A DEDICATION to finding the right pasture combination to suit his superfine wool production system is certainly paying dividends for Wellstead grower Morgan Sounness.
Close to 25 years ago, Morgan decided it was time to do something about the discounts he was receiving for his wool clips, due to poor yield results compared to some of his counterparts.
In an attempt to chase a premium for his wool clip, Morgan had decided to offer his wool in New South Wales, where there was a greater demand for ultrafine and superfine wools.
The move was an awakening for Morgan and his wife Debbie after they found their yields were just not matching those produced in the Eastern States.
“We went over to watch some of our first wool being sold, and to our disgust our wool looked horrible compared to other superfine wools that were being offered in the same sale,” Morgan said.
“There was a large amount of dust penetration that we had from farming on sandplain country.
“It really detracted from how the wool looked in the display boxes and buyers were avoiding it because they were looking at a dirty sample.
“It was a perception thing, because all wool is washed and scoured, but the difference for our wool was occurring on the tip of the fleeces where there were perishing and erosion issues.”
Morgan and Debbie returned to their farm, knowing they had to do something about their wool clip if they were going to make the exercise of selling in the Eastern States worthwhile.
“We decided to try putting coats on the sheep and while this worked well, the intensive nature of this from a labour point of view just made it too difficult,” Morgan said.
“We had seen some of the work that the Department of Agriculture and Food, and Paul Sanford in particular, were doing around kikuyu pastures so we investigated this option.”
Instead of jumping in boots and all to kikuyu, Morgan decided to set up a small trial to see if the pasture was suited to their enterprise.
“We put in a small paddock, which was our ram paddock, initially,” he said.
“Very quickly we learnt a few things around establishment.
“Spraying is absolutely critical when establishing kikuyu as you have to get rid of weeds.
“Kikuyu seedlings are very feeble and they just won’t compete with grasses, so you need a good spray program to get it up and going.”
Once the first paddock of kikuyu was established, the Sounnesses were able to lift their stocking rate and that gave them the confidence to plant more of it to their property.
“Our wool quality was improving out of sight and we didn’t have the dust issues coming off that initial paddock that we did on the rest of the farm,” Morgan said.
“We gained a bit of knowledge about kikuyu by doing a small area first and that gave us the confidence to move to a bigger paddock and give it a go.”
As more of the property went under kikuyu, there were some interesting developments in the wool clip.
“Given we had tried the coats, we had some interesting data to compare our wool coming off the kikuyu to,” Morgan said.
“Prior to doing anything our vegetable matter (VM) tests were always over one, but when we used the coats we were regularly getting it down to 0.4.
“As we harvested wool from the sheep coming off kikuyu we were getting back to the 0.4 mark.
“It was really a significant finding for us and in essence we were coating the paddocks, not the sheep but obtaining the same outcome in reducing dust issues.”
Other things began happening to the property that really signified that kikuyu was the right plant for their program.
“This property is mostly made up of gutless sandy soils,” Morgan said.
“In tough seasons and long summers we experienced terrible wind erosion. Also, if you had a large rain event, you would end up with bad water erosion.
“Prior to the kikuyu I was in the process of fencing off large areas of paddocks because the erosion was just too tough to deal with.
“When we were cropping there were some areas of the paddock you just couldn’t go on because the sand was that bad the truck would get bogged every time.”
As the kikuyu took hold, the erosion problems began to disappear.
“Areas of land that were non-productive or you couldn’t drive on were suddenly transformed and we were able to bring them back into production,” Morgan said.
“The soil profile really started to change with the kikuyu binding it together more.”
There was also a big benefit to the property’s wool clip.
“If you want a consistent quality wool clip, you need even nutrition for the whole year,” Morgan said.
“We don’t crop anymore, but when we were we found we would have a massive amount of feed in spring, then it would drop off in quality and you would try and hold the sheep until we could get them onto fresh barley stubbles.
“After the feed value of the stubbles ran out, you would start trail feeding but often the sheep would lose condition anyway, then the break of the season would come and condition would really drop off until the feed started to pick up and then condition would go with it.
“These spikes and troughs in nutrition played havoc with the wool strength and consistency of the fibre.
“With kikuyu we are evening out the nutrition plane and providing something for the sheep year-round.”
Morgan said he looks at his pastures as having multi-layers.
“You need the foundation pasture to stop the sand and stop the erosion, so when the annuals (grasses) fall over you still have an intact paddock,” he said.
“Kikuyu is my foundation pasture. The first layer after that is a legume and the research is showing that along the South Coast, sub-clovers are the best for kikuyu.
“The third layer is grass.
“You still need grasses, such as a ryegrass, in combination with the kikuyu and clovers.
“When the kikuyu goes dormant in the middle of winter and the legumes haven’t quite fired up, you have to fill the feed gap with something and that is where your grasses fit in.
“The fourth layer and the hardest one to work out, is shrubs.
“I have played around with shrubs such as tall wheat grass, but it hasn’t been too successful.
“We have some tree Lucerne here and saltbush is a possibility, but I am yet to nail this fourth layer.
“It is the hardest one to achieve and the final chapter in the book. If you can get a fourth layer that works you can essentially set up a maternity ward for your ewes.”
At the moment more than 50 per cent of the 1277 hectares on the Sounness property is planted to kikuyu.
“There are arguments that 100 per cent of the place should be kikuyu given how it has worked for us, but I don’t think that way,” Morgan said.
“If something came along and wiped the kikuyu out, I could fall over.
“Kikuyu is also great for maintaining stock, but if I want to finish them in the future I will need to try chicory or something like.
“I need to keep flexibility in the operation so that I can adapt to seasons or changes in our farming operation.”
While the aim of the move to establish kikuyu was driven by Morgan’s passion for producing the highest quality superfine wool, the offshoot of the process has been the establishment of a very good kikuyu seed business.
“When we looked at what we were paying for seed when we first started out, we could see there was an opportunity there,” he said.
“We set ourselves up to harvest our own seed and are now selling seed to every State in Australia.”
The hike in livestock prices has meant demand for seed has gone through the roof.
“It is obviously cyclical,” Morgan said.
“Investment in pastures is driven by cattle and sheep prices and what we are seeing now in terms of demand for pasture seed is a reflection of the buoyancy of livestock prices.”
Morgan said seed supply was also down this year.
“The last two seasons have not been good for seed production,” he said.
“We had two very wet summers in a row and that impacted on our ability to harvest and we only got on to about 50pc of the area we planned to harvest this year.
“We will struggle to fill orders this year and if anyone is planning to plant kikuyu next year, they really need to be ordering seed now.”
The Sounnesses are running about 5000 sheep and have lifted their stocking rate to 10 sheep to a hectare since introducing kikuyu and stopping cropping.
“When we were running the annuals and cropping mix, we would run seven sheep to a hectare,” Morgan said.
“We could probably lift our stocking rate to 12 sheep a hectare now we have a lot of the farm planted to kikuyu. But how hard do you push the barrow?
“We could push hard and get higher returns, but then there is also higher risk.
“We have pulled back and while we receive less returns, there is a lower risk.
“We don’t crop anymore either.
“When I weighed up the cost of cropping as opposed to what we could make from running more sheep and buying in oats for supplementary feed, it made sense to buy-in feed.
“If you take a paddock out of pasture – say it is 100ha, that is 1000 sheep that you can’t run at 10 sheep to a hectare.
“We looked at growing our own sheep feed, but the economics of that didn’t stack up with having that paddock in pasture and growing more wool.
“There is also a balanced work load and if we run more sheep we will work harder.
“At this stage in our lives we don’t want to be working harder.”
Shearing takes place in July-August and the ewes lamb in September, which is a unique timing for WA.
“Not many people lamb at this time of year because it is hard to get weaners across the first summer,” Morgan said.
“If they don’t achieve a certain bodyweight they are going to fall over and fail.
“Here we have the kikuyu and the weaners go across the summer fine, because the kikuyu is providing good feed value then.
“Having the perennials allows us to lamb later in the spring and there is plenty of grass for lactation so we don’t have to trail feed and upset lambing ewes.
“We can leave them alone and let them do their thing.
“Lambing late also means that when we come to shearing time in July, we are getting more length of wool off our lambs, which basically pays for the shearing.”