National Workshops

The second Advance Party Conference (renamed National Workshop) took place on 13 and 14 June in Methven.  In a departure from a traditional conference, with speakers presenting prepared papers to an audience, the AP National Workshop took a very inclusive path.  The purpose was to create opportunities for farmers to discuss their productivity issues in detail with their peers. 

The Advance Party process follows the theory that farmers learn best off other farmers, therefore the purpose of the AP National Workshop was to create the environment where farmers could talk directly with other farmers in a facilitated small group, and address individual production and farming challenges with practical advice from other farmers.  The groups were also joined by topic experts who could provide a best practice perspective if the group could not arrive at solutions, or if the advice offered was dramatically wrong.  Each group was guided by a facilitator to keep the conversations on track, to record pertinent observations and to guide the discussion. 50 farmers from 15 advance parties registered to attend the event.  12 facilitators also participated. 

36 group workshops were conducted with the most popular topics being decision support tools, winter feeding, velvet genetics and fawn survival.  The main points from these workshops have been collated into summaries and are attached below.  These notes are based on discussions at the conference. Additional research has been done to make the notes more comprehensive. The author takes no responsibility for decisions made based on the information in these notes.

The Workshop Summaries are available for download, see side bar: 

1. Early Spring Growth 
2. Reproduction and Fawn Survival 
3. General Reproduction 
4. Feeding for Lactation  
5. Feeding Velvet Stags
6. Fodder Beet  
7. Hill Country Management  
8. Integrated Livestock Management 
9. Recording and Measurement Tools  
10. Weaner Finishing 
11. Velvet Genetics 
12. Venison Genetics 
13. Winter Feeding 
14. Animal Health

Advance Party Presentations

9 Advance Parties also shared their experiences with the attendees as part of a story competition, included below are the presentations from the different groups with the winners being Hawkes Bay AP as selected by the judging panel.