Farms gradually recovering from polar blast

Farm managers in pockets of Southland, Otago and Canterbury have had a tough week dealing with the polar blast - the snow that first hit Sunday was only just starting to disappear today. These images were snapped by one of our farm managers on a MyFarm dairy syndicate at south Otago on Thursday, after four days of snow.

On this farm the snow was as deep as 20 cm for much of the week and staff were flat out feeding out silage two or three times a day to cows during the day and  checking calving cows three or four times a night to minimise losses.

Our supervision team reports that managers and staff have managed the trying conditions extremely well - but some will be physically drained after such a busy period in the middle of calving. Some will have also chewed further into their supplementary feed supplies than they planned.

Here's hoping the weather forecasters predictions for mostly fine, warmer weather next week are correct.