Situation/weather: While Government extends lockdown for cities with a population over 500 000 people until May 10th to contain virus, smaller cities like Corrientes may return to normal activities if they meet 5 requirements. This will help the recovery of the local economy but without real impact for us as farming activities were mandatory excluded from quarantine. Farm operations are running as normal and we took preventing organization measures to prevent the sprayed of the virus and run the risk that the entire farm personal may be put in isolation if someone from the staff may be affected when they return to their families. So far, no cases have been declared among our staff in any of our farms.
As for the weather, the farm starts “to look a bit dry” as we registered a warm and dry month of April (with temperature exceeded 30°C) and few rains were registered since the beginning of the year (-18% compared to historical rainfall). No water stress has to be reported so far but we would appreciate some rains to boost pastures.
Cattle operation (6,042 heads): The cattle is in good shape. We are testing pregnancy of heifers previously inseminated. We are also selling 360 male calves. Then, we are entering in a stabilization phase and we will focus on the maximisation of the pregnancy ratio of breeding heifers. We have reached around 3,000 breeding cows and heifers by retaining until now young female calves to increase and replace mothers’ herd.
Silage and pasture program: We are in process of sowing 158 has with OAT and 118 has of Ray grass. Both grasses have a high protein content to feed cattle and support high loads of animals per hectare. OAT is also cleaning the soil and improving its structure.
In addition, we are also buying 245 tons of corn and 170 tons of pellets and mixed supplementation to cover food needs for the winter. Those pellets have in particular a higher nutrition density, higher economic benefits (animals can digest, absorb and conserve better) and are easier to store/transport than traditional silage.
