Livestock management in cropping systems video

Title: Livestock management in cropping systems during dry seasons

Vision: Livestock Management in Cropping Systems in Dry Seasons points

This presentation provides farmers with information about stock containment areas, and managing stock during the dry season. It also looks at stubble management and grazing stubble.

Vision: Stock containment areas

Amy Martin - Biosecurity Officer - Agriculture Victoria:

'The ideal setup for a stock containment area is to make sure that stock has plenty of room.'

Vision: Sheep showing shade cover — paddock — sheep

'That they have some sort of shade and shelter. Plenty of space for stock to actually feed from feeders and from hay, and the best scenario is to actually have hay and feed at one end of the yard and water at the other end.'

Amy Martin speaking - sheep:

'When managing stock containment areas, farmers need to keep in mind the health issues that are associated with keeping stock in stock containment, they're in a lot more confined area so the risks of disease are higher.'

Vision: Water trough

'They also need to keep water clean and fresh all the time, especially in hot conditions.'

Vision: Sheep feeding

'If stock run out of feed they run a risk of potentially gorging themselves when they do get fed, and risks of associated problems like grain poisoning.'

Hamish Dickson - Livestock Management Consultant - AgriPartner Consulting:

'If you are looking at using a containment area for holding stock, and especially it's an option once we start running out of paddock feed, things to be conscious of is making sure that we get the feeding ration correct. One of the benefits of using a containment area is that you have full control over the diet. The rations that you use will vary depending on the class of stock that you're feeding.'

Vision: Grazing stubble - Amy Martin speaking - Things to be aware when grazing stubble points:

'When grazing stubble farmers need to be aware that the stubble may not actually meet all the requirements of the stock that they're actually grazing on stubble, they also need to be mindful of groundcover over the paddock, how much grain is available, how far stock have to walk to water, and also watch body condition of livestock to make sure that they're not losing condition on those stubbles.'

Vision: Stock Management - Amy Martin speaking:

'Body condition is so important because it's a hard thing to actually gain back.'

Vision: Stock condition scoring

'It costs money to feed stock to gain that body condition back, and it can have ongoing effects with the production of your stock.'

Hamish Dickson speaking:

'In terms of monitoring, from the paddock point of view, one of the key things is the grain availability that's out there. That's the main driver of condition in stock, so we need to be able to do some grain counts to make sure that we've got enough grain available to stock. At the minimum level, we only want to graze stubbles once they get down to the level of about 40 kilos per hectare. From a groundcover perspective, we want to make sure that we're monitoring the groundcover available in the paddock.'

Vision: 50% standing stubble photo

'And we only want to take that groundcover down to an absolute minimum of 50%. And you might even take that a little bit higher if you're trying to really make sure that erosion isn't a problem.'

Hamish Dickson speaking:

'And from a livestock point of view, we want to be making sure that we're monitoring the condition score of stock, particularly your adult stock, because it's a big driver of a lot of their production aspects. And from a growing stock perspective, you'd be looking at things like the growth rate as well as a monitoring tool.'

Vision: Drought feeding and management of beef cattle — drought feeding and management of sheep booklets

Agriculture Victoria — Drought. Don't go it alone