Managing Crop Grazing: Producer Demonstration Site
| Project start date: | 30 June 2017 |
| Project end date: | 03 April 2020 |
| Project status: | Completed |
| Livestock species: | Sheep, Lamb |
| Relevant regions: | Western Australia |
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Summary
The autumn feed gap is a period of the year that limits stocking rates and per head growth rates due to lack of available feed. Current practice is to hand feed, with lower stocking rates. Current common practice to address this feed gap is to lower stocking rates from summer until late winter, in order to reduce expensive hand feeding costs. This can involve selling off lighter store sheep early and having fewer wethers on farm or just running a lighter stocking rate all year round. This can result in sub-optimal stocking rates during the growing season. Crop grazing can rectify this by providing an alternative feed source to reduce hand feeding and potentially increase stocking rates.
This producer demonstration site project aimed to demonstrate advantages of crop grazing on profitability and enhance producer understanding of how to best apply the tool in different seasons and situations.
Using paired-paddock methodology, performance of sheep grazing crops was compared to sheep grazing available pastures. Crops were grazed for 10 to 44 days during June, July and August, which coincided with three years of late season breaks. Stocking rates varied between 0.5 to 7.2 DSE/ha, using ewes lambing in June-July, or dry hoggets.
Objectives
The objectives were to do so by demonstrating the impact on four properties in Western Australia's Great Southern, over three years. It was expected that this would show an increase in feed by deferring pastures during crop grazing, and a condition score advantage in ewes grazing crops compared to those grazing pasture. In addition, harvest yield was expected to be impacted by less than 10%. An economic analysis was conducted to show impacts on lambing performance and overall profitability.
Progress
Knowledge, Skills, Confidence & Adoption Results:
• 93% of producers increased their confidence in crop grazing to an average level of 7.4/10
producers’ involved in the project increased knowledge, skills and confidence in pasture manipulation and selecting its timing.
• 85% of producers found the project to be valuable and would recommend the PDS program to others.
• Satisfaction and value of the project involvement was rated as an average of 7/10. 78% of producers indicated that the likelihood of them adopting crop grazing had increased.
Impact:
• The impact on crop profitability averaged a $81.13/ha profit over the three years (range - $100/ha to +$408/ha).
• Reduced costs of feeding (calculated at 12c/h/day) combined with reproductive impacts resulted in sheep net benefits of $11.42/ewe and $4.75/hogget grazed on crops.
• Impact on whole of business gross margin was an average benefit of $15.67/ha for reproducing ewes.
• Hoggets averaged a $10.19/ha profit which only used the feed and labour-saving costs to offset yield impact.
