ROTATIONAL GRAZING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3938, 11 August 1937, Page 11

ROTATIONAL GRAZING

ADVICE TO SHEEP FARMERS. MASSEY' COLLEGE TRIALS. Those who attended the sheep farmers’ conference in Palmerston North last Juno will well remember the interesting trials being carried out by Massey College with intensive rotational grazing of sheep. The ewes then looked almost too fat and feed was really plentiful, writes Mr H. A. Seifert in the Dominion. He adds: Recently I called in at the trial area and found the feed as good as ever and the ewes in the same condition. The feed was such as to be envied by many, in fact most, dairymen at. the close of July. The ewes were the best conditioned I have seen in any district. The area is exactly 82 acres, and 600 ewes are grazing on it, approximately 71 an acre. They have grazed there continuously since March 1. Two-thirds of the area is in splendid pasture, averaging two years old, but the remaining one-third is a bad gully in run-out pasture. This is providing grazing for fewer than three ewes an acre (estimated), despite top dressing. Actually the new pastures must be carrying close upon 10 ewes an acre.

On visiting the area I found the ewes in the top paddock, at the Aok-autere-Tirotea roads corner. Mr E. P. Gould, who is in charge of the sheep, told me that that was the second day on this five acre paddock for 350 ewes. The feed was good and by no means trampled out of sight. The remaining 250 ewes, the later lambing, were being fed mangolds as a supplementary ration. The rotation practised is two days in each paddock and the nights in an adjacent portion of the gully, where clover hay is now being provided for the ewes. Most of those who visited the area at conference time will remember the “dirty” paddock by the road. Many doubted if it would again get clean this winter. I can assure them that ii did. This was the ewes’ first feed for the day following my visit. The pasture there was perfect, a great body of clean feed, and the paddock had had only six days’ spell from its previous grazing. The rotation will be followed right through lambing. Regarding this point Mr Gould tells of a veteran farmer who visited the area and asked if the rotation would be so continued. When informed .that it would be, the veteran forcibly remarked that he did not envy Mr Gould and his helpers their job. They, themselves, however, anticipate no great bother with it after last season’s experience. “The ewes really draft themselves, those with new lambs remaining in the ‘old’ paddock, and those unlambed or with older lambs going through to the next one,” said Mr Gould.

Top dressing is by no means extreme—3 cwt of super and 5 cwt of lime an acre annually. Grass is the main food, but 10 acres of mangolds were grown as a winter reserve. Even at the dead of winter the grass and the clover, too, maintained a growth. The trial acre of 82 acres is part of Massey College’s “Paliiatua Block,” a piece of 230 acres. Before the college took over, it ran 500 ewes and 200 hoggets. This winter it carried 1400 ewes.

This increased capacity has resulted from several improvements made. Besides the laying of improved pastures and the erection of subdivision fences, soil drainage has been a most important improvement. Both tile and mole drainage are provided. Without this the present carrying capacity would have been impossible of achievement.