With a good start to the season in most areas, medic pastures established well with good densities.  However, with the season finishing quickly, farmers need to monitor pastures to ensure stock aren’t overgrazing and in particular grazing medic flowers.  Overgrazing at this stage of the reproductive cycle can have devastating effects on seed production.

Medic pastures can be continuously grazed to a height of 3-5cm throughout the season, helping to control weeds. With the recent run of dry weather, medics haven’t recovered well and will need resting to allow some recovery to enable plants to flower and produce seed.  This is particularly important following such a good germination, as seed reserves will have been depleted.

Farmers should assess their paddocks and plan ahead to try and reduce the impact grazing may have on pastures and seed reserves. Farmers however don’t have many grazing options left at this stage.  Those with sown cereals have benefited and may have some paddocks with some feed left.  In this instance if they plan to graze medic pastures they may opt to choose paddocks they know still have good seed reserves.  Those with little feed left may opt to reduce stock numbers and only retain breeding stock to reduce grazing pressure. Another option is to remove stock from pastures and place them in containment areas. This will prevent overgrazing and reduce the potential of wind erosion. The obvious problem here is the current inflated grain and hay prices and therefore cost of feed lotting stock.
     
Managing pastures now and preserving seed reserves will ultimately save costs in the long term. There are considerable costs involved with establishing pasture and building seed reserves, so farmers need to assess feed reserves and try to rest paddocks that may have low seed reserves.  Securing seed set now will allow for adequate seed reserves and high-density pasture germinations in subsequent years. 
     
A new NLP project has begun in the Murray Mallee and will look at the benefits of sown cereals compared to traditional medic based pastures and where they can fit with current farming systems. The project is titled “Demonstrating sustainable and productive forage systems in the Murray Mallee” and will have on farm demonstrations to compare dry matter production of the different systems and calculate associated costs.  Early results will be available next year, and will assist farmers decision making when choosing pastures for their farming systems. For more information contact Rural Solutions SA Consultants at Murray Bridge on (08) 85356421.

PICTURED - left to right:  Craig Bell, Rural Solutions SA Consultant and Peter Frahn, Younghusband farmer, assess medic grazing potential.

CONTACT: Craig Bell, Sustainable Ag Systems Consultant, Rural Solutions SA

AUTHOR: Craig Bell, Rural Solutions SA Murray Bridge office, 08 8535 6421