21 March 2007

Mixed farmers in the Liebe region have reverted to an old way of using a traditional forage oats to provide some early feed for stock and to keep the animals off newly sown or germinating improved pastures.

And in another approach to filling feedgaps, they are increasingly realising the value of saltbush as a source of high protein feed in autumn and a shelter for newborn lambs and their mothers.

Liebe farmer, Gary Butcher, says "While many farmers already appreciate Saltbush's value as 'living feedlots' his family is experimenting with plots of Saltbush interspersed with equal areas of arable country, planted with new species like subtropical grasses to provide roughage to balance the protein in the Saltbush next door.

The aim with oats is to plant in mid-April for grazing three to four weeks after germination, a system which Brianna Peake, executive officer with the Liebe Group, says used to be common practice but has become less widely used over the past 10 years.

"Growers are beginning to revert back to the practice now as they are not getting the early season bulk they want from improved legume pastures," Ms Peake said.

"Many of them are planting the oat variety Pallinup which, as it grows past ear emergence, becomes somewhat unpalatable, forcing the stock to eat the weeds that have grown underneath the canopy.

"That's a very effective weed control strategy that also allows the oats to continue on for a grain harvest."

Ms Peake is benchmarking whole farm feed supply on five mixed farms in the Liebe region in research supported by the national Grain & Graze program.

Grain & Graze is a collaborative partnership between Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and Land & Water Australia (LWA).

The program supports 57 projects designed to improve profitability on mixed farms in nine regions around Australia, as well as four national projects.

Gary and Kerry Butcher and their son James run one of the five Liebe mixed farms Ms Peake is benchmarking under the Grain & Graze project.

The family crops 2,800 of their total 3,900 hectares, with wheat the main income earner, and runs a Merino and crossbred flock of up to 2,500 sheep on a range of pastures - those early sown oats, self regenerating Caliph medic, stubbles and the increasingly popular saltbush.

The farm lies within a salt lake system that flows into the larger Ballidu Lake system, and some 800 hectares of the property are salt affected, with another 300 hectares fenced to remnant vegetation and planted trees.

The Butchers have been long-term supporters of Landcare and Mr Butcher is currently president of the Pithara Dalwallinu Landcare Group.

"It was people in the Landcare Group who really activated the Liebe grower group, which was established in the mid 1990s," Mr Butcher said.

"The purpose of the group was to attract research funds to the area and coordinate local research and development.

"It's grown to a current membership of 120 local farm businesses and has a staff of five.

"It was also people in the Landcare Group who became interested in the potential of trees to dry up sand plain seeps, and who thought bulk purchase of tree and saltbush seedlings would be a good idea."

Mr Butcher said the group had chosen Rivermore saltbush, which seemed to be more palatable to stock than the Old Man variety. It was easy to grow from cuttings but, because of the time required to run a nursery, the group bought seedlings in bulk from Esperance.

With a subsidy from the local Landcare group, they came at a discounted price.

Mr Butcher says about half the family property is heavy, red soil, salmon gum country, with a pH of 6 to 7, and the remainder a mix of gravely duplex soils and clay valley floors with edges of sand over the clay.

The soils dictate what is done on them and it had been difficult to obtain much production or return from the saline, valley floor country until it was planted to saltbush, which "grew well where nothing else would".

The Butchers now have 60 hectares planted to saltbush, with probably another 120 hectares that is suitable and 20,000 Rivermore seedlings to be planted in the 2007 winter.

"Saltbush is becoming more and more important to us, and we have a couple of eight hectare plots of them - living feedlots if you like - with eight hectares of arable country in between them," Mr Butcher said.

"We were looking for Utopia, I suppose, with those arable intervals, thinking we could seed them with a source of roughage, subtropical species perhaps, that would balance the protein in the saltbush next door, but we have had only mixed success.

"Grain & Graze has done some work on perennial grasses and lucerne, and they have been patchy and seem to be very soil dependent, but we will persist with the perennials on different soil types.

"The saltbush itself, though, also provides shelter for lambing ewes in June and early July, usually the coldest and wettest time of the year. We do supplement the sheep in the saltbush plots with hay for roughage and the combination works really well."

Mr Butcher says the first great value of Pallinup oats sown in April is production of feed that - however short the crop might be - can be grazed to give improved pastures of Caliph medic and serradella pastures time to bulk up.

"The longer you can keep sheep off pastures after germination, the better grazing you get later on," he said.

"Then, when Pallinup oats gets to the stage of ear emergence, we've found it is somewhat unpalatable to sheep, and they will wander between the 250 millimetre spaced rows of oats to clean up the radish and ryegrass.

"You can harvest the oat grain as an opportunity crop."

For information about the benchmarking of whole farm feed supply by the Liebe Group, contact Brianna Peake on 08 9664 2030 and for more information about the Grain & Graze Program, contact Phil Barrett-Lennard, Grain & Graze Regional Coordinator for the Northern Agricultural Region, on 08 9475 0753; Richard Price, National Coordinator, on 02 6295 6300, mobile 0409 624 297; Gillian Stewart on 02 6263 6042; Lynne Sealie on 02 6263 6021 or visit www.grainandgraze.com.au.

Grain & Graze Regional Coordinators

Avon Region - Linda Leonard - 08 9690 2191
Border Rivers Region - Rachel Charles - 07 4671 7900
Central West/Lachlan Region - Jodie Dean - 02 6895 1015
Corangamite/Glenelg-Hopkins Region - Cam Nicholson - 03 5258 3860
Eyre Peninsula Region - Alison Frischke - 08 8680 6223
Mallee Region - Zubair Shahzad - 03 50 219 103
Maranoa/Balonne Region - Stephen Ginns - 07 4620 8122
Murrumbidgee Region - Katrina Sait - 02 6924 4633
Northern Agricultural Region - Philip Barrett-Lennard - 08 94750753