CUTTING TECHNIQUES FOR PASTURE YIELDS ON HILL COUNTRY

Abstract

Production of pastures measured by the trim and difference cutting techniques are presented for sites on North Island hill pastures and South Island improved tussock grasslands. On North Island sites the trim technique consistently gave higher yields. On South Island sites, interim results have shown no consistent overall effect, although large differences in yields have been measured at some cuts. The number of samples required by the trim lechnique to give a standard error + 10% of mean yield was 30 on North Island sites (sample size 0.3 m x 0.2 m) and 15 on South Island sites (sample size 0.5 m x 0.5 m). The difference technique was much more variable and required 5 and 20 times more samples on North and South Island sites, respectively, to give a standard error +- 10% of the mean yield. On another North Island site, large, laxly trimmed sampling sites gave higher yields than smaller, severely trimmed sampling sites and one large sample (3.4 m x 1 .O m) generally gave similar precision in yields to 6 or 7 smaller samples (0.8 m x 0.3 m).