L.PDS.1811 - PDS: Weaner to yearling production pays off

Summary

This project will demonstrate if high quality forage crop and perennial pasture systems can be utilised to meet target weights for finishing steers on the Monaro and increase overall farm profit relative to the traditional base selling enterprise system.

Objectives

By December 2021, in the Monaro region of Southern NSW:
1. Seven (7) producer demonstration sites will validate / ground truth the modelling projections demonstrating the relative profitability of the following:
(7) finishing pasture systems in beef enterprises;
(a) Improved grass pasture (phalaris and rye grass based) – 2 sites
(b) Wheat (with pellet supplements) – 1 site
(c)Oats / Cereals – 3 sites
(d) Control / baseline (permanent pasture) – already documented in Grassgro® modelling paper – 1 site

2. Validate on-farm the following metrics for each of the six (6) demonstration systems;
(a) Dry Matter Production (kg DM/ha/year)
(b) Feed quality (DMD, ME etc)
(c) Steer live-weight gains (g/hd/day)
(d) Percentage (%) of farm area (ha) required for finishing steers to target weights
(e) Soil fertility (phosphorus, sulphur, PBI, K, Ca, Na, Mg, Al, CEC, EC, pH)

3. Conduct a cost benefit analysis to determine the overall profitability of each system in context of whole farm profit compared to the traditional base weaner selling system. Key performance indicators to include;
(a) income ($/DSE) and income/HA
(b) enterprise expenses ($/DSE) and per HA
(c) gross margin ($/DSE) and per HA
(d) net profit ($/DSE)

4. Demonstrate the value of EID cattle tags to monitor performance of the treatment groups.

5. Collate five years of comparative analysis data for Monaro beef enterprises for11 farm businesses participating in the MFS benchmarking group. (These 11 businesses includes 4 of the core farm businesses hosting sites).

6. Deliver a series of educational, training and information activities to upskill 71 core farm businesses to increase confidence, awareness and capacity to adopt and integrate steer finishing systems into their farm enterprise. Estimated 65% of these businesses will learn new knowledge and skills resulting in 35% adopting (or intention to adopt) new finishing practices on-farm.

Key findings

All demonstration paddocks in the project with specialist crops and pastures enabled steers to be held over the winter to reach higher weights than the traditional system of selling as weaners before their first winter. In every case tested this strategy lead to much higher profit per ha on the sown paddock compared with the farm average and in so doing significantly increased the whole farm profit.

Benefits to industry

The combination of the initial modelling with these PDS results lends confidence to Monaro and other southern tablelands producers to change their beef systems from focusing on number of head produced as weaners to targeting heavier weight steers either finished for slaughter or suited directly to feedlot entry. While this change will increase the total DSE carried over winter it also facilitates a beef system which retains a more weaners throughout spring and shifts the peak pasture requirement into the period of greatest pasture growth enabling higher utilisation overall and of dry matter when it is at its highest quality.

MLA action

Results of the project will be made available on the PDS search tool and have been presented at two field days, in multiple newsletters and media articles, as well as being published on the MFS website which is accessible to the public.

MLA continues to deliver the Producer Demonstration Site (PDS) program, supporting livestock producers working in peer-to-peer groups to pursue new skills, knowledge and management practices applicable to their own commercial livestock production systems.

Future research

Based on the very high digestibility levels measured in these specialist crops and pastures it is suggested that adding an additional digestibility class to the Green component of GrazFeed would enhance its utility for helping to manage these high productivity systems.