Farm Nutrient Advisory Ltd.

27/08/2026

It’s always nice to have positive feedback about your work & proof in the pudding that the changes we make on farm are achieving objectives & meeting or even exceeding expectations.

This particular paddock in North Canterbury had been a bit of a nuisance with its lack of clover & palatability. In my interpretation, soil tests revelled a significant calcium & S deficiency with a MAF 11, Ca base saturation of 49% & Total S 351mg/Kg. Total P was on the low side too but not the limiting factor & not the priority.

Now, if you’re a NZ trained soil scientist or Lincoln/Massey ag graduate, you’ll only look at the Ca MAF units (standardised units for cmol+/Kg) & say the calcium is ‘high’ because apparently, according to NZ science done 70 years ago which focused on averages with no assessment of plant or animal requirements, the ‘optimal’ Ca is 4-10 MAF units.

Now, if I tell you this soil, apparently ‘high’ in Ca according to NZ ‘science’ only has a pH of 5.5, do you still think Ca is high ❓
Take that one step further & imagine if this soil only has a Ca MAF level of 4, 7 units less but still considered ‘optimum’ Ca if applying the 4-10 MAF range. Can you imagine how low the pH would be then⁉️🤢

pH is misleading (refer to previous post) & NZ’s claimed optimal Ca levels are beyond iffy, they’re just outright wrong ❌🙅‍♀️ if you are targeting those levels, farm health, productivity, efficiency, carbon neutrality, will never be achieved.

Long story short to get back to this very welcome happy Friday message, we put lime & sulphur on this hill country less than a year ago & the positive effects are already being seen.

For those who are understandably nervous about the looming El Niño & looking towards putting nitrogen on to try boost spring covers, imagine how much free & sustainable N is provided if all hills had this much clover coming out of winter ☘️

As for the low phosphorus, I expect this to naturally increase under a regular liming regime☝️so the amount of additional input is less & more effective than when ignoring obvious warning signs of low Ca.

When you acknowledge & treat soil as a living entity 🪱🪲🦠 not just a inert medium, decomposition of litter material & dung increases beyond your imagination compared to its limits under an acidic & calcium deficient environment.

23/08/2026

Last week I was invited by Amuri Lime Co. to present at their event “Benefits of Ag Lime on Farm Production & Financial Performance”. North Canterbury is always a great community for open mindedness & discussion, so it was a pleasure to be asked to be a part of it. By throwing the cat amongst the pigeons, many do tend to leave my presentations with more questions unanswered than the ❓❔ they came in with.

I'm not shy when it comes to my love of lime & to say we underdo lime in NZ & AUS is an understatement. Unfortunately, our industry’s 80-year-old science hasn’t progressed & at the farmer’s expense 💰🚽. This stall in NZ science is driven by the fact our research funders are those who would suffer a profit loss if farmers knew more lime & less phosphorus is actually the key to higher profits. Fortunately, the rest of the world are a bit more advanced (& unbiased) with their science 👏 & is exactly why other countries correctly state the optimum pH is neutral i.e. pH 7 for maximum plant-availability NOT 5.8-6.2 as we claim here.

There are of course varying economic pH optimums that are rarely as high as pH 7 here & quite frankly a neutral pH is near impossible to achieve when the natural soil state is as acidic as pH 6. That being said, our soils are nowhere near the true optimum so will always benefit from lime regardless if you are a pH of 5.5, 6.0 or 6.5. There is a lot of scare mongering 😈 about us ‘overdoing’ lime yet your stock health will be far worse for wear by avoiding lime than regularly applying it. The only way you can ‘overdo’ lime when your soil is naturally acidic is by pouring it on at high rates as by doing this, you have literally dumped a highly insoluble alkaline product on in one layer that does not dissipate through the soil profile so simply stays in one thick band & can stunt the chemistry & biology in the months following – exactly the same as by dumping five times the amount of a typical urea application, that will also ‘stunt’ plant growth!
Anyone else worked out that dumping 4T of lime on only increases your pH average on paper & not the actual soil profile pH 🤔🤦‍♀️

pH is NOT solely driven by Ca & that is one of our biggest downfalls with advisors thinking all there is to a soil is pH & Olsen P. pH is elevated by Mg, K, Na so you can have a so-called ‘high’ pH at the same time as a soil Ca deficiency. It’s not 🚀 science, but it is basic science that appears to be dropped from the NZ ag science curriculum (I’m sure it’s just a coinkydink that the fertiliser coops fund varsity education). A pH that is driven by the other cations will not directly improve your plant or animal available nutrition.

Stock need at the very least double the amount of Ca to P but with our industry as we know it, most farms are farming this the wrong way round. Ca a major driver of skeletal & muscle growth, hormones, lactation, immunity & directly correlated to rumination.

A very common opinion is that lime is "too expensive to put on hill country' but I would disagree, lime is too valuable not to. Stock & pasture will grow quicker with sufficient Ca than without.

In farming, there is no silver bullet but lime comes pretty close.

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20/08/2026

Coming to the end of my two week stint (minus the weekend) across all areas of Canterbury. I’ve conveniently picked the only two weeks of drenching rain in Hawke’s Bay to be away while here basking in sunshine for the most part. Very grateful for both all the invites to farm & the good weather ☀️

Animal health & early season plans are now well underway. With a significant number of triplets 🐑🐑🐑 on the ground following a growthy autumn & the threat of a Godzilla-like El Niño arriving, 💨 more mouths to feed means pasture management & animal nutrition are even more prudent than usual.

August is nearly done & dusted so shortly I will be booking my next flights for at least three additional South Island ‘tours’ including Marlborough, Otago/Southland & Canterbury (again) before summer. For anyone interested in a visit who hasn’t reached out already give me a bell (or text, or email).

13/08/2026

My first of two weeks in a row working in Canterbury, luckily for me, better weather compared to last week! ☀️

Most of this morning was spent with these pretty girls 🐄 a couple of real cuddle bugs amongst them & very much loved ‘pets’ 🥰 (anyone who does not like cows cannot possibly be a good human!) taking the time to note down the tail enders that may need a bit of special attention including extra minerals so they can look more like the ‘fat’ girls in the group. I also paid attention to their behaviour & herd dynamics with the ‘poorer’-looking girls always near the gate both days I was there…is this just coincidence or are they possibly not eating as much as the others so getting less energy, less minerals just because of less intake?

When condition scoring , it’s vitally important NOT to pay attention to the average figure or only remember the ‘fatties’ (because they make us feel happy) & fail to pay attention to the actual spread of results i.e. the range of scores from the lowest to highest & number at each given point of the scale. This ensures when there are individuals not where they should be, they aren’t ‘lost in translation’.

By using averages, the value in any data collection is completely lost, negating the purpose of doing it in the first place. This same issue is often seen when blood or liver results are ‘interpreted’ by only looking at the average 🤦‍♀️

FYI, when we refer to ‘fat’ in NZ dairy terms this is typically not actually fat but what I would simply consider well fed. Generally, we tend to underfeed cows for what’s expected of them (& then wonder why metabolics, animal health bills or poor reproductive rates are an issue) with our condition scoring for target weights ‘calibrated’ on what would be considered a skinny cow if any qualified non-NZ nutritionist were to assess them. This difference in knowledge & opinion of a healthy cow was nicely demonstrated when the great, Dr Ian Lean visited a couple of years back for an NZARN conference. Walking the paddock with the group I asked him for his opinion on the herd there that day as I knew my BCS versus the typical NZ BCS is very different. He put this question to the group who ALL rated them 4.5-5.5 while Dr Lean had them at 3.5-4.5 maximum (10 point scoring)…one heck of a difference which should have been alarm bells for anyone in the paddock that day & an eye opener for me just how few professionals here actually know what is, or isn’t a well conditioned cow.

The statement he made that day which really stuck with me & highly applicable to the NZ ag industry was ‘it might be typical but it is not normal’.

I challenge you all, especially those in the animal health industry to assess your ‘normal’ & decipher if it’s really “normal” or simply typical 🤔

09/08/2026

For any North Cantabrian's at a loose end Thursday afternoon 20th August, Amuri Lime are hosting an event exploring the benefits of lime to soil health, animal health & farm profitability.

I will be presenting the direct animal health benefits when there is a strong focus on soil calcium outside the so called 'optimal pH' & breaking down our 'silo thinking' between soil & animal sciences.

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05/08/2026

I had a great question following on from my potassium post asking ‘what’s not right with the Albrecht-Kinsey method’ for balancing a soil. A valid question & one that those who follow the A-K philosophy aren’t usually open enough to even contemplate let alone ask. Here’s a bit about why I'm not an advocate:

Ask yourself, “are you wanting to grow grass or grow stock?”
Many think it's the same thing but it’s most definitely not. When there's any form of significant mineral imbalance (macro or micro), the added energy expended to cope with the imbalance actually pushes up ⬆️ total energy & dry matter required to be consumed compared to a balanced diet (the exact same thing occurs with high protein diets, you know, the typical NZ dairy diet 🐄💩).

The A-K system promotes this sort of metabolic imbalance (ironically given their objective) with their claimed base saturation requirements having NO relevance to ruminant nutrition.

❓Why increase grass growth with excess K when any 'good' the extra DM achieves (minimal) is undone by increasing MJ demand & reduces animal health for less output?
Potassium when in excess (>0.8% of pasture for most stock classes) not only reduces feed efficiency but damages the intestinal lining, reducing integrity of the epithelial cells, compromises the function of tight junctions (what should keep bad stuff out but let good stuff through to circulation) with negative impacts on immunity, weight gain, reproductive performance, profits.

The claimed soil base saturation values under an A-K regime will always have high dietary K & worse, the dictated Ca values will hamper any attempt to rectify it. It is very easy to confirm this by assessing a soil test with the corresponding pasture test but unfortunately, few using A-K philosophy puts 2️⃣&2️⃣to get 4️⃣.

Albrecht’s & Kinsey’s work is noble but neither were/are ruminant nutritionists so it's another prime example of inside-the-square soil science siloing.

Another oversight by advisors who use this approach is the depth tested.
A-K target ranges & reports are calibrated to either 10cm or 17cm yet NZ consultants have taken it upon themselves to test at 15cm.
❌ No standardisation 🟰 no calibration 🟰no understanding.

The data literally has no applied meaning but followed like a bible. Kinsey himself specifically says permanent pasture & no till crops should be tested at 10cm yet you have a following of ‘consultants’, largely unqualified in the realm of soil science who all use 15cm with no understanding that the numbers they get from the lab & the numbers they apply to it are completely different. This encourages 👆 fertiliser & 👇 sustainability, a somewhat different outcome to the A-K objective.

Flaw #3 is believing there is a fixed set of ‘rules’ that applies to ALL farms, EVERY soil, EVERY system in the entire world 🌍 Quite the stretch.

At the risk of bursting some bubbles, science is not that simple 🫧

While I am no fan of what Ballance & Ravensdown claim to be soil optimums (they just want to sell product & ignore soil health altogether), as far as the Albrecht-Kinsey philosophies go, there is NO supporting (independent) evidence despite a huge amount of global research for their claimed cation principles. Soil balance is very important but the ratios A-K apply are not justified.

I liken the whole A-K belief to a cult 'science', on a par with Scientology or a belief in God - a philosophy that gives comfort & sense of belonging along with fear of the unknown & uncertainty if you leave the group. Naturally those believers are very augmentative with an obscure sense of 'proof'.

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01/08/2026

I'm in the midst of 'streamlining' a few of my farm reports I provide clients when we've done lab testing of some sort, whether it be soil, herbage/feed, liver or blood assessments. My reports contain a lot of information, not to intentionally overwhelm 🤯 or with expectation it will all to be understood (although hopefully?) & certainly not to be remembered, but quite the opposite - to enable farmers to use that report as a 'reference' for soil, plant & animal health when they cannot remember everything I blurted out at the time of our discussions.

The bigger, long-term objective through sharing basic science fundamentals, is to empower & provide full transparency of what a healthy farm system actually looks like.

💫A WHOLE FARM SYSTEM'S APPROACH is essential, incorporating soil, plant, animal & economic requirements with positive environmental benefits naturally becoming a much needed knock-on effect. Imagine a world where farming isn't considered 'bad'. Well, it's easier than our industry 'leaders' is making it.

📊There are a few bits I felt are worth sharing to try limit the damage done by consultants & reps that don't understand the bar charts labs give you are typically not optimal ranges but usually the average ("medium") range that occurs in NZ. Even in the few instances they are 'optimal', understanding what that means to the WHOLE system, & the actual context of each value is essential. The charts show elements in isolation to one another, fully disregarding chemical & metabolical behaviour.

Let's look at potassium as an example:

🚫Claimed optimum: Ravensdown 7-10, Ballance 6-12 MAF units.
Actual ideal soil levels are 5-7 units combined with a base saturation of 1.9-2.5% for adequate plant supply while minimising dietary K.

🍀Plants require more K than animals (2-3% versus 0.6-1.2%). If herbage analysis (clover-only) confirms sufficient K for optimal yield, additional input is NOT recommended, it will be money down the 🚽

⚠️High K leads to animal health implications such as: impaired rumen function, scours, reduced growth & immunity, bloat, sub-optimal fertility, milk fever, staggers, all exacerbated by low sodium & magnesium. Herbage analysis will determine if there are risks from mineral imbalance.

☹️Disappointing growth rates, B12 deficiency, scours, dags etc. from high K (&/or phosphorus, protein) are all typical symptoms especially during rapid grass growth due to it's potency, low DM, effective fibre.

⬇️High K can also reduce pasture palatability leading to poor grazing & utilisation.

💦Soil health is negatively affected with excessive K (&/or Mg, Na), dispersing soil particles (deflocculation) reducing water filtration, absorption, aeration, root growth, plant performance. Ca counteracts K promoting flocculation.

A regular liming regime combined with cation balancing (NOT Albrect/Kinsey values!) will improve soil structure, filtration & aeration as well as animal production.

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30/07/2026

I'm a bit lazy this winter, reusing with the odd tweak, some of my old posts which still hold relevance, especially this time of year. Following on from my post on milk fever, ketosis is another potential metabolic disease for dairy cows.

Ketosis can occur in any stock class where reduced intake, either through physical unavailability or mineral induced anorexia (e.g. B12, zinc deficiency) leads to insufficient carbohydrate intake to meet essential metabolic functions. The body then increases breakdown of muscle & fat into glucose to try overcome the energy deficit.

For sheep, ketosis/pregnancy toxaemia/sleepy sickness, may occur close to lambing if feed supply has been low, multiple-bearing ewes at greatest risk.

Ketosis of the dairy cow typically occurs within two weeks post-calving (type II) or within 6-8 weeks of lactation (type I) where the amount a cow physically eats can’t keep up with the demand of early lactation. Negative energy balance leads to tissue breakdown with release of by products called ketone bodies which in excess, are toxic, reducing blood pH with an array of detrimental knock-on effects including disproportionate volatile fatty acid production, acidosis, further appetite depression.

Type I, 'delayed' ketosis is typical of underfed cows where the deprivation of glucose leads to excessive fat mobilisation a month into lactation while type II (1-2 weeks post calving) is often associated with fatty liver. While both types of ketosis are caused through negative energy balance, the ‘fatties’ are more prone to the earlier type II onset as ‘surplus’ fat easily mobilises.

While fatty liver & ketosis are closely linked, NZ's idea of a 'fat' cow is typically still a skinny cow by global standards so please don't go starving your cows in fear of ketosis (the irony). Even at a BCS of 6, the cow is not 'fat' enough to be the cause of metabolic issues.

During dry off before reduced rumen capacity reduces, it’s essential to provide high effective fibre (straw, hay) to stretch & condition the rumen wall musculature essentially increasing its elasticity so post-calving the rumen volume expands to maximum capacity as early as possible to allow greater intake thereby minimising the discrepancy between intake & energy requirement allowing for a quicker recovery.

All metabolic disorders can be either sub-clinical (no visual signs but result in significantly reduced production potential) or clinical where there are visible symptoms such as nervous dysfunction, incoordination, abnormal gait, aggression, agitation, pica (eating weird stuff), dry faeces, abnormal licking.

Encourage staff to get to know your cows best as possible so early detection & production impacts are limited, in-shed or feed pad behaviour should be observed carefully & where possible in the paddock given this is where the majority of feed intake is expected.

Cows suffering from ketosis, even to a sub-clinical degree are at risk of other complicating disorders such as metritis, retained membrane, displaced abomasum, reduced fertility & reduced milk production with genetic potential unlikely to be fulfilled.

27/07/2026

This is a good article on the basics of fibre type & fibre differentiation for those in NZ who continue to believe our pasture supplies all the fibre our stock need.

I can’t keep track of the number of ‘discussions’ I’ve had with highly qualified (on paper) rural professionals who are adamant our dairy cows get sufficient fibre from the highly digestible, degradable fibre in our pastures & crops. The low dry matter combined with excess protein way beyond rumen metabolic capacity further increases the need for EFFECTIVE fibre.

DairyNZ unfortunately promote this belief & as a consequence most of our cows will be running with sub clinical acidosis but again that’s completely ignored because of NZ’s belief that acidosis is only caused by feeding high starch 🤦‍♀️

I’ve had arguments (can’t even politely call them discussions), again from supposedly qualified professionals about how “our cow’s rumens are different to other countries & don’t need fibre”. No 💩, our cow’s rumens are definitely different, but that’s because we feed them like monogastrics & don’t develop the rumen as it should be.

So for anyone who thinks I’m completely mad 🤪 by insisting all my dairy clients have straw in their paddocks at all times, this article is worth a read.

Why crude fibre, NDF, ADF and lignin matter more than they seem

26/07/2026

🐄 Calving if not already upon us, is very near. It's prudent to understand the basics of cow nutrition & actual mechanisms behind common metabolic issues during transition, hypocalcaemia being one of them.

A hypocalcaemic state at the beginning of lactation is completely NORMAL given there is a 9-fold increase in Ca requirement literally overnight. Low rumination is also completely normal. It’s the ‘bounce back time’ that is important. There is little point taking bloods for monitoring purposes on day zero or one for clinically normal cows or a misleading result will likely see unnecessary treatment.

The increased Ca demand initially exceeds the rate of mobilisation & it takes time for the cow to respond to this through increased removal of Ca out of bones, kidney & intestinal absorption so we expect to see low Ca in the serum straight after calving, it’s inevitable. What we don’t want however, is low serum Ca continuing.

Recovery from ‘normal’ hypocalcaemia should be