Jesse Moody studies soil health through Nuffield

Grazier Jesse Moody has been studying the correlation between soil health and performance of livestock. Here’s what he has found.

Tenterfield wool grower Jesse Moody.

For grazier Jesse Moody there’s a clear correlation between soil health and performance of livestock.

And it is something he has become increasingly aware of, and passionate about, since he attended a pasture management course in 2012.

The 33-year-old was awarded a 2022 Nuffield Scholarship, supported by Rabobank, to study managing soil health to promote pasture management and drought resilience through grazing principles that promote soil regeneration.

“In the mulga lands and black soil flood plains of western Queensland our conventional grazing practices don’t seem to working as effectively as they once did, especially with the seasons becoming more variable” he said.

“In a drought, our soils go backward and so does our business, so that it can take years to recover.”

Jesse said when he attended the pasture management course it wasn’t widely accepted in the pastoral zone, then they went through 10 years of drought and he could see something needed to change.

While looking after his family property while his parents were away, Jesse boxed the sheep together and tried to rest some paddocks.

“We got some rain at the same time and under our conventional system we might have got two to three weeks extra feed, instead we got two to three months,” he said.

“That small experiment convinced me rotational grazing and rejuvenating the soils would work.”

With exclusion fencing now helping control grazing pressure, Jesse said a holistic grazing program was possible in the pastoral areas.

Jesse Moody says holistic grazing is possible in pastoral zones.

Jesse splits his time between his 40,000ha family property, Yarmouth near Cunnamulla in south-west Queensland, part of which he leases from them, and a 150ha property he purchased in 2020 at Tenterfield in northern NSW.

The Moody family has owned the Cunnamulla property for three generations, however they are currently planning to sell it as they look toward retirement, while Jesse will pursue a management role elsewhere.

At Cunnamulla they currently run 700 Merino ewes and 8000 rangeland goats, which Jesse has joined to Boer and Kalahari goat genetics in recent years.

Jesse Moody’s rangeland goats.

Given the distance between Cunnamulla and Tenterfield is more than 700km, Jesse said it was timing and opportunity that lead him to buy the property at Tenterfield.

“I had been trying to enter the market before it exploded during Covid, and ideally I wanted to stay in Cunnamulla as I knew the environment, but you need a fair bit of land and economies of scale in that country and the money I had just wasn’t enough to get in,” he said.

He said the block at Tenterfield came up and he was attracted to it because it had good water security.

Jesse said buying into farming property was extremely hard and you had to “look outside the box”.

Jesse runs 600 three-year-old Merino wethers on the 150ha Tenterfield property. Which at capacity can handle 700 dry sheep equivalents.

The Grass Merino-blood wethers averaged about 19 microns and cut an average 6kg fleece.

“I’m still developing fences and Merinos are a bit easier on fences than other breeds, so I’m running a wool growing operation rather than breeding for now,” he said.

Since buying the property Jesse has started to invest in improvements, starting with fencing and he has also installed 16 water troughs.

“I feel I over capitalised on the 16 water troughs, but it will allow me to manage my pastures more intensely.”

While Jesse said he was lacking the paddocks to graze Tenterfield how he would like at this stage, he has been using a combination of cold winter burns to remove the excessive bulk, that he inherited when purchasing the property, and a basic rotational graze.

“I think the pasture has improved a little since I’ve had the property.” ​

Jesse Moody says traditional grazing methods aren’t viable in the long term.

He said the idea to study soil management came up because he was sick of drought and was questioning why they were managing it the way we were.

“Something didn’t sit right and I had observed different reactions in the pastures from different grazing patterns and this only made me question it more.”

“Basically we want to be able to manage climate variability and the best way to do that is start from the ground up.”

“Whatever happens in the soil is reflected in our animals.”

Jesse said managing pastures and soil health was about trying to get a “balance point” in the soil.

“Grassland pastures are bacteria dominated and this isn’t necessarily beneficial for the livestock in the long run as it create a nutritional imbalance in the soil.”

For example on the Tenterfield property Jesse said there was a proliferation of love grass, which was OK when it was fresh and young but it was dormant in winter which meant there was “no life in the soil” during that time and livestock would have to be supplementary fed macro and micron nutrients.

“If there is too much of that dormant grass in winter, the livestock won’t do well. I try to “get the balance right so it is reflected in the animals, via the plants.”

While Jesse doesn’t put a label on the way he manages grazing, he said it has become more intuitive.

“If you overgraze then pasture pioneer species come through first, and as you progress along the line of plant succession, the type of plants improve. They have deeper roots and they can then access better nutrients in the soil and that is reflected in the animals.”

“I’m convinced controlled grazing works and just changing up the grazing routine can allow grass species to return.”

“I don’t feel the way the way we’ve been managing pastures in Australia is viable in the long term.”

“If we can graze in a way that suits our environment and maintain ground cover, rather than the old European way of grazing that earlier graziers bought to Australia, then we can develop more resilient soils and pastures, which would in turn, increase our carrying capacities and ensure healthier businesses.”