Feed nutrition of low rainfall crops and pastures
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Tanja Morgan: Hello and welcome to the MSF Farm Talk podcast. I'm Tanja Morgan. And on today's episode, we are joined by Hamish Dickson, who is the Principal Livestock Consultant with Agri Partner Consulting. Welcome, Hamish. Great to have you on the show.
Hamish Dickson: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Tanja Morgan: Now you are based just out of Orange in New South Wales.
What's been happening in your neck of the woods? How wet are things over there?
Hamish Dickson: We've had one of the wettest seasons, I think probably in the history books at the moment. So yeah, for us, probably a pretty disastrous drought that came through and mostly broke in sort of early 2020.
And since that, yeah, a couple of years of La Nina and we've had an incredibly wet season, and this year's shaping up the same. It's not something you wanna complain about ever, but it's certainly bringing a fair few challenges with the amount of water that we're getting.
It's we're struggling to probably string together three days of sunshine at the moment before we get, [00:01:00] another sort of a bit of moisture coming through again. Yeah even for us, I guess on our farm, we've had all sorts of challenges. We've actually had a spring that's popped up in our sheep yards that has never existed before.
So that's been a new challenge to have to dig up and drain those sorts of, things that have come up in, in these years. Yeah, different challenges. But a positive thing overall, you. Certainly don't wanna be looking for the alternative, which is the dry times.
Tanja Morgan: Good to hear things are going well over your way. I guess we're gonna jump from one extreme to another. Now we're going to look at the low rainfall zone. And we've had you on the show before speaking about the
AWI-funded project, looking at improving sheep nutrition through the assessment of regional crops and pastures in the low rainfall zone, trying to get a better idea of feed nutrition values on lower rainfall crops and pastures.
And you've just put together the second year of results. The first year that we started sampling, we were looking at very low rainfall. I think we were decile one and two in some regions. And now we've also gone to an above [00:02:00] average rainfall year. So we've got quite a difference in the years where we've been sampling.
Hamish Dickson: Yeah, it's been interesting, and I think even with the second year of sampling. Whilst the seasonal conditions changed quite a lot, it was certainly that late break. And as a result of that, we weren't able to do our autumn sampling in this second year of testing.
I guess too, to go back a little step. The idea is that we can sample a whole range of these species every season. So in this second year, we've effectively got winter, spring, and summer samples collected across a whole range of different species for us to look at what the difference is in feed quality.
The second year, certainly, I think with the late break and then obviously the continuing season and how that played out. Generally, we've seen quite a good hold in higher-quality feed for longer periods which is good. And it reflects certainly the season that was experienced.
The differences start to come into play about really how that effect has played out across different species in the system. We've seen things like obvious lucerne that has got some more summer [00:03:00] activity has held quality all through the season, whereas normally we would still expect some drop off coming into potentially summertime.
With lower rainfall coming into play. So for example, the lucerne tested at 10 ME through winter, spring, and summer. Whereas certainly, we might expect those sorts of figures coming through winter and spring. And then we might expect to see that sort of fall down a little bit to maybe nine or even eight and a half.
So those sorts of impacts have come into play a little bit. And then probably things like even aspects like some of the cereal. Where we would typically see protein, for example, come down as we come into spring and summer, you tend to see bigger decreases where we've got larger bulks, the bulk matter of that sort of feed.
And we've seen that come through in the test results. So I think, as we start to pull together the year-on-year comparisons within the project. It would be good to be able to get those out clearly and see the comparison across those two quite different seasons.
Tanja Morgan: Yeah. You talked about growth before and how that has quite a big impact on the feed [00:04:00] nutrition at the time. And I, I guess that's one thing to keep in mind when we're in the Mallee and. we think about such a highly variable environment that we're in. We don't always get a break at the same time of year every year.
And it can be quite broad when we do get the break of the season. So we get quite often gonna see things growing at different times of the year. So I guess when we look at the data going forward taking into consideration the growth stage and the feed nutrition of things is gonna be important.
Hamish Dickson: Yeah. And I think with the way that we've run, I guess the sampling as such it's been aligned to season to a degree, but like you say that the actual really important part to bring out of it is the stage of growth of the plant not necessarily, what month we call the sampling and how that, what month that was undertaken.
More than anything the quality of the pasture varies based on reality, whether it's, in a really active young growth stage and there's lots of fresh leaf material there, or if it's progressed all the way through to flowering or drying off and or all the way to being senescent. That's realistically what is actually driving those differences in quality.
Not [00:05:00] what month we happen to call it. A really important part of looking at, these trends is what we see from guessing something like what's our peak nutritive value of different species in the early growth phase compared to where they decline? Is actually, really mapping out how that aligns along the growth phase.
Fortunately, as part of the project there are actually quite a few photos that have been taken of all of those different species at sampling time as well that help put a lot of that into context so that you can actually see, Okay, this is what that plant looked like at the time of sampling.
And many of you will be able to put that in a better context in a visual way like that.
Tanja Morgan: And another thing that we were interested in when we came into putting this project together was looking at grazing legume crops.
And the reason is that we love to have dual-purpose options in the Mallee, just in case things go wrong in some years. So being able to graze legume crops and having that as a backup option takes the risk outta growing those sorts of things. We also see that a lot more people are sewing legume crops to pasture just because they can get more production than [00:06:00] your typical regenerative pasture-type systems. So what do you think about grazing legume crops based on the results that you've seen?
Hamish Dickson: Yeah, I think I think a lot of these legumes have been a standout in terms of. Quality, especially through winter and spring, which is, I suppose the timing when we'll start to have some sort of guidance about whether they're potentially gonna be headed towards an opportunity for grazing.
So I guess that's a couple of examples. So if we look at I guess canola as an example, has been. I guess break crops have been included in both years of this testing and through winter. It was certainly the highest energy quality of any of the samples that we collected. And that was consistent in year one of the project as well where.
It tested very high-quality feed and that's consistent with canola testing, outside of the Mallee as well. It's certainly got the opportunity. And then other, I guess going back to legumes such as peas and even vetch, we see certainly and high energy, we see high protein of those species coming through.
One, of the interesting aspects of those, is probably looking at [00:07:00] how they decline in quality as they come into summer. I think one interesting point that, will be I guess quite good to sort of draw out. In the reporting and some of the extension workshops and things that are involved in this project down the track is how drastically some of those decline in quality.
And we probably see bigger declines in quality out of some of those legumes as we come into summer compared to cereals. So potentially that means that, yes they have a really big opportunity, but maybe the tactic is we need to identify that quickly and utilize that feed as soon as possible, rather than letting that go right through.
So there's probably a little bit of nuance in there that's important to dig out and, understand so that, if there is something like a pea crop that needs to be
potentially grazed, there are some factors about, what types of peas are used and how that plays out.
But certainly, if we're gonna get a graze off, off peas or vetch or even something like a canola the timing can be really important. So the upside is there and the opportunity is there, but there's probably some aspects that are important to cover off in [00:08:00] terms of the management and how we graze them.
Tanja Morgan: So another key aim of this project was having a really useful data set for low rainfall farmers that are participating in Lifetime Ewe workshops. So now that you've seen the data, I know you haven't had a real, deep dive into the things that you've looked at.
It's just been a bit of a quick overview of what you put together, but. How do the trends of feed nutrition compare to what we see in a high rainfall zone?
Hamish Dickson: I think this testing has probably been really useful in that it's picking up probably the slight differences that do come through in a lower rainfall zone like the Mallee. So aspects like if we would typically be looking at, say protein content of a cereal coming through winter and spring I think we tend to see. Protein in particular is one aspect that will be lower in these sorts of environments. So it's still certainly good quality. And if we take, say our barley samples in the winter, they're at about 20% protein.
So certainly high quality and high protein content, but you [00:09:00] would quite often see a high rainfall zone that, that might be 25 or even 30% protein. So probably a fair component of that relates to nitrogen application at sowing or urea top-ups or more of an agronomic impact there.
But the reality is that the protein content in that scenario is lower and that's one aspect to be conscious of. And those sorts of trends and slight differences exist even for other components like, looking at energy in some of the species or probably the other big part is getting some good testing undertaken on species that tend to exist in these lower rainfall environments for say veldt grass. The reality is there's not a heck of a lot of veldt grass that's put into high rainfall environment pastures. Whereas here we've got the testing that's been included in that. So we now have I guess an additional data set on that as an example to be able to bring into Lifetime Ewe management courses and to be able to provide a resource in really working through calculations and all the decision-making processes that are involved in lifetime year.
Tanja Morgan: Yeah, it's fantastic that we're gonna have these [00:10:00] resources available for low rainfall farmers very soon. We look forward to working with you over the next couple of months to roll these workshops out and we'll keep people posted on where they can get more information.
Thank you very much for joining us today on the MSF Farm Talk podcast we'll be bringing more of this very soon.
Hamish Dickson: yeah. Looking forward to it. Thank you.