Autumn challenges with hints for future years

They sometimes don't occur until late autumn, or even into winter, and are vital for winter and spring feed as well as for starting the winter crop.

We can't change the rainfall, but can we modify the impact of late, erratic, and sometimes insufficient autumn rain?

A critical aspect of many mixed farming and grazing businesses, as well as grazing only ones, is the timely establishment of crops used for winter grazing.

Commonly, winter is when quantities of quality feed is scarce, especially when the autumn brake is late.

Key aspects to maximise the probability of crops providing good winter feed is increasing the length of the desirable sowing window, and helping to ensure crop germination occurs successfully on minimal rainfall events.

It is common to use fallows, prior to sowing them for winter grazing, for summer feed via self-sown of the previous crop or fallow weeds.

However, this practice uses soil water that more often than not adversely impacts on the ability to sow early on minimal rainfall.

Stored fallow moisture is commonly critical in drier years for winter feed.

Also, as the summer feed supply improves as native grasses are upgraded and more areas are sown to tropical grasses, the need for fallow feed recedes.

The same applies for grain-only crops.

If every fallow rain event is captured for stored soil moisture, generally also involving stubble retention and as timely fallow weed control, improves the probability of timely sowing.

It is also vital for winter spring growth and grain fill, especially in drier years.

Extending the sowing window, by sowing earlier than is currently advocated in most industry and commercial documents, can improve the probability of sowing dual purpose crops in a timely way in the typically dry autumn period.

For example, many farmers in the Central West this late summer sowed their dual purpose crops in mid-February to mid-March.

Temperatures were mainly a bit above average with around 18 days above maximum 33 degrees and up to 40 degrees in this period for many areas.

While one can't guarantee success because of heat, overall, it has generally been high.

Part of the success with earlier sowing is dry sowing.

We have successfully done this for the past few years while some farmers have done so for decades.

With lighter soil and good sub soil moisture, it doesn't require much rain post-sowing to achieve germination.

Sowing equipment is also important with timely sowing.

Our contractor, Marcus Neiberding, with a Seed Hawk airseeder combining knife points, press wheels and accurate seed depth control, commonly achieves good germination on minimal soil moisture.

Again, in our case sowing a week after 10 millimetres of February rain this year, following well below average summer rainfall, resulted in good establishment.

A dilemma when autumn breaks are late is to rest paddocks to allow feed to get away.

Generally growth of winter legumes and grasses is faster if they are able to build good leaf area and roots before grazing.

Hard grazed pastures prior to their good establishment grow far less feed and succumb earlier to adverse conditions.

When the autumn break occurs it often presents some challenges.

Livestock need to graze some areas or be placed in temporary mini feed lots.

If paddocks with germinating clovers and grasses are to be grazed in their early establishment period, supplementary feeding can lessen livestock impact on them.

Cattle are also less close-to-the-ground grazers and tend to allow for faster early autumn winter feed development unless grossly overstocked.

Dry carryover feed, common coming into autumn and winter, can be variable in quality.

Where soil fertility has been excellent, and feed has burnt off, it commonly can remain OK to good until rain breaks it down into winter.

But rain hopefully is leading to increasing supplies of quality winter herbage.

Soil fertility, correct crop and pasture species are all important aspects for coping with typical low rainfall autumns.

Crops with winter habit tend to best suit early sowing as they stay in the vegetative phase over winter compared to spring habit types running to head too quickly, even if slow maturing.

Next week: Drones have realistic role for most farmers.