Opinions about running high stocking rates are varied, but with some forward thinking Booroowa producer George Gregory has made it work.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Gregory and his family run a mixed farming operation across the 1050-hectare Mountview, along with a contracting business.
The farming operation comprises 250 Te-Mania-blood Angus cattle, 1200 Merino ewes joined to composite rams, and another 2600 Merinos ewes joined to Merino rams.
These are all run across natural pasture and grazing crops, where the operation generally works on a stocking rate of 18 dry sheep equivalent (DSE) a hectare.
This naturally increases with through winter with pregnant ewes and cows.
One of the routine practices of Mr Gregory's is the sowing of winter crops to help fill the feed gap through late autumn.
This meant he could put the ewes onto canola, allowing other paddocks to be locked up to prepare for lambing in spring.
"Usually we're about 26 to 30 per cent grazing crops," he said. "Then you've got your lucerne and chicory behind that."
Normally wheat and oats would be sown, but this year he was also trialling a new variety of barley tried called Newton.
"We've only sown 13 hectares to see how it goes compared to the wheat with the grazing," Mr Gregory said.
"It might be an option instead of growing oats to fill a silo and trickle out instead of us buying barley. We might be able to fill our own silos and be a bit more self-sufficient."
Another efficiency is his on-farm feedlot to keep market options open for lambs, irrespective of the season.
Mr Gregory said taking action early and making the hard calls paid off.
"We started feeding out February last year and we found that we were further in front than people that were saying lambs aren't worth anything," he said.
"A few people said 'you're mad for feeding now', but they were selling lambs for $70 and we never got south of $110 for the whole drop."
One of his strategies was also to budget on feeding for three months of the year, with performance targets in mind.
This was helped by a tight joining period of 35 days, which has produced an average of 4.5pc dry ewes each year, and about 100pc of lambs born to ewes joined.
"I have been toying with the idea of pulling the joining back to 30 days as well," Mr Gregory said.
"I found that when we went back from 42 day joining to 35, everything was a lot more even."
He said this included no longer having to draft three ways at weaning and having a little tail-end mob.
"Come the middle of January, I'm thinking, right what are those ewes' conditions scores?" he said, with regard to his early planning.
