AS well as being a successful weapon against weed numbers, chaff carts could be a boon for mixed farmers for sheep feed and potentially helping fill the late-autumn feed gap.
For Kojonup farmer and Catch Em chaff cart manufacturer Peter Hills, using a chaff cart on the 2200 hectares he crops is providing an additional feed source for the 3000 Merino sheep that he runs with wife Emily.
The Catch Em is part of the suite of farm equipment Mr Hills manufactures, along with the Pick Em rotary rock picker and the Chase Em chaser bin.
One of the largest on the market, the Catch Em chaff cart is on controlled trafficking settings, which Mr Hills said was a big selling point as more people pushed into controlled trafficking farming.
He said there had been growing interest in chaff carts from mixed farmers to help increase sheep feed.
"The sheep feed side, from a mixed farm point of view, is one of the biggest selling points," he said.
"I've had a lot of growers actually just buy the chaff cart purely for feeding sheep, as silly as that sounds."
Mr Hills has been using chaff cart on his property for four years, initially as a weed control option but as the sheep side of their enterprise picked up, they had seen the benefits in producing additional sheep feed.
"We've been running the cart for four years and we're finding that it doesn't really matter if it is a wet or dry year," he said,
"Last year was quite exceptional because there was a green pick all the way through so that was quite handy but even in years gone by like 2015 where it was quite dry in our area and no summer rain, the sheep just do fantastic off the chaff.
"The best results we get are off the canola stubble - we've also baled it before, so you can actually get a feed reserve going into the winter and late autumn and they hold together pretty well."
Weed control is still front of mind for the couple as cropping remains their main focus.
The wet conditions last year saw a blowout in ryegrass numbers but Mr Hills said he was hoping that with the chaff carts trailing the headers that the weed banks could be brought under control.
"The chaff cart is another tool in the box and we don't really want to go down the genetically modified path unless we have to, so it is buying us longevity in our chemical usage," he said.
"At the moment we do a two or three-way tank mix for pre-emergents and we get away with not doing any post emergent ryegrass sprays at all.
"The long-term goal is to do away with the two to three-way mix as well and for that we could be looking at saving $50/ha plus on chemical costs alone."
The couple is also using other crops, such as hay and canola, to reduce the need for pre-emergent herbicides.
"We are slowly increasing our hay hectares so our plan is to get the hay off as quick as we can and the seeder will follow directly behind the baler and put the millet in and maybe a cow pea-lablab mix, so we get some nitrogen fixing over summer as well," he said.
"The plan is to do that and with the hay timing when the hay comes off the paddock it's actually the ideal time for planting our summer crop so we'll try and get a dual crop."
This year Mr Hills is trialling millet.
If that goes to plan it could be "quite exciting" as a cropping and potentially feed option, he said.
The millet was sown late in December and received 55 millimetres of rain the day after seeding and at this stage will be harvested in late March or early April.
"We have no plans at all with the millet, we'll watch it and it's starting to get quite leafy now, so we could graze it, but if we graze it we'll have to feed it more nutrition so at this stage we're just going to watch it and see what it does and run it through to harvest with no cost."
