Page 85 - NZ Herefords Magazine 2018

Hardy cattle On Farm

key to high country operation

KEN AND JANE WIGLEY FARM ONE OF THE LARGER HIGH COUNTRY STATIONS
IN THE SOUTH ISLAND AND HEREFORDS ARE A CORE PART OF THEIR BUSINESS.

WORDS / PHOTOGRAPHS ANDREW SWALLOW

PICTURED: Cows need to have a good constitution and be hardy
because winters can be long at Glen Lyon.

GLEN LYON AND HUXLEY GORGE,
OHAU 1200 cows, there are 12,000 Merino ewes, lambs and wethers.
Cattle numbers were cut a couple of years ago to “do them
OWNED AND OPERATED BY KEN AND JANE better” and limit erosion risk in response to what appears to be
WIGLEY WITH THEIR SON, JOHNNY WIGLEY a trend of reduced summer pasture growth.
• Two high country pastoral leases, run as one. “We sold 1000 calves one year but last year it was only 780.
• 46,000 hectares (30,000ha effective). The winters are getting easier but we’re drier in summer.”
• Eastern boundary Lake Ohau, western boundary main An increasing tahr population also competes for pasture
divide up Hopkins and Dobson valleys. and exacerbates erosion. It’s been estimated 500 a year need
• 800ha workable by tractor. to be culled just to keep the population static.
“They’re getting harder and harder to shoot. They hear the
STOCK: helicopter and just disappear.”
SHEEP: All cows used to be wintered on standing hay but now about
• 12,000 Merino ewes, lambs and wethers. 20% get silage and baleage, with ewes and hoggets wintered on
CATTLE: crop. Ken estimates about 800ha of the property is accessible
• 1200 cows, including 200 blacks with white faces, rest with tractor-mounted machinery.
pure Hereford. “It might not even be that. We’ve put in 45ha of crop this year:
a mix of kale, rape, turnips and grass. We have planted some
(radish-rape hybrid) Raphno so it will be interesting to see how
LONG WINTERS, a brief spring, and increasingly dry summers that goes. The turnips are good straight out of native pasture.”
demand tough cattle, especially when you’re running them over Lease requirements mean cropping decisions have to be
30,000ha and up to 1200m above sea level. made well in advance. “We’ve got to apply to LINZ, ECan and
The Glen Lyon and Huxley Gorge pastoral leases have been DOC for a consent to work any native pasture, or even track a
farmed by the Wigley family since the Second and First World fence line. It usually takes two or three months to come through
Wars respectively, and throughout that time Hereford cattle so you’ve got to be organised.
have been part of the operation. “We’ve been doing about 15ha a year and have just about
“We need something that will thrive eating browntop,” Ken done all the heavier ground now.”
says. He has been farming the stations with wife, Jane, since They’re similarly constrained by consent conditions when it
they bought them from his father and uncle in the 1980s. comes to planting trees.
“Our cows need to have a good constitution and be hardy A few wethers – about 400 – used to be run at the end of the
because we have quite long winters,” he adds. Dobson Valley but it took a long time to get them up there and
The stations, which are run as one, stretch from the shores a long time to get them back, and they “ate a bit of feed that
of Lake Ohau on the west of the Mackenzie Basin, north-west cows and calves could so now we only send cattle right up the
up the Hopkins and Dobson valleys to the main divide. Besides valleys,” Ken observes.
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