Beef Fundamentals course

G'day and welcome to Beef Fundamentals.

I'm Dale Kirby, I work in the Local Land Services Sustainable Agriculture team, and I'm excited to introduce the Beef Fundamentals online course.

Whether you're brand new to the beef industry or an old hand, this self-paced course aims to expand your knowledge and skills as a farmer.

You'll learn about cattle nutrition and how to determine feed quality, how to assess the condition of your cattle, your legal responsibilities, how to safely handle your Course Modules cattle across the farm, looking after the welfare of your cattle, and a whole lot more.

Topics are broken up into six modules, with links to more resources that you can go through at your own pace. You can even go back and revisit topics for up to 12 months.

Experienced agronomists, livestock officers and district veterinarians from Local Land Services and the Department of Primary Industries have created this practical course based on what they see in the field every day and the questions they get asked the most.

We hope this course furthers your knowledge about owning and growing cattle, and gives you the best tools at hand the next time you face a challenge. 

If you have any questions after completing the course, please contact your Local Land Services office.

Thanks and enjoy the course.

Hi everyone, I'm Nikia Nolan, Livestock Officer for the North Coast Local Land Services, today I'll be talking to you about farm planning and infrastructure. 

First off, I'd like to briefly talk about the LPA program – Livestock Production Assurance program – here you'll need a farm PIC, so Property Identification Code, and a Farm Biosecurity Plan.

A Farm Biosecurity Plan enables you to record and manage all of your inputs and outputs from your property.

To create a Farm Biosecurity Plan, you can search online: LPA Farm Biosecurity Plan, and templates will come up which you can put in your own details to create your own plan. 

From there, you'll get one of these signs which you can put at the front gate of your property with your details, where people must contact you before entering your farm.

So come on in and let's talk a bit more about farm planning and infrastructure.

So we've just came up the driveway of this property where you'll see the main yards. Here we have the loading facilities, the main yards and crush, and also the holding yards.

On entry to our farm, you'll notice that our loading ramp is right at the end of our driveway.

This enables all-weather access, which is really important, especially in high rainfall zones like this one here.

It's important to have vehicles and livestock trucks be able to come and go from your farm safely and efficiently under all weather conditions.

With loading ramps, there are different varieties which you can plan on what best suits your needs – you can have ones that are adjustable with height to suit trailers and trucks.

With yard design you should also consider animal behavior. Here we have black plastic, which creates shadows and darkness where cattle are happy to move throughout the yards. We also include plenty of gentle curves which help cattle follow each other throughout the yards naturally as well. 

When planning your yards, it's also important to consider size to reflect the number of cattle you wish to be working with each day.

It's also important to have good shade and fresh water, especially in your holding yards.

We have recently purchased this farm so not everything is up to scratch where we wish it to be.

We do plan to have an undercover area where a full vet crush will be in place so that we can call out vets at any time, and they'll be happy to come out and help.

Holding yards are important as they're good for biosecurity – so for quarantine – and also for health and regular treatments.  They're also important if you wish to have confinement feeding, or to safely store your stock when there are bad conditions such as drought or flooding.

As a part of farm planning it's also important to have a good stable boundary fence.

Boundary fences will also need continual maintenance to make sure they stay secure and intact, and doing their job properly.

Here we've chosen a mesh fence as it's good for keeping smaller livestock such as calves, sheep and goats in or out of the boundary fence.

We run steers while the neighbours next door run cows and calves.

I find this fence is really good for if we also choose to run cows and calves, or heifers, as this fence should be good for keeping those livestock in or out.

If you're having trouble with bulls jumping fences, it's also important to consider having a single electric fence running along either one or both sides of the boundary fence.

From here, we might go and have a look at some of the internal fencing choices we've made on this property.

As we run mostly steers, the majority of our internal fencing is five strand barbed wire.

On some of our larger paddocks, like this one here, we have two strand plain electric fencing. 

This enables us to increase the grazing intensity of our pastures, so that we can manipulate how selective our cattle are when they're grazing.

As we talk about farm planning, I would like to quickly go through with you some of the ideas and planning techniques that we've done on this property.

We've broken down the larger paddocks so that every paddock is approximately 5 to 7 hectares each.

It is important to have good water sources that can supply efficient, good quality water to your livestock at adequate amounts where your livestock will not run dry.

Here we have a solar pump which feeds to water troughs which are located in nearly every paddock of our farm.

We do have one larger paddock, however, which is fed by a dam.

It is important to check your livestock water source daily and make sure the water is clean and good quality.

Moving on from yard design and fence planning, I would like to conclude by talking about good feeding infrastructure.

So we're here standing in front of a hay ring, which is one form of infrastructure which is really good for feeding out hay or silage, especially for minimising feed wastage.

If you plan to feed out grain or supplements, it's always good to have grain bins or troughs which are undercover protected from weather. 

The importance of keeping grains and licks, especially dry licks, undercover and protected from weather, helps reduce spoilage and minimize health risks.

Hi everyone, I'm Nikia Nolan, Livestock Officer for the North Coast Local Land Services. Today I'd like to go through with you a little bit of a herd health check, which you should be doing routinely as you check your cattle and your water and grass each day. 

So behind me here we have a few steers.
It's always good to be familiar with what cattle you are
working with each day, that way, when something
unusual pops up, you're much quicker to detect it.
In this paddock we have approximately 100 steers.
We started off with 127, but when we weighed them the
other day, we removed the bottom 25% to 30% so that they
weren't getting bullied
and they can focus on growing.
These steers average about 400 kilos or just over, with the
main range being between 360 to 430 kilos.
It's always good to be familiar with what production your
cattle are doing, that way you're quicker to identify if
any are slipping or going backwards.
Generally, when I first come into a paddock, I do a quick
scan to make sure all the cattle look like they belong in
the same mob, they have the same visual ID tag, and also
they all have their own NLIS tag.
It is important that all your livestock have an NLIS tag,
as this is part of the National Livestock
Identification System.
You should also check that there's no unusual stock which
may belong to neighbours or be wandering stock.
As a part of a general health check, I'd like to
identify a few key things that you should be checking off as
you look at your cattle routinely, you should be
looking for if there's any flies or ticks or other type of
parasite annoying them.
This might be shown in head flicking, tail swishing,
cattle appearing irritated or just the visual, seeing plenty
of flies attacking the cattle.
They may also get weepy eyes, have drooling noses, or have a
lot of wet manure and bulk piling up at their tails.
You should also be checking for other health issues such as
noisy breathing, drooling, coughing,
general lethargy, so tiredness,
weakness, sulking, so, even though these
cattle have all come up to me in this paddock, it is always
important to go for a look further out to see if there's
any cattle isolated by themselves, sulking or
unable to move.
If your animals are bellowing, appearing very alert
and reactive, or chasing your pet dogs or working dogs,
there may be an issue of pests such as wild dogs or even town
dogs coming and irritating your livestock.
When you're moving your livestock, whether walking
them through a gate, or just pushing them along
up a laneway, it's also important to take note if any
have physical injury, are lame or maybe lethargic as far
as falling behind, slow walkers or starting to drool as
they're walking along.
In grazing systems, when you can't tell the cattle exactly
what to eat, as they are selective grazers, that means
that you need to be aware of nutritional related illness.
You should be looking for pot bellies, drooling,
non-eaters – so they may be falling away or show
a wasting disease,
so becoming thinner, just an overall appearance of a general
sickness or loss in body condition, or they may
become downer cows, meaning that they come down and
cannot get up.
Nutritional risks related to some of the characteristics in
a grazing system include, nutritional deficiencies,
which may derive from a deficiency in soils such
as cobalt, common in coastal areas, or selenium,
or it may even be related to the pasture species, such as
clovers and legumes, which generally are related to
issues such as bloat.
After periods of drought or rainfall events,
where there's a fresh green pick or rapidly growing grass,
there can also be other issues such as grass tetany related to
a magnesium deficiency, or other issues where the grass
is growing rapidly, such as nitrate poisoning.
When you go to move your cattle, it's always good
to have a herd head count, that way you know exactly how
many you've moved and keep record of mortality, sickness,
and changes in herd numbers.
If your herd number changes, it's always best to go for a
drive around and make sure you find where those numbers
have gone missing.
These may be mortalities, illness – so they may be
sulking over in a corner, which need treatment or moving
into a hospital pen,
or they may be stock that have gone missing where you need to
go find them.
Stools can say a lot about cattle health.
Looking at this pasture, it's good quality, but from
where we are at in the season, it's all starting to
get more fibrous, go to seed head and be reproductive.
Therefore, you should be expecting the stools to get a
bit more structure about themselves just like this,
as there's a lot more fibre in the diet than if they were
grazing this grass when it was still mostly
vegetative and soft.
Let's go take a look around and see what other stools
we can find.
This stool here is starting to get a little less structure and
a bit more watery.
The cow that produced this may be choosing to pick around and
get a lot more leafy matter, rather than the
reproductive seed head.
This stool here, is a bit more runny than the last two that
we've looked at.
The colour of it is dark green, which is expected
on pasture like this, which is high in chloroplasts.
If it was any darker or an unusual light colour
like white, cream or even bloody, then you will be
concerned about the health of your animals and you should
look further into what's causing the scours.
If this stool was runnier, or had bubbles, that's a good
tell-tale sign of acidosis, which may have been caused from
a diet change or something upsetting the rumen, such as
being off-feed and having a quick feed, or having too good
a quality of feed and not enough fibre.
If there's other signs of poorly digested material in
your stools, such as grain heads, then you should
also be looking into the digestibility and fibre content
of your feed.
We'll go for a walk around and just see if there's any cattle
that I would want to identify as ones that I'd want to keep a
closer eye on than the others over the next few days.
This guy here, you can say compared to the others, he's a
bit more of a rougher coat and I would be a bit worried,
but considering the season we're at, we're coming out of
winter into summer, he is most likely just losing
his winter coat.
He still has good body condition, his neck's
shiny where most of the roughness has came from and his
bum is clean.
If he was sunken in, had a dirty backside then I would be
considering other parasites or something else, causing him to
become that bit more of a woody, poorer conditioned,
rough coat.
We'll go for a look around further.
So these guys should all be gaining weight.
So you don't want any bullying, and as you
can see here, there's a few smaller guys in the mob.
They're also fellas that you should be keeping an eye on,
making sure they're not getting bullied or isolated from the
rest of the cattle.
As you move through you should also be looking for
lameness or injury.
A lot of them that are at the front of the mob are generally
the more confident, bigger, healthier cows.
As soon as the cow starts feeling a little bit off,
or isn't as confident as the others, it will be hiding a
bit more behind the mob or off to the side, so it's always
good to have a good thorough check through and make sure
that they're all okay.
This little guy here, he's smaller, got a bit of a
rough coat, so he's definitely the type of steer I'd be
keeping in mind, as I do my routinely checks each day.
If you're checking your cattle and they don't stand up,
it's always best to make them a bit uneasy and stand them up
just in case, even though you think they're just quiet,
they may have a bit of downer cow or have an injury such
as lameness, where they're just wanting to choose rest
over walking about.
This one here is slightly lame, so it's best to
remove him from the mob and treat him up at the yards.
He is a bit smaller than the others, so this could have
been a result of bullying, where he slipped over, also,
we have had plenty of afternoon storms with rain, so the ground
is quite slippery, so he may have just slipped over or it
could be something else, such as an object stuck between
his toes or an infection within his foot.
So we'll pull him out, take him to the yards, check him out,
diagnose it and treat it for what it is.
You can see this guy,
he's got a few warts on his neck.
Warts a generally a sign of stress.
We have just came out of some pretty dry conditions,
which means that warts can be typical on a lot of cattle.
Even though it doesn't look very appealing, they aren't
that much of a health issue.
Overall, I'm really happy with this mob.
We will remove that one that's lame and treat him, but the
rest are all pretty happy chewing their cud, ready to
move on to the next paddock.
Now that we've covered most of the herd health check
looking at weaners, like these steers, let's move
over to a cow and calf mob where there's a few more things you
should be looking out for.
We're just here with a cow and calf herd, they're a bit
noisy because we just moved them into this holding yard
with some dogs.
If you get into your paddock where they should be relaxed
and they're bellowing like this, it's a good tell-tale
sign that something's really irritated them, such as wild
dogs or town dogs.
When you're looking at these girls, you can see that
they're quite happy, their ears are up, there's no drooling,
there's no tonguing, they're not hollowed out
or woody looking, their bums are pretty clean,
and there's no big tell-tale signs of fly worry, ticks,
or any type of pneumonia or some type of disease.
When you're running bulls, it's really important to not
have them too thin or too fat.
These two boys here are a pretty good example of how they
should be looking, because if they get too fat or too thin,
they start losing libido.
That means they stop working and chasing your girls,
trying to get them pregnant again for next year.
I've just taken notice of this bull.
As you can see, his penis is a bit droopy looking and it's
a bit pink,
but after I followed him around for a bit, he sucked
it back up, therefore, he must be just active and
chasing his girls.
If he wasn't sucking this back up and it kept
dragging around, or appeared a bit swollen or a bit more pink
or discoloured, then you would be worried he's had some
type of injury.
For that I would recommend getting a vet out.
When you're looking at bulls, it's really important to take
note of their conformation.
They should have good sound feet, healthy eyes,
not be too fat or too thin, they should have a
good large scrotum, that way they're healthy
to be reproducing.
It's always good for bulls to get a semen test, get your
local vet out, do a test, and that way you know if
they're able to be fertile and reproduce for your girls.
Finally, with bulls, it's always good to keep an
eye on them, make sure they're all following their girls
around and they're still happy in their herd.
If you have a few bulls that are continuously fighting with
each other, obviously they're focusing on each other more
than the girls, and they may not be able to be serving
your girls efficiently.
Also, after bullying between the bulls, sometimes one may
get a bit sulky and hang away from the girls.
It's always best to keep an eye out when you're mixing bulls in
one herd so that they're all working, and if not,
switch them out and make sure they all have friends.
When looking at your cows and calves, it's always good to
take note of their udders and who's feeding who.
This girl here, owns this little heifer,
and her udder is beautiful.
It's nice and perky, full of milk and the teats
don't show any signs of discomfort.
And also, it's good to take note if any cows are dry,
that means their udders will be shrivelled up, not full
of milk, and there will not be a calf sucking her.
When checking cows and calves in the paddock, it's always
best to have a look if any cows are bellowing or searching
around looking for a calf.
This calf may be lost, sick or in worst case scenario, dead.
When you're in the paddock searching for calves or
moving cows, it's always good to be aware of long grass,
or the fact that calves are really good at laying down and
hiding from people, so be very careful when you're traveling
around in a paddock in case you come across a calf.
When you're moving cows and calves to a new paddock,
it's always good to take note of distance.
Sometimes it's best if you just open a gate and let them make
their own way through to the next pen, rather than moving
the cattle through several paddocks where there is a
higher chance of leaving a calf behind or a calf
getting overly tired.
When checking cows and calves each day, it's always
good to take note of who's cycling and who's springing.
So if your calves are about to come on the ground, when they
spring cattle start to get really soft around the backside
and their udder starts get nice and perky as they
produce milk.
You'll also sometimes see a string of goo coming from
their back end.
When cattle are cycling, it's always good to take note
of who the bulls are chasing as well.
When checking cows and calves each day, it's also good to
take note of any calves that appear woody or thin – another
calf may be stealing milk, or the cow may not be producing
enough milk for the calf, or the cow not being a good
mother and not letting the calf drink.
You should also take note if the calf has scours, that is,
discoloured poo or runny poo, and it will cause a calf to
get very sick.
Also, if a cow's udder is really bulging and full and she
seems uncomfortable, she may have lost her calf, so it's
always best to have a look around to see if any cows have
bulging udders, as well as dry udders, or bellowing
around searching for a calf.

Hi everyone, I'm Nikia Nolan, Livestock Officer for the North
Coast Local Land Services.
Behind me here is a paddock that I'd like to move some
cattle into today,
so let's go through a paddock check on what to look for
before you move your cattle into their new paddock.
When doing a paddock check, it's always good to walk into
the paddock to get a good feel and look over, the uniformity
or changes within the paddock, rather than just having a look
from the gate or from the fence.
You can't expect pastures throughout a paddock to
always be uniform,
there will be changes in plant density and quality.
Plant composition, biomass and quality will always be changing
throughout the paddock, this is due to stock camps, laneways,
fence lines, gateways, areas where water may
be sitting, different soil types and
soil characteristics, and also areas where you may have been
previously feeding out different feeds, such as
hay or silage, or where your vehicles may be travelling
across the paddock.
As you can see in this paddock, the plants are
well past the three leaf stage.
Our goal here, before grazing this paddock,
was to have full canopy closure.
From the gate, it looks like there is full canopy closure of
this pasture, but as you walk through it, there are still
areas where the pasture hasn't quite recovered.
We have had a pretty tough winter here and that's why
we've waited a little bit extra before grazing this paddock.
Because of this, you can see that some of the pastures are
starting to boot and flower, therefore getting seed heads.
This does reduce the quality a bit, but at least we know
there will be enough herbage mass here to fill the cattle.
This here is an improved pasture.
There is quite an array of different species within this
pasture – we have ryegrass, oats, chicory, plantain and
clovers all together in this mix.
These improved pastures offer high quality feed for our
productive goals of gaining weight on our steers.
If this feed was very stalky, from going to seed head,
and wasn't as vegetative, there may be a need to
supplement with, say, a urea block.
If your cattle are grazing this pasture and don't seem to be
performing as good as you were hoping for, it may be best to
get a feed test to see the quality of this feed, in case
there may be an underlying nutrient deficiency –
for that, you may need to be supplementing.
To address any issues with withholding periods,
or grazing risks, it's always good to know the history
of your paddock.
This paddock has not had any recent chemical or
fertiliser use, therefore it should be safe to graze.
Let's go have a look around to see if there's any weeds or
plant species that may be a risk to grazing.
So let's define what a weed is.
A weed is any plant growing where it's not meant to grow.
Here, I've spotted a plant which we haven't planted in
this paddock recently, however, to me it looks like it could
still be beneficial in this pasture sward.
So let's ID it.
It's always best to ID a plant when it's in
its reproductive phase, because when it's vegetative,
it's sometimes difficult to distinguish
between different leaves.
When the plant's reproductive you can see its flower head,
or seed head, these are very distinctive to each plant.
Looking at this plant, I think it is prairie grass
which isn't as productive as other pasture species
in a pasture sward.
As we recently purchased this farm about 12 months ago,
the previous owner must have planted this species in the
pasture sward, as it is a good complementary species to
ryegrasses over winter.
Even though I wasn't sure on the ID of this plant, I don't
classify it as a weed because I think it's still beneficial in
this pasture sward for grazing.
Let's go for a walk and see if there's any other plants that
we can ID to see if they're weedy or not.
Here, is what I would call a pasture species in
this paddock.
This here is dock, you can tell by the flower head with the
colouring of being a bit greeny, reddy colour,
and the leaves, which are sometimes similar to
chicory or plantain, however, they've got
this reddish marking, and sometimes get a bit curly.
This dock has popped up in this pasture after the high rainfall
events we had about a year ago.
Dock isn't as palatable as the other grass species in
this paddock, so I'm not worried about
stock consuming it.
This weed is not considered toxic to livestock, as it's not
as palatable, so they won't eat large amounts of it, however,
if it is consumed in extreme quantities, they may
cause oxalate poisoning in stock.
As there's plenty of other feed available of good quality
in this paddock, I would not say this dock is a grazing risk
to the livestock entering this paddock.
Let's see if there's anything else we can check out.
So I've noticed a few of these patches of taller,
yellow flowered plants popping up in this pasture,
especially where the density isn't as thick
and competitive.
I have plenty of weed books at home, which I always love to
carry around with me when I'm not sure on
identifying species.
I'm gonna pull out a smaller plant from this patch so we can
look at some characteristics, and ID it.
When IDing plants which have flowers, it's always good
to note the color of the flower and what the flower
looks like.
This plant has pale yellow flowers of about four petals
and has some darker veins within the petal.
Looking more at this plant, as I pulled it out, I could
really tell that it's quite hairy and bristly,
nearly spiky.
The leaves of it look similar to chicory,
dock or plantain, and when I look at some of the really
small species around it, it's nearly like a rosette
before it stalks up.
The seed pod on this plant is quite distinctive and might
help with IDing it.
Looking at the root system, these roots are not fibrous.
There's quite a distinctive taproot there, which made it a
little bit hard to pull out.
Closer to the base, it's a bit woody and purply colour, that
might help in IDing it.
I'm gonna pop this plant down now and have a look through the
book to see if this relates to any ID.
Looking through this book, I'm sure this weed
is wild radish.
It's distinctive from the pale yellow flowers with four petals
which have dark veins.
It also has that long, pointy seed pod,
like we talked about, and the bristly, wiry hairs
around the stems.
It says here that the younger plants start off as a rosette
and then get weedy like this here.
This isn't toxic to stock.
not as palatable, so they shouldn't be eating it,
however, it can taint milk and meat if they do graze this.
After IDing this plant and understanding the
characteristics and life cycle, I think the best
strategy will be to graze this paddock and then come back and
either slash this down or spot spray it with
a selective herbicide, that way, we can encourage the
competition of the more desirable pasture species.
Looking around this paddock, I can't see much else unusual,
however, I have spotted some type of thistle over there,
so let's check it out as the final weed.
This here, is a spear thistle, dark green in colour, can get up
to 1.5m tall when mature, and has a bright
purple flower.
This one here hasn't flowered yet, however,
it's pretty close with these little buds.
For that, it's a great time to graze this paddock, remove the
cattle and slash before this becomes reproductive.
This isn't much of a grazing worry, as it's not
palatable to cattle, due to all the spikes, except for when
paddocks are heavily infested by them,
it may cause some eye injuries to cattle.
There's not many in this paddock, so it won't be
too much of a worry letting the cattle into graze.
When I walk through a paddock, I always like to pick up bits
of grass as if I'm a cow myself getting a mouthful.
Cattle eat using their tongue, that way when you grab it like
this and pull, it's a good representation of what they're
getting in one mouthful.
Here, you can see they're getting a few stems,
but they're mostly selecting a few leaves and the odd, maybe,
seed head.
I'm pretty happy with what I'm grabbing hold of here – they'll
be getting a fair few leaves, but still a bit of fibre,
so that the food may not be going "right through them".
When people talk about a soft, palatable grass species,
they're generally referring to grass that when you pick
it up, you're able to easily break it up, and it's soft and
gentle to the touch – that means it's palatable
for the cattle.
When you pull it, and squish it, and roll it
in your fingers, if you get a bit of moisture, it's usually
30 or less percent dry matter.
That means it's mostly water and it's
generally good digestibility.
If you were to pick up grass that was hard to the touch,
a bit bladey and sharp on your fingers, that's generally
referred to as a harder grass,
that's because it's not as palatable or desirable
to the cattle.
Sharper, bladey grass can cause injury and cut the tongue,
therefore, cattle learn that they don't want to eat that and
will go searching for other softer grasses.
I've gone along and I've picked some seed heads.
If your pasture is in a reproductive phase, it's not
going to be as good a quality.
As you can see, it's much harder to break up,
that's because it's full of fibre, it's not as soft
to the touch, and so it's going to be a lot less digestible
when the cattle are eating it.
Also, when you roll it up and squish it, there's not as much
moisture coming out of this grass.
That's because reproductive grasses are a lot
less quality, even though there may be more herbage mass.
There's always a trade off.
The digestibility of reproductive grasses isn't as
high as when the grass is vegetative and full
of moisture.
Now that we've had a look at the pastures and weeds, and we
know that the pasture is ready for the cattle to come in and
graze safely, we'll do the last few things on
our paddock checklist.
I've just checked this water trough behind me and know it's
good quality and there'll be enough water for
all the cattle, as it's being pumped by a solar pump,
which is currently working.
I will still check the water each day to make sure it's good
quality and enough quantity there for the cattle
in this paddock.
Lastly, we'll also go around, look at the perimeter of
the paddock, make sure the fences are good and safe to
keep the cattle in, and we'll check out the shade,
make sure there's enough shade for all the cattle in
this paddock, and we'll also make sure there's no rubbish,
such as plastic or wire, that may injure or be
mistakenly eaten by the cattle.
Let's go do these last few things now.
Now that we've gone through this paddock check, and this
paddock's ready for all the cattle to move into, let's have
a look at the other paddock that we've just moved them off
to see why we've moved them.
Here, we're in the paddock where the cattle have just
moved out of, so as you can see, we are aiming
to maintain 100%, or close to that,
for ground cover.
So here, you can pretty much not see any soil, there is good
enough residue that the grass is able to respond
quickly after grazing.
If you graze it too low, you'll get past the growth
point of the grass and it won't be able to recover as quick,
or it may become dormant.
As you look across this paddock, you can
definitely see the selective grazing behaviour
of cattle.
Steers, which came out of this paddock, are a lot more
selective and picky than older cows.
This is because they love this palatable, fresh pick
of sweet kikuyu grass, vegetative
ryegrass and clovers, over some of this more stalky,
grassy, seed head and the older, less palatable,
plantain and chicory.
As a good grazing strategy, you may follow these mob of
steers along with a herd of cows, which will be happy to
pick up all of this excess biomass.
Or you may come along with a slasher to cut down this grass
evenly to enable even competition between grasses,
so that more palatable grasses don't get out
competed and weeds, such as dock, won't come in.
Now that we've done a paddock check,
everything looks good, let's go get the cattle and put them
into their new paddock.
Whenever I move cattle, I find it a good opportunity to get a
headcount to make sure everyone's there,
and also, when you move them into their new paddock,
I always like to make sure they know exactly where
the water is, they're settled, and their heads
are down grazing.