Gippsland - How Now Gippy Now - June 2010 Edition
Wet Winter? Are you ready?
Frank Mickan, DPI, Ellinbank
Over recent years we’ve experienced disappointing autumn breaks, long dry, often hot summers and less predictable springs. However, the winters have been milder and also drier which resulted in much higher pasture growth rates than the long term average.
In West and South Gippsland, we had heavy rainfalls in mid-late September which caused many farmers grief with pugging damage and greatly delayed silage conservation. December was reasonably wet early on and then in 2010, we started to get decent showers from February onwards although a “false” break was lurking in the background. During late summer early autumn, we at least received enough rain to keep most pastures ticking over, with some areas better than others.
Indications from the weather experts seem to be indicating a slight chance of above average rainfalls for the rest of this year. Regardless of whether you believe in climate change or not, there has been a trend to much “drier than average” years for several years now. Figure one shows this.
However, during any trend, up or down, there will be individual or a few short years where rainfall is above or below the long term average rainfalls.
In 2009, the Tasmanian farmers experienced their wettest winter for many years. We don’t appear to be ready for something similar here. In Tassie, rotations were far too quick, fodder supplies ran out quickly and were expensive if they could be sourced. Paddocks became severely pugged causing many headaches such as reduced pasture availability and production, cows losing condition with tracks becoming quagmires. With the good run of relatively dry winters, stand-off areas and feedpads were not needed and so not available or in poor maintenance state when they were needed in 2009.
A heart break for many of the guys was their cows losing condition, cows with increased levels of cracked and sore teats, mastitis levels up, much larger proportion of cows not getting back into calf, etc. Understandably, all this lead to many stressful situations for the farmers and their families.
Back to Gippsland. How many of you were around during our own extremely wet winters/early springs in 1995 and 1996? How many of you remember the lessons learnt or how badly you, your families and the cows and pastures were affected? There are many new and also younger farmers now in Gippsland who may not have experienced those horribly wet years. Many farmers may be thinking that we won’t have those sorts of years again!
Sorry to disappoint you but we more than likely will, just a matter of time, regardless of the trend to drier seasons. Will it be THIS year? I’m not trying to scare you (too much), just wishing to get you thinking about (and preferably preparing for) a wet winter. This, ideally, should be happening well before we are into the wet period or, at the very least, being ready to act as soon as the early indications are there.
Too many Tasmanians did not act early enough and ended up in dire straits with less attractive and expensive options available to survive. I know farmers are still recovering from the high feed price years and the huge drop in milk price in early 2009, but if it came in very wet, what would you do? How averse are you to risk?
You can gamble on there not being a wet year, a reasonable gamble based on recent years. Tell that to the Tassie farmers now. So… what can you think about doing just in case?
No matter what, if soils become so wet that they become pugged during grazing, then pugging must be somehow avoided. Steps need to be put into action as soon as the first signs of pugging occurs. Some options to consider:
On-off grazing: Cows are removed after 2 to 4 hours of grazing, based on when pasture damage is becoming obvious. If cows are entering paddocks with reasonable quantities of grass such as those at the 2 to 3 leaf stage or 2000 – 2500 kilogram of dry matter per hectare (kg DM/ha), then they will consume about 70 to 80% of the pasture that they would if left there for the full 12 hours. That is they will be removed with only deficit of 1.5 to approx. 2 kg DM/cow, and this deficit can be topped up with good quality fodder or possibly extra grain.
Allowing cattle onto saturated soils with short pasture is a recipe for disaster as the cows will continually walk (and PUG) looking for grass that isn’t there. For the inexperienced or unprepared, this is the case if the first rotation in the wet period is sped up to give cows a larger area to “avoid” pugging. The cattle arrive back in this paddock way too quick for the grass to regrow to 2.5 t 3 leaves, and in they go again, causing catastrophic problems. If the wet period is only for a few days to a week, the faster rotation option may get you out of trouble, BUT will cause a bigger feed deficit later on
The “off” location, ideally, could be a stand-off area or feedpad well set up to handle the feeding as well as cows standing in the same location for many hours.Effluent must be contained in someway. Other ‘off” areas for short periods could be the laneway (sectioned to restrict movement) or the cow yard itself. The surface must be free of stones, etc to avoid hoof damage.
Properly constructed stand-off or feed pads: These can be simply a concreted section of the laneway with feed troughs on one or both sides. It could be a more expensive pad with sawdust, rice hull or wood shavings etc. hilled up towards the centre and well drained underneath. OR it could be a very expensive, well planned, well constructed concreted feed pad area. There are many variations of these suggestions and farmers are urged to obtain as much information as possible before investing large amounts of money.
Yes, if the winter does come in too wet, and you haven’t built something along these lines, it will be too late at this stage!
Sacrifice areas: Some farmers will give the cows at day break on the pastures and remove them to sacrifice area at night and fed a fodder there. This may be the same “off area” above or could be an old sand quarry, sand bank, unused road, etc. or more likely, a paddock earmarked for renovation/summer crop in spring/summer. The best way to use this paddock is to strip or block graze it offering only a small amount of pasture each break and if possible, feeding silage/hay under the fence on the next break (See Figure 2). Strip configuration tends to result in more pasture waste as cows walk the fence line before settling to graze.
Feed allocation: At the very least allocate separate day and night feeds. This restricts the damage and fowling of pastures from mud and poop/piddle to that area only and the cows get a fresh patch that night. Better still, and for the same reason, move an electric fence several times during the day break. Cows generally graze about two thirds of their intake during the day so require less area for the night break anyway.
Some farmers feed their cows very well at the shed immediately after milking (grain and silage/hay) before sending them down to the day break in the paddock. They believe that the “full” cows walk much less when topping up on pasture. This often negates the need to remove cows from the paddock. Talk to farmers who use this technique.
Probably a bit late to be suggesting this now, but slowing the rotation in autumn, or even winter, to build up the grass wedge is very beneficial in a wet winter compared to offering cows paddocks with very little pasture.
Back fence: This allows pasture to recover much more quickly and, in a wet year, prevent excessive pugging due to cattle wandering to get out of the wind/rain or looking for that last bit of untainted grass.
Many of these suggestions involve extra often unpleasant work, some can be very expensive but the alternative of stuffed pastures, cows dying at calving, pulling calves out of mud, and thinning cows and crashing milk production is a worse alternative, isn’t it?
The ideas presented here are light in detail and there are many other ideas out amongst the farming community, factory staff and seasoned consultants. For further information on the above and other options, a booklet called “Management Option on Wet Soils”, a Wet Soils brochure are available from the DPI offices at Ellinbank, Leongatha and Maffra.
Another tool is the Wet Soils Online Consultant available on the DEC website (www.dairyextension.com.au ) under Resources. There are also many useful Agnotes under the Wet Soils Management topic on the DPI Information Notes series. Google Wet Soils Management.
