Forage Shrubs podcast series Episode 1
Thirty years of Saltbush at the McNabb’s – What did they learn and how did it turn out?
Ian and Elizabeth McNabb have been planting and managing forage shrubs on their land at Carwarp in the Victorian Mallee for over thirty years. In this first episode of our four part forage shrub series, we hear how the McNabb’s establish their shrubs, what types survive best, and how the shrubs have boosted productivity and business resilience while reclaiming saline land.
Podcast Summary:
Ian and Elizabeth McNabb have over thirty years’ experience with different types of forage shrub, established by both direct seeding and planting tube-stock. They’ve worked out which species survive best and regenerate, and currently have around 800 acres of mostly Old Man Saltbush on heavier, salt-affected land. This stand has helped reduce the spread of saline land on their property. It also provides valuable extra feed, allowing the McNabb’s to lamb their SAMM ewes down three times every two years. Grazing with cattle as well as sheep has prevented shrubs from getting too tall. Importantly, the extensive area of Saltbush meant the McNabbs could keep their stock through most of the drought of 20172020, improving the drought resilience of their business.
[00:00:00]
Nick Paltridge: Hi, it's Nick Paltridge here from Mallee Sustainable Farming. I'm traveling through the Mallee at the moment, meeting farmers with experience planting and managing fodder shrubs. Today I'm with Ian and Elizabeth McNabb, who farm at Carwarp about 40 km south of Mildura. How are you going, Ian and Elizabeth? Can you tell us a bit about your farm?
Ian McNabb: It's a typical dry farm with about 7,000 acres and a lot of sour ground that we are trying to bring back with saltbush. We've run mainly SAM Merinos and Angus cows.
Nick Paltridge: When did you start planting salt bush Ian?
Ian McNabb: We started back in 2000 and bought a little machine from WA. And the trend has gone on since then.
Nick Paltridge: And when you started what varieties were available for you to plant?
Ian McNabb: The main one then was just Old Man.
Nick Paltridge: And did you plant tube stock or seed?
Ian McNabb: We started with seed, but then nobody told us we needed a thunderstorm to germinate it, so it [00:01:00] sat there for four years. I abused every seed grower in the country and we moved over to seedlings, which we could see what was happening. Then four years later, we got the thunderstorm and up come all the seeds. So basically you've gotta have a thunderstorm to get the seed to germinate.
Nick Paltridge: If you had your time again, would you focus on planting tube stock?
Ian McNabb: I think it's cost a bit more, but I'd go for the seed stock because I've got a wife that loves planting them and you can see what you're doing and they grow straight away.
Elizabeth McNabb: And I think that with the tube stock you have you've prepared the mounds and they're weed free. And then because the tube stock has their root, they take straight off and less competition for the weeds. They do not like weeds when they're first growing.
Nick Paltridge: What row spacings?
Ian McNabb: Only three meters wide.
Nick Paltridge: How did you prepare the ground?.
Elizabeth McNabb: It was Ian's job. He'd mound the ground and then he'd work it and you can't have any weeds. So [00:02:00] make sure it was weed free and we had to time it with hopefully summer storms that took off better then.
Nick Paltridge: How did you choose what parts of the property plant?
Elizabeth McNabb: Marginal areas, low areas.
And we tried around salt pans, we worked out how far out you can come from a salt pan and what type of soil we could put it into. The better the soil, the better the plant.
Nick Paltridge: So I suppose your motives were...
Elizabeth McNabb: Reclamation of land.
Nick Paltridge: Reclaim land, reduce the groundwater, but also provide a useful source of (that's right) feed for the sheep. Yes.
Have you got any tips for listeners on how to manage the grazing?
Ian McNabb: We made sure it was well established to the ground that the stock wouldn't pull the plants out. No. We used to concentrate with sheep on the new plants and once they
got a certain height, we'd mow them down with the cows because they always wanted to reach the high bit.
Nick Paltridge: That's interesting cause a lot of people have had an issue with keeping the plants trimmed. So it sounds like having some cows has been...[00:03:00]
Ian McNabb: They're pretty cheap just buy a few cows.
Elizabeth McNabb: You can't leave them in there too long and then destroy the crown of the plant either. You have to be, have to watch the grazing.
Nick Paltridge: Elizabeth, do you find that the stock are born knowing how to graze the saltbush?
Elizabeth McNabb: They need training. When we introduce the lambs to the saltbush, we take the ewes in with them and the ewes love it. The lamb will just follow in and eat. So that's good.
Nick Paltridge: I've been hearing from some people that they're having trouble with rabbits moving into their plantations. Have you got any advice on rabbit control?
Elizabeth McNabb: Yes. The spaces of the row so you can go down and rip, you can use baits. The problem when we've had a really good year last year and the regeneration, there's going to be problems with rabbits because it's spreading everywhere and quite thick. We can't get in and do our normal program of checking.
Nick Paltridge: So you were saying that you prefer to plant on heavier ground cause that's less prone to rabbit infestation?
Ian McNabb: Rabbits don't seem to worry [00:04:00] the flat country, they'd like a bit of heavier ground. No, they keep out of that flat country.
Nick Paltridge: Now, you said you started with Old Man Saltbush. Have you tried any other varieties of shrub or Saltbush?
Ian McNabb: Yeah we've tried most of them, but the main ones that survive are just the Old Man, the other fine leaf one, Murray Saltbush, we've still got some of them, they're hanging on pretty good, the stock actually like them better because there's probably less salt.
Nick Paltridge: We had a terrible run of dry years from 2017 through to 2020. How did the shrubs survive that period?
Ian McNabb: Yeah well, the first three years of the drought we kept all our stock alive, but we just never got any rain to germinate it again. And from 2021 the last couple years it's starting to come back.
Nick Paltridge: Which varieties are regenerating now from the original stands?
Ian McNabb: Yeah, mainly just Old man.
Nick Paltridge: So did you find that having the shrub plantings really came into its own during that dry period from [00:05:00] 2017 to 2020?
Ian McNabb: Oh, yes. We were running over 500 cattle at that time, prices weren't all that flash, so we kept feeding them and growing them. And it wasn't until about 20 when up North got the rain and we were able to sell a lot of cows and calves up through that country. It was great to see that we could hang onto ' em for three years with basically no rain and without having to get rid of any of the stock. Well, prices, were pretty sick.
Nick Paltridge: Roughly what area of saltbush have you got?
Ian McNabb: We've got most of our low country covered, work out around about a thousand acres. Some of it's too wet the wet year of 11 knocked us around a bit because it got too wet. But what was on the right ' in between ground' actually grew fantastic. And it allowed us to keep the stock going.
Nick Paltridge: Now, in addition to using the saltbush as a living haystack for dry times, do you also use it at other times of [00:06:00] year?
Ian McNabb: Yes, we'll put in lambing news or just give them break. And the main advantage of it is just to put 'em in for a few weeks, and give them a bit of a change. Especially the lambs. They just do kickoff with it. So yeah, I use it quite a bit at all times of the year because I do drop lambs at all different times of the year, and therefore a green pick is at any time of the year is always great.
Nick Paltridge: It's really interesting to see the flexibility that the fodder shrubs have brought your system. It also seems that it's making you more drought resilient and able to get stock off country during dry times. So it's a real asset to the farm!
Ian McNabb: Absolutely. Yeah, because you can then lamb anytime. You don't have to worry about a nice green pick for the lambs because you know you've got it sitting out there in the salt pan.
Nick Paltridge: Have you found that the saltbush plantings have helped you reduce the spread of the salt pans [00:07:00] or the regionally high water table?
Ian McNabb: Oh, absolutely. That's one of the main reasons I did go for it as well is to keep the water table down. It was always interesting monitoring the water table. The roots wanted to go right down to it and feed straight from the table.
Elizabeth McNabb: We find now that after mounding and having bare ground between the mounds , as the saltbush grow , we've found we're getting more native grasses back between the mounds that wasn't there before.
Nick Paltridge: Fantastic. So it's helping you reclaim land. That's so great.
Have you got any final messages for listeners out there?
Ian McNabb: I'm a great fan of the Saltbush because it's basically a haystack growing all the time and at the moment it's starting to come back very good, ready for the next drought, which I hope won't happen too soon. But if you got any sour ground or any ground not producing is really, it's the only way to go because there's so much salt country around and [00:08:00] it's, just great to see a salt pan covered in green.
Nick Paltridge: Ian and Elizabeth, thank you so much for showing me around today and being part of this podcast.