L.PDS.1807 - PDS: Bulking up pastures with cereals

Summary

The bulking up pastures with cereals MLA Producer Demonstration Site (PDS), conducted in Western Australia’s Lakes region, was designed to demonstrate that sowing cereals and canola into legume pastures can improve sheep profitability and productivity, by increasing carrying capacity/stocking rates through improved pasture composition, quality and quantity.

Objectives

The project aimed to demonstrate that sowing cereals into legume pastures can improve sheep profitability and productivity in the Lake Grace area. This was by increasing carrying capacity through improved pasture composition, quality and quantity of pastures.

The objectives were to demonstrate these impacts on five properties in the Lakes region of Western Australia, with sites running for three years. It was expected that this would show an increase in pasture quality and quantity, which in turn would increase livestock carrying capacity and stocking rates. These increases were expected to improve productivity and profitability key performance indicators and lead to higher adoption rates of the practice throughout the area. It was also key to alleviate fears about cereals outcompeting legumes, or the legumes being grazed out of the pastures, by determining pasture composition.

Key findings

There was great variation in results across the three years, making the results less reliable. However, when combining the three years of feed quality and quantity results, it was shown that:

• Sowing cereals into pastures can provide benefits of $19/ha, with 60kg/ha cereal was shown to be the most profitable seeding rate.
• The results indicate that sowing cereals is only profitable if early growing season food on offer increases by more than 30% and to capitalise on the benefits of sowing cereals stocking rate must be increased.
• Condition scores are higher in mobs that grazed pastures bulked with cereals than those grazing traditional pastures, and predominantly led to improvement in condition over late pregnancy to lactation.
• Pasture quality was reduced in late winter and spring by the addition of cereals.
• Analysis showed that it is only profitable to sow cereals into a proportion of pasture, due to a diminishing return trend revealed in the analysis.
• To capitalise on the benefits of sowing cereals stocking rate must be increased. When additional food on offer was 72% it was optimal to run a 9% higher stocking rate.
• Condition scores are higher in mobs that grazed pastures bulked with cereals than those grazing traditional pastures, and predominantly led to improvement in condition over late pregnancy to lactation.

Benefits to industry

This PDS benefited WA sheep producers by helping increase awareness, knowledge and skills, adoption of cereals in pastures. Sowing cereals into or with legume pastures is a practice that is now being seen as common across WA, helping red meat producers achieve sustainably higher stocking rates through more reliable early season feed. This leads to higher profitability, but has also reduced risk, making producers better equipped to handle poor seasons as they have earlier, more reliable feed. The findings of the project are easily implemented on-farm, as it is a simple practice that can be easily adopted or tried for one pasture cycle or season.

MLA action

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 system.

Future research