The Green Casino
Many areas have had a reasonable amount of rain - a lovely surprise! And the wintery temperatures have also arrived. So when, and how, do I stop feeding?
We all know that it doesn’t rain grass. It takes time. For native paddocks, the expected growth will be around 5-10kg of DM/ha per day. Lucerne 10kg DM/ha/day, forage cereals 20-30kg DM/ha/day and while the buffel and other tropicals have got some green shoots, their growing days are just about finished for the season.
We want to graze the plants when they’re in Phase II, deeply anchored into the ground with plenty of solar panels to catch maximum sunlight under the winter conditions. If you snip them off early with hungry mouths, the plants won’t grow.
Keep feeding the stock. Chasing pick will cause the animals to expend more energy than they are taking in. For every 1kg walked, it takes 5MJ for a cow and 0.5MJ for a sheep. The grass is watery and takes a lot of biting and chewing and the animals undergo bite fatigue. As you can see from the following table, 500kg of DM/ha when it’s presented as a bowling green of short green pick results in the animal having to graze for 11 hours per day and only eat 0.7kg of dry matter. If this grass is 10MJME/kgDM, they just ate 7MJ. That’s below maintenance for a dry sheep and doesn’t even touch the sides of a pregnant or lactating ewe.
On the other hand, if the 500kg of DM/ha is presented as large tufts, which results in big mouthfuls, less walking and less chewing, the animal can eat 1.4kgDM per day - or 14MJ. This effect is more significant for cattle than sheep, so keep feeding.
When we transition animals’ rumens from grain to grass, it takes 2-3 weeks for the rumen bugs to adapt. They won’t put on any weight for a few weeks. So, if you’re going to warrant letting them out of the confinement pens, you need to ensure there is more than a few weeks of grazing in front of you to get any sort of return.
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The information contained in the document is general in nature and intended solely for our clients and should not be relied on as specific advice in relation to your specific circumstances. Neither AHN Consulting Pty Ltd nor any of its employees or agents warrants that the information within this document is error-free. Everyone’s circumstances are different and you should not rely solely upon this information, but should make your own enquiries about the subject matter of this document. If you have any questions about the information you should contact us.