The Northland Agricultural Research Farm is located on SH12 just 4km North-West of Dargaville and 58km from Whangarei.
The 84 effective hectare milking platform is predominantly flat in contour and milking 230 spring-calving cows. The facilities include a modern 30-aside herringbone with Protrack, feed pad and excellent races. We are often open to the public through field days and discussion groups so we pride ourselves in presenting a well set up and efficient operation.
The current Research Project at NARF is the reducing Reliance on Importd Feed Trail and will be in its 3rd year next season. It is comparing the productivity and profitability of different management systems so it is running three seperate farmlets. They are:
1) A Grass farmlet that uses only homegrown pasture and grass silage.
2) A Cropping farmlet that uses no imported feed, instead different combinations of crops are grown on farm to increase total feed available.
3) A PKE farmlet which uses PKE to fill feed gaps to optimise production.
This trail is of huge interest amongst the industry and provides a unique learning opportunity from experiencing several different management systems at once.