Handheld soil moisture monitoring determines whether soil moisture is appropriate for irrigating.
Irrigation take is metered.
Irrigation applications are recorded online.
No discharge at or near field capacity. Soil moisture tests are done after rain to determine when irrigation may resume.

Operating Procedures

Check forecast.
Measure soil moisture for irrigation trigger.
Check soil temperature when considering irrigation in August and in May.
If above conditions allow then start irrigator.
Record irrigation.
Check for leaks or other failures.

Irrigation water optimisation

Staff check the irrigation while going about their day. Maintenance and repairs are recorded - previously in the Dairy Diary and now online.

There is a runoff check location where the pivot CSA's would drain into Pleasant Creek if there was a runoff event.
K-Line is shifted twice a day and Rotorainer is run on full speed. Readily available water is 30mm.
Lines are turned off where necessary to avoid over watering.
All staff with irrigation responsibilities are trained using the training template and by attending Irrigation Managers workshops through NOIC.
Operations manual for K-Line as well as the installation video are used for training, and the Pivot operators manual is in the door of the control panel.

Bucket Tests:

2022 Bucket Tests

Pleasant Creek West Pivot: applies 5.5mm when set at 8.6mm. Distribution Uniformity at 0.48.
Pleasant Creek North Pivot: applies 8mm when set to 11.6mm. Distribution Uniformity at 0.54.
Pleasant Creek School Pivot: applies 7.7mm when set at 8.6mm. Distribution Uniformity 0.49.
Pleasant Creek Rotorainer: applies 22mm on fastest speed. Distribution Uniformity 0.82.

Maintenance

Recorded in the Irrigation Maintenance record.

Start of Season Checks

Pivot start up checklist to inform the first start of the season.
There are always more blockages at the start of the season so more time is allowed to clear nozzles.
K-Lines are most likely to blow apart or lose sprinklers in the first few pulls of each line. Check carefully before starting up, and then once up to pressure check again.

End of Season Checks

Drain all lines to protect from frost and cover all valves.

Soils and Nutrients:

Soils

Pleasant Creek Soil Map.

Pleasant Creek is primarily Templeton and Eyrewell soils.
Templeton soils have a 61mm Profile Available Water to pasture rooting depth of 300mm and Readily Available Water of 30mm.
Eyrewell silt loam has 67mm Profile Available Water to pasture rooting depth of 300mm and Readily Available Water of 33mm.

Nutrients

Pleasant Creek is managed to minimise the amount of nutrient that escapes the farm and becomes a pollutant, and to maximise the nutrient that stays within the root zone of the plants as a resource. Infiltration rate is optimised to minimise runoff.

Critical Source Areas are managed by only grazing when dry, using a 5m buffer and monitoring for run off. Pleasant Creek is located on the edge of a Nitrogen Sensitive Zone making it important to manage nutrients well.

Fertiliser

Orders, and applications (proof of placement examples via Tracmap) are all recorded and are informed by an agronomy plan. Spreading is done in house using a spreader calibrated using a known weight of fertiliser and a known area.
Soil temperature is checked prior to first application in shoulder seasons to ensure it is above 8 degrees. There is no application of fertiliser in June and July.
Fertiliser is not applied during periods of heavy rainfall, on hot days, in windy conditions, on pugged fields or when field capacity is exceeded.
Bore locations and waterways are avoided by 20m and 10m respectively in these conditions.
Fertiliser is not applied to gateways or troughs, or other compacted soils. GPS aids navigation and recording.
Fertiliser is collected direct from the supplier and when storage is necessary, stored on farm in covered concrete bunkers.

Nitrogen

An Overseer Nutrient Budget has been prepared by Ballance to understand where higher N loss occurs and the model is run again if there is a change that may risk increased nutrient loss.
Rotorainers are the main risk areas and these are run at full speed to minimise application rate to 22mm per pass to keep below the Readily Available Water limit of 30mm. They will be phased out as part of ongoing development and replaced with low rate irrigation. One new pivot per year is budgeted across all the farms - initially replacing worn pivots, then replacing Rotorainers.
- No more than 190kg of Nitrogen is applied to each hectare and monitored using a heat map generated by proof of placement on Tabula.
To prevent accidentally exceeding the cap the grazing rotation is set and half of the farm is spread every two weeks on a preset schedule which will result in 186kgN/ha.

Phosphorous and Erosion

The aim is to maintain good soil structure by using the relevant cultivation practices for the given situation, and minimise the period of soil exposure to wind and rain erosion.

- P applications don't exceed 100kg P/ha and not spread in Jun or July. Waterways are avoided and run off points are monitored.
- Minimum tillage cultivation is used where soil conditions allow, and if full cultivation is necessary slopes are worked across. Steep areas are avoided where possible and weather forecasts are considered when deciding on cultivation timing.
- Care is taken not to work soil into fine aggregate sizes and a 5m buffer is maintained to waterways. There is minimal delay between cultivation and sowing to minimise the time that soil is exposed.
- Waterways are protected by fencing, vegetative strips and stock crossings.
- Pugging prevention is achieved by giving larger breaks in wet conditions and cows are allowed to leave longer residuals. Young grass is grazed only briefly and in dry conditions only to minimise damage to the softer soil.
- Bought-in feed is recorded and the majority of silage is sourced from in-house foraging operations. Typically 350kgDM is made on farm and imported feed is usually 60kgDM straw per cow, and 650kg wet weight per cow of a blend consisting of approximately 10% barley, 60% PKE and 30% DDG.
- Soil tests and agronomy recommendations are done annually to inform fertiliser decision making.

The winter grazing plan below includes identifying risks of crop paddocks losing nutrients to the environment.

Effluent

Refer to Effluent Management Plan.

Waterway and CSA Management

Kakanui River

The Kakanui River is fenced with a strip of rank grass and Willows on the bank that reduce the nutrient, sediment and pathogen load entering the water.
The underpass is maintained to prevent becoming a CSA.

Point Source Management

Pit silage is not used. Any ensiled feed is to be individual or tube wrapped baleage.

Offal: Dead stock are to be buried of in a timely way and are not left in sight of the road. In accordance with regional council requirements, dead stock are buried:

a minimum of 100m from any wells that supply water for domestic drinking or livestock
a minimum of 50m from any waterway, including lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands and groundwater
a minimum of 50m from the closest property boundary
in an area free from ponding, flooding, or erosion
away from any areas used for offal pits within the past five years
away from any areas of cultural, historical, or conservation significance

Waste and by product: only steel and concrete is disposed of by burying on farm.

Household rubbish is disposed of by wheelie bin, or dropping to a transfer station.
Plastics, tanalised timber and other chemical product is not burned.
Greenwaste, cardboard, and other non-chemical product may be burned in accordance with fire season requirements.
Bale wrap, and chemical containers are recycled. Only a minimum of chemical is used to reduce the amount of toxins stored on farm.
Needles and sharps are collected in a sharps bin and disposed of by the vets.
Sick or injured animals collected for pet food.
Soil, fill and stones used elsewhere for development.
Oil is captured in a container and disposed of at the transfer station.

Critical Source Area Management

Critical Source Areas are only grazed when dry. More areas are considered to be a CSA and further management considerations are described in the Intensive Grazing Plan for winter crop paddocks.
When rain ponds in paddocks these areas are fenced off with a hot wire to prevent pugging and stock access.
Fertiliser is not spread to CSA's and irrigation is designed to avoid them where practical.
Tracks, troughs and gateways are maintained to minimise their loss of nutrients and sediment. Water tables are maintained to reduce erosion risk.

Intensive Winter Grazing

Permitted activity:
Winter grazing does not occur in CSA's from 1 May to 30 September each year - these areas are left in grass, or if planted they are lifted mechanically rather than grazed.
Grazing does not occur within 5m of any waterway, or 100m of a water abstraction point.
Backfences are used to protect previously grazed areas and they are replanted as early as practicable.