Big plantings of the fodder shrub tagasaste and more recent ones of subtropical perennial grasses are improving stock performance and reducing pressure on the environment on Alan and Joy Heitman's 5,200 hectare property, Arena, at Mingenew, Western Australia.
The Heitman family's Arena country runs from gravel sands through yellow sand plain to sand over clay valley floors. This last group - "little valleys that would grow absolutely nothing" - was where the Heitmans began planting tagasaste.
Arena now has 350 hectares under tagasaste and the Heitmans expect to graze a cow to the hectare for six to eight months a year - even 10 months if they fluke a summer rain.
Mr Heitman says while there is "a bit" of pasture growth between these 10 metre, twin rows of tagasaste, it isn't worth much, and stock in these paddocks get hay in late summer when the tagasaste leaves close up due to moisture stress.
Cold winds can be a major threat to newborn lambs in the district but, while small scale trials of lambing under the protection of the tagasaste rows have delivered a 20 per cent increase in marking rates, the Heitmans are yet to try the system with big numbers of ewes.
The shrub needs regular pruning down to a metre high to stop it from growing too tall - this is done mechanically by a contractor. The Heitmans apply 100 kilograms of superphosphate to the hectare every year, as they also do with the subtropical perennial grasses.
"Those perennial grasses - Gatton and Bambatsi panics, Signal grass, Finecut and common Rhodes grass and Splenda setaria - have done extremely well since we began planting them about five years ago," Mr Heitman said.
"We needed something besides clover to provide ground cover on these unstable soils.
"We sprayed the first paddock out with Roundup, followed up with Sprayseed to produce a grassy cover and sowed with long narrow points and a firm run on the press wheels.
"That pushed the seed down into the trench, but not so you couldn't see it - five millimetres maybe, and it was a roaring success."
Mr Heitman said clover failed to persist under the perennial grasses because cattle tended to walk it out as they moved around the grass clumps.
The main questions about subtropical perennial grasses were:
� whether the poorer soil paddocks where they had been planted could be sprayed out and sown to wheat, and
� whether the farmers involved would want to do that anyway.
Arena is one of four properties being benchmarked for whole farm feed supply by Sarah Knight, project officer with the Mingenew-Irwin Group, with support from the national Grain & Graze program.
Sarah Knight recorded stock movements on one block of the Heitman's farm and calculated the grazing days per hectare for each paddock in Dry Sheep Equivalents (DSE).
Ms Knight found tagasaste (6.0 DSE/ha) and the perennial grasses (5.4 DSE/ha) supported far higher stocking rates than the annual pastures (3.6 DES/ha). However, annual pastures were still the biggest contributor to stock as they covered the largest area (35%).
Table 1: 12 month averaged stocking rates, total DSE grazing days and area by pasture types from May 05 to April 06
| Fodder | Dry Sheep Equivalents /Ha | Total DSE Grazing Days | Area in ha of each Pasture Type | % by Area | % by Grazing |
| Annual Pastures | 3.6 | 1,418,981 | 1,069 | 35 | 50 |
| Barley Stubble | 2.6 | 149,467 | 258 | 8 | 5 |
| Wheat Stubble | 0.6 | 60,975 | 303 | 10 | 2 |
| Lupin Stubble | 0.4 | 46,996 | 820 | 27 | 2 |
| Oats | 3.6 | 174,794 | 133 | 4 | 6 |
| Tagasaste | 6.0 | 796,913 | 364 | 12 | 30 |
| Perennial Grasses | 5.4 | 208,491 | 106 | 4 | 7 |
Ms Knight said the Grain & Graze Northern Agricultural Region project team were preparing a booklet which would detail case studies of farmers who had planted subtropical perennial grass species. This booklet will soon be available to anyone who is interested.
Grain & Graze itself 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 on mixed farms in nine regions around Australia, as well as four national projects.
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 5021 9103
Maranoa/Balonne Region - Stephen Ginns - 07 4620 8122
Northern Agricultural Region - Philip Barrett-Lennard - 08 9475 0753
Murrumbidgee Regional Coordinator - Katrina Sait - 02 6924 4633.
For more information about the Grain & Graze Program in the Northern Agricultural Region, contact Regional Coordinator, Philip Barrett-Lennard on 08 9475 0753 or 0429 977 042; Richard Price, National Coordinator, on 02 6295 6300 or mobile 0409 624 297; Gillian Stewart on 02 6263 6042; Lynne Sealie on 02 6263 6021, or visit www.grainandgraze.com.au.