Autumn grazing management webinar

Tess McDougal:

Welcome everyone to tonight's webinar about autumn grazing management. My name is Tess McDougall and I'm a livestock industry development officer from Agriculture Victoria based in Ararat.

Tess McDougal:

Tonight's webinar is proudly supported by the Victoria government's 2019/2020 drought support package. If you experience audio difficulties during tonight's webinar, my suggestion is that you use your phone for audio and, if the internet allows, continue to use the webinar platform for the presentation.

Tess McDougal:

If you have a pen handy, it might be handy to write down this number, 1 800 896 323 and you'll then be prompted for a passcode 57130136, and then the hash key. This number can also be found on your reminder email.

Tess McDougal:

Fiona will be using a PowerPoint presentation during tonight's seminar. This can be found on the resources tab, which is the light blue button next to the hand on the webinar platform, or, if you call the help line on 1 800 733 416, it can be emailed to you. You might need that in order to follow the presentation and the presenter will let you know what slide number we are on. For those joining the webinar platform, the presentation will appear in your browser and the slide number is on the bottom left-hand side.

Tess McDougal:

After the presentation, we would be grateful if you could complete a short survey, so as to ensure that we are providing you with the right information.

Tess McDougal:

After the seminar, you will be migrated to the short survey. If you are joining us on the phone, a link to the survey will be sent out with the recording.

Tess McDougal:

This seminar is hosted tonight by Redback Connect. Our Redback operator tonight is Mary Grace and she is here to ensure that our seminar runs smoothly. There will be an opportunity for questions after the presentation and this will be managed for us by Daniel.

Tess McDougal:

If you're participating on the webinar platform, you can type your questions on the questions tab on the screen at any time during the webinar.

Tess McDougal:

If you are joining us on the phone, Daniel will provide instructions on how to get your questions in the queue later on.

Tess McDougal:

So, our presenter, Fiona. Fiona has 21 years of experience in delivering on topics such as nutrient management, grazing systems, cattle nutrition, and feed budgeting. Tonight's webinar, we will focus on grazing management for autumn. I'd like to thank Fiona for her involvement tonight. I will now hand over to Fiona to continue with her presentation. Thank you, Fiona.

Fiona Baker:

Thanks, Tess. As we can see, the first slide in front of you, we're calling this one slide [inaudible 00:02:59] our Autumn Grazing Management, so that's what I'm going to talk to you today about.

Fiona Baker:

If we flick across to our slide number two, I've got a bit of a thinking point for you to all to ponder. I always like to put up a bit of a challenge when we're talking about pastures. When it comes to a pasture growth, is it that your pastures aren't growing or is it that you're not letting them grow? So, have a think about that.

Fiona Baker:

The photo that you might be able to see on the screen or on the slide, if you're looking at a printout of the slides is from Gippy down in Gippsland in 2019 last year. It's an area that has been hit hard by the drought.

Fiona Baker:

So, we're lucky enough to have had some rain at this point and exclusion cages, which is what we call those cages that's sitting over that bit of pasture. We'll put out in the paddock to see what might grow as stocks could not constantly graze the plants.

Fiona Baker:

And I think what this photo really highlights is the value of stock container areas or sacrifice paddocks when needed to allow plants make use of the moisture that's available and to start to recover and provide valuable feed after long, dry spells or as part of a fire recovery plan.

Fiona Baker:

As you can see, there's some really healthy pasture growth inside the cage. Yup. There's some grass, but there's also [kately 00:04:19] so that's just showing what could grow if the stock weren't constantly grazing it. We actually had sheep grazing its pasture, pretty much a sick stocking situation. You can see the pasture as such around the cage.

Fiona Baker:

So, because they were constantly chewing it off, it just looked like nothing was growing, but if we could move that stock off that pasture and actually let it rest, what was in those cages is what could actually regrow.

Fiona Baker:

So, that's where my challenge comes from and gets you to think about, is it my pastures aren't growing or is it that I'm not letting them grow?

Fiona Baker:

So, let's take a look at understanding plant growth and pasture management. So, ensure we set our pastures up to provide us with the feed we need.

Fiona Baker:

So, let's move onto slide three. I guess before we look at pasture growth and management, we probably should address the question of can my pastures actually recover?

Fiona Baker:

So, you might have been through a long drive sell over summer period, or you might be recovering from fires. Can my pastures actually recover? The density of what's remaining and the time periods you're looking forward will actually determine that answer for you.

Fiona Baker:

So, how quickly do I need them to recover, because different pastures, if I've got a 12 to 18-month time period in front of me, those pastures might recover, but if I need them to be functional in six months, we might have to turn them as not being able to recover.

Fiona Baker:

Generally, though, if you have a pasture, such as in the picture on the left-hand side, with no desirable plant mass, it's going to take a long time for that pasture to naturally thicken up. It's at risk of a large amount of weed invasion compared to the paddock on the right.

Fiona Baker:

You might look at that one on the left and you could see the red soil and you can see a trash layer on. Quite often, when we talk about ground cover, we include that trash, but when we're talking about pasture recovery, we're looking at those actual clumps of plants that are alive and can they actually [inaudible 00:06:26] out, thicken up, and fill out those gaps and to the degree that we want them to to provide the production we need off those pastures?

Fiona Baker:

As a right rule of thumb, paddocks with less than 70% desirable plants species might struggle to thicken up and recover, even with careful management in a 12-month period, and it's very dependent on rainfall as well. These paddocks might benefit from oversowing, so anything below 70% of desirable species. You may need to oversow them to thicken them up.

Fiona Baker:

But how can I estimate the percentage of the desirable species in the pasture? There's a couple of ways. Either select a number of spots in the paddock and stand with your feet roughly a meter apart like in those photos and visualize a square in front and then estimate the percentage, and that's a little bit hard to do, but generally go with your gut feel of what you think it's going to be.

Fiona Baker:

Another method is to walk across the paddock, throw a stick or a ruler or just use the toe of your boot and record what's there. Then, maybe every 10, 20 steps, just look down and say, "All right. What's the toe of my boot touching? Is it bare ground, is it a weed, or is it a desirable plant I actually want in the system?"

Fiona Baker:

If you do this 20 times, multiply it by five to give you a percentage and if you do it 50 times, then multiply it by two and then you can design your options from there.

Fiona Baker:

If we move onto slide four, start talking about pasture management. For me, the principles of pasture and grazing management are the same no matter whether it's autumn, winter, spring, or summer.

Fiona Baker:

It's about understanding what's best for the plant, ensure persistence in the system and trying to balance that with animal requirements in the target, what you're trying to get those animals to actually do and achieve.

Fiona Baker:

The first that we need to remember that plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil and convert them to carbohydrates, so that's the food the plants actually live and grow off. So, these carbohydrates are used immediately for growth or that's stored as root reserves to be used later when they're recovering and regrowing.

Fiona Baker:

The rate of regrowth after grazing is going to be largely determined by the intensity of grazing, that is the leaf area left to capture light to produce those carbohydrates and the frequency of grazing, so the root reserves of the carbohydrates.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we graze too often, we'll talk about this as we go through, the root reserves of the carbohydrates can actually be depleted if we don't allow enough leaf to regrow to replenish those carbohydrates.

Fiona Baker:

So, just remember that plants need that leaf area to capture that sunlight and produce those carbohydrates.

Fiona Baker:

We'll move onto slide five. I need to add a quick note in here about tillering just to explain what tillering is for those who might be a little unsure. I'm sure a lot of you are quite aware of what it is.

Fiona Baker:

This picture is showing a picture of three ryegrass plants. Plant one on the left-hand side there, if you look down towards the base of the plant, where the outer, older leaves have been stripped back, you might just be able to see a tiny, white little shoot on the left side of the stem. This is a tiller emerging. So, where that black circle is, look right down the base, you should be able to see just a tiny, little, white stem sticking up. That's the start of a tiller.

Fiona Baker:

Plant two in the middle is showing the tiller emerging from the sheath of the parent plant, so again, look at that black circle in the middle. You can see that tiller is just coming out of that little sheath. And plant three on the right-hand side is showing the tiller as it's growing its second leaf. So, you can see that in the larger circle there on the right-hand side.

Fiona Baker:

So, perennial plants reproduce through both seed recruitment and through a process called tillering. It's generally this tillering that gives us the majority of the density in our grass [sword 00:10:57] and is important for the persistence of our perennial pastures.

Fiona Baker:

So, these dorsal tillers are produced from the base of the parent plant. Bit of a tongue twister, that one. And new leaves of the parent plant form from the center of that plant.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you're trying to look at a grass and you're trying to work out is it a tiller growing or is that a new leaf? Just remember, tillers come off the side like in those photos and a new leaf will come from the center of that stalk of that grass.

Fiona Baker:

Tillers can form any time of the year, but most activity is seen during autumn and particularly in spring. Any tillers that will form prior to winter are going to put up a seed head and become reproductive in spring and die. So, when they go through a cold winter, that's their trigger to pull the seed head up.

Fiona Baker:

So, tillers that have formed in the spring period will not become reproductive until the following winter. It's these plants that survive under our pastures and our seed grass stock over the next 12 months.

Fiona Baker:

So, just remember, any tiller that's formed in autumn, so now, is going to go through a cold winter period and stick its seed head up and die in spring, but before that, totally, it tillers out and produces dorsal tillers as well.

Fiona Baker:

Any of those tillers that have formed in that early spring period before that seed had formed, they'll actually survive through the rest of spring, summer, autumn, the following winter and then will die that following spring. So, that's what gives us our thickness and our density in our perennial plant systems. That's why it's really important to manage our pastures to enable tillering and for those plants to thicken up.

Fiona Baker:

Look across to slide six. You might be thinking, "Well, we don't have a lot of ryegrass in our pastures. Maybe we've got phalaris or cocksfoot, a whole range of different other grasses out there, but, I keep talking about ryegrass, because of a lot of the work that has been done in terms of research has been done on ryegrass. However, what they found is most of the principles that apply to ryegrass apply to our other grasses as well.

Fiona Baker:

In this graph in front of us, the ryegrass leaf-to-feed ratio, is looking at what happened as leaves regrow. So, if we look at this top graph on the slide, where it starts down the side pasture mass in tiller ground with dry matter to hectares. But firstly, the top graph is looking at what proportion each leaf generally contributes to the amount of seed that the ryegrass plant is allowed to grow at with three leaves.

Fiona Baker:

But firstly, which is the line a lot on root and stem reserves to fuel its growth is relatively quite small and contributes only about 15 to 25% of the overall feed. The second leaf now has the first leaf acting as a solar panel to provide additional energy and so is larger in size. So, it's not just relying on the root and stem reserves. It's now also got that first leaf acting as a solar panel, producing those extra carbohydrates. It contributes 35 to 40% of the overall feed.

Fiona Baker:

And then thirdly, now powered by two solar panels, it's able to grow to a larger size again, often contributing somewhere around 40 to 50% of the overall feed. So, just imagine if you're grazing your pastures too early, how much feed you're actually missing out on.

Fiona Baker:

But look, coming up to the side there where it says, "Tip," the first leaf contributes less when using low nitrogen inputs for grazing below target residuals. This has to do with how much of the stem reserves are eaten into as well. But particular where we're talking about grazing below target residuals.

Fiona Baker:

The harder the plant is grazed down, the less energy reserves are available to push out and support the growth of that new leaf. It can be a very important point to consider, in times of the year where growth is naturally slower, such as the summer and winter periods. It's much less of an issue in spring where pastures just grow so fast.

Fiona Baker:

Margin, in that little comment about nitrogen, nitrogen actually causes an increase in the size of a leaf. So, if your plants are growing in a low-nitrogen environment, you don't have any clover in the system and then you don't use urea either, you actually tend to end up with smaller-leaved plants because they need that nitrogen to be much larger, which is why we tend to encourage having that up 30% clover in the system to provide that nitrogen to the grasses.

Fiona Baker:

The budding graph shows what is happening in the plant itself. As the plant pushes out the first new leaf after grazing, it is relying on some of the energy reserves held in the root and the stem, depleting the overall energy reserves in the plant. At this stage, the grass hasn't had a chance to replenish reserves, so it's grazed again at this stage, again relying on what is left of the stem and root reserves. A new emerging leaf will be smaller and roots will be dying off in the soil.

Fiona Baker:

As the plant is allowed to grow out to that second leaf, it now has the ability to use the leaves as solar panels to generate energy and supply that energy back down into the roots and into the stem reserve.

Fiona Baker:

The ryegrass plant can be grazed once they've grown their second leaf really without damaging individual plants to any degree, but are you getting the most from your pasture system?

Fiona Baker:

As you can see on that graph, it's not until the ryegrass plant pushes out its third leaf that it generally has enough energy to consider tillering out.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we often graze before that third leaf has grown and tillering has not occurred, we can end up with pastures that are not as thick as we think they should be and that leaves a lot towards the systems for our pastures as well.

Fiona Baker:

So, plants also need light to reach that growing point of the plant, which is found at the base of a plant to initiate tillering. It's the same in all grasses as well as adequate moisture and temperature. It's an important spring not to allow our pastures to become too long for too long, as often happens when we lock our pastures up for hay.

Fiona Baker:

So, once the pasture canopy closes, light can't reach the base or the growing point and tillering slows or stops and canopy closures when you might see at your paddocks that the grass grows so tall and thick and then it folds over at the top so it looks like it's lying down on top of the grass.

Fiona Baker:

So, once that canopy closes, the light cannot reach that base and, as I said, tillering slows or stops so we get that long, great pastures for months at a time, and resulting is decline in pasture density that might take years to recover. These open pastures can now allow an invasion of wheat species or more undesirable annual plants, pasture plants like winter grass, barley-grass. These shorten the growing season of our pastures and reduce the quality of feed offered to our livestock.

Fiona Baker:

To help grass plants grow and partition energy is an important consideration particularly where pastures have come out of a very long dry period or any period of considerable stress, even fire recovery. If you want them to recover and go onto be productive pastures, it's important to take note of how these plants need to be treated to grow to their maximums.

Fiona Baker:

So, we click onto slide seven. A little photo here of a clump of ryegrass. We're talking about the impact of residuals, how hard we're grazing into our pastures.

Fiona Baker:

So, in the previous slide, we mentioned that the first leaf contributes less if you have grazed below your target residuals. So, what you have, you've just got to have on our new emerging leaf.

Fiona Baker:

In this case, a clump of ryegrass was grazed. It was actually cut, but we'll call it grazed, to eat at 1,600 kilograms of dry matter per hectare or six centimetres, 1,200 kilograms of dry matter or four centimetres, or 700 kilograms of dry matter or two centimetres. And these kilograms of dry matter per hectare readings were based on the MLA's pasture ruler.

Fiona Baker:

So, what actually happens when regrowth occurred? So, if we flick across to slide eight, what happened? When it was assessed a couple of days later, the part of the clump that has been grazed to 700 kilograms of dry matter per hectare or two centimetres had produced two centimetres of regrowth. The part of the clump that had been grazed to 1,200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare, 34 centimetres, had produced three centimetres of regrowth, and the part of the clump that had been grazed to 1,600 kilograms of dry matter per hectare or six centimetres had produced four centimetres of regrowth.

Fiona Baker:

So, the more stems left behind, the greater the energy reserves available to support the growth of that first leaf. You just need to balance how much you're leaving behind with how much it will affect the feed quality moving forward.

Fiona Baker:

If you leave too much stem behind, which is lower in feed quality for stock anyway, although it may produce a larger first leaf, overall, it may not be beneficial to what you're trying to achieve on the farm. So, you've got to find a happy medium to your own system as to where you want to be.

Fiona Baker:

Hey. We click across to slide nine. We're looking at the recommended leaf stages for grazing here. So, this is where not just talking about perennial ryegrasses, Palmer green, cocksfoot, phalaris, tall fescue, prairie grass into the system as well, because research has been conducted to determine what leaf stages are best for the other grasses as well.

Fiona Baker:

The leaf stage relates to the plant's physiological readiness to be defoliated or eaten. Foliation at the recommended leaf stage will increase plant persistence and increase dry matter production.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we look at the table in front of us, we've got perennial ryegrass, cocksfoot, phalaris, tall fescue, prairie grass. It says, for leaf maturity, perennial ryegrass has three active growing leaves at any one time, and from the research, it's shown that it's best to try and let it get out to the three-leaf stage as much as possible. Two and a half's not too bad, but the three-leaf stage as much as possible across a year to get the best benefit out of that grass.

Fiona Baker:

Cocksfoot plants have six to seven active growing leaves at any one time. The best time to graze it is the four to five-leaf stage to maximize production.

Fiona Baker:

Phalaris has a four-leaf active growing leaf at any one time, recommend grazing time is the four-leaf stage.

Fiona Baker:

Tall fescue is also a four-leaf plant with a recommended grazing time at the three-leaf stage.

Fiona Baker:

Prairie grass is a five active growing leaves with the recommended time at the four-leaf stage.

Fiona Baker:

And this makes it really easy. If you've just got a ryegrass pasture, very easy to manage. It gets a little bit more difficult when we've got our mixed pastures, so if we've got a little bit of ryegrass and cocksfoot mixed together or some ryegrass and phalaris mixed in together or some prairie grass in with phalaris or anything like that. It becomes a bit more difficult, particularly if they're going to be grazed at different leaf stages, so it can be a bit of a tricky one.

Fiona Baker:

However, it was found that defoliation of prairie grass and cocksfoot at the four-leaf stage resulted in greater growth rates compared to defoliation at the two or three-leaf stages of regrowth.

Fiona Baker:

How can some of this help us plan our grazing management? The other thing just to think of is some of the grasses actually put out their leaf stage a little bit quicker than the other plants and we'll get onto that in a couple of slides time.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we just have a look at slide 10. Again, jumping back to good old ryegrass, and this table was stolen from a presentation by Lisa Warn. Many people would probably know Lisa Warn, who was Lisa Warn, Ag Consulting. This table is based on research by Danny Donaghy when he worked at TIA down in Tasmania. He did a lot of the research as well as Bill Fulkerson on the ryegrass plants.

Fiona Baker:

So, this is just showing that if the impact of grazing a ryegrass plant continually at the one-leaf stage per year or the two-leaf stage or letting it get out to the three-leaf stage and what impact does that have on how much feed was actually produced.

Fiona Baker:

So, the paddock that was continually grazed at the one-leaf stage was stock had removed and only one leaf allowed to regrow and stock returned for another grazing. That pasture produced 4.8 tons of dry matter. Yeah, 4.8 tons of dry matter per hectare for the year.

Fiona Baker:

The paddock that was allowed to grow to two leaves before being grazed again grew 8.5 tons per hectare of the dry matter for the year, and the paddock that was allowed to grow out to three leaves grew 12 tons of dry matter per hectare for the year.

Fiona Baker:

So, it comes back to the question that I posed at the start. Is it that your pastures aren't growing or are you not letting them grow? So, it just shows the difference in how much feed, I suppose by, in this case, is showing that if you graze at the one leave stage all the time, you're losing up to 60% of your feed compared to allowing the ryegrass to get out to the three-leaf stage. If you grazed at the two-leaf stage all year round, you're losing a potential 30% of possible feed on your farm.

Fiona Baker:

So, think about that in terms of, well, if I allowed it to grow out of how much extra feed would I have on my property? Would I end up with the same feed gap that I see on my place now or could I actually run extra stock and do I want to?

Fiona Baker:

So, we move onto slide 11. This is just to harp on a little about what incorrect grazing can do to plants. So, this is a photo of grass tops and of grass roots. In this experiment, they defoliated the ryegrass plants at, okay, the one-leaf stage all the time, the two-leaf stage, or let them grow out to the three-leaf stage before being defoliated. You can see not only a difference in the length of the root between the one leaf on the left-hand side and the three-leaf stage on the right-hand side.

Fiona Baker:

So, not only a difference in the length of roots, which impacts on the plant's ability to access nutrients and particularly water at deeper depths, but also the width of those roots as they go deeper down the profile, which gives us a much healthier, stronger plant that's able to withstand any stressful conditions compared to that one-leaf plant.

Fiona Baker:

So, I'd just like to harp on about trying to let those plants get out to their ideal leaf stage as much as possible, because it's not just good for what's above the ground. It's really good for what's below the ground, as well.

Fiona Baker:

So, let's flick across to slide 12 where we're talking about leaf emergence and recovery. Moisture impacts on the size of the leaf whereas temperature impacts on the emergence rate. Ryegrass can range across the year with a typical leaf appearance rate being six or seven days to a leaf in spring, 12 to 30 days to a leaf in summer, 10 to 15 days to a leaf in autumn, and 15 to 30 days per leaf in winter. So, longer rest periods are required during summer, when moisture is limiting and in winter, when soil temperature is limiting. So, one's moisture, one's temp.

Fiona Baker:

You can work out the leaf appearance rate on your plants by counting the leaves. Have a look 14 days post-grazing at a paddock and see how many whole leaves we've picked. We've, yeah, what a tip of grass tends to look like, not too blunt so it's got to have that pointy tip on it.

Fiona Baker:

So, how many of those whole leaves are present in a couple of spots across the paddock? Then, check again a month later in slower growing conditions. So, if you look at the number of leaves and divide by the number of days since it was grazed, that would give you the leaf appearance rate.

Fiona Baker:

In those perennial species, a new leaf commences growth when the previous leaves reach approximately three-quarters of its full length and new leaves begin to emerge two to three day post-grazing, so they stick their thirsty little heads up about two to three days after that first being chewed off.

Fiona Baker:

Not all species have the same emergence rate. Perennial ryegrass, they found doing some work at the University of Tasmania back in 2006, excuse me, the perennial ryegrass exhibits the slowest leaf reappearance rate with cocksfoot marginally faster and prairie grass the quickest. These were the numbers in green, which is PRG, perennial ryegrass equals 23 days, C was cocksfoot, equals 22 days, and prairie grass was 16 and a half days. And that was the average leaf appearance rate across their trial period, so it wasn't just for spring or just for autumn or just for winter. It was an average right across. It's just to give you an idea that perennial ryegrass was the slowest in terms of leaf emergence and prairie grass was one of the quickest at having their individual leaves come out.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you're waiting for perennial ryegrass to get to three-leaf stage and prairie grass to get to the four-leaf stage, there isn't actually much difference at the point or the days that they need grazing so about where they should be in terms of ideal leaf number for grazing, so that's a little bit interesting.

Fiona Baker:

So, how does this help with our grazing management? If we wish to graze our pastures at a particular leaf date, say you want ryegrass to get to the three-leaf stage to insure we're maximizing the chance of tillering and replenishing their energy levels in the plant for regrowth, if I know the leaf appearance rate is roughly eight days, that means my rotation should be eight days by three leaves equals 24 days before I come back to this paddock.

Fiona Baker:

First starting to get me to think about how I could possibly fit my rotation. If we move to slide 13. So, rotational/planned grazing has the benefits of trying as best as possible to juggle what is best for the plant, but also what is best for the stock in terms of feed.

Fiona Baker:

So, ideally, stocks should not graze for more than three days and why is that? As I said before in the previous slides, the new leaf sticks its head up after two to three days.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you leave your stock in there too long, what they'll actually do in the very large paddock is they'll rotationally graze themselves around that paddock. They'll be in one corner for a couple of days, then they'll go off to the far corner for another couple of days, but animals are sneaky. They know that grass has put that new leaf up after two to three days post that first grazing and it is very sweet and tasty. It's like having a bag of lolly snacks next to me that I always want to go and grab. Something like that with new little green shoots. They will be back and coming and nipping those off as soon as they stick their little heads up. What that does is weaken those plants over time.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we graze at that point, they'll be quite weakened. So, stock needs to be in a paddock for more than three days. Consider using a hot wire to back fence, if you can, while giving them access to water so they don't regraze areas.

Fiona Baker:

But I know that's not always possible. We break the rules all the time at home, but sometimes, it's about understanding what you're actually doing so that you know you're going to be pushing those plants and actually stressing them out a little bit with this particular grazing. You know that next time you come around to grazing these paddocks, hopefully, you'll be able to up slightly differently so those plants aren't under as much stress.

Fiona Baker:

A demo here, we'll call it a demo for now, so I'm wanting to show that, by eliminating back grazing, we could actually double the growth rate of the regrowth from nine kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day up to 18 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day. We just have stock in the paddock for six days versus two days basically.

Fiona Baker:

So, we saw the difference in terms of growth rates by having a larger number of stock farm the paddock for a shorter time versus a smaller number of stock taking longer to get across the same size paddock. That's really did make a difference. It actually doubled the growth rates by having stock on for a much shorter period of time that they're off and not being able to graze those new shoots that were just coming up.

Fiona Baker:

A demo on a big farm in central Gippy quite a few years back, it was proper set up demo shows by eliminating back-grazing, they can grow an extra at least 25% seed. So, that's quite significant.

Fiona Baker:

And sometimes, really, when we think about our paddocks, how big are they, what are our stock numbers, how long do they need to spend in the paddock? Maybe sometimes the best thing you can plant in your paddock are fence posts, so that you can actually better manage those grasses and allow them to grow to their potential, give you that extra feed for ... It's nearly free, really, when you think about it.

Fiona Baker:

If you click across to slide 14, grazing before the optimum leaf stage. So, if you do graze at this stage, grass growth slows down, as I said. We had a regrowth growing at nine kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day and you could easily double it to 18, but grazing before your leaf stage, you also going to minimize tillering so, again, we're saying that ryegrass needs to get out that two and a half to three-leaf stage to tiller adequately. If you graze too early all the time before that optimum leaf stage, you're not going to get that tillering which is going to open up those pastures.

Fiona Baker:

Roots and stem reserves with carbohydrates can decrease. Root systems are smaller, plants can be less persistent and, as I said, opportunities for weeds and less-desirable species.

Fiona Baker:

I used a photo that's on there is just a photo of basically set stocking those rotational grazing and the difference a fence line can make and that is it can make in terms of what sort of grass is grown. The paddock on the left-hand side was originally part of the farm that's on the right-hand side. It was cut out around a house that was then sold off and a bloke bought it and he set stock with sheep, versus on the right-hand side, it was rotationally grazed with cattle.

Fiona Baker:

So, it would have been a little difference in fertility as well, with stuff on the right-hand side was fertilized every year. Stuff on the left-hand side, I think was fertilized once in 10 years roughly. But it just goes to show, management makes a big difference as to what sort of grass and the volumes of grass that you can actually grow.

Fiona Baker:

Just clicking across the slides you see, if we wait too long, what happens if we go past that three-leaf stage of right after we went to the four and five-leaf stages? With cocksfoot, if we let it grow out to six or seven leaves, what happens then? Basically we get an accumulation of dead material because they've only got, when you go back to that slide that talked about the leaf numbers, so ryegrass only has three active growing leaves at any one time. As soon as that fourth leaf comes out, the first one starts dying off. As soon as that first leaf comes out, the second one starts dying off, so you get all this dead material at the base. Stock don't like eating that very much.

Fiona Baker:

The dead material can course shading at the base of that plant and, if you remember, I mentioned earlier, the growing point is at the base of that plant. We need light to get down there to help initiate tillering.

Fiona Baker:

So, tillering is reduced so quality declines because the stock are sometimes forced to eat that dead material, which doesn't have much food value. They tend to get poor utilization for the next grazing and particularly if you want clover in your system, clover content in seed sets get to be reduced by allowing grasses to grow around it. That's an interesting one. You get to balance up what's best for your own system.

Fiona Baker:

Getting into slide 16, if you want to get really, I don't know, targeted with ... That's called targeted production, but if you want to get really targeted with your grazing management and really fine tune your grazing, how much seed should there be in the paddock, and this works for rotational grazing. If you put how much feed should there be in the paddock as you put your stock in to ensure you don't graze down too hard and also maintain the rotation you need to get the appropriate leaf stage?

Fiona Baker:

This equations come out of the New Zealand dairy industry, but I think it's a great tool for managing our pastures here. This will work with sheep equally as well for cattle. You decide the rotation length and the residuals you're aiming for. So, your rotation length, of course, should just be based on your leaf stage.

Fiona Baker:

So, when you get a good stock in the paddock, if there's not enough feed, you might assess the paddock and find you're short of feed, but how do we first work out how much feed should there be in the paddock to start with?

Fiona Baker:

So, in this example, the calculation we're using is the stocking rate, that's the number of head per hectare times the pasture requirement in tilling grounds with dry matter per heads per day multiplied by the rotation length in days plus the residual in kilograms of dry matter per hectare.

Fiona Baker:

So, the example, it is a cattle example because I'm a beef officer, so I tend to do all my examples as cattle. If we've got 2.4 steers per hectare and they're weighing 400 kilograms of live weight and our pasture's roughly 10 megajoules of energy. So, three and a half keep growing grass. And 52% NDF or neutral detergent fiber.

Fiona Baker:

So, our maximum intake of those animals based on that fiber level is going to be 9.2 kilograms of dry matter. You might wonder how I worked that out and I'll just show you on the next slide in a minute.

Fiona Baker:

The leaf appearance rate of the ryegrass is 12 days, so ideally I want a 36-day rotation. And I want to leave behind 1,400 kilograms of dry matter.

Fiona Baker:

So, looking at that equation, we've got 2.4 heads per hectare times by 9.2 kilograms of dry matter per hectare day multiplied by the 36 days plus our base of 1,400. So, that paddock needs to have 2,195 kilograms of dry matter per hectare in that paddock so that those stock leave behind 1,400 kilos ideally and I maintain that 36-day rotation, if that makes sense.

Fiona Baker:

So, when you go to put those stock in that paddock, if there's not enough feed, you might assess that paddock and find you're about 300 kilograms short of feed and go, "Well, I'm not up to that level of 2,195. Perhaps I am a kilo short. So, what do I do?"

Fiona Baker:

You can use this figure as a guide for how much supplement you need to provide to maintain that desired rotation. Just be aware of the difference in feed quality between the paddock feed on offer and the supplement you offer.

Fiona Baker:

So, for example, if the grass was 10 megajoules of energy per kilogram of dry matter and the hay that you were going to feed to fill that 300 kilogram deficit was nine megajoules, that's a 10% difference in feed value between the grass on offer and the hay that you're going to offer them as a supplement.

Fiona Baker:

So, you need to provide roughly 10% by dry matter weight extra of the supplement. So, in this example, instead of 300 when you assess that pasture and think, "I'm 300 kilos short of pasture, I'll supplement them with hay," because that hay is 10% lower in feed value, you actually going to need to feed them 330 kilograms of dry matter of hay for each hectare inside the paddock used to maintain that 36-day rotation and to leave behind 1,400 kilos of dry matter per hectare, if that makes sense.

Fiona Baker:

That little table off to the side there, the rough estimate of the fiber level based on energy, so if you haven't done a feed test, but ideally you do a feed test to get the accurate figures of your pasture, but these are pretty good at estimating the energy levels. You can see NDF percentage, or neutral detergent fiber percentage down the side. So, if you've got 10 to 10 and a half megajoule pastures, you've got roughly 52% neutral detergent fiber. And why is that important to know? Because that tells us how much the maximum intake of those animals is going to be.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we flick across to slide 17, it's just that it's more of an FYI for you, a quick reference chart for working out maximum intake of your stock. So, it includes the sheep, those right down at those 15, 25, 35-kilo animals, right up to your big heavy bulls at a thousand kilos.

Fiona Baker:

So, if we look across and we have that example of 400 kilograms steers, so that's two-thirds of the way down the table, you can see 400 kilograms. We go across that line. You remember we were sitting on roughly 52% NDF.

Fiona Baker:

So, there's another column to that. So, if we said, "Right, there were 55% NDF, they could eat 8.7 kilograms of dry matter." If the feed was only 50% fiber or NDF, you can see they can eat 9.6 kilograms of dry matter.

Fiona Baker:

If you want to be exact and you don't want to estimate between that 50 and 55 and you want to use that number 52, look down the bottom of that table and you can see an equation down there, live weight multiplied by two brackets 120, which is a constant, divided by your NDF. So, that's where you put you 52, 120 divided by 52, divided by 100, and then multiplied by the live weight.

Fiona Baker:

So, in that case, we had a 400-kilogram animal, and that would work out at 9.2 kilograms of dry matter that they can eat. So, that's how to use that little table, if you ever want to do that.

Fiona Baker:

Flipping across to slide 18, we're getting there. Excuse me. Knowing your pasture growth rate. So, if you assess your pasture cover in kilograms of dry matter per hectare as stock leaves the paddock, but I like people to know their pasture growth rate because it helps you budgeting of your feed and also helps monitor how each paddock performs and how the season's progressing. So, assess the pasture cover as stock leaves the paddock.

Fiona Baker:

And then reassess the cover in the same paddock some time in the future, such as a fortnight down the track and calculate the difference in pasture cover. Divide by the number of days since your last measurement.

Fiona Baker:

So, an example. The paddock is 1,200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare as stock left. Excuse me. And a fortnight later, the paddock was 1,800 kilograms of dry matter per hectare. So, our growth rate was 1,800 minus 1,200, divide by 14 and our growth rate was 43 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you request slide 19, if you want to do yourself a little feed budget, you're about to put them into a paddock and you want to know how long that paddock will actually last, this little equation here will help get you through it and that's why you need to know your pasture growth rate.

Fiona Baker:

So, example is, Jane, apologies. It's going to be Steve. I've got 65 head of 400-kilogram weight steers. Pasture quality is nine megajoules of seed and roughly 55% neutral detergent fiber. Our paddock size is five hectares. Pasture growth rate's 15 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day. Pre-grazing that's going into a paddock that's got 2,200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare and post-grazing, we want to leave that 1,400 behind.

Fiona Baker:

So, going across this little table, block A, column A, it's asking what is our available? The available is the difference between our pre-grazing and what we want to leave behind, the post-grazing or the residual. So, 2,200 minus 1,400 is 800. So that's our available kilograms of dry matter per hectare.

Fiona Baker:

We then need to know the maximum intake of those steers, so either use the equation or you use that lookup table based on the energy in the fiber, the size of those animals. It would say that they were going to have a maximum intake on this particular feed of 8.7 kilograms of dry matter per head per day.

Fiona Baker:

The next column is how much total pasture is going to be eaten per day by the whole mob, so take it from the individual intake up to the whole mob, so that's just taking that 8.7 multiplied by the 65 head of steers. So, they're going to eat a total amount of 565 and a half kilos of dry matter per day.

Fiona Baker:

So, because a pasture growth rate per kilogram of dry matter per hectare per day, we need to find out how much pasture those animals is going to eat per hectare per day. So, we take our 565 and a half and divide it by our hectare size, which was five hectares that our paddock is. So, they're going to eat 113.1 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day.

Fiona Baker:

So, what's that same going to be, because over that period of time that they're going to be in that pasture, it's still growing, so we need to take that growth into account. So, we worked out our pasture growth rate was 16 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day. It could be at the top of that sheet.

Fiona Baker:

So, we take pasture eaten minus that pasture growth rate so 113.1 minus 15. Then, there's going to be a change of 98.1, so basically what's going to be available at the end, excuse me, I've got a tickle in the throat, is 98.1 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day.

Fiona Baker:

So, the day the feed will work, we just take out available of 800, divide it by our changing availability, and that gives us eight days that that particular paddock will last.

Fiona Baker:

Well, if we flick across to slide 24, just a quick note on using urea, basically. Urea is best applied immediately after stock have been removed from the paddock site. One way of boosting your pasture growth rate. It's been shown that delaying the application of nitrogen fertilizer reduces the potential pasture response by about 1% per day post stock removal from the paddock.

Fiona Baker:

The other benefit of nitrogen is that it's been shown to promote and encourage tillering. To boost growth and to be able to feed [inaudible 00:48:39] of stock, consider a one-off application of 80 kilograms of urea per hectare. If you have a moderate growth rate in your pastures currently, you should get a 10-to-one response from urea. That is 10 kilograms of dry matter grown extra for every one kilogram of nitrogen applied.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you're applying 80 kilograms per hectare of urea, you will be applying roughly 37 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen. So, therefore, in a 10-to-one response, you should be growing an extra 370 kilograms of dry matter per hectare. This is on top of what's already growing.

Fiona Baker:

So, if I had a paddock grazed down to a thousand kilograms of dry matter per hectare and the pasture growth rate was 30 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day, in a month's time, instead of being 1,900 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day so that's a thousand base, about 30 kilograms of growth times the 30 days, with the addition of putting 80 kilograms of urea per hectare on top of that, my paddock should instead be around 2,270 kilograms of dry matter per hectare per day instead of the 1,900.

Fiona Baker:

Onto slide number 21. This is just a little cost of feed in cents per megajoules grown when using urea based on differing response rates. I'm just looking at, is it cost effective to me to actually use urea in my system to get that extra growth or would I actually be better off buying in hay to use as a supplement instead?

Fiona Baker:

So, I look at urea in terms of a supplement to help us grow pasture. In an example here, I've got urea at $1,650 per ton spread and I've got a response rate of 10 to one.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you look in that table, you can see that column down the left hand side, $650 per ton slide across that line to the far side, you'll see a 10-to-one response. You can see that its costing 1.41 cents per megajoule. So, that seemed to grow. So, that's actually really quite cheap.

Fiona Baker:

So, 1.41 cents per megajoule of feed that's grown. So, if I was comparing that to purchasing in hay to fill the feed gap, if the hay was nine megajoules per kilogram of dry matter, it would need to cost $108 per ton delivered or cheaper to beat using urea at that price of $650 per ton. Well, you've got to remember that hay is an immediate feed and you should keep stock of the urea-treated paddock for at least 21 days, minimize the risk of nitrate poisoning and ideally at least a month to five weeks to maximize from the production from urea.

Fiona Baker:

So, that's a really cheap source of feed. So, anytime that you're buying a complimentary feed, you should really cost it out on cent per megajoule to find the best value feed that you can.

Fiona Baker:

So, urea generally, so long as you got green, active-growing pastures can be one of the cheapest supplements that you can get that extra feed, if you've got that time to wait, that sort of four to five weeks.

Fiona Baker:

If we just switch across to slide 22, nearly there at the finish. Just a little not on using gibberellic acid because there's a lot of people out there interested in gib acid and is it right to my system, basically?

Fiona Baker:

So, gib acid is a cheap alternative to boost feed growth. It's a natural plant hormone that's present year-round in plants that tends to fall to low levels over the winter period. By boosting the plant levels during the colder months, you can get a good boosting growth rate and the size of the leaf of the plant. If you do use it, you might notice plants are a lighter green to slightly yellow color during their rapid state of growth. This is simply because the chlorophyll, the bit that gives the plants their green color cannot keep up in terms of production. It's very cheap. It's roughly $12 a hectare and to be mixed with amine if you're spraying broadleaf weeds in your pasture.

Fiona Baker:

Phalaris is highly responsive. We tend to use a lower rate, two and a half to 10 grams per 100 litres of water. Ryegrass and cocksfoot, we tend to use 10 to 20 grams per 100 litres of water, but there's varying strengths of gibberellic acid out there, so you need to have a look if you're using it.

Fiona Baker:

We can get it in a granulated or a liquid form. You need to look at what strength the gib acid that you've purchased is and follow the instructions that comes with it for mixing so to make sure you get the right rate to get the response you like.

Fiona Baker:

Be aware that it works best in colder temperatures, so if you have a very mild winter, where temperatures are sitting around the 15, 16 degrees during the daytime for a week or two, you tend not to get a response from the gib acid during those mild winters, so the colder that winter the daytime temperatures are, we find the better the gib acid works.

Fiona Baker:

So, some years it works and some years it doesn't, but I always recon, at $12 a hectare, if you're going out to spray some weeds or something, it's very useful to chuck some in your tank to see whether you get a response.

Fiona Baker:

In saying that it's for perennial pastures. It's not recommended for annual pastures, for your grasses and it's also not recommended for new sown pastures either. So, if you've gone out and you've sown a perennial pasture this year, you'd be better off using urea instead of gibberellic acid on that. It's just that it's because of root systems of a perennial plant in its first year. It won't be mature enough this winter to be able to draw out enough nutrition out of the soil to support the extra growth that the gib acid is trying to, or using the gib acid is trying to get it to do.

Fiona Baker:

They also suggest final application no later than mid-August because temperatures are on the rise then and they've found through some research that sometimes applications in late winter and early spring might actually suppress spring growth.

Fiona Baker:

So, basically that's a wrap and I'll hand over to Tess now to go through question time. Thank you, Tess.

Tess McDougal:

Thanks, Fiona, for answering some of the questions that are commonly asked around grazing management.

Tess McDougal:

I would now like to open the webinar for questions. First, I will read the questions from the webinar platform and then ask our operator to explain how those joining us from the phone can ask their questions.

Tess McDougal:

So, Fiona, we've got one here. "Where can I find the tools to help me develop a rotation?"

Fiona Baker:

Yeah. That's a really good question. Basically, I like to tell people that as farm managers, they are the best tool on their property. It's a management of your pastures, what you do with it. You've got the tools yourself to develop proper rotation. It depends how detailed you want to be with it as to what you need, but to maximize pasture growth, basically, it's getting down and counting leaves so you can work out that leaf appearance rate is a really good way of doing it to kick off trying to work out what my rotation should be.

Fiona Baker:

So, as I spoke about earlier, once I stock around the paddock, wait a week to a fortnight, go into that paddock and see how many leaves have started to regrow. You might find that you've got a single leaf after 10 days and you might just see that second leaf just starting to appear. So, you might be saying, "Well, okay. I've got a full-grown leaf and a tiny little one, so that's really only the one-leaf stage and it's taken me nine days to get that first leaf fully grown."

Fiona Baker:

Come back and check it a couple of weeks later, just to see because sometimes that leaf appearance rate can speed up over time as well. So, come back and recount it again, like when it's got its two and three leaves and just to check to see what that is. That'll give you an idea for what your rotation should be for the next week, couple of weeks going forward.

Fiona Baker:

So, be aware, at certain times a year, it can change quite quickly. You might be going, "Well, you get to a three-leaf stage, I need a 36-day rotation," and you come back a month later and you check and you might be back down to a 24-day rotation a month later, depending on what the weather's been like in terms of temperatures.

Fiona Baker:

So that's probably one of the best ways you can do. Also know what residual you want to leave behind. How much is stock going to consume? What your likely pasture growth rate's going to be? They're all important, too. Basically, a lot of what we've covered up on tonight should help.

Fiona Baker:

And don't forget, there's a good old suck it and see method, so if you don't want to be too technical, A, you can always just take a look at the paddock when you put your stock in and take them out again. Has the stock eaten lower than what you were hoping to leave behind? If they have particularly since strict grazing you can adjust fairly quickly.

Fiona Baker:

So, if the stock have eaten lower than what you're hoping to leave behind, it means you didn't have as much feed on offer as you thought you did, so next trip, you offer them a little bit more. If they leave too much behind, offer them a little bit less. But, it's just sort of changing a very short, not really, I suppose, planning a rotation, but it's adapting to how much you want them to consume and how much you want them to leave behind.

Tess McDougal:

Thanks, Fiona. And another one. How do I estimate a pasture growth curve on my property?

Fiona Baker:

Yeah, that's a good question. One of the best ways, I recon, you just go to your paddock month to month to see how they perform. You probably only really need to do it over a 12-month period unless your seasons change considerable from time to time.

Fiona Baker:

So, once you got a handle on what your growth rates are, particularly for the different seasons, it typically will benefit for when you're doing your feed budgeting.

Fiona Baker:

So, we talked about how do we best pasture growth in the paddock by going out and assessing what they've left behind and coming back a couple of weeks later and assessing how much is in there and dividing it by the number of days. So, the difference has actually grown. Excuse me.

Fiona Baker:

If you've got a large number of paddocks and you think, "Oh, I don't want to go out and measure on for 40, 50 odd paddocks. I don't want to go out and measure every paddock monthly." One of the easiest ways to do it is maybe pick six of those paddocks to monitor. Three is what you consider your best paddocks and three is what you might consider your poorer paddocks to use as monitor paddocks. And just measure those once monthly and average the figures out after you've done your assessment to allow you to start plotting out a pasture growth curve to your whole, entire property.

Fiona Baker:

Also, I recon there's a website to keep an eye on. It's not currently up and running, Pasturesfromspace.csiro.au. They recently took it offline last year to revamp it and looking to rerelease it at some point this year. I know some people in the past have used that website to get pasture growth rates for your shire area, so you can see how your place compares to the wider shire.

Fiona Baker:

So, keep an eye on that website. Hopefully, they'll release it sooner rather than later because I've always found it very valuable just as a benchmark for our own property, but also sometimes, when other people ask me what growth rates might be in different areas, it's easy to go and look up.

Fiona Baker:

Another starting place could be the feedinglivestock.vic.gov.au website and look under tools for pasture resources. And there's some links there to generalized pasture growth curves, which are based on the, if anyone has heard of [prograde 01:01:13] as a core that used to be run, there was pasture growth curves developed through that course and they're available on that feedinglivestock website. So, feel free to go and have a look on there as well.

Tess McDougal:

And one last one on the question platform is, "What dry matter per hectare should be residual be?"

Fiona Baker:

Ah! Good question. That's really up to each individual and what they're trying to achieve on their property. I guess the only thing I'd say on that is you can't really be too prescriptive on that one, but just remember, a residual below a thousand kilograms of dry matter per hectare or three centimetres is going to result in a slower regrowth and it won't be maximizing your pasture growth.

Fiona Baker:

So, quite often, particularly on ... I've seen a lot of targets for sick recommendations, drought books and all sorts of places, of grazing down to seven and 800 kilograms of dry matter per hectare. Just think about how much that's eating into the stem reserves of those plants.

Fiona Baker:

So, if you remember back to that slide that has the photo of the ryegrass that was chewed off to those three different heights and the regrowth that happens between the, I think it was 700 kilograms of dry matter per hectare versus 1,200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare. It was only a centimeter regrowth difference, but that's quite considerable when you start to add it up over time and over a large area.

Fiona Baker:

So, just think about what you're doing to your pasture. Normally, I'd say, even on a sheep property, I'd be saying, "Try to keep it above a thousand or at a thousand as your base as much as possible across the year," just to maximize that pasture growth.

Fiona Baker:

Of like the dry stock, I suggest a thousand kilos of dry matter per hectare. Lactating animals, I don't care whether they're cattle or sheep, but lactating animals with young stock, I'd probably recommend 1,200 kilos of dry matter per hectare. That's 74 centimetres and now you're trading stock where you're trying to push animal growth. Ideally, 1,400 kilograms of dry matter per hectare, which is about five centimetres and that's so that they're eating mostly leaf, which is a high-quality feed and that really pushes animal growth. Anything below that, they start chewing into some of the stem material as well, which can bring back their animal performance.

Fiona Baker:

So, the most important thing to consider is to monitor his stock condition and just adjust those residuals and feeding take as needed basically. So, yeah. That's probably what I'd be suggesting.

Tess McDougal:

Thanks, Fiona. And Elena's asked, "How do you work out what dry matter kilos per hectare you've got? What tools do you use?"

Fiona Baker:

Yup. Good one. So, one of the things I like using, I don't know whether people have seen. I probably should have put a photo on there, on the slide. The MLA pasture ruler is really good. If you haven't got one, just shout out to, if you've got Tess's contact details, just return email. She can let me know. I've got a stash of these pasture rulers from MLA that's just a little plastic ruler that's got those heights with those kilograms of dry matter marked off next to them. So, there is the one to do.

Fiona Baker:

If you just training your eyes for the first time. So, once you get your eyes trained in, it's quite easy to walk out into a pasture and go, "Ah! I recon there's 1,600 kilos of dry matter per hectare here." But that doesn't take any training to get that eye in.

Fiona Baker:

And then pasture rulers are great for doing that toe point method for the first few times. You walk across the paddock and it might be every 20 steps and you just put that pasture ruler down in the grass and see how far it comes up that ruler. And you might say, "Well, that was six centimetres, 1,600 kilos of dry matter per hectare." I keep walking across the paddock, do some more measurements and there'll be varying heights across the paddock. Then, I average those heights out to give me that average across that paddock.

Fiona Baker:

The other way to do it and it's tied into it is we call it the gumboot method. And does anyone got access to the drought feeding books? They're available on our AgVic website and also on the feedinglivestock website, which was feedinglivestock.vic.gov.au. You can download a pdf version of those if you haven't got a hard copy. It's a drought book. If you want a hard copy, just shout it out and we can mail one out. But if you've got the gumboot guide in there on the beef cattle in chapter three, and that is the same measurement that are on the pasture ruler. But it can be handy when you're walking across the paddock and seeing how high up that grass comes on your gumboots.

Fiona Baker:

So, generally, when it's sitting at close to the top of the toe of your gumboot, it should be roughly around the 16, 1,700 kilograms of dry matter per hectare if it's nice and thick and dense across your pasture.

Fiona Baker:

If it's sort of coming up to, think about where that bone in your ankle is. If it's coming up to that sort of height consistently across your pasture, that's roughly 2,200 kilograms of dry matter per hectare.

Fiona Baker:

So, yeah, just shout out. If anyone wants a copy of that pasture ruler or you can't find where the drought books are or you want a hard copy of the drought book, just shout out and we can make sure you can find that information.

Tess McDougal:

Thanks, Fiona. And I'll now ask Daniel to explain the phone question process.

Daniel:

Thank you, Tess. And our phone audience tonight can queue for a question by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad.

Daniel:

We might just pause a moment and see if we can assemble a question queue, but from what I can see, we're not getting any questions coming through on the telephone at the moment.

Tess McDougal:

Fantastic. Thanks, Daniel. So that concludes our Autumn Grazing Management webinar. Thanks again to our presenter, Fiona, and thank you all for attending.

Tess McDougal:

Shortly, an email will be sent to you. This will have a link to a short survey. Please take the time to fill this out, as it allows us to offer you timely information. A transcript and a recording of this presentation will be available on the registration portal link and an email at a later stage.

Tess McDougal:

Before I close tonight, I would like to highlight the third webinar in this series by Agriculture Victoria titled Planning and Designing a Five Star Water Supply, presented by Clem Sturmfeis. This webinar will cover topics such as planning for your future, stock water requirements, climate impacts, and basic design. This will be held on Wednesday, the 20th of May at 7:30 pm. For registrations, please contact me by phone 0409 841 492. Thank you and good night.