Good evening everyone. My name is Nyssa and I'm a senior projects and programs officer with the Local Land Service's Drought Adoption Officer Program.
So tonight, I'll be a facilitator for our session on managing pastures and livestock through drought times.
Just quickly. This webinar was brought to you by the Drought Adoption Office Program. The Drought Officer Program received funding through the Australian Government's
Drought Fund, through the Southern New South Wales Innovation Hub and the Southern Queensland, northern New South Wales.
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Quick introduction for our speakers tonight.
So first off is Fiona Leech. Fiona is a Senior Agriculture Advisor based in Yass
Fiona will be covering what we can expect from our winter pasture growth. Key pasture targets for lambing and calving and whether nitrogen
is worth using this season. Following Fi, we
have Matt Lieschke, who's a Senior Ag Advisor in Goulburn. Matt will talk through the quantity versus quality and the value of green feed
in winter, the impact of short green feed on overall feed requirement, and some other feed options and amounts.
This evening we will hear from Brett Littler, who is a Drought Adoption Officer, and he will share tips, tricks and tools for managing livestock
and what's trending in fodder this season. I'll now hand over to Fi,
who will kick us off this evening.
Okay, thanks very much Nyssa is that showing through on your screen? Yes.
Good. Okay. Well, good evening, everybody. Thanks for joining us this evening.
I'll just, kick off the just one moment while I, right.
Okay, so the current state of play, I guess it's great news,
for those of us in the sort of more western part of,
the south east that, we got an our autumn break arrive finally back on the 21st to the 23rd of May.
So, you know, I'm hearing around the traps that we've had
in, in the, or that we've had in the order of sort of 60 plus mils,
you know, full pretty consistently across a wide area.
Certainly, areas to our west,
are starting from no green. So we've had paddocks that just have had, you know, it's back to, to adjusted
feed, of varying quantities. Certainly then as you go a little more east, we've got small to moderate amounts of green
that have been or kicked in present on earlier, you know, smaller falls of rain.
Supplementary feeding of stock has been firmly in place, in these areas that are quite extreme, you know,
according to the class of the stock, their reproductive state, etc.,
there's been a mix of feeding strategies, of course, as it always is. But, you know, some are using drought lot confinement feeding areas,
or, you know, sacrifice type paddocks while they can rest pastures.
Others who haven't had that same, sort of opportunity or luxury on their places are actually feeding in paddocks
to, to varying degrees. So producers, at various stages
are at various stages with livestock production or reproduction. So I guess the way we're going to frame this is discuss the situation
based on those that are, calving or lambing on the 1st of June.
So, you know, almost now, those that are not till the 1st of July
and then the last group, you know, back a bit to the 1st of August
and we're going to look at some fodder budgets because, you know, for those that have dealt with Prograze and other courses that we run, you know,
you will have seen how powerful fodder budgeting can be is a tool to help
us assess, you know, the availability of pasture going forward. So the options that we'll have as we go into winter.
So let's now look at, some figures. So what pasture growth do you think we can expect this winter.
So this is a bit of a snapshot for some areas it's not covering obviously the whole region.
But back in 2004, 2005 and 6, we had very dry autumns
in all those 3 years. And the season broke in late
May, except for in 2005 when it was the first week of June. So they were very late breaks.
And below, in the table are some growth rates that we actually measured on the bookham grazing demonstration back in that time
on both the supered paddock and the no super paddock during, those winter months.
So these growth rates, you will notice for those months and then those different paddocks, the supered well fertilised versus nil fertiliser,
certainly a very consistent sort of growth rates for this, this time of year.
And, and, and across those, those 3 years
that are similar to the one we've just encountered. So I think,
based on these growth rates, you know, I think we can be pretty confident that they're the sort of growth numbers that we can use for some parts
of the district, certainly down in the lower elevations. back Yass way.
Now we'll move on to some just some, points before I move into some actual fodder budgets
of looking at using how we use fodder budgeting to plan ahead. So I guess at the moment we need to consider with that recent rain,
we are now transitioning into a period, where the green component is coming away.
While we still are doing quite a lot of hand feeding.
We, we will look to investigate, you know, can we build enough green feed to support lambing and calving animals
at their respective times? So at the moment, producers are either feeding livestock
in confinement sacrifice areas, or the like, and allowing pastures to build
or other producers might be, you know, are they still in paddocks. Some may be putting in lighter stocking rates with continued feeding.
That will allow pasture growth, maybe to move ahead a little and, you know, build a bit more leaf area and quantity while still in the paddocks.
So we'll present some fodder budgets showing how much feed can be built if you lock key lambing and calving paddocks up.
So not grazing them, locking them up over the coming months, coming weeks to months. Okay.
Just to show you, you know what what's possible with amounts. So we'll compare these amounts to some pasture benchmarks
then for lambing and calving animals at these particular times. You know, so the 1st of June 1st of July, 1st of August.
We'll give 2 examples of fodder budgeting that sit firstly at the lower elevations.
So it mimicked on the Bookham growth rates that we have. So you know, around that 500 to 600 metre elevation.
And where we have started from very minimal green and then to the thousand metre elevation where we have another trial up at Laggan,
north of Crookwell, that that we've got pasture growth rates from now. And, you know, they're starting from,
from not quite as low a basis. We are at the Bookham site, but,
you know, small amounts of green have been in their system just ticking away.
So if we look, firstly at a fodder budget for this late May break at the lower elevations, so this small back Yass
Bookham, Boorowa way. So firstly, I guess remind you all that this idea of fodder budgeting,
you know, helps to give you this clear picture or if when we say clear, you know, a fairly
good idea of what things might look like in 3 to 4 months time. So you can see we've scoped it out to September.
Obviously these are total lock ups. So that's not totally realistic to people right till September.
But but just giving you the idea of of what growth can happen.
Okay. Now you will notice on the left side is the fertilised pasture, fodder budget
and this is for the 500 metre elevation, so lower country - at the start of June, we're
estimating we've got about 150 kilos of green. So this break happened on the 21st of May.
And, you know, we've had about a week to get us to the 1st of June. And, you know, in that period, it things are moving quite quickly at the moment.
And we'll go into why that's happening in a moment. But it's we were estimating about 150 at the beginning of June.
So I guess this slide shows that at, at Bookham by the end of June,
we've got if you lock everything up, we've got our growth rates in there of 15,
15, 18, 26 for the four months, respectively.
But at the end of month of the quantities down the bottom. So, you know, at the end of June, if you lock it all up, we should have on
well fertilised or reasonably well fertilised country, around 600 kilos to the hectare,
of dry matter.
So the fodder budget on the right is for the unfertilised pasture. So our estimate from the Bookham data showing, you know,
the growth rates are actually halved,
for all that measured data is strongly indicates that on unfertilised country, that's what happens.
And certainly the end of month figures that you can see there are not,
as certainly you know way under what they are for for the fertilised country.
Right. Let's now move on to talking about range.
How much pasture do do we need? So if we talk firstly for lambing ewes.
So ideally we would aim for around 1000 kilos for singles,
1400 for twins. If you've got, scanned mobs and you'd be working somewhere
in the middle about 1200, but you can get away with 900 for singles
instead of a thousand if we know we've got fairly high quality green pick. So with a bit more legume through it, you know that three centimetres of height,
we know we can get away with that for singles and and actually for twins, it's about 1100 under those conditions at the start of lambing.
But the assumption is that the pasture would then go and get a go, take off and get ahead of the stock as lambing progresses.
So this might involve, you know, using extra lambing paddocks than you normally would,
so that you can, you know, lower that stocking pressure and let pasture go ahead.
Now, if we look at calving cows, the aim for them, the benchmark for them is around 1100.
At the very start of calving. So I've actually, put an early June break in there
It should say a late May break. But for late May break. I guess we can say for well fertilised country,
for pastures at 500 to 600m elevation.
Early August is looking By the start of August, it's looking okay and manageable for lambing and calving.
Based on those benchmarks we've talked about, if lambing or calving starts towards the end of August,
then the pasture situation is certainly looking a lot more comfortable. So you can see, you know, a figure of sort of 15
to almost 1600 by the end of August. They're on fertilize country.
Unfortunately, you know, in the unfertilized pasture situation, things they got to struggle because there's just not enough pasture.
There really, until, you know, mid September. So, you know, some, some level of supplementation
is likely in these paddocks to be needed. Unfortunately, pasture quality also tends to be lower
in unfertilised pastures due to that lower, closer content.
Now, if we move to the thousand metre elevation to talk for the budget and again it should say, like may break.
I miss that change. But this. Yeah. So this slide now is showing the pasture great growth rates that have been used
based on measurements taken at the Laggan Grazing Demo near Crookwell.
So the winter growth rates at laggan and certainly are roughly half of what we see at Bookham
at fertilised country. Back at the 500 metre mark.
So the slower growth rates, I guess, at this sort of elevation means that even on well fertilised pastures, paddocks
will not have sufficient pasture for lactating stock
by, you know, well, up until not not by the 1st of August. But, you know, not until really we get to mid to late August.
And again then for on the, on the right we have that unfertilised country at these sort of elevation.
And you can see that, you know, pasture is going to struggle to reach 700, by the beginning of September.
So, you know, lambing or calving paddocks on low fertility country at these elevations really do mean supplementary feeding
needs to kick in still. And, it'll be required, you know, during the pregnancy
and also then into early lactation to meet those livestock requirements and drive that milk, you know, milk production.
Now that we have actually just an overview,
slide of all those conditions. So you can see that on the left, we've got the fertilised,
budgets for the 500m and 1000 one on top of the other.
And on the right side, we've got the unfertilised at 500m and a thousand.
And I guess the point of showing them all as one unit was that just to show that you can adjust your growth rates according to your location.
So even though you may not be at 500 or 1000, if you're somewhere in the middle,
then you would, you know, perhaps just use a midpoint. You're picking growth rates that are somewhere,
there in the middle and picking your starting amount. As well, adjusting, adjusting those figures.
So I suppose next, is let's look at the state of play for these calving and lambing groups.
So the aim is to try and have minimal disturbance ideally in, you know,
the perfect world to these groups of animals when when they go into lambing, calving. We don't want to have to supplementary feed them in an ideal world.
So, you know, if we can set things up to have is minimal interference, the better is what I guess
we trying to aim for. And when we're in tough years like this, it's hard to achieve.
But it's looking to see what we can do to to minimise disturbance as much as we can.
So if we look at the 1st of June group, it's obvious we've got minimal feed.
You know, we're down in that very low end, 150 to 350 at most.
We need to be building dry matter in these paddocks. So I think there's no, no easy answer for this group.
It's keep feeding this group until the pasture gets away and and making sure we're feeding to satisfy lactation.
The next group is the 1st of July lambing calving group. I guess if you,
from the budgets, you can say if we lock paddock up now, I'm, I'm talking the fertilised country.
My apologies with my phone. It's now, on silent.
So with the 1st of July, if we lock those paddocks up on fertilized country,
we'll have around 600 kilos of dry matter per hectare.
Still. We're short. We actually need to be building closer to 900.
To a thousand is what we really would like. So at this, for this group, we would be definitely feeding
pregnant animals to the point of them lambing or calving.
And lastly, the state of play. Then for the first of August group,
not such a tricky group as it's turning out with the break timed at the late May end.
If these paddocks locked up, we will definitely on fertilize country. Have, you know, around a thousand kilos at our lower elevations
and and around 800 at at higher elevations by the beginning of August
on on gain fertilised country. They should be okay.
But but you would want to stock paddocks, perhaps to allow them some growth to make,
peak lactation demands. And on higher elevations, I think you could definitely consider using
even though it's just like group, you know, they might be you might, might see the benefit of using a nitrogen source
all a good acid source to help kick perhaps a little bit of a quicker response,
you know, particularly in the twin lambs or the cattle.
All right. Next to I wanted to talk about strategies to build
green feed. So I guess the aim is to build as much grain pasture as possible to make,
you know, I wouldn't livestock demands for these different categories.
Two key strategies that I'll focus on tonight are Nitrogen additions
So you know, often with using, urea for that or the use of a plant hormone called Gibberalic acid.
And it comes in two forms to us. We can do the as a liquid in the form of, a product called GALA
or a granular form called ProGibb. Now, I am aware there are other products on the market.
I've not done as much investigation with them. And, we won't discuss them here tonight,
but I know you might be faced with them when you do speak to resellers and whatever.
So let's have some assumptions. First of about the season our soils and pastures.
Firstly you know we've got soil temps that are sitting sort of around
at that 10 centimetre depths 4 to 5 degrees higher than they were.
Well this time, you know, last year and, and often in more average,
you know, seasons in the autumn. So warmer, warmer conditions in the soil.
We're dealing with a mix of pastures. So both native and introduced. And often, you know, we know there is a range of soil fertility that come with that.
I want you to remember that there will be always a natural kick in nitrogen availability from mineralisation of organic material.
You know, particularly when you come out of a dry period. And, and this particularly happens when soils then, become moist
and they stay at a bit warmer temperature. So we still have that luxury of bit warmer conditions at the moment
that that that kick will still be able to happen to some degree.
So first of all, let's look at some strategies to build using nitrogen.
So I thought the best way to present this to you was in a table. And you know some pros and cons pretty much
looking on the pro side, I guess one of the big advantages is that nitrogen is going to be, you know, suitable to use.
Now, basically, and on on, you know, small amounts of pasture.
We've got perfect conditions now you know, moist soils, warmish soils,
warmish than what they could normally be, that we would still have some nitrogen,
response happen with growth. Now, the rule of thumb that goes with using nitrogen is in the order of a kilo
of N will produce ten kilos of dry matter per hectare. There’s quite a bit of variation around that,
but that's, that's sort of a rule of thumb in the industry. If we use a rate of, say, 60 kgs
of urea per hectare, urea is 46% nitrogen. So about 28 kilos of N would be going out.
We could be getting in the order of 300 kilos of dry matter from a
an application a very a like that. The other positive is that it gives you an increase in pasture quality.
When you use nitrogen you will get digestibility. In ag and protein, you know, increasing.
So that's a productivity response in the animal. We know from research work
that maximum nitrogen response occurs when applications of nitrogen pure nitrogen
of 20 to 60 cages per hectare go out. That's sort of the optimum area.
But I don't necessarily think we should be probably going out there and putting 60 kgs of N That's in the order of 130 kilos of urea.
I think, you know, somewhere in that maybe 60 to 80 kgs of, of, urea per hectare, probably quite,
quite realistic. And I think we can expect a response on both fertilised and unfertilised country by, by using that in,
I think it will be a scaled response depending on the fertility. But,
it is you'll still get a response on unfertilised country from, from in
on the con side, the downsides, you’ll get a declining response as temperatures
get colder and it works best on soil temps over, five degrees if moisture is limiting, we’ll get a minimal response,
but thankfully at this time away we've got good moisture.
There's a an issue with stock withholding periods. It will vary depending on rates, you know, 7 to 21 days
for my, my investigations, you know, lower rates of around 60. You can under certain conditions get away with seven days.
But but you know, to be truly safe, you know 2 to 3 weeks is is more the time when you would want to keep stock off.
And then I'll talk about there's a cost, of course, that will be discussed coming up.
Let's do the same now for Gibberalic acid So it's a plant hormone,
that actually stimulates shoot and cell elongation to promote plant growth.
Now in winter, the production of Gibberalic acid in the plant actually diminishes it.
It shuts down, and it actually is done because it protects then the plant from wanting to grow in the colder months.
And that's when nutrient availability is often a bit less anyway. So it's it's almost a protection mechanism
the plant has. But we can trick the plant by adding some. And that does trigger response in dry matter.
So it's taken up through the leaves largely. I might start on the cons for this one,
because it's pretty important that, you know, you would only use this product once you have some leaf area.
And, you know, I'd hundred kilos of dry matter per hectare is about the minimum.
Some research work actually says it's higher than that, up to sort of 1000 to 1200.
But you know, I think at the moment our situation is that we don't have that sort of dry matter at all.
And, you know, it's not looking such a useful product to us right at this minute.
So that's the second point. You know, we haven't got it, but it's best applied. The other thing is it's best applied to, well, fertilised pastures.
You'll get sort of the sort of response you would expect is when it goes on those sort of pastures.
But the pasture response can still be variable depending on species. And you know, how temperatures are and etc.. So,
it's still a bit of an issue - on the pros side, You know, the response we could expect probably a 300
kilo dry matter per hectare response bit similar to that nitrogen story.
And and that response would come in about 30 days under those right conditions,
as said earlier with the leaf area etc.. Note that it it does actually cause some yellowing of the leaves, but
that actually isn't affecting pasture quality and it has no withholding period.
So that's again a plus. And you use it when soil temps are declining.
So, you know, from now through the sort of late August, early September, and it can be used in conjunction with,
with nitrogen. Right.
I wanted to just show you some costs that I've been researching on applying this stuff.
So urea, I mean, we're not talking, you know, semi truck, semi
trial loads where we're probably talking more smaller loads. And when I inquired on those smaller sort of tonnages,
the cost, you'll get a copy, I guess, of these slides from the recording later that you can see the detail.
But the costs there are about $81 a hectare if you're putting out,
you know, 60 kgs of this stuff per hectare of urea. If you go with heavier rates
of up to 100, then that 100, right? You'd be looking at about 120 bucks a hectare for,
for urea on the other side, the Gibberalic acid,
and I've quoted you on a, on the GALA, on the liquid form. I think the ProGibb form, which is the granular, is similar sort of costings.
But when I include the spray application cost of $25 hectare,
you know, put the cost of the product at at either 40 or 80 mils.
It's actually not a very expensive product on a per hectare basis, you know, for a $8 per hectare there respectively.
But, you know, you add the spraying cost to that. It's sort of around that sort of $30 mark per hectare.
And I think if you were going with Gibberalic acid I would be going with the 80 mil. Right.
Given the the research and knowledge about that product.
Okay. So, before we move
along a bit more with the economics, well, I'm actually not going to go too much more into the detail of, of,
you know, a budget with this. But I'm giving you some of the key figures that you can look at to,
to make decisions on, on, you know, what you might consider.
But I think one of the important point, important points to for you to know is then the value of that additional pasture
that you might grow due to nitrogen or generally acid. So, you know, some assumptions here are that the cost of feed grain,
we're going to say it's $400 a tonne, $0.40 a kilo. The metabolize energy of grain.
This grain is 13 megs of energy. The of energy of the pasture
that you would grow is is 11 megs of energy. And if we assume that we're putting nitrogen
on at 60 kgs of urea, and we're saying we're going to, you know, approximately
grow another 300 kilos of dry matter from that. And if we assume Gibberalic acid
is applied at 80 mills, that higher rate or the equivalent is 20g of the produced
to get the 300 kgs of dry matter. So what I wanted to show you is then to work out
what is the value of the extra pasture ground. So this, set of sort of,
equations and whatever is showing you that I'll leave you to read that maybe later,
but it is showing you that to grow that extra sort of pasture
and if you equate it to, you know, the megajoules of energy side of things and how much grain you would need,
it actually works out if grain is worth $400 a tonne to buy,
then the value of the extra pasture that you're growing, that 300 kilos of
dry matter is $102 a hectare.
Radio. So the next or the last slide I wanted to show you before
Matt takes over is in summary or
I guess a looking at the impact then of that extra 300 kgs of dry matter that we might be able to grow
by using one of these strategies. Let's look at it on the different groups.
So the 1st of June lambers and calvers, I guess,
we want to keep feeding this group until pasture builds into June - with the nitrogen,
addition, if that was applied ASAP I think by the end of the third week in June, we could have built,
you know, up to sort of 700 kilos of dry matter if it was given this kick by nitrogen.
You may decide then that you could move ewes and lambs onto this amount at lower stocking, right,
so that you could still be letting pastures get ahead. But of course you would still need to be supplementary feeding.
These ewes to maintain their lactation. So there is going to be some disturbance still isn't there.
And I think at that stage you still wouldn't consider Gibberalic acid because leaf area is still,
you know, too limiting in this situation. If we look at the next group,
the 1st of July lambing calving, if we applied nitrogen ASAP now and the paddock is locked up for June,
we could have sort of 850 kilos of dry matter at the 500 elevation.
And 750 at the thousand metre elevations at the start of July.
And I think if we could put ewes in at lower stocking rates so that the pastures go ahead.
And as you move into July, you know that when peak lambing,
occurs, that you would you would have the pastures that could, could still be building a bit more than that.
And you would cope. I mean, you may find there's still some level of supplementary feeding
for certainly for weaners or, or cows, but
that that could be a strategy or way of thinking for you
Nitrogen certainly remember will increase pasture quality as well which can also help compensate for this shortfall in quantity.
Matt will talk to that a bit more. I guess you could consider applying Gibberalic acid
as more leaf area develops. Particularly for the cattle and twin lambers.
And there's no withholding period with that product. But but it often requires paddocks to be left then to respond
graze. So it it's not a straightforward answer to just put out Gibberalic acid
And while the stock is still in there because you're trying to let it grow ahead.
And then lastly, this last group, the easier group, I guess we could call them, you know,
these paddocks will sit for them at 800 to 1000 depending on elevation,
if they're just locked up without any additions of anything. But, you know, on the higher elevations,
a thousand metres, you may consider that use of nitrogen, as maybe temperatures
warm a little more at the other end or Gib acid, you know, while it stays colder.
But, you know, cold enough for it to work, but just to help give a bit of a, boost to the response
if if you're still in need. So, I'll stop sharing.
Nyssa and, and back to you.
I'll thank you very much, Fiona. We actually have a couple of questions in the chat, if you don't mind.
So yes, the first one is ‘Can pastures still respond to urea application even though the daylight is decreasing
and therefore, Christina, assume the plants are slowing growth for the winter’. So, I'll just. Yeah.
Look, it's more to do with temperature. I mean, yes, day length is a big I guess it's it's not just to do with temperature
day length is important. But we are nearing the cold the shortest day and then we'll be increasing.
But but it's more the cold, I think as plants start to, you know, going to colder,
temperatures that's when, you know, you're not getting and soils, you know, get colder, you're not getting as much growth due to, due to the cold largely.
I think. Thanks, Fiona. Yes. One from Kathy is ‘How much leaf is needed to use GA effectively?’
Well, I think a bare minimum is sort of around that 800 kilos to the hectare of dry matter.
Yeah. And then as I said, I think in the talk there's some research in Victoria that's sort of saying, you know, thousand to 1200 is what is needed is minimum.
So from their research. So yeah, I wouldn't be going under 800 to,
to make it valuable, you know, and worthwhile. That's great. Thank you so much, Fiona.
If anyone has any further questions, pop them in the chat and, we'll address them at the end.
I will now hand over to Matt.
Thanks, Nyssa. Hopefully that's coming through okay. Yep.
I'll see if I can get this to work.
Is that coming up? Beautiful. Thanks, Matt. Righteo. Good evening, everyone.
So as Fiona sort of alluded to, your feed requirements at the moment in terms of supplementation
are really going to depend on where you sit in the scheme of things.
In terms of what class of stock you've got on hand at the moment
and, and what elevation you're sitting out as well. So I'll just I'll just have a few slides here
and there are some handouts which we'll send out. Following the webinar which, which we'll step you through in a bit more detail, but
I'll just, brief something about sheep and cattle. So firstly, was sheep , you might have seen graphs like this before,
but this just shows how energy requirements change for both single and twin bearing ewes
during pregnancy and then into lactation. And really the amount of pressure,
and the feed requirements at the present just depends on where you sit on this graph.
So if you're an autumn or early winter lamber, then you're going to be really in the on
the right hand side, and really under a lot of pressure at the moment,
in terms of trying to keep up the amount of, supplement and energy that those lactating
or light pregnancy ewes require. But in contrast, if you're a late winter or early spring lamber,
then you'll be sitting towards the left hand side of this graph and nutrient requirements at the moment aren’t much more than a dry ewe.
So, what I'm going to do now
is just in the next couple of slides is just really home in on the, the right hand side of the graphs, so if you’re lambing,
either now or in the next month to six weeks, I'm just going to have a look
at the impact of this short green pick and how it might actually,
that might actually impact your supplementary feed requirements.
The other thing that before we look at that is I just want to flag, I guess the pre toxs issue, or window in
for those of you that are in that sort of late pregnancy stage, even though there's a bit of green pick coming away
and it's going to take the pressure off, as we get a bit more height,
it is important that if you are in that really late sort of, you know, the last four weeks of pregnancy,
just to make sure that you keep, keep the supplement up to the stock
so that you meet the requirements in late pregnancy, because that is really the the period where we can get caught out, with pregnancy toxemia
which is particularly, I guess, prone in twin bearing ewes
because of the rapidly increasing, nutrient requirements, you know, as last three weeks of pregnancy.
So in the attachment that we'll send out after the webinar, there are a series of tables. And with these tables I've used Grazfeed just to have a look
at the impact of green feed on the amount of supplement required.
And I've done it for different stages of pregnancy and also into lactation.
This table is for Maureen. I use with single lambs and we're now 14 days into lambing,
and down the left hand side is different amounts of barley going from zero right through to 1.6 kilos per head per day.
So a really high, amount there, and the high amount is where we have no green in the paddock.
And so, if we went back a few weeks ago, I particularly in that Yass
Yass Boorowa region of the south east where we, we had
minimal, dead feed in paddocks and, and virtually no green.
If we had lambing ewes those, those, supplement, you know, the grain, the amount of grain you need to feed out
when there’s no green in the paddock is, is quite scary. But once you actually start getting a bit of green in the system.
So we've got one centimetre in the next column, two centimetres or 700, kilos a dry matter,
and then up to three centimetres, you can see that the amount of grain that we actually have to put out actually reduces quite quickly.
So I'll be going from, you know, one virtually 1.6 kilos back to 0.7
once we've got 500 kilos or one centimetre of green in the paddock
and then at at 700 kilos or two centimetres, we're now back to 0.2,
kilos per head per day of barley to be able to meet their needs. So I just you can use these tables
just to get a sense of how much you can ratchet back. The amount of barley or pellets,
that you're feeding out, in those different, those different classes of livestock
through through pregnancy and into lactation. This table now is exactly the same, approach.
But now we're dealing with twins and the same pattern. It's just that the numbers are slightly a little bit higher, as you would expect.
So, you know, 1.8 kilos without any green in the system. And then we're back to 1.4
with, with 400 kilos and, and then back to point. Sorry. Yeah. 1.4 and then back to point four,
with 700 kilos of grain in the paddock. So just highlights the power of that short green feed.
And, you know, it really does pay to have a very close look at what stock of grazing and particularly the height, you know,
might not be much there in terms of density, but it's really the height that's really going to drive intake.
And animal performance at the moment. So this is a photo, that I took yesterday
actually up at Grabbing Gullen in a phalaris, sub clover paddock and I reckon this paddock
had about 350 kilos of green dry out of per hectare,
currently being grazed by lambing ewes and supplemented with hay.
And as you can see there in the photo, that the green pick actually has a little bit of height to it
and would be making up, a good proportion of the daily energy needs.
So height and density will improve, as we move a bit further into winter, especially if we can rest paddocks.
And again, height really does drive intake density determines,
how long the paddock will last or our stocking.
Next slide here is now for cattle. And again there'll be some handouts which which tip you through this. But
really the same thing. We have a, a graph showing the the nutrition requirements for pregnancy and lactation.
And again we can see a similar pattern to the ewes with nutrient requirements increasing quite dramatically in the last 3 to 4 weeks of pregnancy.
And then really continuing to climb, until the cow hits peak lactation,
which is around six weeks after calving.
So again, as with sheep, the amount of pressure that you're under the moment will will be driven by where you sit
on that graph. And if you are in August, September, calfer,
then you're just heading into that final trimester and you've got a little bit of time to build some pasturing, calving paddocks,
and maybe put a little bit of condition on cows if needed. But if you're, if you're calving now
or in the next 4 to 6 weeks, then, you just don't have that that time.
obviously, unfortunately. So supplementary feeding will be really important in combination with that bit of green feed that's coming away.
The other thing too. And I'll just touch on fat score in a moment as well. But both fat score and nutrition are really important.
In terms of getting cows back in calf.
And cycling again. So if we've got cows grazing, and I've just broken up into two different categories.
So if the grazing 500 to 700 kilos of green,
which is about one and a half to two centimetres a height, so very, very short grain peak,
the cows are working really hard and grazing for a long period of the day.
Their requirements are around 120 megajoules a day, and they're getting about 70 to 85 megajoules out of that short green pick.
And this is all done through Grazfed. So if we look at how much supplement we might need to do a top up
for these cows on this short green feed, I've just listed a few options here
with with different, pasture hays or legume hays. With cereal grains and pellet mixes,
ddg you could also use, cottonseed
and hay as another option. Here or even silage good quality silage
Doing all this Grazfeed work, what it really shows is that
when we have these small amounts of green, you know, under, say, less than an inch in the old language, it's really important
that we provide high quality, high energy supplements in early lactation,
to really drive milk production and also to help those cows, start, you know, recover and start cycling again.
So they, ready to get back into calve.
If we've got more than inch of green feed, we can, the cows are actually able to harvest
more energy, and we can actually then get away with a good quality hay.
You sort of want to be looking at about eight and a half to nine megajoules minimum, particularly for the on the shorter end at around that inch.
But that good quality hay in combination with that sort of amount of green in the system,
can do the job quite well. And then once we get up to sort of three centimetres and five,
you know, you can see that the cows are working hard, but they are able to actually harvest,
enough of that high quality green to be able to meet their requirements.
And just just a last one on this, with fat score, the general recommendation for fat score is to carve down. In a fat score,
sort of three, which is the photo on the right hand side. And what the researchers shown through
the maternal efficiency program is that producers that carve down in a fat score two and a half or better.
So a two and a half is on the left hand side, are able to have a more,
a higher conception rate and a more condensed calving pattern. So managing fat score
particularly in years like this can be really challenging. And you might be looking at cows at home and, and sort of thinking, yeah,
I do have some age groups that, might be around that two and a half to three. And so you'd be looking at maintaining fat score through to calving if you can,
if you've got cows that are a bit wider, than your fat score two and a half then,
and you've got some time, then drafting up based on fat scoring and allocating some
some better feed to those lot of cows just to try and get a bit more cover on them before calving will really help,
down the track in terms of getting them to be able to join up and get some some good conception rates
later in the year.
What it's interesting that, there has also been a bit of research to show that, you know, while fat score at calving is is really important.
Nutrition during early lactation is also, very important. And so, there's some research done out of Grafton, a number of years ago
that, that looked at the influence of both, pregnancy nutrition and lactation nutrition.
And what they did is they split, this was in first calvers they split up,
a mob of cows or first calvers into two and they manage their pregnancy nutrition in a way that half of the group
calve down in a condition score of two and a half to three. The other half were on a low plane of nutrition,
and calve down in a score of 1 to 1 or half. So very light one group.
The other group was sort of, where you sort of want them they then manage the lactation
nutrition in two different planes, a high and a low. And the high plane of nutrition was designed to achieve
0.2 kilos a day gain between calving and,
joining. And the conception rate there was 97%.
The low group also, even though they they calve down in suboptimal condition, they were also fed a high plane of nutrition.
And that actually resulted in 86% back in calf. So not as good, but still, a pretty reasonable result.
The other two groups, the low plane we can see that good fat score at calving but did it tough
during lactation and we can see a drop in conception rate And the, the low low group had a really, really big drop off,
down to 47%. So the key message for this slide is that fat score
at the point of calving has the biggest impact on conception rates But most calving nutrition is also important.
And if you're looking at your cows and going they’re they're in a bit lighter condition than what I would have liked.
And you don't have much lead time to really turn that around before calving. If you can get in in that really early lactation period.
And, and really make sure the nutrition requirements are met. Then you still are able to
You, you still be able to set yourself up to get a good result
conception rate wise and which is, you know, really important for profitability in beef herds.
Just to finish, there's there are a couple of handy tools out there if you're trying to work out
ok, I've got a bit of green feed, but how much extra grain or hay might I need?
There are a few tools out there that can help you work that out. So there's two tools by the DPI that, have been released.
over the last sort of ten years. The drought feed calculator was released in, in 2014.
And then the newer version in 2019. The newer version, which is the Drought and supplementary feed calculator,
takes into account both pasture. It takes to count how much the stock is getting at pasture as well as,
rather than just a forehand feed ration. And Grazfeed does a similar thing,
but I think with any of these tools, particularly the second and third tool there where you are putting pasture inputs into these tools,
some training, in pasture assessment, you know, I think is really important just so you can have more confidence in the results in
some of these calculators, put out. Thanks, Nyssa I'll pull that up there.
Thank you so much for that, Matt. No questions in the chat so far.
I will handball to Brett, please. No worries.
Hopefully that's come up. Obviously we're, very mindful of time and we’re
right So getting very, very close to the, the time that we allotted for the, the webinars
so thanks everyone for hanging in there. I was going to cover a few little tips and tricks and, and other bits.
But I thought it might be worthwhile mentioning that, in the not too distant
future, we will be holding another webinar, looking at, draft feeding,
and some tips and tricks with different foods, looking at managing ewes, looking at using corn, cottonseed and some of those, bits and pieces.
So keep an eye out for that. But but also, I would probably take the time, obviously,
with the level inquiries Matt and myself and other people are getting, we're seeing,
a lot of people using hay, and from a cost point of view and even the discussion there today is,
I said to Matt, historically, we see a lot of people tend to use hay early. And really
it would be better to use other things and keep that hay to when we really need it, which is when we're changing feeds, moving animals on and off different,
feeds when we're changing. I have when ewes and cows are
coming into the back end of pregnancy that last or month, six weeks and then into that early lactation,
you've really got to have that roughage. So it's one of those ones
that I would definitely be saying to people, be aware Yeah, you can need that hay
And, the things that we're finding at the moment, it's becoming very difficult to source hay is starting to get up there.
We're still seeing a fair bit of availability of grains, byproducts and the like. What I would also say to people is,
just being aware of some of the weird, wonderful feed out there. This evening I had someone ring me up
and ask me about potatoes. Hopefully he’s not online and I won't mention any names, but,
Yeah, it sounded pretty good when I worked out that was 20%. dry matter and it was going to be cost him somewhere in the vicinity
around about $777 a tonne on farm, and all of a sudden that you went, geez, that's not cheap.
No, it's not. So it's really, really important. I think while we've still got Matt and Fiona online.
If there's any specific questions that the people have got, please feel free to put them into the chat.
And we can handle them. Also, what we will do is send out to everyone some useful links.
Those those, tools that Matt talked about. We've also got the confinement feeding manual, that was developed in New South Wales.
We've also got the drought fire and flood guide as well. That will will send the links out for those as well. So
if there's no other questions, we're bang right on 7:30.
Any questions? Or not.
Appreciate that everyone, Nyssa Nothing in the chat. I'll just go to a couple of closing comments for our very patient listeners.
So as I mentioned at the start, your feedback informs what we do
for all of our events, what topics we cover and what you'd like to see. I will also circulate this via email after the conclusion of this webinar.
But if you have a chance, if you could please scan the QR code and submit your feedback, that would be much appreciated.
Also, I'd just like to quickly throw to Fiona as a bit of a plug. There's a couple of events coming up to support this webinar.
On Wednesday the 4th of June one is it Bowning and the other one is at Boroowa
Fiona. Yeah, thanks for that Nyssa. I just thought it was a prime opportunity
for anyone that did want the face to face as well. Both Matt Lieschke and myself and Alex Stephens, our district vet at
Yass will be, you know, talking again along a similar lines to tonight.
So Bowning next Wednesday, the 4th of June from 930 to 12. It's actually at the Bowning Hall.
Bowning is not a very big place, so, I can't remember the name of the street, but hopefully you find it.
And then we will move over to Boroowa in the afternoon and from 230 to 5 p.m..
And CSIRO have kindly offered that we could use the seminar room. So they're on the Cunningare road.
As you head into Boorowa, you turn onto Cunningare Road and and CSIRO's research station is in there now.
And yeah, it will will be meeting there. But but do email me or or ring if you want to discuss.
We've got a flyer coming out tomorrow on that. Thanks, Nyssa.
Thank you very much Fiona I've just popped the links to both of these events in the chat. If anyone would like to jump in and see those details.
But if there's no further questions, thank you very much for joining us this evening, and we look forward to meeting you again.
Thank you. Thank you.
