'Pastures for Profit' provokes thought

A panel of five speakers covered off on the theme in a series of short presentations which looked at topics such how to get the most out of your pastures, how to manage and graze pastures for the best results, the importance of getting pasture orders in early, how much pasture should you sow each year, maintaining livestock condition and providing the right nutrition.

Speaking on the day were Manypeaks beef producer Bevan Ravenhill, Lawsons Angus; Elders, Albany livestock production specialist Tiarna Wallinger; Cattle Australia membership and sponsorship officer Sam Parish; Harvest Road agribusiness manager Declan Keogh and Bell Pasture Seeds representative Dave Edwards.

Bevan Ravenhill

Speaking first on the panel was Mr Ravenhill who focused his presentation around the title 'profitable pastures, bring profitable business'.

Mr Ravenhill, whose enterprise is 100 per cent pasture based running cattle and sheep, said profit equals increased production, not a reduction in costs.

"This means we should be focused on the kilograms of meat produced per hectare, not talk about the price received per animal," Mr Ravenhill said.

"To do this we need to increase our production, not reduce our costs as we have fixed costs, which don't change irrespective of how many head we run.

"We need to graze, we need to do better."

Mr Ravenhill said the seven most expensive words in the cattle business are "we have always done it that way" and tradition was a real hamper to their businesses.

"Producers need to be in control of their business and to grow their businesses they need to grow more grass," he said.

"Growing more grass this year will be your biggest driver, we have all driven round and we all know there is no feed.

"When the season breaks there is going to be no stored forage anywhere, so we are going to need to grow every amount of grass we can this year.

"We need to capture that in livestock sold per hectare and we need to fill the hay shed and get the stocks back."

In his presentation Mr Ravenhill emphasised producers need to learn to manage what they grow and understand the drivers of pasture utilisation.

"I firmly believe you get what you give, so if we are a poor grazer we will get poor management, we will get poor pasture," he said.

"It comes down to the person, you can change your pasture composition by the way you graze."

When it comes to the keys for growing good pastures, Mr Ravenhill said there were a number of important factors that would help create profitability.

"The first is to defer paddocks, it doesn't rain grass," he said.

"If we get rain today it is going to be six weeks until we get grass, so you need to keep those cattle off that newly resown pasture or newly grown grass for six weeks, until you get to the third leaf.

"Resting and rotating phase are also a key factor.

"You should only be grazing 3pc of your property at any one time, this means you should only be grazing your paddock for three days on a 30-40 day rotation.

"Your resting phase should be way bigger than your grazing phase.

"Fertility of your soil and plant is important but the main thing is flexibility.

"You have to be flexible given the seasons and we need to change it as we go.

"Another key is to dry sow your pastures, to give it the greatest chance, as it will be chaos when it rains."

When it comes to livestock keys for profitability, Mr Ravenhill said they included the time of calving and weaning, cow condition, sire selection and estimated breeding values.

He emphasised producers needed to make sure they calved with the season.

"You need to make sure you grow the maximum amount of grass, so you don't put yourself at risk of reproductive failures," Mr Ravenhill said.

"If you don't get cows pregnant you can't sell kilograms, which is your biggest profit driver."

Tairna Wallinger

Ms Wallinger focused on maintaining livestock condition and how nutrition tied into that.

She emphasised the importance of condition scoring stock throughout the year as it lets you know if they are putting on or losing weight which then helps to manage them better throughout the season.

She said the condition score had a direct effect on joining and calving percentages and ultimately the size of the calf you were able to wean at the end.

"For autumn calvers, we want them to be joining in a three condition score and at calving we want to bump them up to a three and a half condition score, because of coming into mid lactation their energy requirements are so high they can not eat enough," Ms Wallinger said.

"This means they are going to be drawing energy off their back, therefore we need to have more condition on them coming into that high demand period so that they can lose a bit of condition but we can get them back up a condition score three for the next big event.

"If we let our cows slip below a score two it is going to be very expensive and going to take a lot of feed to get her back to a three score."

Ms Wallinger said to make sure producers were meeting the needs of their stock, they firstly need to determine their cattle energy requirements and what stage they are in production, then we need to assess our pastures and our feed for quality and quantity and then calculate our surplus and deficit and feed appropriately.

She said energy and protein requirements of cattle will vary depending on their liveweight and prospective growth rates and it was also important to know what stage of production the cattle are in so they are fed their needs to maintain condition.

"It is also critical to know how much feed you have and how good or bad it is, so we can feed accordingly," Ms Wallinger said.

"So if we know what we are starting with, we can better allocate our feed we might have.

"You need to know the energy and protein levels in your feed."

Ms Wallinger also stressed it was all well and good to feed out a ration or hay, but it was also important to know what your stock was doing with it and the best way to do that was to visulise it with manure scoring.

"It gives a really good indication of how your cattle are converting feed," she said.

"If it's runny (score two) there is too much protein in the diet and they are lacking fibre and starch (energy), score three is your ideal, while if it is too dry (score five) they are in a protein deficiency."

Sam Parish

Cattle Australia membership and sponsorship officer Sam Parish gave an outline on Cattle Australia in terms of what it is, who it affects and why producers should be involved.

He said Cattle Australia was the peak industry body for beef producers (not feedlots) to the Federal government and the link to getting into parliament house.

"It provides a clear leadership and direction for the grassfed cattle sector by uniting levy payers, engaging with producers and stakeholders along the supply chain, advocating on all matters of importance to the Australian cattle industry, developing and driving contemporary policy, guiding research, development and adoption and marketing investment and finally protecting the profitability, competitiveness and sustainability of the industry for future generations," Mr Parish said.

"No matter what is happening we want to represent you, the producer.

"We are also the advisory council to Meat & Livestock Australia for producers."

He said the priorities for Cattle Australia in 2024 include areas such as biosecurity, the live export industry, trade and market access and the sustainability space.

Dave Edwards

In Mr Edwards' presentation, he gave an overview of the Bell Pasture Seeds business in terms of who it is, how it is set up, how and what pastures it grows.

Mr Edwards main message to producers was to get their pasture orders in early as there is going to be supply issues due to the dry season.

"Don't dawdle in getting your orders in, you are going to miss out, so make sure you are organised as we are going to see a shortage of seed this season," Mr Edwards said.

"There will be a shortage of oats and ryegrass."

Declan Keogh

Mr Keogh spoke firstly about Harvest Road and what it aimed to do, before speaking about its vertically-integrated cattle and beef supply chain in WA.

He said the supply chain the company had built and operated at the moment tries to optimise the growing regions across WA in which it operates.

"We have got extensive breeding properties up in the Kimberley and east Pilbara where we have reliable rainfall and good carrying capacity for those cows year round and we also have some extensive backgrounding on some pastoral leases in the west Pilbara and upper Gascoyne, where we have strong nutrition value in the pastures to get good growth rates but we are able to manage the stocking rates with more volatile rainfall patterns and seasons," Mr Keogh said.

"We finish the cull cows on the less productive land systems on the stations.

"The intensive backgrounding is on our three farming aggregations in the Mid West coastal area while we grain finish at Koojan where we are close to the commodity supply and cattle transit routes.

"We also procure cattle into our supply chain at all stages from producers all over WA."

When it comes to pasture management in Harvest Road's intensive backgrounding system, Mr Keogh said they were trying to maximise sustainable productivity on developed pastures using a regenerative grazing system.

"Intensive grazing gives us the opportunity to optimise growth rates and cattle preparation ahead of grain finishing," he said.

"We are really trying to manage these cattle well and set them up for a win when they go onto grain finishing.

"We utilise intensive backgrounding to manage the intake of cattle at a wide range of weights and specifications, procured from WA producers and our internal extensive breeding and backgrounding properties."

Mr Keogh said in their system their target weaning weight from their extensive breeding programs is 190kg and their target entry weight into the 100-day grainfed program was 420kg.

"In our intensive pastures we are targeting an average daily weight gain of 0.8kg across the whole year," he said.

"A major focus of our investment at the moment is to smooth the supply of cattle, which means trying to smooth the production of grass over all 12 months of the year to suit our supply chain."

Harvest Road's goal for its intensive background setup is to establish a healthy regenerative grazing system and Mr Keogh said they were only early on in this journey.

"To do this we want our soil health continuously improving and also improving the water cycle across all of our properties," he said.

"We are also managing the plants for biodiversity, productivity and ground cover and we are managing the grazing pressure to match rest periods to plant growth rate and stocking rate to carrying capacity."

When it comes to their pasture management and development Mr Keogh said they were wanting to develop permanent pastures to encourage biodiversity, productivity and an elongated growing season.

"We are also trying to establish pastures with deep root systems which will increase infiltration and the water cycle and year-round ground cover to help with soil biology," Mr Keogh said.

"Our focus is on encouraging perennial grasses with complementary legumes and biodiversity of plant species as this will smooth out productivity through the season with varying optimal plant growth timing.

"Annual grasses and cereals may be incorporated into established perennial pastures for productivity and biodiversity."

Some of Harvest Road's pasture activities include sowing species mixes to suit soil and climate conditions, utilising the time to develop infrastructure to allow perennial pastures to establish ungrazed and utilise well managed Tagasaste where best suited.

In terms of managing grazing pressure Mr Keogh said for them it was about developing their properties and their people to allow that to happen and most of that was wire and water.

"So we are investing in paddock sizes and water systems, so we can graze larger mobs for shorter periods of time.

"Pasture rest periods are also important."

Mr Keogh said they were trying to have optimal animal health management and performance, as it sets the animal for the feedlot and it also maximises beef production per stock unit.

He said getting the right animals in and selecting animals that are going to suit the system and are going to perform both on feed and on the hook was important.

Other key factors were managing the stocking rate to suit the season and available pasture, managing animals in weight and sex groups, managing nutrition and supplements, minimising mortality and morbidity and finally mininising animal stress with excellent stockmanship.

When it comes to achieving this, Mr Keogh said their people were one of the key enablers of doing it and so they were investing in upskilling, as well as leading and empowering their people to be exceptional land and cattle managers.

"Another enabler is data, measurement and analytics," Mr Keogh said.

"You can't manage what you don't measure, so we are trying to invest in systems and processes, so we are better informed to make better decisions and better investments longer term."

Along with hearing from the guest speakers, visitors during the day were able to inspect a sizeable display of tractors, loaders, feeding equipment and cattle equipment alongside trade displays from supporters of the challenge.