Case study – John Duncan, Ashburton – Kea Kale

Success squared – top crop wins twice over.

Bumper growth from a new kale has impressed both two and four-legged judges in mid-Canterbury this season.

Yielding 18 tonnes dry matter/ha, Kea won the kale section of the local winter feed competition, and kept dairy heifers full and content during May and June.

“It’s very utilisable,” says farmer John Duncan. “Heifers ate it right to the ground, with hardly any residue left, and they cleaned it up because it’s good quality feed, not because they were hungry!”

Always keen to try new plant genetics, John sowed 5 ha of Kea last spring on a dryland corner of his 70 ha, predominantly irrigated grazing and finishing block at Dromore.

“I heard about it from my rep, and it sounded good. I was able to use that small area as a trial planting; the rest of our kale area (14 ha) was sown in a different variety.”

Running a mix of dairy heifers, dry dairy cows over winter, and store lambs, John says kale plays an important role in his system.

“It’s a very versatile winter crop; you can feed most animals on it, there’s very little transitioning required and it’s easy to feed.”

He wasn’t expecting such a high yield from Kea, especially after a dry spell in early establishment which saw young plants struggle for four or five weeks.

But regular rain through late December and January made all the difference.

“Once we got rain at Christmas, it just took off. I got one dressing of urea on it but by the time the second one was due, it was too high to get the spreader over.”

It’s the first kale he has entered in the Ashburton A&P Association annual winter feed competition and while he was pleased to win that section, he was more interested in how his client’s animals felt about it.

“Kea kale has small stems, and is very leafy with good quality. We have found that the animals are utilising it extremely well. I would definitely plant it again.”

The paddock was ploughed and sown on 30 October following a good rain.

Sowing rate was 4kg/ha; early inputs were limited to base fertiliser, pre-emergence herbicide and insecticide.

Kea is a new intermediate kale from Cropmark Seeds, bred for quality, yield, high leaf percentage, disease tolerance and flexible grazing management. Seed is available for sowing this spring. Order yours today.