Stand still for long enough at the moment and you can just about see the grass growing as you watch. For livestock producers this is a good thing because as the weather cools down that growth will slow down considerably (that’s also why we don’t need to mow the house yard as much during the cooler months). Right now, we are growing the grass that our animals will be eating for the next several months until the weather warms up and the growing season starts again. Have you got enough to see them through? It’s time to do a pasture budget.
A pasture budget based on the probable length of the dry season enables a safe stocking rate to be calculated.
To establish a pasture budget, you need the following.
- Number of days between your estimated Brown Date and Green Dates
- Number of head and total feed requirements.
- Pasture Capacity
The brown date is when you estimate pasture growth will cease. Let’s guess mid-May for this exercise.
The green date is your estimate of when the dry season is likely to break. Growth will generally kick off when soil temps get over 20 degrees and there is moisture equivalent of about 50mm rainfall in your soil.
No-one knows for sure when this is going to happen so obviously it’s an estimate but for the sake of the exercise let’s say mid November.
There are 180 days between mid-May and mid-November
How many head have you got? Let’s say 20 head at an average of 400kg each. As a guide, livestock need to consume approximately 2-3% of their body weight in dry matter (DM) every day. So, for this example your entire herd will need a total of 200kg DM per day – or 36000kg for the non-growing season.
So how much DM have you got right now? Let’s say DM content is about 80% of the green feed in your paddocks now. If you took a typical 1sqm of your pasture, cut that pasture down (leaving at least 2cm residual), weighed it then took 80% of that weight and multiplied it by the number of square meters you have, you will estimate your dry matter total. Considering the number of animals you have, is there enough feed for those animals until the next flush of growth happens?
Matching stocking rate to seasonally adjusted carrying capacity has the potential to reduce the extent of supplementary feeding and reduces stress on pastures, stock, finances and you! If you know that you won’t have enough feed for the animals you have, you can make the decision now to destock or perhaps you can plant a winter active crop to grow your own supplementary feed? Feed budgeting helps you move from reactive to proactive management. It’s covered extensively in Holistic Management training and there is a course coming to the Mary Valley in June. Find out more here
