Prepare for dry days

Diversity is the key to Greg's farming system at Glen Turret Pastoral, in the Barossa Valley, that includes rotational grazing and a variety of crops to ensure he has feed across the year.

If the season does not suit one crop, another crop might flourish.

After a "shocker" last season when not even his well-honed policy of risk-management diversity could provide enough growth, Greg is happy with the growth and feed this year.

"We have a range of phalaris clover-base, fescue, lucerne and we sow different crops such as oats into that as well," he said.

"It tends to run hot and cold.

"If there are summer storms I'll say lucerne is the best thing I have - if not I might want to get rid of it."

This season things are getting back to normal.

"Last season was just a shocker due to the lack of rain and then frost, but this year has been pretty good," Greg said.

"Phalaris is doing really well at the moment and lucerne did well this year because we had a good break and warm weather."

Greg's farming system will be highlighted at a pasture update at Clare today (July 25), which will feature a range of expert speakers on topics to help producers to drive pasture growth, improve grazing technology, achieve the most out of crops and increase lamb-weight growth. It is part of a series of six pasture updates planned this year by the Grassland Society of Southern Australia on behalf of Meat & Livestock Australia.

Greg says diversification and willingness to trial and embrace new systems has worked well on his 800 hectares.

"We have only about 200ha highly arable land and the rest is hilly or has trees and rocks," he said.

"The cropping is just for feeding our sheep - we don't sell any. We're solely dedicated to permanent pasture now."

The poor 2012 season left the farm without enough feed, so Greg was forced to reduce his self-replacing Merino flock from nearly 1900 to 1450.

"We sold them off at reduced prices, which hurt - but it would cost more in feed if we kept them," he said.

The flock also has a 25 per cent component of prime lambs.

Although "still a bit low on confidence", Greg hopes to build numbers again.

As part of his risk-management plan, Glen Turret Pastoral started a drought-containment lot about three years ago.

"We try to protect the ground cover and make sure we're not over-grazing so that the pastures can get away in the paddocks after the break," he said.

"It's also an efficiency benefit. It can take a half-day to feed them but if they're in the same place it's nice and easy."

Greg said he normally had enough feed on hand to get through the dry months, but that was not the case last year.

"As an example we put sheep on one of our phalaris paddocks - it lasted eight days when normally it would have lasted three weeks," he said.

The farm has also been involved with trials, including a grazing systems demonstration (rappa) electric-fencing trial with the Barossa Improved Grazing Group to trial small paddocks.

"We wanted to see if our grazing paddocks were small enough and if we could improve overall pasture grazing, but because it was such a tough year we couldn't get a good gauge," Greg said.

*Full report in Stock Journal, July 25 issue, 2013.