Thread: Video: The first outing with my mates new Tikka T1x 17hmr

Originally Posted by GWH

Mate, I'm sure the local hawkes know my vehicle. There were several circling as soon as we pulled up, at one point a hawke dropped down onto a rabbit before it had even stopped kicking.

That HMR does some damage! I've never used one, maybe I should be looking at one....

I should have hired your services last year. I was growing Japanese millet for seed and trying to keep the sparrows away, I threw heaps of dead rabbits and hares around the paddock as the crop grew to try to attract hawks, to scare the birds away. No hawks, but lots of sparrows. The only thing that saved me from the Hitchcock nightmare was the guy down the road growing hemp, the birds loved that stuff and cleaned it up before hitting my millet.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

That HMR does some damage! I've never used one, maybe I should be looking at one....

I should have hired your services last year. I was growing Japanese millet for seed and trying to keep the sparrows away, I threw heaps of dead rabbits and hares around the paddock as the crop grew to try to attract hawks, to scare the birds away. No hawks, but lots of sparrows. The only thing that saved me from the Hitchcock nightmare was the guy down the road growing hemp, the birds loved that stuff and cleaned it up before hitting my millet.

What you are going to do with those millet seeds? for chicken? I never saw millet field in NZ. Any farm grow sorghum? Good stuff for your stock, and can use to make very tasty strong alcohol, 65+.

Originally Posted by Black Rabbit

What you are going to do with those millet seeds? for chicken? I never saw millet field in NZ. Any farm grow sorghum? Good stuff for your stock, and can use to make very tasty strong alcohol, 65+.

I was growing the millet seed to sell into the seed industry for people to use for cattle feed. Most went to dairy farms, it makes a good high yielding summer annual that the cows love. Sorghum is grown too, probably more commonly than millet these day. Neither crops are common compared to maize which is widely grown. The advantage of millet and sorghum over maize is they can grow 60-80% of the biomass in less than half the time, so you can fit other cops around them more easily. Also they grow best in a hot dry summer when temperate pastures struggle.

This crop was close to the beach and other houses, but still had deer living in it! Couldn't shoot in there though, far too many people around and in amongst the crop you can't see anything.

Here's the crop from a few years ago, it was seeding at about 1.8m with biomass yield around 30tDM/ha at 4 months after sowing.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

I was growing the millet seed to sell into the seed industry for people to use for cattle feed. Most went to dairy farms, it makes a good high yielding summer annual that the cows love. Sorghum is grown too, probably more commonly than millet these day. Neither crops are common compared to maize which is widely grown. The advantage of millet and sorghum over maize is they can grow 60-80% of the biomass in less than half the time, so you can fit other cops around them more easily. Also they grow best in a hot dry summer when temperate pastures struggle.

This crop was close to the beach and other houses, but still had deer living in it! Couldn't shoot in there though, far too many people around and in amongst the crop you can't see anything.

Here's the crop from a few years ago, it was seeding at about 1.8m with biomass yield around 30tDM/ha at 4 months after sowing.

That's all very interesting Ben.

Originally Posted by GWH

That's all very interesting Ben.

Yeah sorry @GWH, I apologise, I should not have moved from your topic. Suffice to say it would be hard to shoot rabbits in that stuff.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

Yeah sorry @GWH, I apologise, I should not have moved from your topic. Suffice to say it would be hard to shoot rabbits in that stuff.

Nah seriously I genuinely found it interesting, as not crops I had heard of before, but I also don't know much about cropping