The days of broadcasting turnip seed and super have gone by the way at the Sandy family’s Buchan South property, but turnips and ryegrass are still the go-to for a fattening crop.
About a dozen members of the Buchan Better Beef group met last week to take a look at the Sandy’s crop, which cattle are strip grazing, eating all leaves as well as the turnip bulbs.
“It’s a pretty economical feed source,” Peter Sandy said.
“You get two grazings and a cut of hay within 10 months, depending on the season.”
The Sandys have spent close to the last 10 years renovating paddocks with the aim of controlling bentgrass.
They used to plant turnips at a kilogram to the hectare, broadcast with a tonne of super via the super spreader, then would roll it.
The current crop of 8ha was direct drilled in late February with 12kg of tetila ryegrass and 1kg of Barkant turnip seed to the hectare.
The paddock was then spread with super and rolled.
Peter said they used to grow Mammoth Purple Top turnips, which grew three-parts under the ground, whereas the bulb of the Barkant turnip grows 50 per cent above the ground.
When cattle eat the bulb they don’t disturb the ground as much.
Barkant also has a high sugar content which provides winter hardiness and increased palatability.
The Sandy’s 10 to 12-month-old Angus steers had been weaned on hay, then put on the crop to strip graze it from the middle of June and will be sold at the Wyndham Special Store Cattle sale in mid-August.
“It takes about a fortnight for the cattle to figure out they can eat the bulbs,” Peter said.
“It’s well worth the effort.
“You’re killing two birds with one stone, you’re doing your paddock up and getting better weights, as well as quietening your cattle from all the handling because of the strip grazing.”
This week the Sandy family will shear 2200 sheep just north of Buchan, which will take two shearers about eight days.
Trevor Sandy, Peter’s uncle, was on hand to give the Better Beef group a bit of farming history, saying he and his brother Jim Sandy bought their property in 1965 for eight pounds an acre.
Trevor said the place was “all bush” when they bought it and worked hard to clear it.
They ran 110 dairy cows, with the wives running the dairy and the husbands working off farm to pay for it, only going out of dairying when Murray Goulburn wouldn’t come to pick up the milk.
They went to a beef operation and were able to buy in cows and calves at $450 a unit.
The Better Beef group members spoke about everything from spraying fish
hydrolysate, gibberellic acid and pasture booster, to injecting livestock with copper and selenium products, as well as controlling bentgrass.
Increasing soil fertility so that more productive species can grow is one of the first steps, with Peter saying the turnip/rye crop was very easy to grow, particularly the turnips.
“When it strikes there’s a nice broad leaf which catches the dew and sort of funnels the moisture in,” he said.
“It’s more of a hindrance if it’s too wet.
“With this crop we’ve had a bit of rain and where the turnips didn’t strike in the wetter areas, the ryegrass did.
“The turnip is a bit thick in other places which has smothered the rye out, but it will be interesting to see how much ryegrass comes back in the spring.”
All going well, Peter expects by the end of September the ryegrass will be ready to graze again, then they should be able to cut a round of hay around Christmas time.
“The cattle do a lot better being on a crop, we fatten a portion of steers every year for this August sale.
“It’s been such a good season there’s not much of a tail to them.”
