Investigating livestock pasture systems with FEED365
By Kate Parker, WMG Project Officer
Introduction
The 2024 season marks the third year of the FEED365 Project. This year will see the continuation of the Gillingarra site from 2023, focusing on the topic of seasonally over-sown perennial pastures to increase livestock and paddock productivity, groundcover, and farm resilience. The site will follow 3 paddocks across the 2024 year, measuring pasture growth and animal performance to investigate the economic impact of over-sowing perennial pastures with a cereal and legume mix.? Paddocks consist of an established perennial grass paddock over-sown with cereal and legume mix, an established perennial grass paddock (Control 1)?and an annual pasture paddock (Control 2). A key output from this project will be an economic analysis of these different pasture systems utilising the animal performance data that will be collected over the season.
A new trial site has been set up in Warradarge for the 2024 season. This site will follow 3 paddocks to measure effectiveness of 3 different pasture systems: a regenerative legume pasture base with over-sown cereal, standalone cereal pasture, and a control (farmer practice) annual sub-clover pasture. The host farmer’s interest is in creating a permanent pasture paddock that can support early grazing and with a low potential for soil erosion. In previous years, the farmer has utilised cereals for feed but has not formally gathered animal performance data to give an indication of the economic value of using cereals for grazing. As with the Gillingarra site, an economic analysis will also be prepared for the Warradarge pasture systems.
Gillingarra Site – Early Results
Figure 1. Plant establishment in the perennial control paddock for 2024 measured on the 9/7/24. Error bars denote the standard error of the mean where presented. Pictures taken on 17/07/24.
Figure 2. Plant establishment of 2024 sown cover crop in the perennial/cover crop paddock for 2024 measured on the 9/7/24. Error bars denote the standard error of the mean where presented. Pictures taken on 17/07/24.
Figure 3. Plant establishment in the annual control paddock for 2024 measured on the 9/7/24. Error bars denote the standard error of the mean where presented. Pictures taken on 17/07/24.
Regardless of the pasture system that is being implemented at each site, the pastures are largely dominated by grasses, either annual or perennial, with broadleaf weeds being the second most dominant in most cases. The presence of legume species is a relatively low proportion of the pasture mix but will be increasingly important to improve the quality of each of the grass dominant pastures. The presence of regenerating serradella and some vetch (although not captured in the data) indicates there is a long-term benefit to annual seeding of cover crops to improve pasture production, and this could lead to a cumulative benefit of this practice over time.
Rainfall for the first 6 months of 2024 can be categorised as extremely dry with a total of 6.6mm for the summer period and 12.4mm in April at the treatment sites, the break to the season came at the end of May when 35.6mm was received.
Groundcover measurements were taken for each paddock after the seeding of the cover cropped paddock and 2 months later. The established perennial paddock went from 73% to 86%, the perennial and cover crop paddock went from 54% to 70% and the annual pasture paddock went from 64% to 79%. All paddocks shifted from an average 10% green to a 38% green proportion of groundcover with an average 15% jump in groundcover and 28% jump in green groundcover.
Warradarge Site – Early Results
Plant establishment counts were as expected for the sowing rate and season in the sown treatment paddocks, the control paddock had such a high number of regenerating pastures that it was difficult to measure accurately.
Rainfall for the first 6 months of 2024 can be categorised as extremely dry at a total of 11mm for the summer period and 9mm in April at the treatment sites, the break to the season came at the end of May when 29mm was received.
Groundcover measurements were taken for each paddock after the seeding of the two treatments. The serradella paddock had 58% groundcover, Triticale at 30% and the annual pasture control had 92% groundcover. Recommendations to prevent soil erosion are to maintain groundcover at above 50%, these results show us that established regenerating pastures are far more likely to achieve those levels.
Conclusion
The FEED365 demonstration sites at Gillingarra and Warradarge have been successfully established in a season where there was a late break. There have been two differing strategies implemented for sowing the pasture treatments this year with the Gillingarra farmer choosing to sow early and the Warradarge farmer choosing to sow later near the break of the season.
The late break has resulted in slower pasture growth than expected and this has meant that pastures have not been grazed as much as in previous, higher rainfall years. It has been challenging for all farmers in the region, with little feed in paddocks and large amounts of supplementary feeding occurring. While this was hard to manage, the sites in this project had been managed responsibly over summer and had >50% groundcover at the season break. Good rainfall in winter is expected to drive an increase in pasture growth, however, the low soil temperature will slow this growth until August when day length and temperature increase.
The extended dry summer also caused some uneasiness amongst our pasture producers, and this prompted an extremely successful discussion group meeting at the Gillingarra site. From this discussion there is a renewed focus on the autumn feed gap window and developing strategies to better manage this. There are four events planned for the 2024/25 year to further explore these topics and continue the momentum of the project amongst farmers in the region. There continues to be increased interest in the FEED365 project as farmers see this year as a pressure test and opportunity for review of their current management systems. There has been excellent engagement from the WMG pasture community (~40 farmers) to explore the economics of growing pastures and improving feed quality, with the timeliness of the project helping to inform their management strategies for future years.
