Leeston Pastoral focuses on grass efficiency with rotational grazing

They run about 360 head of cattle on their 300 hectare property near Goulburn and started to change their practices at the end of the drought in 2019.

With a fully grass-fed Angus herd, bred and finished on grass for the prime market, Adam said they had decided to look about for different bulls to suit their specific needs.

"We got to the stage where it became almost impossible to finish our animals on grass," Wayne said.

Adam said in an effort to rein in their input costs they tried the little known Mashona breed, using a bull called Zim Bob, owned by the Pharo Cattle Company, to inseminate 100 heifers.

The Mashona-cross calves are on the ground now.

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"We've been trying to focus on grass efficiency and that involves a smaller framed animal that can convert the pasture better," he said.

Mr Rabjohns said they chose the Mashonas because of their background of being selected in the harsh Zimbabwe environment.

"They had some interesting things where they were much more resistant to external and internal parasites, low birthweight, heat tolerance and just general grass-fed feed efficiency," he said.

Despite opting for the African breed, he said they were not worried about market acceptance.

"They're still black and polled so complement the phenotype of the Angus cattle that we already have, which should help market acceptance," he said.

Mr Rabjohns said they were now building their herd to the size where it would be self-replacing and they could select from their own bulls.

"We're really focusing on the bulls (that are) early maturing, masculine, grass efficient bulls," he said.

The focus on grass led them to change their grazing practices and to complete a course which focused on high density, high utilisation, short grazing periods.

"We went from 25 permanent paddocks three years ago, at the end of the drought with very little feed in front of us, to then split each of those paddocks with a single, permanent electric wire," he said.

Over the next three years Mr Rabjohns said they continued to decrease their paddock size and increase densities and now have about 130 permanent paddocks.

"We still split those using a temporary electric wire to increase our density when pasture conditions allow," he said.

"When there's more grass in the paddock we might split them again."

During the growing season only about a third to half of the property is used with the rest set aside for a stockpile.

"At the start of our non-growing season we very quickly know by how fast the animals are eating the stockpile, how much grass we have ahead of us and how long it's going to take our current numbers to get through that grass," he said.

"That allows us to make instant management changes to our stocking rate so we can enter or exit the market early and not have to buy feed, which is another big import cost that has gone out - we don't buy hay."

The cattle are moved daily, except weekends or if the family goes away. Then they are put in a bigger paddock, with an average stocking rate of 130 head a hectare.

"This [stocking rate] does depend on their body condition, rumen fill and dung score," Mr Rabjohns said.

Protein is supplemented to allow the high utilisation of stockpiled grasses.

"We do a minimum protein supplement which might be 500g of soybean meal per head per day, or cotton seed," he said.

"That allows the rumen to digest fibre which is what we need in our grass-fed animals."

All the paddocks on the property wedge out from dams so they can easily access water.

He said since beginning this system the property had transformed, including from rest periods of six to nine months in non-growing seasons allowing increased germination.

"With the increased rests we're seeing the inter-plant spacing decrease, lots of germination of new species," he said.

"We're also getting more summer grasses and we're getting a lot of the seedbank germination happening in places that haven't been sown for 30-50 years."

With some unimproved pastures still on the property Wayne said they do a bit of work every year on these by running a straight set of disks and three rows of tyres laying flat to make a shallow seedbed.

"That only tills about 20pc of the actual pasture," Adam said.

"We're not trying to kill what is there - we're just trying to broaden the species."

Seed is then broadcast, which last year was a 20-way multispecies mix, but based off this year's results that would be changed to cocksfoot, chicory, plantain, vetch and clovers.