Good clover Bad clover
| Project start date: | 01 March 2017 |
| Project end date: | 14 January 2020 |
| Project status: | Completed |
| Livestock species: | Sheep |
| Relevant regions: | Southern Australia |
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Summary
Varieties of oestrogenic clover include Dinninup, Dwalganup, Yarloop and Geraldton. Substances in these clovers, known as isoflavones, have an effect on sheep similar to that of natural oestrogens. These isoflavones are responsible for a variety of symptoms in sheep including lowered ewe fertility, increased difficult births, prolapse of the uterus, udder development in maiden ewes and wethers and urethral blockages in wethers.
There is no cure for the permanent infertility in ewes that have repeated exposure to large amounts of oestrogenic clovers over a long period of time. These ewes should be culled. The cumulative effect may occur over a 2-3 year period of exposure. Pastures with greater than 20% oestrogenic clovers are considered problematic.
Objectives
Measurable project objectives included:
increase the awareness of 70% of the collaborating group members on the issues encountered with oestrogenic clovers
90% of the of the core group producers adopting practices to reduce the impacts of clover disease, resulting in increased ewes scanned in lamb by 20%, increased marking percentage by 10% and decreased dry ewes by 5%.
Progress
This project has demonstrated that if properly trained, producers can learn to identify all four oestrogenic cultivars, but they lack the confidence and time to undertake risk assessments of paddocks.
Training on risk assessment was outside the scope and the resources of this project and would require a coordinated training program.
Most of the core producers were confident to be able to identify the bad cultivars on their farm, but still lacked the time and high skill levels to undertake a full farm risk assessment.
A commercial agronomist on Kangaroo Island was trained to be 100% repeatable in identifying the four bad cultivars and was also competent in the stick method.
