Pregnancy scanning of dairy cows is under way and results are abating fears the storm hitting around mating would produce fewer calves this season, a Southland vet says.
Extreme wind gusts flipped vehicles and brought down power, telecommunications and water networks, closed roads and caused widespread damage to rural properties across the South in October last year.
Clark Brothers Fencing owner Tim Clark, of Heddon Bush near Winton, said storm-related damage to fencing was across Southland.
He had been repairing fences since the storm and he estimated the work would be ongoing for at least another two months.
Many owners of damaged fences had been unable to get a digger to remove fallen trees lying on fence debris.
Those trees needed to be removed before the fences could be repaired, he said.
He estimated about 80% of storm-damaged fences had been repaired in Southland.
Many of farmers did not insure their fencing, he said.
One of his latest jobs was repairing about 70m of fencing destroyed by a fallen pine tree at Thornbury School.
He had been in the fencing industry for about 12 years and the storm was the worst natural event for the extent of the damage across the region he had seen, he said.
VetSouth clinical head west Georgette Wouda, of Winton, said pregnancy scanning was under way on dairy farms and most herds had improved rates of in-calf cows.
"When the storm hit the way it did, we were very fearful it might have had a bigger impact."
Before the storm hit, many dairy farmers were preparing to artificially inseminate their herd.
Consequently, many dairy farmers delayed their breeding programme by a few days to wait for normal services to resume on dairy farms, such as electricity and internet so they could resume using technology, such as smart collars, to aid mating decisions.
Some farmers had started mating cows before the storm hit but could continue as planned as they had a generator, she said.
"Thank God it wasn’t a week later."
A Southland deer farmer, who asked not to be named, said the impact of the storm was ongoing.
Before the storm hit, they were splitting their in-calf hinds to mobs for fawning.
The mob selection allowed them to keep track of the hinds and their genetics.
Fawns were not weaned from their mothers before the breeding season began so being split in different mobs allows them to make decisions on which stag to release to which paddock.
Then the storm hit, hundreds of trees fell, destroying boundary and internal fencing and any plans to run separate fawning mobs
A lack of fencing meant all of the in-calf hinds were run as one mob.
None of the fences on his farm were insured.
About half of the fencing had been repaired.
Now the hinds were run in mobs, dictated by paddock size, rather than by their genetics.
The stags would be put out soon.
As the mating mobs had been mixed, the stag selection process needed to be reconsidered.
A stag he had been planning to release shared some the same DNA as some of the hinds.
Consequently, an opportunity had been lost to make the potential genetic gains of putting his best stags over his best hinds.
Another stag would needs to do that job.
"It’s just the way it needs to be done."
