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Good ground cover essential for cattle and beef

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Sustainable Agriculture

Managing grazing pressure so that ground cover levels are maintained is hard enough when managing sheep, but when you throw cattle into the mix as well the challenge becomes even more complicated.

Ken Mutton from Wickepin crops as well as trying to maintain 1500ha of pasture for his merino ewes and Droughtmaster cattle.

Even with his 40 years experience Ken thought he could find out more about summer cropping and strategies to avoid hand feeding over the summer/ autumn feed gap.

Previously Ken has tried lucerne, sorghum and chicory as summer pastures over 100ha and is keen explore other options.  Ultimately Ken hopes to run more stock over summer, without compromising soil health, by well managed grazing regimes and having more summer growing fodder and forage plants.

Ken will be demonstrating new strategies to tackle this issue as part of our Optimising fodder options project.

Sign up to be part of the project and see what options Ken tries to increase groundcover for feed as well as protecting his soils from erosion.

For more information about this project, please email Bonny Dunlop-Heague at bdunlp@wheatbeltnrm.org.au.

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