Nick Linden: Welcome everyone to a another agriculture. Victoria, live feed, season a Webinar.
Nick Linden: I think we'll probably just give it a minute just to let a couple of other people come in. I know um. We've probably got a few people on already, but just to give it another minute and we'll get under way with some introduction. So just hold fire. If you're online now and we'll commence the webinar very shortly.
Nick Linden: Well, again, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this evening. Um, thanks for giving up some of your evenings to listen into another advoc. Live for the seasonal Webinar. I think this one's a really timely one. Lots of
Nick Linden: regions within Victoria are looking like they're going to have a fairly good sort of moisture profile late into the spring period, and It's always a challenge us to think about how we can make the most of that, and how we can convert that into product.
Nick Linden: Um! And certainly one of the options that may be relevant for large parts of Victoria this year is the use of summer forage opportunities for growing lambs, but equally either finishing lands, or even maybe putting some weight into a replacement new land. Um! It's in potential benefits from a reproductive perspective. So I think it's a really timely topic, and again we thank you for joining with us this evening.
Nick Linden: Look, it's like all of our sessions. Hopefully. It's going to be a fairly short, punchy one. We're kicking off at seven, and the plan is to be all finished up by seven hundred and forty, five. So we've got three speakers today. We've got Rebecca Stuttz joining us from Clyro, and then we've all got Ralph for rent
Nick Linden: and Dale Gray from Ag Victoria, speaking as well. So we certainly thank those guys for their time as well.
Nick Linden: Um, as you'll see from the first slide. The webinar is being recorded. So you know we know lots of people Aren't able to get them get to them on the evening, and just gives lots of flexibility. So just be aware that the webinar is being recorded as we go.
Nick Linden: And the other thing is, we really welcome questions depending how we're travelling for time, we'll either run a short question and answer after the first two presentations, and if we're a bit pushed we will carry over and run some questions at the end. So, please, if you've got any questions at all, make use of the chat function as indicated on this slide. Just type them in, and we are able to record to those and get them at the end, and I will. So i'll say we've got our speakers. But sitting in the background is Jane to she's much more
Nick Linden: adapt at the technology that I am so certainly. We thank Jay for sitting in the background and making sure the system all runs as it should. But
Nick Linden: now i'm actually going to stop sharing my screen at the moment, so that we can hand over to our first speaker, which, as I said, is Rebecca stunts. Rebecca works for sorrow, and is based in their agon food unit, and she's looked at a range of massacres in proper livestock farming systems and on both stuff at Brother Glenn. I think the thing that's really exciting potential here is, I think she's done work not only in the cooler regions, the high rainfall areas, but some of the warm areas and the more dual-purpose cropping livestock areas. So um
Nick Linden: really, to hear about what rebecca's got to say today. So Rebecca, if you can unmute and i'll hand over to you. Thank you.
Nick Linden: Is that screen coming up is Yep, that's sharing nicely. We can see your cover screen.
Rebecca Stutz: Um. So what i'm talking about today is Um, a project that was led by Richard Kelner. Um, and it was part of Ah, the livestock product productivity partnership, which was ah had a meeting Livestock, Australian Donor Company, together with Csiro.
Rebecca Stutz: So our project looked at um perennial pasturing forage combinations to extend summer feed for Southern New South Wales so hopefully that that'll be relevant for um Victorians as well.
Rebecca Stutz: Um. So this graph is just ah! Showing the pasture supply of of a traditional Pharaohs of clever pastrance of the tablelands, so you can see um in like in late summer. So January, February, the pasture supply is quite low.
Rebecca Stutz: Um! Then there's another dip in the middle of winter, and then you've got green party supply over September, October, November, and it's in it, and it decreases through December.
Rebecca Stutz: So What you really have is a you,
Rebecca Stutz: a quantity deficit of retail, and then a quality deficit in December that turns into a quantity and quality deficit over January, February. So if you're blaming at the end of July early April, a lot of farmers then try to sell lambs as stalls
Rebecca Stutz: by December, so that they're not having to carry those across the period of of their deficit.
Rebecca Stutz: Um, But there's obviously ah more money to be made, if you can retain those lands, um, and and finish them off yourself at your own property. So what we try to have a look at is whether we can
Rebecca Stutz: increase the use of high-quality summer active species to support meat production in the summer autumn period.
Rebecca Stutz: So um we did that, looking at Ah, we looked at that question Ah! In three carts um. The first was an on-farm paste and forge species, evaluation, and second, was a land finishing experiment that we did at Kinandera experiment station here in Canberra, and the third part was a modeling component.
Rebecca Stutz: So our course sites for our on on the farm species Evaluation trials were located at Galvan and Bombala, and we looked at um. We had a legging troll and another control. Um, twelve, twelve kilometers, legumes, and twenty kilometers an onlooking trial,
Rebecca Stutz: and we ran that over three years at Golden and and two years at Bbala, because we couldn't establish there in the first year because of the
Rebecca Stutz: draft.
Rebecca Stutz: We also had some supplementary sites. So I at Gunning. We had a like your non-lev, your mixtures trial,
Rebecca Stutz: and that ran from two thousand and eighteen to twenty one, and then we had a Ah! Another trial in Canberra that was sort of a pilot that ran from two thousand and sixteen to two thousand and twenty. That was ah two legumes and twelve-nine legions and a dry plane, and the acuma we had ah ten non-legged customers.
Rebecca Stutz: So the non-legging trials at galvan um we had. Ah looking at total herbage production over the three years. Um! The red line represents the phalaris of it. Sort of the standard. Ah, our comparison!
Rebecca Stutz: I don't know if there is a hold fast,
Rebecca Stutz: and you can see everything above the line was a bit better than a hilarious um, and the things in the first summer of primary grass and chicory perform better in our second summer with secret grass and chicory, and the third summer, in the first time it was cooked, as Cox put in Chicory, and the second half did you grass again
Rebecca Stutz: in the autumn? It was a little bit ah less exciting. But um! So we had just prairie grass that was doing quite well there
Rebecca Stutz: at Bombala we had um.
Rebecca Stutz: So we looked at total hermit production over the two years, as I mentioned.
Rebecca Stutz: And again, you can see that Chicory and loosen are the only ones that really performed significantly better than Polaris.
Rebecca Stutz: And over the old time actually nothing to feel much better than flowers.
Rebecca Stutz: And now, looking at the nutritive value,
Rebecca Stutz: the chickory actually had the best metabolize of allergy scores, both at gold and and Bombala
Rebecca Stutz: quite low in our creed. Protein so loosen, had a much higher pre protein than she grew,
Rebecca Stutz: looking at the liking Charles at Galvan.
Rebecca Stutz: Nothing can really be loosen, we found, and that was
Rebecca Stutz: over the summer. Nothing really came close in the autumn. Something that looked promising was a strawberry,
Rebecca Stutz: a Bombala same story, and nothing can compare to loosen
Rebecca Stutz: in the in the autumn it's it. Everything became much more productive. So again Strawberry looked pretty good, and then some of the red clovers and white globe is also performed right well with some wetter conditions in in
Rebecca Stutz: um it's just trial in Ghani. Um looked at three non-legging species, a Pharaoh's tolvest merchantry, and three legum species so we had subsequent white chlorine, and we grew these in that pictorial combination as well as
Rebecca Stutz: Ah, so there's the first lot of bars you see, there are the um, the Pharaohs and cholera's combinations that it's tall fescue and the kickeries and the sub clover. What clever! And we're sitting alone
Rebecca Stutz: what you probably noticed there, so that the blue bars are the not like you to that orange orange part So the like you is is that we're really struggling to keep the leggings in that system?
Rebecca Stutz: Um! And another stand out from that is that the chickory was actually really persistent, despite. We had very, very intense rabbit raising at one stage, and it came back from that.
Rebecca Stutz: So that's um showing you how poorly our loosen did unfortunately there. This site had an acidity at depth, and it also suffered from waterlogging at some point. So that's a really downfall of reason.
Rebecca Stutz: Um, and then on the right hand side, you see the chickory um, and that's looking much better than anything else during this very dry period this photograph was taking.
Rebecca Stutz: So the land finishing experiment was
Rebecca Stutz: in the act. Um that looked at Ah, sixty for mixtures. So we had the Pharaohs leg. You tall vessel like you. Um! A pure loosen stand, a herb like a mix which was chicory Plant name
Rebecca Stutz: and your brassica. So the leg you mix. We had a sub flavor. Loosen red flavor and white flavor, and that's so. That was standard across all the ones that had like you.
Rebecca Stutz: Ah! We sewed the perennials in April, twenty, nineteen um Nebraska, and August, twenty, nineteen, and then we started our grazing trial of In the first summer we had to wait till March, because of dry conditions.
Rebecca Stutz: Um! And then we had to re-so the Brassica in September the following year, in twenty twenty and then we had another grazing trial that lasted from January through April twenty, twenty, one.
Rebecca Stutz: So we on each of our plots. We had ah six call lambs, and we added, and so ah! Abstracted additional lamps to control the the biomass, and we did fortnite the forage, primus, measurements, composition, quality, and land. And
Rebecca Stutz: so from from my first year this is showing you the feed on offer over the eight weeks of the experiment. Um! We actually ended up with so much feed because there was a um a rainfall event in February that we ended up with excess speed by the end of March.
Rebecca Stutz: What I would point out on this one is so. The The the red bars are weeds. Basically, Um, you can see that the loosen and the breast can perform very well in terms of kicking out weights. So that's definitely a benefit there,
Rebecca Stutz: and the gray bars are dead materials. So you can see that in some of the plots we weren't able to stock them high enough to actually keep on top of the material, and we did have some
Rebecca Stutz: and in the in the herb-legging Ah, plots we actually had um predominantly planting to start off with, and that's probably to do with the time that we we sewed. That mixture was probably paper and plantains to the chickory.
Rebecca Stutz: The in the second year.
Rebecca Stutz: We um can't see again that the the load of weeds is fairly low in the recipe evolution, but does sort of increase through the um experiment,
Rebecca Stutz: and there's a lot more chicory in the herb, and like you in the herb leg, you mixtures. So in the second year we found that the chicory really took off.
Rebecca Stutz: So what's the the main interesting part is the rate of lightweight game, I suppose so. In the first year we had almost three hundred grams per day for sheep,
Rebecca Stutz: the have legions, and about one hundred and seventy five
Rebecca Stutz: in the second year. So because that was including an actual summer period, and and it outstripped any of the other treatments that we had in our experiment.
Rebecca Stutz: Looking at Lamb live wet at the end of April. Um. So we set a a target of fifty, two kilos for the end of April. If you were going to sell those as finished lambs um, and the other treatment that Um met that condition in two thousand and twenty was the her leggings. Ah! In twenty twenty one the loosen and the Russell also came close. But again the herb legions were ahead
Rebecca Stutz: as the last component of our our project was a modeling component, so that was to give a longer-term analysis of high quality, some of forage options that are a wide range of seasons.
Rebecca Stutz: Um. So in this scenario we um asked if we had a twenty percent of a farm with high fertility. What happens if we replace all of all, or of of that? The loosen for it, tobraska, chickory, or combinations of these? Um, And so an absent model was used to look at her bridge production over sixty years.
Rebecca Stutz: Um! And they did that at two locations Galvan and Bbala, so interesting to note that in this session model that the simulated sheet reproduction was actually lower than our field measurements.
Rebecca Stutz: Um! The upseeing model outputs were then put into a whole farm, feed, energy balance calculator to evaluate the time in frequency and magnitude of babies, and that was assuming a system using marino, use cross-pol Dorset
Rebecca Stutz: uh Cross coldals at Rams that were landing in early early August to early September, Uh with a target of selling the lan to Stalls in in December at the twenty eight kilos, but it's it's finishing in midday from fifty-five so comparing those two options. So it stalls best finish plans
Rebecca Stutz: so the summer activity of the loosen and chicoree produced the most complementary growth patterns, and that led to the largest reductions in the frequency and size of the deficits.
Rebecca Stutz: Um. So the modeling suggested that converting twenty percent of the grassland to high-quality subarctic forages could support aversion to a front-lown enterprise, while also reducing the risk of forage deficits, and that there were significant gains to be made in the last of enterprise, productivity, and profitability. Um, where the marginal cost of implementing those new forages was less than two hundred dollars per hectare
Rebecca Stutz: so overall our project. Ah! Suggested that chicory is a very reliable long-season. Um! Ah, so ah species Ah! To produce high quality forage. Ah! And a good alternative to loosen in some of the tail lens environments, and i'm sure it in a lot of environments in Ah Victoria as well.
Rebecca Stutz: Um had high summer, or to herbage production high nutritional quality, and produced Highland growth rates, um acid soil, tolerance. So that's an advantage of it,
Rebecca Stutz: and it had excellent post without recovery.
Rebecca Stutz: So if you have any questions, that's
Rebecca Stutz: well, you where you can contact me, it's you. Sorry
Nick Linden: That's fantastic, Rebecca. Thanks very much for your presentation, and I think the prospect of having excess feed at the end of March would be something that we would all relish at
Nick Linden: um at that time. You So what we'll do is, i'll ask you to stop sharing your screen so that Ralph can load up on his, and i'm sure there'll be a couple of questions, but we're actually going to hold off on those and we'll roll through Ralph's presentation at the moment and then combine some questions, possibly after that.
Nick Linden: But i'm sure, Ralph, to many people online will need no introduction. I've had the great pleasure of working on a couple of experiments projects from impact of growth restrictions to the body composition of slaughter.
Nick Linden: Um, Some flee deficiency work. And um, yeah, I guess. More recently. Ralph's also been involved in establishing conditional score targets for maternal composites. He's got a real breadth of experience, but today he's going to talk about some of
Nick Linden: the work that have been done, I think, largely at Hamilton, which Ralph will clarify. Um. Looking at some summer grazing options, and particularly with reference to some of the work that they've done in Hamilton with grazing canola. So i'll mute myself, Ralph, and let you take over.
Sorry, Ralph, You're just still on mute the
Nick Linden: Okay? And you can see my screen. Okay?
Nick Linden: Ah, not yet.
How's that?
Nick Linden: There we go. Yep, that's very good
Ralph Behrendt: or um.
Ralph Behrendt: Okay, Thanks, Nick and Jane for the invitation to talk, and i'll be talking about forages for growing lambs, and as Nick introduced, it will be mainly, it will be about work that was conducted at the Hamilton Research Farm
Ralph Behrendt: back in two thousand and thirteen, through to two thousand and sixteen. It was work that was conducted in in collaboration with one of my colleagues, who, Margaret Rayside, and it was part of a Victorian government and mla funded project.
Ralph Behrendt: We're looking at dual-purpose crops and making some step changes in land production, but also evaluating other forages. And we've used this for throwing out new lambs, but it's not.
Ralph Behrendt: It doesn't mean that it's exclusive for that it can be also looked at for finishing lambs.
Ralph Behrendt: So the what we what we did was three grazing experiments that were run at Hamilton, Victoria. They were run in two thousand and fourteen, fifteen and two thousand and sixteen.
Ralph Behrendt: The foragers that compared were a spring, same wintertight, canola, forage, brassica, chicory, plantain, looser and perennial rye grass, but we also included a supplement on the pastures that were prenier Roy grass was just a pellet supplement
Ralph Behrendt: and we rotationally raised you lambs on these pastures during summer and autumn, between sort of February, March, April, and into to May and June to complete the end of the joining period.
Ralph Behrendt: So um So four weeks prior to joining, and then six weeks during joining, and then we pulled all the lambs off their paddocks, grazed them together, and then scanned them for pregnancy. Scan them to look at the reproductive right and level of conception
Ralph Behrendt: so on the right-hand side of this slide you can see the feed on offer that we had in two thousand and fourteen and two thousand and sixteen, and this was the feed on offer, both before the experiment started. So in January and February, and then during the experiment between March and May, and then at the end of the experiment as well, we'll pull the animals off,
Ralph Behrendt: so what you can see there is in two thousand and fourteen The
Ralph Behrendt: The ah brassic has all achieved sort of three to four ton. So this is sort of a summary, and that was achieved by about January and February from a sewing point in spring,
Ralph Behrendt: and then the rye grass, which was an established rye grass pasture. The plantain, chicory, and lucerum, which were being established, hit one point four to two point, three
Ralph Behrendt: tons of drying out of pick there.
Ralph Behrendt: So this is sort of the the level feed that we grown that we then were able to stop for the experiments in two thousand and sixteen. It was a slightly different story, and we we had a below average spring and some summer rain,
Ralph Behrendt: and the Brassicas, while they established relatively well, only we're able to produce around two to two point, four tonnes dry matter, hectare, and the looser and the ryegrass plantain chickory were in the range of one point eight to three point, four tons
Ralph Behrendt: so quite different years. One, the spring sewing in two thousand and fourteen, was on the back of a really good spring, plenty of soil, moisture, and a little bit of summer rain. The two thousand and sixteen year was over on the back of below every spring,
Ralph Behrendt: and some submarine. So quite divergent.
Ralph Behrendt: And you might be asking, Okay, where's two thousand and fifteen gone? And that's uh it didn't go, is the answer. Um, basically springs got the selling risks. Um, because of either the the potentially dry establishment period or a dry price period, and in two thousand and fifteen on the back of what a lower average two thousand and fourteen spring uh some of the classic paddocks failed to establish, and we didn't have enough feed on off to run the experiment
Ralph Behrendt: across all the all the paddocks some of the paddocks still did establish, but not all of them.
Ralph Behrendt: So, under the sort of results of interest similar to Rebecca's slides. Metabolizable energy here is for the different forages, and it's the green component of the forages that we're presenting.
Ralph Behrendt: And you can see in the in the top graph the metabolizable energy over two thousand and fourteen Again, This is before the experiment starts during the experiment, and then, after the end of experiment, and likewise for two thousand and sixteen, and you can see, probably the key result. There is that the brassic has all had a range of twelve to thirty Megajoules kilogram dry, and that a rodm. Ah! Whereas the planting chick read, We're so
Ralph Behrendt: printing a rye grass all bounced around a bit from eight to eleven Mega joules of me per kilogram dry matter
Ralph Behrendt: Now, part of the reasoning for that is that it depended on when the rain fell, and also when we were grazing
Ralph Behrendt: the plots, and therefore the level of maturity that different paddocks were getting to, and also the level of leaf and stem that was being sampled pre pride of grazing, and it was back so fresh green leaf, obviously highest digestibility, and gives you the most in terms of metabolical energy. As you go through and raise down forage crop, you start becoming more stemming, less green materials
Ralph Behrendt: behind, and the the mega joules of energy decreases.
Ralph Behrendt: So um!
Ralph Behrendt: You can see on the right-hand side what a typical rye grass pasture might look like in the autumn. There's a little bit of green at the bottom, and this is the reason for supplementing use growing to a target weight for joining at the time of year. So there's a little bit of green there. That green is often quite good can be up to eleven megawatts of energy in in in metabolizable energy.
Ralph Behrendt: Ah, but there's not a lot of it. So you do need to supplement it with some extra energy to make sure that we get the intake that we need it in comparison. You might only get seven to six. Mega Joules per kilogram of dry matter me from the dry material that's there.
Ralph Behrendt: So Crew Protein, obviously also of interest, was in the range of fourteen or twenty, two percent,
Ralph Behrendt: one thousand nine hundred and ninety-six for plantain chickory there ten to twenty-two. These are the extremes, but most of the time The crew program is in the middle of the range for these values and looser and sort of fourteen or thirty-one a little bit higher on most occasions. Again perennial rye grass. The green opponent is not bad for crude protein, one hundred and fifty,
Ralph Behrendt: and and so for all these forages, excluding the perennial rye grass, which is a lot of dry matter. They would meet the requirements of crew protein for a growing lamb, which is sort of in that forty and a sixteen
Ralph Behrendt: group protein.
Ralph Behrendt: So what the gut do for growth rates? What we've got here is the graphs from two thousand and fourteen and two thousand and sixteen. We started our um. Ah live weights around thirty-eight, thirty-nine kilos in two thousand and fourteen and forty forty to forty, one kilos in
Ralph Behrendt: two thousand and sixteen,
Ralph Behrendt: nearly all the foragers performed quite well in the early period, where there was sufficient dry matter
Ralph Behrendt: and um. We had growth rates up to two hundred and fifty grams per day and um but over the period of the joining, so this is the four ten weeks um, the best, fastest growing, foraging the fastest growing lands we're able to achieve. About ten kilo gain compared to only about three to five kilo gain in the slowest growing treatment. So that was dry grass in two thousand and fourteen, and you can see that
Ralph Behrendt: in the bottom table, where perennial raw grass only achieved a growth rate of around seventy, five grams per day over that ten week period.
Ralph Behrendt: In contrast the two winter canolas, springstone, canolas, and the winter for Brassica. It feed about one hundred and fifty grams per day, and the chickory plant and looser, and a sort of intermediate plantain also did quite well in that year
Ralph Behrendt: reproductively. What that resulted in was that the rye grass was the lowest in terms of reproductive rates from the Zealands that were joined,
Ralph Behrendt: and the the the high, all the the tourists and the looser and the kickery all achieved a high reproductive rate with the Winifred and the plantain sort of in between.
Ralph Behrendt: So the two thousand and sixteen data sort of showed a similar pattern, but some slight variation depending on due to the seasonal conditions in the state stage of growth.
Ralph Behrendt: Again, the brassic has performed quite well. Quite good growth rates up to one hundred and sixty four for the grams today for the hazel.
Ralph Behrendt: Ah, but the chicory and you can see that it's in large part due to the end period of Ah, the the raising study. So after the fourth of April on like graffiti. You see, there's a dip in the chickory growth rate, and over the whole period, therefore, the growth rate was around twenty-three grams today. Ah, likewise plantain didn't perform all that well walk way through was a little bit lower in terms of sixty s one grand stay, and that was
Ralph Behrendt: impart a palatability issue. Um, actually avoiding grazing of plantain, even though there was plenty of it there. Loosen was sort of intermediate in terms of growth. Rates, and the rye grass again was sort of at the lower end of the growth rates in two thousand and sixteen. We saw no effects on reproductive rate, and the reproductive rate was largely the same across all the treatments.
Ralph Behrendt: So
Ralph Behrendt: basically the key messages are rising out of our work, And this is really just a snapshot. Quick snapshot results from those studies, because that I mean, basically we know that all autumn for it, some or forage carry some risk either due to dry weather during the establishment phase or during growth phase. So you're not either getting the amount of dry matter that you might need. Um, sometimes due to a dry summer or water period, little summer rainfall, and and sometimes the response from the forages
Ralph Behrendt: in terms of the amount of fresh leaf that you can grow which provides the metabolizable energy is also variable, so that that third point there around metabolizable energy which drives the growth rate of lands, is very important, and what we saw was quite a wide variation
Ralph Behrendt: in lamb growth rate, but also the metabolizable energy due to the stage maturity and the leaf versus a stem scenario. For each of these forages.
Ralph Behrendt: Each of these foragers have their good points and bad points. Lucer and kickery. Both can provide high growth rates these advantages there because they are perennials, and we don't have to sow them again for at least a few years, and there's some resilience there in dry seasons so
Ralph Behrendt: very important to consider that mix. And then, finally, just with springside and canola, it is. It is a correct sort of thing that you can do similar to a winner from Brassica. But if you wanting, then to, you need to not lock it up after the before it hits flowering stage to be able to allow to go to harvest and then get the harvest of tunnel in the sleep the following season as well,
Nick Linden: and we'll leave it there, Nick. Thank you, Ralph. That's fantastic. Thank you, and credit to both the speakers that we are bang on time at the moment, which is a fantastic event.
Nick Linden: So look, I think we do have time for a couple of questions. Maybe if Jane's had any come in, she can either unmute herself or type them in, or try and share them with the group, but failing that, I had a couple that i'd like to ask. Anyway, Ralph,
Nick Linden: first one to you are just interesting in that two thousand and sixteen that there was no relationship between. I think I've got this right. The growth rates of the different forages, and then the repro rate for the you lambs that have been grazing
Nick Linden: um like. Take any thoughts on. Why, that might have been, Or is it possibly, that just that a heavier starting, and they've had better early growth. And then maybe the repro potential has been set up, or something. I just thought that might look it's unusual.
Nick Linden: So target-wise. We We were at the targets. The aim was to try and get these lambs above thirty, five kilos hitting a forty kilos of average liveweight. Yeah, to make sure that they were going to give the best joining performance, and then grow them out on on the forages as well, and you know they were putting on still ten kilos. But, as you said, retroactive freight was not that good? Oh, it was. It was still good, so they were doing it, but it wasn't linear. Like it wasn't
Nick Linden: it was there it going to great right. Yeah, But the reason for that was we did join a little bit earlier, so the animals were a bit younger, so for every month that animals are older than sort of six to seven months of age. In the Eu lambs, they will produce a higher reproductive rate,
Ralph Behrendt: because they're further on from impunity, and the other side of it is that we also joined
Ralph Behrendt: in terms of the for each component that year there wasn't as much forage around, and probably not as good a growth rate or me and growth rates as the previous year
Nick Linden: on average, and i'm not sure if you can see there is a question that's coming in the chat so it can. Either Both speakers comment on the value or not of a pasture mix of herds leg ends over a monoculture um open for either Rebecca or Ralph,
Ralph Behrendt: so I can. I can have a bit of a go at this one. Um! It'll it'll come back to what the the first limiting nutrients are. So Herbs and legions will offer some diversity and some selection ability in terms of the metabolizable energy and the crew, protein, and animals to pick up, and it does provide some growth advantages. And there's been some really good work in New Zealand where mixtures of pastures have really promoted growth rates.
Ralph Behrendt: However, some of the work that we've done here where You've done that experiment where we've had herbs, and like a plantain and looser, and side by side
Ralph Behrendt: it it really came down, to which forage was actually delivering the most in terms of digestibility and metabolizable energy; and if the loosen was better than the plantain, everything just went with whatever the forage was that was better at point in time, so um in those experiments it didn't actually matter whether we had rye grass, plantain, or loosen, and they were offered them offered for sheep side by side.
Ralph Behrendt: Ah! The one that had the best forage quality, and in most cases was looser, and during that time of year for um versus plantain or um ryegrass for those experiments we did, and the looser, and ended up giving us the highest growth rate.
Nick Linden: Excellent thanks for that Rough. Would you like to add anything to that, Rebecca?
Rebecca Stutz: Ah! The only thing I would say is for the for that herb, like your mixture, that the issue that we found was trying to maintain the leggings in the mixed because the herbs
Rebecca Stutz: um it's kind of shaded them out, especially early on um before the sheep could get on, get on um and raise them down a little bit. I mean they they did sort of stick through to that following year, which we were almost a bit surprised about because they sort of disappeared at the end of the first year of raising. But yes, definitely.
Nick Linden: Okay. Well, I think that,
Nick Linden: Please, John, you guys narrative I put a hand up. So you happy to take a
Nick Linden: Of course we've got time. So if there's a question for Now let's go for it.
I think we must unmute. So
Nick Linden: there we go. Thanks. I can't seem to get the chat working so. Um
Nerida Anderson: I. So that's why I raised my hand. Um, These results are really interesting, and I was wondering if they've been published anywhere so that we can look over them in the more detail.
Ralph Behrendt: Yeah, So it's all the data that um I presented, or the majority of it is available in uh some this, especially if you event on production science. So we can get you. You'll provide the links for that. Um,
Ralph Behrendt: Probably at the close of the event, Jane, with the recording, and the There is also an Mla report on that on the whole project that was a result of part of as well,
Ralph Behrendt: which you'd be free to download from the Mla website if you research the R. And D. Record, so I can actually point you to that, too.
Nick Linden: So it sounds like we should be able to help with at least the Hamilton information. Narrator:
Yep.
Rebecca Stutz: So our work is not published yet. We're in the process of publishing ours, but it will be in an Mla report that will be up on their website as well when it when it's all finalized
Nick Linden: excellent
Nick Linden: well in the spirit of keeping to time, which everyone's doing remarkably well, and thank you for the question it's now my joy to enter into interrupt, introduce, i'm not interrupting it. You might have
Nick Linden: introduce our final speaker, which is Dale Gray. And again, i'm sure they'll as a as
Nick Linden: seasonal climate change agronomist. I think it's roughly the term again. It's probably very limited seasonal risk. Sorry. Agonus needs a very little introduction, and well-known through a lot of his um Ah, social media extension of the messages around climate um predictability and variability. So i'm not even going to share my screen dial. I'll just hand over to you because you've got yours up and going, and that you um
Nick Linden: tackle our mythbuster, which was all around. Does the la Nina deliver for Victoria? And what might we be able to expect? Thanks, Dial. Thanks, Nick, and
Dale Grey: learning is deliver for summer, because I must admit my my initial thoughts. Well, historically, probably, since last year, were that no, they didn't. They were pretty much hit, and Miss Lion Indians have, of course, historically
Dale Grey: led to normally Wetter Springs. Um. And so what we've got here is just some data from four locations, Barabara, Bonella, Cassiden, and Bansdale. Looking at the Times. The years that we've had alarming Yeah, irrespective of when it occurred, And what the October to December rainfall has been, and if it's in the blue here it's in the highest set of records it's in the yellow. It's in the average Middleford. If it's red. It's in the Lower Third, and you can see that the number of
Dale Grey: drier years there is reduced, and the number of wetty years generally, perhaps, with the exception of Castodon, which is kind of split between normal and wetter. But the other locations have historically had a strong bias that larnia has wet things up for spring
Dale Grey: if we change to summer, and we look at years where there's been a learning. Yeah, um, we can see that we start to get a shotgun. Now that anything has potentially happened, there's a great mix of of things there. But the problem with this data is that we're looking at.
Dale Grey: Here's where the lining you may have been in the spring, and yet we're looking at summer rainfall. And so what you really need to do is to correlate the years where it's actually been a
Dale Grey: over the summer period as well rather than just the spring. So what I might do is just go to this data here first, and this is where we're looking where it has been a
Dale Grey: in the spring over here, and we're looking spatially Here we're looking at the change in median or average rainfall here, and the dark blue dots are when the rainfall's been higher than thirty percent greater than the normal.
Dale Grey: And you can see that spatially that that has a very strong signal in Northern Victoria. In fact, if you look at the September rainfall data today,
Dale Grey: it has a pattern very much kind of right that north of the divide, but not to say that there's certainly increases in rainfall normally, on average, when it's lar Nina in the spring over the most of Victoria to be honest.
Dale Grey: But when we look at when Lar Nina has occurred over summer, we can see that that's a very different story. We can see that once again that Northern big northeast North Central Victoria has a very strong, wetter signal, but we can see that Southwestern Victoria
Dale Grey: almost has a negative, almost has a rainfall decline signaling years of La Nina, which is quite interesting. There's a distinct sort of spatial boundary there
Dale Grey: in years of London. Yeah, but that that where our trend sort of continues into West Gibson, and through a skip's land as well. But you can see not to the strength that it has in North Central and Northeastern Victoria.
Dale Grey: I'll just give back to this one here. This is some data I was crunching while the other speakers were speaking. It was very naughty on me. But um! This is where I've looked at the years. This is just a vanilla, this table here, and we've looked at the years where it has been over the summer time,
Dale Grey: and we've got the year, and we've got the summer rainfall and average summer rainfall is about one hundred and twenty one millimeters, so you can see that there has been some years where that was less
Dale Grey: some years, where it's average, and a fair number where it's been drier, and some of those twenty, ten and two thousand and eleven and two thousand and seven have been in relatively recent times. We even argued in one thousand nine hundred and eighty eight. It's requisite as well, but two thousand and twenty was a bit. My most recent one was a bit of a kind of enough enough. One
Dale Grey: One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine was also sort of or averaged. Ah! Remembering that when we've got a full profile that you know that might only last about a month of decent summer forage growing. I'm thinking things like
Dale Grey: some are grasses like millet and sorghum, and things like that, you know. That sort of full profile disappears very rapidly with rapid water use. So you really are needing,
Dale Grey: perhaps, more than just the the profile. You are needing some where to summer rainfall. So what is going to happen? So let's look at the most recent model runs. You're seeing it here first. This is my newsletter unpublished data we could call it.
Dale Grey: We can see we've got seven of the eleven models that I observe, are predicting a la nina of sorts, either week or moderate for October, November, December.
Dale Grey: Ah, we're all predicting the negative iid which we currently have to continue on. If we look at rainfall, there's very strong consensus from twelve of the to the model ten of the twelve models there that the whole of Victoria is likely to be in the wettest third of records, with a much stronger
Dale Grey: consensus there. Although we have, we have some models here with a very strong probability that's likely in the be wet as third. The once again. That's a wetter,
Dale Grey: and then there's some models here that say slightly where that probability is less. It's certainly more elevated than normal, but it's less than these are the less emphatic kind of models. But we've got a real blend there of a number of models who are predicting that you know the highest, wetest third of records is much more likely.
Dale Grey: Um.
Dale Grey: And interestingly enough, we've got a strong consensus of models.
Dale Grey: Northern Victoria, north of the Great Divide. Temperatures are likely to be cooler, but more normal as we head south of the divide. So once again what we're seeing at the moment more northerly influence,
Dale Grey: particularly with the temperatures there. But we're not seeing any kind of breakaway here in terms of regional distribution of the rainfall, according the models for the next three months.
Dale Grey: But the real crystal ball gazing is is why we're here is over summer, and once we get to January, February, March. Well, the landing year is off, so I can't find a model that wants to continue the lining on past December. They all kill it off then,
Dale Grey: so we will see whether, in fact, the London has any enthusiasm to go further than that just one model here predicting a flip into a relatively quick El Nino.
Dale Grey: I might I might. Since we talked about a nick. I might add that we we've had three triple learning years in a row now, and we've had that in times in the past. We've had that in one thousand nine hundred and fifty-four fifty-five to fifty-six, and in one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven that turned out to be an eleventh. If we looked at one thousand nine hundred and seventy three one thousand nine hundred and seventy, four, one thousand nine hundred and seventy, five, one thousand nine hundred and seventy six was a normal year, but one thousand nine hundred and ninety, seven was an elbow.
Dale Grey: If we look at one thousand nine hundred and ninety, eight, one thousand nine hundred and ninety, nine and two thousand, we
Dale Grey: two thousand, and one was a neutral year, but two thousand and two was an El Nino. So we only got three other years to go on. No real idea about what happened next year.
Dale Grey: Normal is the most likely and just a neutral kind of is the most likely, probably. Ah, but just looking at those couple London years. It it does increase. Perhaps it looks to increase the chance that we'll have an El Nino sometime in the next two years, If we have a look at the rainfall or the the Hinduation dive all collapses. That will happen as soon as the northern wet season kicks off. That's pretty good to kick off somewhere at the start of December. Um! Some of rainfall here. We now come back to all over the
Dale Grey: We're mainly sitting on the fence. Predictions for rainfall. We have a stronger consensus for rainfall, being greater in the eastern half of Victoria, but particularly in far eastern Gippsland, and that's indicative
Dale Grey: of a positive southern andular mode continuing which we currently have as as well. But we start to see temperatures there sniffing up.
Dale Grey: Yeah, from there. Cooler bits. Um Now sort of sniffing sort of neutral anything that happened to warm up. So. Um, that's my my mythbuster there, and Nick happy to take any questions if there are any that historically. Yes, if we get a line in here over the summer, it absolutely has
Dale Grey: classically increase the chances of we to rainfall.
Dale Grey: But if you just look at the years where there's been a learning here in general. There's no influence over the summer to the rainfall. I'm sorry it's a kind of all over the shop, but it's a managed to get one over summer. Remember, the landing is never normally a spring. Things, and fewer of them have gone into summer.
Dale Grey: Much more of them are sort of a more spring event,
Nick Linden: anyway. I'll stop talking, Nick or I'll keep going
Nick Linden: a very interesting presentation, as we'd expect aisle, and yeah lots in it. I particularly like seeing some of that regional specificity. It um haven't quite viewed it in that in that framework before so very interesting and great to see your most recent updated figures. So thanks very much for pulling those together for us. Jane. I'm.
Nick Linden: We've probably got. I know we're at the brink of time, Dale. I might ask you to stop sharing so I can share my last screen.
Dale Grey: Jane has taken control for me.
Nick Linden: She has fantastic. Thank you, John. The
Nick Linden: what we would like to just plug is the feeding livestock website which is part of.
Nick Linden: Is that your screen or mine, Jane. I don't know if I press the dot off.
Nick Linden: If everyone can see that, you know we'd like to just promote her feeding livestock website hopefully. That's on your screens. Now. Um! A great resource. It's got lots of our other previous mythbusters that we've run, as well as some of the other seasonal webinars that have been undertaken so well worth a look. There's lots of good stuff there.
Nick Linden: Um! And also look, as I say, we probably have got a time for a couple of extra questions if people did want to type them in to either of the presentations. And there's a really quick,
Nick Linden: just a poll a couple of questions that if you can scroll down, I think, within the question, Section Jane um, and leave us some feedback would be greatly of verities. If you could just click on those to give us a feel for your satisfaction or any other comments, you'd like to make be greatly appreciated,
Nick Linden: so I would certainly appreciate people filling those in.
Nick Linden: So I guess, of
Nick Linden: pending questions. I'm going to throw out a thanks to Rebecca Ralph, as well as Dale. And of course, Jane, for sitting behind the scenes for helping um like the Webinar run as smoothly as it has. Thank you very much, Jane.
Nick Linden: If there are any questions we'd certainly welcome them,
Nick Linden: and I might just throw a quick one in the absence of others to rebecca because she planted so many different
Nick Linden: legging and non-legium varieties. I was just wondering, without a not a comprehensive breakdown but do you have a sense for the cost of production of some of the different ones. Certainly we've had a little bit of a look at fodder beaten. Certainly the cost of production for what it used to be through the roof, or very expensive compared to some others
Nick Linden: for the ones that you look at. Is there any sort of difference in the costs, Rebecca, in terms of cost of production.
Rebecca Stutz: Ah! I suppose that the brassic is
Rebecca Stutz: in terms of having to re-seow them every year, and also we have to spray them quite a lot of times. Um, we had caterpillars and eight is um and uh, yeah, And you can also have problems with like, if you, if you're going to graze it multiple times, and then what it gets in top, and it's um. So I think that
Rebecca Stutz: that was quite costly. I suppose if that if that answers your question.
Nick Linden: Yeah, that's certainly pointer. It's a Thank you. That's good,
Nick Linden: and I was interesting. I think he had late-season. Weed issues in um. I think it was the Braskers. They'll clean it up, and then sort of came in late in season. I I can't remember from the slide I was just running. How did the chicory go for weeds? And I guess just any
Nick Linden: issues in terms of establishment and preparation, and getting the the forages ready to? So
Rebecca Stutz: um! The the cheaper is pretty, the chickory planning. We're pretty, I think. That's also, you know the shading, so help keep the weeds down in that one.
Rebecca Stutz: We really had mostly had the weed issues in the grasses. Um! And so for the for the preparation. Well, we kind of had quite a long lead up to this experiment, so that the paddock was
Nick Linden: almost two years right. Having said that we still got mustard weed and all sorts of things in there that we?
Yeah,
Nick Linden: Jane, Any other questions have come in line. I'll just check the chat.
Yeah, it's It's a pretty,
Nick Linden: And I think Ralph had mentioned he's saying that it's Rebecca, When did you so? Your I think you said your autumn production from some of your clovers like I think you listed Red Clover. Maybe straw Clover was quite. But when did you say those ones? I think that was maybe your first.
Nick Linden: Sorry you're and you're still muted.
Nick Linden: Sorry we we we all the perennials together. So in in April, with the grasses and a hertz.
Nick Linden: Yeah, okay,
Jane Court: yeah, sorry, Nick. Um, Pat Francis with his hand up. I don't know if you've got a hand up again. Narrator. But it's still up, but certainly Pat's put his hand up, so
Nick Linden: go for a ped. If i'll let Jane, deal with the
Nick Linden: unmuting of people. And, Patrick, if you'd like to answer, ask your question that'd be great.
Patrick Francis: Ah, just more of an observation with the massacres You can get a year like two thousand and twenty one summer,
Patrick Francis: and they're brassica.
Patrick Francis: When Fred was completely decimated by aphas, and it was unpalatable, completely unpalable, and I just sort of draw it in that they're an issue with with some of the brassic of species that are
Patrick Francis: susceptible to a. We we wouldn't plant it again. But that particular species we we try a variety. We try another variety, but we also don't. Ah prefer chicory now, because it has no palatability problems, especially with lambs when you first put them on to it. So that's another thing to consider as palatability of that
Patrick Francis: of the Uh fororage crop.
Nick Linden: Great Patrick! Thanks, Pat, Thanks very much. That's a great great comment to the discussion. Thank you.
Rebecca Stutz: Where, if you found that to that there was a you know a bit of a like in taking up the brass K, and we didn't have that with them with the
Nick Linden: maybe. Ralph, can you comment at all to any, I guess, building on from the palatability. But animal health issues, or any risks associated with any of the
Nick Linden: no rising in mature brasskers or anything
Ralph Behrendt: uh so so we also saw a sort of uh I wouldn't necessarily call it a palatability issue. But there's certainly an adaptation period where um lambs need to get used to the the Brassicas in terms of getting on to plots and raising them. They are high em, and the disability. So.
Ralph Behrendt: Ah, there's there's a transition point in terms of the room, and adjusting to the brassic or itself. And so for the first two weeks they they're not necessarily growing as quickly as what they might do on other forages. But then they do pick up after that time, once they become adapted to the forage
Ralph Behrendt: um with with any of the forage crops. If you're adding sort of nitrogen fertilizers, so nitrates might be an issue if it was too high, particularly around the brassicas, And
Ralph Behrendt: yeah, the the you know never, never putting animals on when they're hungry, making sure that they're always fall before going on, providing potentially some fibre sources when they're going on to things that are lush
Nick Linden: for any of the forage, you know. Forages we discussed as well can help in that adjustment period. No, no need to go to the extent of limiting access for the first week to Fortnite Day. Ralph. I don't know i'm just um certainly from some of the fodder beach experience. The recommendation is, you know you limit the access, for you know, maybe a couple of hours the first day, four hours a second day and
Nick Linden: limit how much exposure the animals can physically get. But there's not. That sounds like There's not the extent to go to that level of management for the adaptation phase.
Ralph Behrendt: Yeah, we certainly Haven't had to do that in our work.
Nick Linden: Well, folks, I think we've probably run pretty much to time, and probably real credit to the presenters that I think everyone that's logged on is hung around to listen to all of the questions sessions as well. So certainly,
Patrick Francis: and thanks to all the speakers, but also, thanks to all the producers and people at home that have given up there even needs to come and tune in and to listen to the conversation. Thank you all very much, and we hope that you'll be able to join us for our next live season, a webinar, and, as I say, please visit the website. There's some really good resources there,
Nick Linden: Pat, Did you just have your hand up again? Or was that just coming off from the previous discussion.
Patrick Francis: Must I?
Patrick Francis: Well, we'll let you have the last word then, and wish everyone all the very best. Thanks again for your time and thanks for joining us this evening.
Nick Linden: Thank you. There,
Ralph Behrendt: very broad.