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Maintaining High Productive Pastures

By David Mason-Jones

The need to maintain vibrant and nutritious pasture through Winter months is paramount on a small property with a large number of cattle depend-ant on a constant source of feed. This is the case at the Scott’s Flat, NSW, property owned by Arthur and Carole Burns which is share-farmed together with Ken and Margaret Atkins.

The property consists of 100ha of fully cleared land with deep rich alluvial soil and access to abundant water. In the Burns’ and Atkins’ case, the form of farming is dairying and the total herd on the property is around 300 cattle. At any one time about 180 of these are milkers and the remainder are dry’s.

The land values in this area are so high that it is necessary to continually maximise production in order to achieve a reason-able return on investment. Maximum production for a dairy farmer means maximum milk yield and this, in turn, depends on pasture quality and quantity.

With the need to supply the market with milk on a daily basis, there cannot actually be a day or a week go by when feed availability is allowed to drop. In this circumstance pasture planning, new sowing and refurbishment are one set of skills the farmer must get right. Arthur Burns comments, “We really can’t afford to have even a few square metres in inefficient prod-uction and we definitely can’t afford to let the general standard of pasture run down even for a one year cycle.

“Pasture maintenance, both in the form of sowing new pasture and in the form of refurbishing existing pasture, forms an essential part of the farm plan every year on an ongoing basis.

“But we run into an interesting problem in how we have to go about planting the new pasture and maintaining the old. With a herd of three hundred cattle it is just not an option to close down three quarters of the farm, cultivate the soil and plant new pasture. The cows still have to eat something while the new pasture is growing.

“Pasture renovation, therefore, has to be carefully planned and carried our piece by piece so that herd is still kept in high quality feed while the new and refurbished grasses are growing,” he says.

The same planning factors also apply on other small farms where the stocking rate may not be so high but the competing aims of keeping the existing herd fed while developing the new pasture, still exist.

At the 100ha Scott’s Flat property, 75ha are planted with pasture. The remain-ing 25ha consists of 10ha pure Lucerne and 15ha Lucerne and Rye Grass. The Lucerne and Rye Grass sections are not renovated annually but most of the remaining 75ha of pasture is refurbished on a yearly basis.

Ken states, “Our approach is not to mindlessly replace pasture just because 12 months have gone by. We examine each of the blocks of pasture to see how vibrant and nutritious it is. Based on this assessment we then plan the re-sowing and refurbishment program.

“I’d say that on average we would re-sow or refurbish about 75% of our pasture each year.

“Our management con-sists of two separate processes. The first is complete re-sowing and the second is refurbishment.

In the re-sowing sections we go right back to square one, cultivate the land and work it up into a seed bed. In any one year we would take this option with around 5% - 10% of the pastured area. This means that in each year we may re-sow from 5ha - 10ha and, as a result, the entire farm is re-sown about once every decade. Re-sowing like this not only completely renews the pasture but it also address the compaction pressure from the herd of 300 cattle.

Refurbishment is the process where existing, but healthy, pastures are re-sown with new seed being direct drilled into the existing pasture. The direct drill head is set to deposit the seeds at a depth of 12mm and in a row spacing of 150mm. With this option there is no cultivation and so the benefit of the existing healthy pasture is maintained,” he says.

Arthur and Ken report that, due to the good conditions at the property, they tend to seed using a lavish seeding rate. For example, with Rye Grass, they use a rate of 30kg - 35kg per ha. Using this technique Arthur and Ken refurbish more than 50ha annually. Preparations commence in mid February each year and the first blocks are cultivated or direct drilled in late February or early March. There is a six to eight week delay until the new or refurbished pasture is ready to graze and so, as Arthur notes, “An early March sowing will give us a stand of feed by Anzac Day.”

The first block refurbished is just 5ha to 10ha at the maximum and the work routine is to keep re-sowing small blocks of about the same size right through to the end of May. When this Winter feed is established it then allows the herd to be grazed on a rotation basis around the property every three or four weeks. The access of cattle to the new pasture stands is controlled with temporary electric fencing. One point of caution with the newly established or refurbished pasture, is that the first time it is grazed care needs to be taken that it is only lightly grazed. If heavily grazed on the first occasion the pasture’s ability to grow back is diminished. A light grazing on the first occasion ensures that there is plenty of leaf left on the grass to enable a full recovery. Subsequent cycles of grazing can be heavier than the first.

Using this system of seeding in small blocks Arthur and Ken achieve the twin aims of keeping the existing cattle fed well in order to give high milk production as well as maintaining pasture quality over the entire area of the property. Grasses used in the process include; annual and perennial Rye grasses, White Clover, Red Clover, Chicory, Fescue and some Kikuyu. An annual plan of pasture improvement, is a key to long term productivity.

Arthur Burns and Ken Atkins. Scott’s Flat NSW. 02 6574 1210

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