Pasture strategy key to post-drought production reboot

The rain of the past fortnight, combined with rising soil temperatures, has created a good early backdrop for spring across the North Coast but critical to capitalising on that would be well-managed native and improved pastures and grazing for optimum efficiency.

Speaking at a beef producers field day at Mallanganee last week, Norco senior agronomist at Casino Tony Gordon said knowing your pastures, and being able to categorise them, underpinned good management.

Inspect for pasture density, species, weed presence, soil type and paddock aspect, he said.

Grazing heights are a key performance indicator, important for both beef and pasture productivity, Mr Gordon said.

Optimum grazing heights on average are 152 millimetres to 205mm or about 1500 kilograms of dry matter per hectare.

Remove cattle at 75mm to 100mm or less than 1000kg dm/ha and aim to stock paddocks so as to graze pastures down to an even height.

Interest in tactical grazing, a combination of rotational grazing and set stocking, was also increasing across the region and could provide benefits coming out of the dry, according to North Coast Local Land Services livestock officer Nathan Jennings.

“Meat and Livestock Australia has been talking about tactical grazing for a while and it is starting to gather momentum here on the back of its focus on matching pasture growth with the requirements of livestock,” Mr Jennings said.

“The overall aim is improving pasture utilisation without compromising groundcover targets. We can grow a lot of grass at times but it’s about getting cattle to utilise that in the most efficient way.”