Rotational grazing good for pastures but not hip pocket

LIVESTOCK producers should do their whole of farm sums before moving to rotational grazing.

LIVESTOCK producers should do their whole of farm sums before moving to rotational grazing.

NSW Department of Primary Industries EverGraze program showed graziers could boost pasture growth, stocking rates and lamb production per hectare by 20 per cent or more by increasing paddock numbers.

However NSW DPI rangelands and tropical pastures leader Warwick Badgery said whole farm economic work done since the initial results had shown rotational grazing wasn’t as profitable.

The EverGraze trial near Orange, NSW, compared continuous grazing on one paddock, rotational grazing on four paddocks and short-duration rotational grazing on 20 paddocks to determine the best balance for graziers.

“Increasing grazing management intensity from one-paddock to a 20-paddock system lifted pasture growth by 21 per cent, which allowed stocking rates to be increased by 22 per cent and lamb production by 20 per cent,” Dr Badgery said.

“But in whole farm context, taking into account seasons you might experience and infrastructure you would have to put in and maintain for rotational grazing, it wasn’t as profitable as continuous stocking or low intensity rotational grazing.”

Dr Badgery said the cost of infrastructure required in rotational grazing was important to consider.

“If you were going to invest heavily in fencing and water the production gains might not be high enough to warrant, but if you have the infrastructure in place, then by utilising it more effectively there are some benefits on a per-hectare basis,” he said.

Further trials into paddock movements, based on everything from pasture leaf stage through to time based, showed managing the amount of feed on offer in rotational grazing was also a key consideration, Dr Badgery said.

“Say we have high feed quality in spring, we can essentially give them an allowance that is similar to their requirements and they will operate to close to the optimum — there is no need to give them any sel­ective ability.”

Dr Badgery said they found when feed quality declined in the autumn and winter, they had to allow for five times more feed to let stock select the highest quality pasture.

“This is the opposite to what happens in practice, when farmers often leave stock in paddocks longer to utilise the feed more and give longer rest time to other paddocks, and it is having a big impact on animal production,” he said.

Moving animals through at a quicker rate when the feed started to dry off would be more productive, Dr Badgery said, and then supplementing on the next rotation.