Project Update - July 2019

An opportunity to increase the contract heifer rearing enterprise at Rhiwgriafol has triggered a review of the current business performance.  Key to this has been comparing how much pasture the farm grows now, estimating how this could be increased, and comparing to the demand of the sheep and heifer enterprises. 

Currently 80% of the energy on the farm comes from grass (grazed or silage).  By measuring his grass on a 2-4 weekly basis Rhidian has captured the pasture growth curve for the farm and the total pasture production which is calculated at an average of 7200kgDM/ha.  As the business is limited by area of land Rhidian has focused on using rotational grazing to increase pasture production.  This has been enabled by sub-dividing the largest fields using electric fencing to make smaller paddocks so groups of stock can move 2-3x per week to new pasture.  By limiting the time animals spend grazing one paddock the rate of pasture re-growth is increased. 

Key to pasture production is maintaining a consistent leaf canopy on the farm to capture light and produce energy for pasture growth.  Due to their larger size target pasture height for heifers to achieve optimum performance higher than sheep i.e. pre-grazing covers of 2500-3400kgDM/ha (7-11cm compressed height) vs sheep at 2000-2500kgDM/ha (5.5-7cm compressed height).  This means the pasture has a greater growth potential which increases productivity per ha. 

Pasture grazed by heifers has produced 10,000kgDM/ha compared to 6000kgDM/ha with sheep & lamb grazing.  This is mainly due to heifer entering into higher pre-grazing covers (more leaf area so higher growth potential) 

Introducing more heifers will increase the pasture production potential of the farm but will sheep numbers need to be reduced?  To answer this feed budgeting program FARMAX was used.  Rhidian already uses FARMAX to monitor the farm and help make decision for the year ahead.  Using his existing farm data a “long term” file was created to test what the sustainable numbers of stock would be, the comparison is below:    

*includes use of forage crops and supplements.

Introducing the additional heifers means ewe numbers need to be reduced by 50hd however the increased pasture production increases output by 159kgLW/ha.  Reducing the number of breeding stock on the farm also increases the pasture use efficiency, this means less kgDM are required to produce 1kgLW.  The data from the farm model can now be used in a profit and loss account to compare the profitability of each enterprise.