Filling the autumn feed gap
| Project start date: | 14 February 2020 |
| Project end date: | 15 January 2024 |
| Project status: | In progress |
| Livestock species: | Grass-fed Cattle |
| Relevant regions: | Western Australia |
| Site location: | South west Western Australia: Scott River; Nillup; Margaret River |
Summary
This producer demonstration site aims to demonstrate the potential of autumn grazed fodder crops that will provide a lower cost and more productive (measured by pasture quality, quantity, animal performance and cost benefit analysis) alternative to supplement feeding with conserved fodder for beef in the high rainfall Lower South West region in WA.
Objectives
By December 2023, in the Lower South West region of Western Australia:
1. Demonstrate and assess the potential and persistence of 6-10 autumn forage crops (eg. cowpea, lablab, soybean, sorghum, sulla, millet, sudan, raphanobrassica, forage rape, lucerne, turnip, centro, forage maize) to provide a 10% increase in target weights and stocking rates of weaners during that period.
2. Conduct a cost benefit analysis to determine the relative economic performance of the demonstrated forage options compared to existing practices of supplement feeding conserved fodder Version April 2019 Page 18 of 34.
3. Develop a project producer guide to support and increase the knowledge skills and confidence of 30 core and observer producers in annual summer/autumn forage crops
4. 75 per cent of core producers will have adopted annual autumn forage crops into their pasture systems and 25% of observers intend to.
5. Conduct 1 initial project workshop and 11 field days over 4 years (approx. 350 total participants) and develop 5 case studies to showcase the demonstration site results and encourage adoption of key practices.
Progress
The project ‘Filling the Autumn Feed Gap’ being managed by the Lower Blackwood Land Conservation District Committee (LCDC) is aimed at beef producers in the Lower South West Region and aims to demonstrate the potential of autumn grazed fodder crops to provide a lower cost and more productive alternative to supplementary feeding with conserved fodder.
The project has now completed its year 3 demonstration site seeding and data collection (including pasture quality, quantity, and animal weights) from 3 demonstration sites. Year 3 summer pasture cut yields ranged from 4.25t/ha to 1t/ha, Energy 10 MJ/kg to 8.9 Mj/kg, and Protein 15.5% to 8.4%. On the Scott River site a total of 40ha was seeded, 56 cows were grazed for 95 days (hay was feed freely),
with an average weight gain of just under 100kg, or 1kg/hd/day. Weight gain information from the Forest Grove site is still pending at the time of this report.
