Management Solutions - Morelamb Quality Pastures

Summary

The volume of lamb exported from Australia has doubled during the last decade and southwest Victoria is a key lamb producing region. Most forage systems in this region are based on perennial grasses, even though they often comprise less than 50% of the total pasture available. An overwhelming advantage of these production systems is their low cost structure, but seasonal and geographical variations in both edaphic and climatic drivers of systems performance are significant impediments to production efficiency and quality control. The propositions underlying this work were:
(a) The profitable production of sheep meat is dependent on high levels of pasture production being efficiently utilised by grazing sheep of high genetic merit.
(b) Most grazing lands are highly heterogeneous in soil resources, climate and landscape and yet a limited range of forage options are widely used.
(c) Productivity gains and the ability to supply high quality lamb all year round will be limited if the industry continues to rely on a limited range of forage options
(d) Alternative annual and perennial pastures have potential to overcome some of the limitations of current systems, such as winter feed gaps and poor summer growth.
(e) The feeding value of legumes is greater than that of grasses but the legume component of most pastures in southwest Victoria is often less than 20%.
(f) To realise this potential in lamb production systems we must identify appropriate plants and their management requirements for different situations and integrate them spatially and temporally into whole farm systems in ways that lead to increased profit and reduced risk.
The Morelamb project comprised of four modules. We first used bio-economic modelling to identify the components of finishing and store lamb production systems that could be manipulated and their likely impact on whole farm profitability. Based on the assumptions used and factors examined in this analysis the critical control points were:
(a) matching ewe genotype and lamb turn-off system (finished or store);
(b) pasture utilisation; and
(c) pasture production.
 When producers have optimised these factors the second order control points were:
(a) meeting market specifications; (b) ewe nutrition and condition score profile;
(c) reproductive rate; and
(d) ewe wool value. For individual producers the management and production factors that will provide the greatest return on effort will depend on their current management and production levels, plus the ease and cost with which they can alter their management.