June 7, 2026 • 9 mins
Ben Dooley has active social media accounts, but would you call him an influencer?!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The muster on the farm with Southland District Council working
together for a beta Southland.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome back to the muster. She even beef farmer YouTube farmer.
You're can almost for social influencer in there as well,
Ben Dooley, good afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
No please don't put that in there, Andy, but get out.
Here's a gown.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah good, good mate. Well you're not an influencer.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, we don't. We don't like that term.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What do you call yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I don't know. I'm just a farmer that does a
bit of filming.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I guess a social media man of the people.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
We'll try it. We'll try and downplay it as much
as possible.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, we'll leave it at that. Anyway, down near Windham,
how are things going?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, first, first real wintry feeling day today. I got
at it's it's weird, it's cold, it's blowing, had to
put the jacket on, couldn't get the truck around everywhere
this morning. So a bit of a shock to the system.
But it was always going to come right and she's
been a pretty good lead and so far. So yeah,
very very hard to complain. We do kind of want
to get winter in winter. It'd be nice if we
just didn't get winter at all, but that's not going
(01:08):
to be the case. So yeah, yeah, no, we'll We're
just looking at that forecast thinking, shit, we've we've had
a bloody good run and it looks like the US
are going to get a few more breaks on crop
before it really gets over yet. So she's all promising.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So everything's on the crops underway.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Pretty much everything Now, I've just gotten a two year
old kid or we're just going to have a sort
up and we will get them, get the remainder of
them up in the feet pad. And the hoggets have
just gone on for the last time. They've just had
their three or four days of transition, and the early
mobs stay on grass for winter. But yeah, otherwise everything's on. Yeah,
just got to pull them off this week to get
(01:43):
the rams out, but then they'll go straight back on
and that's certainly everything's sort of locked into scanning at
the very least. So yeah, looking pretty good. Plenty of
feet around, sweds are done well, so I think we're
going to be okay this winter.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The stock could be looking a pretty reasonable to what imagined.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I don't yeah, no, no, We're pretty happy with here.
Everything's looking this year. There's always the odd light one around.
You always seem to get them. It's just a matter
of pulling them off. But in general everything's looking very good.
You lambs are probably on par with some of the
best overheads, So got a bit of a job ahead
of me this year just with hoggets on Swedes. I
want to keep them that way. But like I say,
we've got plenty of feet around, so we'll just keep
(02:21):
pumping it into them. And yeah, keeping eye on those
feed budgets, make sure they're still stacking up. But yeah,
enough things are. Things are looking really good.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You say that hoggets are as good as what you've
seen them, what live weight would you anticipate?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
What do we we? We took everything under thirty eight
out I want to say mid March, late March maybe,
so they probably well. We drenched them to sixty five K.
They're probably setting at about fifty fifty two before they
went on crop as an average for them all, but
with a bit of a spread through there. So no
(02:56):
for Romney. You lambs that they've done pretty really well.
But then I'm mean, are average kill wait for the
season we'd finished just on twenty kilos again, so yeah,
they've Yeah, the lambs have done well this year.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well talk about talking about that kill. Wait, twenty kg.
You'll be really happy with that, considering as you keep
telling about telling us that your lambs mature later in
the season.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, absolutely, And just bearing in mind with that lot,
we killed half of our lambs. Our works lambs went
the last week of April in the second week of May,
so that just fits with that. We sort of struggle
the whole way through summer and then we get to
autumn and they really start growing. That said, we were
ahead on average kill the whole way through with a
higher than average early kill. Wait, but we did change
(03:42):
a few things around this year. We left the terminal
lambs on month for an extra three weeks, which the
last season anyway, definitely made a big difference. Got a
few more away off mum that way at bigger weights,
and did manised to sort of hold that the whole
way through. But yeah, it's just the Romney thing. They
they were never an early killing animal in the sort
of climate. But like I've always said, we have shit
springs and horse and moortums. I hope you don't want
(04:02):
me saying that word on here.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
You've already seen the US word twice in the last
five minutes, So I'll.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Let you out here. We go, there, we go.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Just make the habit to continue.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But yeah, so that's what we always say about here,
So to capitalize on that, that's how we do it.
We just we just run the lambs later and make
use of that autumn feed and as long as we've
got penny to get through winter, we just push things
as far as we're game.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Be, especially looking at these spring contracts. We've talked about
it before, but we'll continue to talk about it as
a thing of beauty. And if we can get this
twelve dollars thirty or forty whatever they're talking, that can
perhaps be the tip of the iceberg. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, absolutely, Look, it could become a procurement war and
we could pay for that later on. But from what
I understand, at the moment, there's no huge inventory sitting
in stock. Product is selling for the prices they're paying,
you know, it's not the companies are struggling to offload it.
So yeah, at the moment, things are certainly looking very
promising for next season. I like to be a bit
of a realist in these situations and say, well, we'll
(05:00):
will count our blue things when the money's in the back.
But yeah, the outlook is better than it's been for
a long time. So yeah, fingers crossed on that one.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Ben, Winter grazing plans is that time of year? Give
us a bit of an update. How have you found it?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just the window grazing plans that we have to that
we do just to get through. What do you mean
or yeah, yep, yep. So hopefully everyone's got one done
if they're grazing on crop. Just just a general layout
of your intent of what you plan to do, grazing directions,
buffer zones, all that sort of stuff. We have one.
We just have it. There's one on resolution, but we
(05:35):
have it just drawn up on paper and then uploaded
into there. Yeah, so just just a general idea of
what you meant to what you're intending to be doing
with grazing. I don't like the idea of people trying
to pencil one out and lock everything in because obviously
the weather plays a big ball and a big part
in how long breaks last and how much you feed
stuff and everything like that. But yeah, it is a
(05:57):
good tool just to have there, just to refer back
to when you're getting through your winder grazing and just
see how things are going, and just to have those
I guess environmental protections laid out in front of you,
more so so that if something goes wrong and the
council do come in, you can show that you've you know,
you've had an intent here to do the right thing
and obviously understanding. Things do happen, breakouts happen, things can
(06:19):
go wrong. But no, they are a good tool just
to just to cover yourself. I guess a bit.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I guess would you say that everybody's on board regarding them?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, I think so. And I think when you see
the I don't want to say behavior, when you see
the practice has been taken out with wonder grazing around
the province these days, I think most people are pretty
understanding of what's expected and the vast majority of actions
taken seem to be the right ones. Bear in mind,
we've still got to make this a profitable venture and
we've still got to make it work to get through winter.
(06:51):
But you know, I think the vast majority of people
are doing a pretty good job when it comes to
the environmental aspect of winder.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Grazing and brienton Hounden made a really well one point
on this show about ten to twelve days ago saying
that don't you know, just don't give these groups anti
farming groups anymo.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, don't give them any ammo. And that's a double
edge thing. On one side, just do your best. We
understand sometimes it doesn't look the best when the weather
turns to crap, and that's just the way it is.
Just do your best to do the best, boy Stock.
But yeah, the other side to it is, I'm quite
big on this. When you see those posts put up
on social media, don't interact with them, don't take the bait,
(07:31):
don't go in and start an argument with that certain person,
because that pushes his post to more people. And you'll
quite often see the posts that he doesn't get interaction with.
They don't get a lot of likes, they don't get
a lot of views. And that's what we want. We
want that all to be suppressed. Whereas if we all
go in and he gets one hundred comments from a
hundred farmers arguing with him about hell is wrong, which
(07:52):
I do agree is wrong, you'll all of a sudden
see a lot of other people from around the world
that have no clue what we're doing, all of a
sudden commenting in favor of him, So just be mindful
of that. Just one other thing I wanted to touch on,
as drones, if you do happen to see a drone
flying over at your farm, please don't shoot it down.
(08:13):
That is a criminal offense under the Civil Aviational Authority,
and you do not want to piss them off. They're
very strict with their rules and they don't tend to
listen to the other side very much. But if you
do happen to see one flying around, if it's under
four hundred feet, it is absolutely illegal. There is a
special license that you can obtain to do so, but
(08:35):
to my knowledge that only people that have those in
New Zealand are the military and the police, no one else.
Does I forget what the license is called. Yeah, but
if you could find because generally speaking, it'll be getting
flown from a roadside somewhere, if you could call the
police and find the person flying the drone and just
obviously within the rules, try and stop them from leaving
(08:57):
till the police get there, it would be great because
the CIA would really like to know about people flying
drones over private property under that four hundred foot ceiling,
and if they go above four hundred foot there is
a gray area there in between, but if they go
over five hundred they're into proper airspace and they are
definitely not allowed to be there either because then you're
a collision risk for bigger aircraft. So yeah, just if
(09:23):
you do hit someone flying over, try and get the
police to actually find the person who's flying the drone
and they'll take the rest of it from there.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Can only Ben do We always appreciate your time. And
if I start seeing your ads coming up on my
Instagram feed, I'm going to start charging you.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I know you are not.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Ben Dealey, Ben Deally, Ben Dewey, sheep beeping YouTube farmer.
And I can say this because I've cut them off
social media influencer based out there at Wyndon. This is
the muster out next Richard Kite out of Thriving Southland
The muster on the farm with Southland District Council working
together for a beta Southland.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome back to the muster. She even beef farmer YouTube farmer.
You're can almost for social influencer in there as well,
Ben Dooley, good afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
No please don't put that in there, Andy, but get out.
Here's a gown.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah good, good mate. Well you're not an influencer.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
No, we don't. We don't like that term.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What do you call yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I don't know. I'm just a farmer that does a
bit of filming.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I guess a social media man of the people.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
We'll try it. We'll try and downplay it as much
as possible.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, we'll leave it at that. Anyway, down near Windham,
how are things going?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, first, first real wintry feeling day today. I got
at it's it's weird, it's cold, it's blowing, had to
put the jacket on, couldn't get the truck around everywhere
this morning. So a bit of a shock to the system.
But it was always going to come right and she's
been a pretty good lead and so far. So yeah,
very very hard to complain. We do kind of want
to get winter in winter. It'd be nice if we
just didn't get winter at all, but that's not going
(01:08):
to be the case. So yeah, yeah, no, we'll We're
just looking at that forecast thinking, shit, we've we've had
a bloody good run and it looks like the US
are going to get a few more breaks on crop
before it really gets over yet. So she's all promising.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So everything's on the crops underway.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Pretty much everything Now, I've just gotten a two year
old kid or we're just going to have a sort
up and we will get them, get the remainder of
them up in the feet pad. And the hoggets have
just gone on for the last time. They've just had
their three or four days of transition, and the early
mobs stay on grass for winter. But yeah, otherwise everything's on. Yeah,
just got to pull them off this week to get
(01:43):
the rams out, but then they'll go straight back on
and that's certainly everything's sort of locked into scanning at
the very least. So yeah, looking pretty good. Plenty of
feet around, sweds are done well, so I think we're
going to be okay this winter.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The stock could be looking a pretty reasonable to what imagined.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I don't yeah, no, no, We're pretty happy with here.
Everything's looking this year. There's always the odd light one around.
You always seem to get them. It's just a matter
of pulling them off. But in general everything's looking very good.
You lambs are probably on par with some of the
best overheads, So got a bit of a job ahead
of me this year just with hoggets on Swedes. I
want to keep them that way. But like I say,
we've got plenty of feet around, so we'll just keep
(02:21):
pumping it into them. And yeah, keeping eye on those
feed budgets, make sure they're still stacking up. But yeah,
enough things are. Things are looking really good.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You say that hoggets are as good as what you've
seen them, what live weight would you anticipate?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
What do we we? We took everything under thirty eight
out I want to say mid March, late March maybe,
so they probably well. We drenched them to sixty five K.
They're probably setting at about fifty fifty two before they
went on crop as an average for them all, but
with a bit of a spread through there. So no
(02:56):
for Romney. You lambs that they've done pretty really well.
But then I'm mean, are average kill wait for the
season we'd finished just on twenty kilos again, so yeah,
they've Yeah, the lambs have done well this year.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well talk about talking about that kill. Wait, twenty kg.
You'll be really happy with that, considering as you keep
telling about telling us that your lambs mature later in
the season.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, absolutely, And just bearing in mind with that lot,
we killed half of our lambs. Our works lambs went
the last week of April in the second week of May,
so that just fits with that. We sort of struggle
the whole way through summer and then we get to
autumn and they really start growing. That said, we were
ahead on average kill the whole way through with a
higher than average early kill. Wait, but we did change
(03:42):
a few things around this year. We left the terminal
lambs on month for an extra three weeks, which the
last season anyway, definitely made a big difference. Got a
few more away off mum that way at bigger weights,
and did manised to sort of hold that the whole
way through. But yeah, it's just the Romney thing. They
they were never an early killing animal in the sort
of climate. But like I've always said, we have shit
springs and horse and moortums. I hope you don't want
(04:02):
me saying that word on here.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
You've already seen the US word twice in the last
five minutes, So I'll.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Let you out here. We go, there, we go.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Just make the habit to continue.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But yeah, so that's what we always say about here,
So to capitalize on that, that's how we do it.
We just we just run the lambs later and make
use of that autumn feed and as long as we've
got penny to get through winter, we just push things
as far as we're game.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Be, especially looking at these spring contracts. We've talked about
it before, but we'll continue to talk about it as
a thing of beauty. And if we can get this
twelve dollars thirty or forty whatever they're talking, that can
perhaps be the tip of the iceberg. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, absolutely, Look, it could become a procurement war and
we could pay for that later on. But from what
I understand, at the moment, there's no huge inventory sitting
in stock. Product is selling for the prices they're paying,
you know, it's not the companies are struggling to offload it.
So yeah, at the moment, things are certainly looking very
promising for next season. I like to be a bit
of a realist in these situations and say, well, we'll
(05:00):
will count our blue things when the money's in the back.
But yeah, the outlook is better than it's been for
a long time. So yeah, fingers crossed on that one.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Ben, Winter grazing plans is that time of year? Give
us a bit of an update. How have you found it?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just the window grazing plans that we have to that
we do just to get through. What do you mean
or yeah, yep, yep. So hopefully everyone's got one done
if they're grazing on crop. Just just a general layout
of your intent of what you plan to do, grazing directions,
buffer zones, all that sort of stuff. We have one.
We just have it. There's one on resolution, but we
(05:35):
have it just drawn up on paper and then uploaded
into there. Yeah, so just just a general idea of
what you meant to what you're intending to be doing
with grazing. I don't like the idea of people trying
to pencil one out and lock everything in because obviously
the weather plays a big ball and a big part
in how long breaks last and how much you feed
stuff and everything like that. But yeah, it is a
(05:57):
good tool just to have there, just to refer back
to when you're getting through your winder grazing and just
see how things are going, and just to have those
I guess environmental protections laid out in front of you,
more so so that if something goes wrong and the
council do come in, you can show that you've you know,
you've had an intent here to do the right thing
and obviously understanding. Things do happen, breakouts happen, things can
(06:19):
go wrong. But no, they are a good tool just
to just to cover yourself. I guess a bit.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I guess would you say that everybody's on board regarding them?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, I think so. And I think when you see
the I don't want to say behavior, when you see
the practice has been taken out with wonder grazing around
the province these days, I think most people are pretty
understanding of what's expected and the vast majority of actions
taken seem to be the right ones. Bear in mind,
we've still got to make this a profitable venture and
we've still got to make it work to get through winter.
(06:51):
But you know, I think the vast majority of people
are doing a pretty good job when it comes to
the environmental aspect of winder.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Grazing and brienton Hounden made a really well one point
on this show about ten to twelve days ago saying
that don't you know, just don't give these groups anti
farming groups anymo.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, don't give them any ammo. And that's a double
edge thing. On one side, just do your best. We
understand sometimes it doesn't look the best when the weather
turns to crap, and that's just the way it is.
Just do your best to do the best, boy Stock.
But yeah, the other side to it is, I'm quite
big on this. When you see those posts put up
on social media, don't interact with them, don't take the bait,
(07:31):
don't go in and start an argument with that certain person,
because that pushes his post to more people. And you'll
quite often see the posts that he doesn't get interaction with.
They don't get a lot of likes, they don't get
a lot of views. And that's what we want. We
want that all to be suppressed. Whereas if we all
go in and he gets one hundred comments from a
hundred farmers arguing with him about hell is wrong, which
(07:52):
I do agree is wrong, you'll all of a sudden
see a lot of other people from around the world
that have no clue what we're doing, all of a
sudden commenting in favor of him, So just be mindful
of that. Just one other thing I wanted to touch on,
as drones, if you do happen to see a drone
flying over at your farm, please don't shoot it down.
(08:13):
That is a criminal offense under the Civil Aviational Authority,
and you do not want to piss them off. They're
very strict with their rules and they don't tend to
listen to the other side very much. But if you
do happen to see one flying around, if it's under
four hundred feet, it is absolutely illegal. There is a
special license that you can obtain to do so, but
(08:35):
to my knowledge that only people that have those in
New Zealand are the military and the police, no one else.
Does I forget what the license is called. Yeah, but
if you could find because generally speaking, it'll be getting
flown from a roadside somewhere, if you could call the
police and find the person flying the drone and just
obviously within the rules, try and stop them from leaving
(08:57):
till the police get there, it would be great because
the CIA would really like to know about people flying
drones over private property under that four hundred foot ceiling,
and if they go above four hundred foot there is
a gray area there in between, but if they go
over five hundred they're into proper airspace and they are
definitely not allowed to be there either because then you're
a collision risk for bigger aircraft. So yeah, just if
(09:23):
you do hit someone flying over, try and get the
police to actually find the person who's flying the drone
and they'll take the rest of it from there.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Can only Ben do We always appreciate your time. And
if I start seeing your ads coming up on my
Instagram feed, I'm going to start charging you.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I know you are not.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Ben Dealey, Ben Deally, Ben Dewey, sheep beeping YouTube farmer.
And I can say this because I've cut them off
social media influencer based out there at Wyndon. This is
the muster out next Richard Kite out of Thriving Southland
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