Slurry: The slurry spreading season is now open on farms in Zone A and opening on Saturday for farms in Zone B. With land extremely wet, be very cautious about where you go with tractors and slurry tankers. If slurry stores are full, buy yourself time by only spreading a few loads from each tank to delay the main application until ground conditions improve.

I know some farmers have managed to get slurry out already by hiring contractors with umbilical pipes. These reduce the traffic in the field and tend to be faster at emptying than conventional slurry tankers, but there is not much of a difference in price between the two methods.

One of the main issues this spring will be to find a dry field and a field without too much grass on it where slurry can safely be applied. The rule of thumb is to apply about 2,500 gallons of slurry/acre on one third of the farm in early spring and spread urea on the other two thirds. Each 1,000 gallons of slurry/acre is the equivalent of eight to ten units of urea/acre. The normal recommendation is not to apply slurry to fields with grass covers greater than 600kg/ha or fields destined to be grazed within six weeks after application.

Sticking with fertilisers, now is the time to be ordering nitrogen for the first round of applications. The science on this is crystal clear. Those that go early with nitrogen grow more grass. The highest response is in spring and nitrogen is the cheapest form of supplement. While land is a bit wet yet, have it in the yard and have it ready to go out, ideally before 1 February.

Milk Replacer vs Whole Milk: The economics of feeding milk replacer over whole milk are going to be tight this year. One factor to consider is the milk price you will receive. Farms with high fat and protein percentages will be getting 3c or 4c/litre above base price this spring and in such scenarios, they might be better off feeding milk replacer and sending more whole milk to the bulk tank.

Prices for most of the milk replacers available are outlined on pages 12 and 13 of this week’s Focus supplement. Remember, price is only one parameter – the more expensive products tend to be of better quality and higher liveweight gains are achieved as a result. Lower spec products may require a longer feeding period or a higher feeding rate to get to target weaning weight, so over time the two probably balance out cost wise.

Do the sums for your own farm. In the majority of cases, it will probably break even with the current milk price. Other factors to consider are labour input and method of feeding.

There are easy ways of mixing up large quantities of milk replacer that don’t require too much investment. On the plus side, if feeding milk once a day, milk replacer is useful as it can be fed at any time of the day and you are not relying on warm whole milk just after milking.