With the calving season in full swing, it’s still all hands and hooves on deck across New Zealand. Did you know that when cows give birth to a calf, they need to eat around 120 kilograms of grass every day to help them produce lots of milk? At this time of year though, there isn’t always enough grass around and farmers need to feed their cows other food as well. This extra food is called supplementary feed. In the North Island, the main type of supplementary feeds are silage and maize, but on the South Island fodder beet has become really popular with farmers because it grows well in cold climates. Fodder beet looks like yellow beetroot, and cows love eating it because it contains lots of sugar. It’s also high in the nutrients and carbohydrates cows need to produce lots of milk. So many South Island farmers are growing fodder beet that one farmer bought a machine called a Fodder Lifter to harvest fodder beet crops. His fodder lifter can harvest about a tonne of beets every hour - that’s about the same weight as 2,000 pizzas! Mmmmmm, for some reason I’ve suddenly got a craving for a fodder beet pizza. Time to ring the Pizza Shed delivery guy moo thinks.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 02:12:25 +0000