New technology and a willingness to experiment are helping the Morrison family keep their Southland farm on the cutting edge of New Zealand agriculture.

George Morrison and his sons Andrew and Donald run sheep and grow arable crops on 600 hectares of land at Willowbank, near Gore. The core of the Morrison's holdings is a property that has been in the family since 1875 when George's great-uncle acquired it at the time the area was opened for European settlement.

Both Donald and Andrew Morrison have Agricultural Commerce degrees from Lincoln University. The division of labour between them sees Donald looking after the stud stock side of the operation while Andrew is the cropping and pasture orientated. George is the one who gets to spend most of the time with the tractors and other gear.

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"I guess you could say we are basically grass farmers, and livestock is the way we convert our grass into dollars," George says. "We also grow cereal crops both for market and to experiment with for fodder.

This year the Morrisons are running 6,500 ewes, 1,750 ewe hoggets, and 250 ram hoggets. On the arable side of the operation this year, they have planted 160 acres of barley and 30 acres of triticale along with winter and summer brassicas. In some seasons they will have as much as 300 acres planted in cereal crops.

The first point is to grow as much fodder as economically as possible. The second is to get the animal genetics right and have the highest producing sheep breeds. And the third is a feeding regime that lets them realise the maximum potential of their animals.

"We use the technologies of eye muscle scanning, fleece weighing, sheep live weight and weight gain measurements, and pregnancy scanning. The use of sire referencing and progeny performance analysis allows us to identify the best genetics to use.

"Over feeding and underfeeding are the biggest sources of economic loss on a farm. Over feeding is a waste of money and underfeeding lowers the stock productivity, especially during winter. We use farm mapping and electronic measurements to get the most efficient feed budgets we can," Andrew says.

Every mob on the Morrisons' farm has a daily feed budget, which they reassess every month. Andrew and Donald use the Farm Tracker computer programme to plan and record those budgets.

Walking the paddocks with a Technifarm pasture probe records the available kilos of dry matter. They record that information on a Psion hand-held computer and download it into a PC so to get a daily analysis of how much grass is available in the areas being grazed.

Donald says the livestock herd has a Romney background though over the past six years, it has had a GrowBulk component added to it.

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"We were one of the farms that took on the GrowBulk animals when Ag Research and Wool Pro released them for evaluation six years ago. Now we have added GrowBulk genetics over the entire commercial side of the operation.

"With mapping and field measurements we know the exact area of our paddocks, how much grass is in each one, and how many sheep they can carry. In the old days you would go out in a paddock and look to see how high up your gumboot the grass came. You sort of knew how big the area in the paddock was and then you would reckon how many days it would last so many sheep, and that would be it.

For example, this year as well as growing the traditional Southland winter feed crops of kale and swedes, they devoted 5 percent of their property to a trial of summer brassicas. They planted summer turnip varieties Dynanmo and Barabas in October. Stock grazed on the crop in January and February, and then George direct drilled the paddock back into grass.

"We devote about 8 to 10 percent of our operation to winter brassicas. The addition of summer brassicas means we get a high bulk, good quality feed that lets us increase stock numbers. The summer turnip crop can be used to fatten lambs or flush ewes and get their live weight up before mating.

With this option we can take an old pasture and put it into a short 70-90 day rotation with summer turnips. We then regrass the area in more desirable pasture and it is into production before winter," George says.

The real success of the Morrisons' operation comes from combining the results of the breeding programme with the results of the arable programme. They do this by obtaining the measurements they need to determine the optimum feeding programme, says Andrew Morrison.

"We have the flexibility to vary operations each season. In the spring we get contracts for cereal, and we can make decisions straight away about what we will have in the ground that year. In some years we grow essential oil crops such as borage. We put anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of our land into cereal or other cash crops depending on the relative returns to them and stock." The Morrisons have a three-pronged approach to get the most from their livestock.

"Now we know exactly how many animals we can run in a paddock and for how long. We have been using this system for three or four years. We are happy with the higher levels of performance and it also takes the stress out of winter," Andrew says.

Another computer program the Morrisons use in conjunction with SIL (Sheep Improvement Ltd) is Studfax, a recording system that lets them create a data base to trace the genetic trends in their herd. They are able to look at the performance of their herd over the past 10 years and see how what areas are improving.

George says it is important to learn lessons from other operations. In particular the Morrisons have learned some of their contemporary farming practices from the dairy industry, which has been focussed on production". George is surprised more people aren't taking up some of the computer-based techniques because they simplify things and provide greater accuracy.

The soil types on the Morrison property are mostly loams and silt loams. However, one area of about 150 acres of flats was dredged for gold in the 1890s. It is stony and abrasive on gear, it's subject to summer drying and gives lighter crops when planted in cereals than the other soils.

The main tractor George uses for cultivation work is a 170 horsepower Fendt 615. With it he pulls a Kverneland Accord Air Seeder behind a 3.5 metre Amazone power harrow. This is the combination he uses to plant cereals, grass, and summer turnips. The normal recultivation routine to convert pasture into winter swedes is a pass with a plough, then a pass with a power harrow, then comes an application of fertiliser and lime, and the final pass is with a set of gear that includes a power harrow, ridger, and seeder. Treflan pre-emergent weed control is applied with the final pass.