. that should read... thats the typical experienced sharemilker of 16 years answer. I did my duty for enough years in the bay of plenty, taranaki and the waikato. Every year farmers have to bitch about something. When the payout was $3.50 (it was only about 7 years ago) farmers were bitching about it being dry in the summer. At $3.80 they bitched about it being dry in the summer. $5.50 was the best we saw and they still bitched. We fed Siliage, maize and PKE to get through. And as a farm manager I would hope that you are up to date on energy levels of feed rather than the (now) outdated and simplified dry matter content. I used to be heavily involved in discussion groups when I was in the game and every time I hear someone tell me how they are up on production by 2000kg (or whatever) over the previous year I have to ask, doesnt that actually mean you were down 2000kg last year?
By "making target by feb" I meant the feb target by feb. You go back over the last 6 years production and work out how much milk you made from 20 feb till dry off and it will be fairly consistant. Mainly because grass is such a poor quality this time of year, just like last year and the year before and the year before that, that you will be milking off supplement feed anyway. I used to shut the round right down about now and not feed out at all during the winter. Any excessive year would be interesting to see milking days and how the following calving/mating cycles went.
Year in and year out. If you manage efficiently then the bottom line does not change by a great deal.

But you know this, you have just fallen into the trap that every farmer falls into which is constant complaining about something. Usually how they dont get paid enough.

[Blue Velvet]

Most farkin boring thread ever LOL! We had 'watching grass grow', and now we have 'watching grass not grow'?

:killingme

[Str8 Jacket]

Grass is best smoked.

[cowboyz]

dont smoke in the dryer........ you will get dizzy.

[Squiggles]

You missed a bit.

[dipshit]

...I don't like watering lawn in summer as it seems a waste just to have a patch of green....


Why would you want to water them anyhow..???

I couldn't be happier that my lawns are dying off..! Less time mowing them so more time for riding and messing around with my bike.

The lawn can go fu#k itself.

[Str8 Jacket]

The lawn can go fu#k itself.

Is that so it can regenerate? :confused:

[FJRider]

I hear there's a couple of feed companies in Christchurch that are doing the best business they have ever done. Ever.

AND IRRIGATION COMPANIES !!!

[lb99]

our water got contaminated with e-coli so we have to boil it until further notice (cept most seem to be buying bottled water, coz theyre too stupid to boil) and its a pretty dry summer, although raining today which is cool. we have plenty of water we need to get rid of because it is a bit shitty, but get this- no irrigation because the council waited until the height of summer (highest demand) to take a pumping station out of commision for maintainance. stupid huh, you'd think they would do stuff like that at low demand time, and now we have a heap of water to get rid of and we are not allowed... go figure.

[Smokin]

The grass is definitly greener on the other side of the fence.

The brown stuff that used to be grass is now turning to dirt with the kids running around on it all day.

I love not having to mow lawn's

[T.W.R]

lols that lawn is healthy :lol: down here ours burnt off ages ago and currently looks like the sahara desert:pinch: been on water restrictions for the last month :Pokey:

Joys of being at the highest point on the southern railway:pinch: same height above sea level as the spire on the Cathedral in ChCh

[Beemer]

Set your mower a bit higher - the longer grass stops it from drying out so much and it also prevents more weeds from taking over! Ours doesn't look so great right now, within a day or two of mowing it there are heaps of dandelions and clover, but it's still pretty green.

So far we haven't had to buy in water but it's been hot and dry for weeks with very little rain during that period.

We had 11 lambs this year but had to get rid of all but one as we didn't have enough grass for them. We could do with a bit of rain now while it's still warm then the grass would hopefully grow before autumn.

[puddytat]

Some "grass" is doin real well....but the stuff for the critters aint.Going to be real tough for them over winter:weep:

[homer]

When the road side turns brown ........its fucken dry
till that happens nothing to worry about

[chanceyy]

Set your mower a bit higher - the longer grass stops it from drying out so much and it also prevents more weeds from taking over! Ours doesn't look so great right now, within a day or two of mowing it there are heaps of dandelions and clover, but it's still pretty green.

So far we haven't had to buy in water but it's been hot and dry for weeks with very little rain during that period.

We had 11 lambs this year but had to get rid of all but one as we didn't have enough grass for them. We could do with a bit of rain now while it's still warm then the grass would hopefully grow before autumn.

any rain we get now is not doing any good it drys out before it can soak .. feb is always our hottest muggiest month .. as long as we get rain around march it will enable that good autumn growth ..

[homer]

its all going to get worse
dont worry about the bloody emissions and the fucken ice melting and the oil running out ,its all bull shit

what everyone should worry about is the simple fact that the bloody water is running out

THINK ABOUT IT
I bet in about 30 years time you ll be starting to have trouble to get enough drinking water

[Bren]

I bet in about 30 years time you ll be starting to have trouble to get enough drinking water

In 30 years there will be heaps of water...after the ice caps melt and flood all us bastards!

[heyjoe]

Lawns around here are brown as. We had a good shower of rain last night/early this morning. We could do with more though.

[MyGSXF]

We had very dark threatening skies for quite a period of time today.. :shit: seemed it was going to bucket down.. & it did.. for about 2 minutes! :doh:then stopped.. totally! :argh: & that was that! :slap:

[heyjoe]

must have been the leftover rain from down here...

[marty]

it's getting pretty dry here in the waikato - it is very dry over matamata way, but if you pop over the kaimais it is green as!

was talking to a farmer who runs 1000 cows on the side of maungatautari, which normally is quite green with its own micro climate. he's down to 1 milk a day, but is more concerned with the autumn growth/regeneration as his paddocks are dust bowls. he said that a contractor went up north 2 months ago and bought $70000 worth of silage bales, at $70 each. they are for sale now at $125 each...........

[homer]

In 30 years there will be heaps of water...after the ice caps melt and flood all us bastards!

It wont help ya if its salt water ...think about it
Dont worry about the ice melting
its a lot of feed up crap
just worry about the 1% of drinkable water on the planet

[Jantar]

When the road side turns brown ........its fucken dry
till that happens nothing to worry about

It happened around here some hundreds of years ago. Still no improvement except for those areas that get irrigation.

Our paddocks are still green, well sort of green, more a khaki colour really, and we've been on 50% irrigation restriction since early december. But at least FJrider's employers are making a good profit. :cool: