Cattle for Soil Health

Dry times present a new opportunity

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It is amazing how quickly the dry times have returned, with a blistering hot and dry end to spring. The rain literally just stopped coming, and the ground has dried out quickly. The wild oats and barley grass have all set seed, and the landscape is taking on the sunburnt brown hues loved by Dorothea Mackellar. The nearby soil moisture probes at Gunning and Murrumbateman both show a very dry soil profile, with available herbage below the lowest 10th percentile, and based on the graphs, it is unlikely to improve before autumn.

From https://www.farmingforecaster.com.au/index Projected green herbage available relative to historic variation – Murrumbateman. Accessed 21 November 2023

The dry has some advantages, and I have been able to get on top of a few of the mechanical issues we faced a few weeks ago (https://rockfarming.com/2023/10/05/fencing-malfunctions-fires-and-family/). The mower’s transmission units arrived in record time, and in no time I had it back on task knocking the daisy heads off. Local mechanic Dan installed a new clutch in the tractor (so glad he was able to fit me in and get the tractor back on the road in a couple of days). We put a new radiator in the big red truck Myrtle (someone wants to go to his school formal in a certain red, two door Mercedes-Benz) and the same certain someone has managed to replace the head gaskets in his little Subaru, install a new clutch and put the engine back in his car successfully! Talk about a handy run!

But the dry has also created a couple of other new jobs we need to pay attention to. We have started watering our young trees again – something we haven’t done since January 2020. The old re-purposed horse float is perfectly suited to its new task with the IBC container and fire pump.

The other main job I have managed to get ticked off is cleaning out one of our small paddock dams. Most of the Rock Farm’s paddocks are watered via troughs, meaning daily inspections of water points are a necessity. Our main large dam is close to our creek which floods, and can take out our flood gates. This means I have nowhere I can leave the cattle for more than a day or two without someone being around to check on them. By cleaning this dam up, hopefully it will hold a little more water a little longer, meaning I have a paddock we can leave the cattle in for up to a week or so at a time, reducing the burden on our neighbours or my parents should we ask for someone to ‘keep an eye on the place’ while we take a break.

Lou and his little digger spent most of the day and made have hopefully our little dam a lot more useful!

Around all these comings and goings, the cattle have steadily munched their way through the standing grass. It has been a bit of a handful running them in two herds, with the bull settling in quickly with his girls in the joining herd.

He is a lovely quiet fellow, and we will be sorry to see him return home in a few weeks as will Spectacle Sue it appears.

We have a good amount of standing feed at the moment which is keeping the cattle in good condition. Recent storms have missed our place, which is a mixed blessing. Storms may fill our newly cleaned dam and our dwindling water tanks, but they will degrade the quality of the standing grass on the Rock Farm.

Should we get a good couple of storms, we will be ok. We have a good store of hay in the shed, and now the tractor is back in working order, we have the means to move the large round hay bales (each weigh around 400-450kg) and supplementary feed the cattle when the time comes.

In the mean time, it is good fun hanging out with this bunch! Big shout out to Dan for his great work on the tractor, Lou for his awesome work on the dam, and Kathie for the loan of her mower whilst we waited for our parts to arrive! We are so lucky to live in such a great community 🙂

A strategy emerges

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On The Rock Farm we have been struggling to finalise our strategy for this season. We have been watching the seasonal outlook forecast intense drought and cattle prices fall to extremely low levels . On the Rock Farm, we have been extremely thankful for the odd showers that have kept the grass green in our patch – staving off an immediate requirement to make a hard decision. The crystal ball has been somewhat murky, but thankfully there are some experts out there with some insights available through our the NSW Local Land Services that can help us hopefully make some better decisions.

The grass is still green on the Rock Farm… for now.

We have signed up to a series of webinars that provide specialist advice to producers. We recently joined 400 other producers in a webinar with Simon Quilty from Global Agritrends, who gave some analysis of the the global beef market, global weather patterns and what this means for producers. Some of his information was reported a couple of months ago at online news site Beef Central here: https://www.beefcentral.com/markets/why-simon-quilty-has-a-bullish-five-year-outlook-for-cattle-prices/

The information provided by Simon in the webinar covered a broad range of global issues, such as the chilled and frozen beef stock held in stock in our primary markets, and climatic factors driving foreign herd numbers. Simon’s analysis has allowed us to focus our strategy for this season. Broadly we focused on a couple of takeaways.

  • The beef market in Australia should bottom out in November, and prices will likely plateau for around 12 months before slowly rising to high levels in 2026/27.
  • There is likely to be greater demand from processors for cows instead of young heifers due to the yield from each animal.
  • Processors are operating at historically low levels due to a range of factors, however additional capacity will be in place around the end of the year.

With pages of notes and a whole heap more information, Jo and I sat down and came up with our plan for this season. With the bull arriving the following afternoon, we had to make our minds up quickly. We decided we would split our herd and join 10 cows and the 2 maiden heifers we held in April this year with the bull. We decided we would hold the rest of the herd (other cows with calves at foot) until weaning in March / April. One of the advantages of small numbers is we soon had a list of names of cows to join and those cows we have decided not to join.

This plan will allow us to turn off 10 unjoined and any dry cows in April along with our 6 steers. We would then also be able to make a decision based on how much rainfall we receive as to how many of our 12 heifers we would keep for joining next September.

The following morning, I mustered the cattle and quickly had the cows sorted into their two groups. The cows were easily separated into their groups with little more than a roll call. However the calves were all jumbled up, and I knew I would have a challenge getting the calves to rejoin their mothers, now in seperate groups. I came up with a different plan to join the calves back to their mothers.

I made a little gate that only the calves could get through. After five minutes of watching them, the first calf made its way through the gate to its mother. Success!!! I left them them at it for a few hours and came back to find they had mostly sorted themselves out. Mostly. It was a far simpler and less stressful way to rejoin the calves to their mothers! Well it sounds easy, but the last couple of calves made Sapphire and I earn our stripes.

It was all sorted in time for our handsome fellow to arrive and join his new lady friends.

A special thank you to the Local Land Services NSW and Simon Quilty for the information in the webinar. We have signed up the to the series and look forward to learning as much as we can to enhance our decision making on the Rock Farm. And also to Sapphire – who was mostly helpful, and worked so hard she fell asleep on the short drive back home!

Fencing, malFunctions, Fires and Family

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Whilst blog posts have been few and far between, there has been steady progress on the Rock Farm. With a new subdivision going in behind our property, council requested our neighbour upgrade part of the driveway. We were asked to cut our adjoining fence to allow the grader to open the drainage from the road – but I figured it was a good opportunity to pull the old tired fence down and replace the whole section completely. With the fence down, I also had an opportunity to clear overhanging branches with no risk to any fences. This gave me a good load of timber for firewood and mulch to spread around the paddock, and a new fence that should keep the cattle off the lane!

Mechanically things haven’t been going so smoothly on the Rock Farm… malFuncations wasn’t the first word beginning with ‘F’ I considered. Our zero turn mower stripped a couple of teeth from a cog in the transmission. And in the process of draining the oil from the other transmission, I dropped it and cracked the housing. This means I need two new transmissions – both now on back order from the US at great expense.

Lucie The Tractor’s clutch has started slipping badly. I usually can give most things a go, but this is one for the experts. Thankfully a nearby local mechanic will have a look at this for me…. in a month or so (good mechanics being in high demand). I hope to get her back in operation before we start feeding hay to the cattle (expected this summer around Christmas time).

The big red truck Myrtle ran out of fuel – and could I hell as get it going again. I bled the fuel lines, flattened, charged and flattened batteries again trying to get it going to no avail. I figured the fuel line was blocked, and loaded the generator and air compressor into the Hilux to blow back in the line. It worked – and the truck was running again and ready for work on the farm.

The older helper then announced that he would love to arrive at his school formal in a slightly different red two door car than his initial plan (a friend’s red two door Mustang). Now a farm truck is a little different to one on the road, so we are working through the truck to get it ready for a permit to travel. Overall it is in pretty good condition – with a couple of bulbs out, a crack in the exhaust we can weld up and it needs a good clean. The biggest problem is the radiator – some years before we bought it it had been holed, and a solid dab of silicon used to block the leak. No real problem around the farm where it rarely gets hot, and if the repair failed, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but heading to the big smoke, on a balmy summer’s day, might be beyond it, so we have pulled the radiator out and are getting it recored – thankfully locally.

And topping it all off, whilst our little old run around Toyota Camry was in getting some extra attention to it’s cooling system, the older helper called me from the top of Macquarie Pass with a very hot and bothered Subaru Forester. He had been mountain biking and come up the pass nice and gently like all teenage boys drive….. (not). Thankfully he noticed the temperature gauge was well in the red and pulled over in Robertson and let the car cool gently. I hired a car trailer and a many hours later dropped the little Forester beside the Camry for some special attention. The good news is that the head gasket hasn’t seem to have blown (yet), and we may have got away with just a new radiator….

The other mechanical issue we faced was that the old horse float the boys had made into a box trailer was having issues with the brakes. Specifically the left front brake would periodically lock on and not release. We decided to let the rego lapse, and turn the now brakeless trailer into our emergency farm fire trailer… Being a tandem axle, it is far better suited to carry the weight of the IBC container than the old box trailer – and we had a lot of fun running the pumps and checking the system is fully ready for the fire season (did someone say ‘waterfight??’).

Speaking of the fire season, this year is looking particularly nasty. Our local brigade have already had our first call out for the season. Some dry phalaris stalks had got away from a local landowner. Yours truly at the wheel figured it was a good opportunity to test our grass firefighting skills with the nozzles on the front of the truck- until we got close to the fire and then sank the truck to the axles… It made it a very long night….

Despite all these distractions, the Rock Farm continues to nurture not just our cattle but also my soul. With my brother and his beautiful family we have marked our calves (12 heifers and 6 steers). The boys had a great time feeding apples and oranges to the cattle, and exploring the farm. One of the highlights was a night walk along the creek spotting possums and wombats doing their thing (quite remarkable considering the noise we were making). And we got to enjoy some slow cooked lamb with very low food miles (perhaps best measured in metres)…

It is wonderful to share the Rock Farm with family. Whilst there is a lot to do, and at times it can feel over-whelming, being able to see the beauty of the landscape through fresh eyes is always a pleasure. We are extremely fortunate to live here surrounded by great family, friends and community.

Calves – beautiful calves – and a lesson

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Over the past four weeks we have been welcoming new calves to the Rock Farm. We have now finished calving and have 18 beautiful little calves on the ground. Sadly one died during calving and one cow wasn’t in calf, bringing our calving percentage to 90% from our 20 head. The calves are simply the most delightful creatures, and one of our favourite pastimes is to just sit quietly in the paddock and let them pluck up the courage to sneak up on us.

This is a great outcome, but it has come at the price of a valuable lesson.

You may recall four years ago, we rescued one calf from almost certain death (see here). Somehow Mum (called Bomb) and the new calf Daisy both survived. Daisy has since gone on to became a favourite part of the Rock Farm. However Daisy also had her own challenges when it came to her first calf, Buttercup (see part 1 and part 2 here).

Buttercup has also become a favourite on the Rock Farm – earning her place with gentle nuzzles looking for apples. She is a lovely quiet cow, but sadly she is the one who lost her first calf this spring.

Buttercup has recovered well and his happily grazing (left) alongside the other dry cow. Both will leave us this season.

All this means that we have learnt a harsh reality of running livestock. Sometimes we have to be ruthless in our decision making, especially when it comes to breeding. So this year the family have agreed that we will cull this line of cattle from our herd – something I should have done right at the start.

The hard part now is working on the logistics and timing when we will sell them. The market is looking grim, with a combination of factors seeing a crash in prices at the sale yards. An oversupply and the forecast dry spring and summer have seen prices plummet to between a quarter and a third of what they were 12 months ago, and sheep prices are even worse. At least our spring started relatively well, and our cattle still have feed ahead of them, but I feel conditions are about to dry out quickly.

At the end of the last drought, we were down to 10 breeding cows, and had weaned our calves early. This year we have 20 cows with two maiden heifers ready to join. With our new calves, we have 40 head in total on the Rock Farm. I haven’t made a final decision yet on our numbers, but we will start to reduce numbers soon.

This white bull calf has been named “Starlight”…. of course his Dam was Daisy!

We have been down this path before – a quick look back at our photos from 2019 reminds me how dry it was at the end of three years of very little rain. As we head into this summer, our cattle are in excellent condition, and our hay shed is well stocked. There is still moisture in the soil, but it is fast disappearing and the grass is starting to shoot to seed. If we are fortunate, with a few summer thunderstorms, we may just have enough feed to get through until autumn. Time will tell.

In the meantime, we are enjoying the warm weather… and our beautiful calves 🙂

Rock Farm – Winter 2023

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Regular readers will know that my lack of recent updates doesn’t equate with lack of action on the Rock Farm. There have been plenty of activities both on and off the farm with different challenges keeping me away from the blog.

First the most exciting news. Precisely 283 days after the bull joined our cows, we welcomed not one but two calves to the Rock Farm. For the next six weeks or so we will be keeping an extra close eye on the girls, especially the two maiden heifers with the herd, in case there are any difficulties. The little calves are so cute, and it feels extra special that their mothers allow me to get so close to them. Two days later we have four on the ground. It is a magical time indeed.

Our lambs enjoyed their time on the Rock Farm, and I enjoyed having sheep back on the place – albeit for a little while. They reminded me that our fences are not set up for sheep after they moved themselves down to our flat, and then through a tree guard fence where they proceeded to nibble the tops of my two year old oak trees.

We processed the lambs in pairs, and they taste delicious. The combination of healthy pasture coupled with no stress on the animals leading up to slaughter meant there was no lactic acid build up in the meat. We chilled them for a week or more before running them through the band saw and freezing the meat. We averaged 24kg dressed from each lamb, which filled the freezer nicely. Whilst slaughtering the lambs is not a pleasant task, I take comfort in the fact these animals had a good life with us on the farm, and were shot dead in the paddock without the usual stress of being sold through sale yards, taken to an abattior and slaughtered some 48hours after leaving the farm.

The paddock rotation has been going well, and I haven’t needed to put out any feed for the cattle this winter. When I go for my regular walks around the farm, I often pause to pull out serrated tussock (Nassella Trichotoma) underneath which I am pleased to frequently find earth worms. It reaffirms my determination to not use chemicals if at all possible.

Our local Regenerative Agriculture group has continued to meet regularly, and I am continually inspired by the wonderful people who seek to restore the health of the soil and biodiversity of their land. We have been able to help in a small way by storing some native Kangaroo Grass (Themeda Triandra) Hay for the group. The hay was cut with the full seed heads still on the plant. Horses don’t like eating it (the seed head is a little spikey), but it makes excellent seed bound mulch for re-vegetation projects. The hay has been exceptionally popular with Landcare and other restoration projects, and I have been happy to support this project in a little way.

It hasn’t all been about the farm this winter. It is also important to spend time doing other activities that are good for the soul. As the kids get older though, it is harder to pin them down for family activities. We took them skiing at Mount Selwyn which was a heap of fun. The older helper has continued pursuing his love of mountain biking, and spends most weekend carving up the tracks. The younger helper has been tinkering with an old Toyota MR2, which needed a new alternator. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the retaining bolt out, so ended up removing the engine. Thank goodness the tractor could lift the car up, so the engine could come out the bottom!

I returned back to sea for an 11 day voyage in northern waters. The voyage was a heap of fun, with some fantastic and inspirational ship-mates. Being at sea reminds you of the power of nature and can remind you how alive you are. On the way, it was great to make a diversion to catch up with my brothers – an all too infrequent occurrence these days.

But that is not all. We have been working steadily on another project for the past three years or so. It is nearing completion and I can’t wait to share it with you soon! In the meantime, as it is too miserable and cold to head outside today, it is time to pour a hot cuppa and stick my feet up… I think Sapphire agrees!

Autumn 2023 on the Rock Farm – with a pleasant visit!

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There is nothing like the joy of listening to the rain gently falling on a tin roof. First and foremost it brings life to the pasture, allowing it to continue to grow. It creates an opportunity to catch up on machinery and equipment maintenance, and even housework. Which is why I am doing none of that. I have boiled the kettle and am sitting down with a steaming cuppa in front of the fire and have decided to provide an Autumn update 🙂 I am taking a leaf from Sam Vincent; “there are jobs that have to be done now, and there are those that don’t”.

Our weaner calves went to the sale yards at a recent special weaner sale. They weighed a healthy 255kg on average. Like all these things, timing is everything. Our price was around two thirds the price per kg we received last year. Friends who sent cattle in a month later were lucky to receive around half the price they received the year before. We were lucky as the further drop in prices would have negated any weight gains the cattle would have made by going in a month later.

Our cattle mentor John, has often equated the price of cattle to how many Sydney Morning Herald Newspapers the sale of an animal would purchase. By his reckoning, things are almost as bad in the cattle industry as they were during the 1974-1978 cattle slump when cattle were cheaper to slaughter on farm than send for processing (https://www.beefcentral.com/weekly-grill/episode-35-remembering-australias-1974-78-beef-cattle-slump/). Again I consider myself fortunate that I am using the cattle to improve the soil on the Rock Farm (whilst bringing me great joy), and I am not trying to support my family on the (meagre) income they provide.

The Rock Farm received some beautiful rain for our ‘autumn break’. This has transformed the pastures with lush green grass growing under the yellow stalks from summer. The cows have put on weight after weaning, which means they are in great shape heading into winter. I am carrying 20 cows with two replacement heifers, bring the number of cattle on the Rock Farm to 22. It is no large herd, but we will be watching them closely over winter and into spring to see if we can sustain those numbers. For now, Farming Forecaster is predicting pasture growth of around 30-40kg dry matter per hectare per day, which is fantastic. If a cow eats around 12kg dry matter per day, I am happy the pasture bank is being replenished faster than they are eating it, which will help us in the future.

Our little lambs are continuing to grow and I have just started handling them. They are quickly learning that a bucket means a nice treat, and I am able to gently push them to the gate where they are rewarded with some sheep nuts. It is important that I am able to move them safely around the farm. The Rock Farm is mostly fenced with plain wire, meaning the sheep will almost have free reign should they get out of their current paddock and I want to be able to move them should the need arise.

Of course there is always something else to do on and off the Rock Farm. I did finally get the opportunity to attend a chainsaw course with the RFS (Clear Felled Timber). I have been trying to get on this course for years, and finally this year the stars and moons all aligned. It was in a word fantastic. The instructors all had a wealth of experience they willingly shared, with an emphasis on professional attitude and safety. It is not often that people fail RFS courses, but we had several students who didn’t make it through. It is also a course that I am sure has potentially saved lives – including mine. Several bad habits were picked up, and now I am much more aware of my use of a chain saw.

Other little jobs have kept me busy such as moving rocks out of the garden (despite many attempts using the lawnmower to grind them to a lower level), and collecting firewood. It has its own beauty working outside in the cool of autumn.

In the middle of it all we had a lovely visit from the two people who inadvertently sowed the seed for my own dream of what became the Rock Farm – my parents. My mum gave me my love of horses, and my dad gave me my love of cattle. We had a wonderful few days catching up with old friends in the district, feeding apples to the cows and sharing cuppas in front of the fire (concession for the North Queenslanders).

As we head into winter, it is a good time to pause and take stock on where we are at on the Rock Farm. I am becoming more attuned to the rhythms of the land and livestock. I am paying more attention to the birds and what they are feeding on. As I write, half a dozen eastern rosellas and a couple of crimson rosellas are picking at our lawn seeking. The burden of looking after the RockFarm is a responsibility that I find rejuvenates my soul. And it is good.

Weaning on the Rock Farm – 2023

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Weaning is a bittersweet time on the Rock Farm. It means winter is coming, and it is time to reduce the number of mouths feeding on our pastures. Without the capacity to keep our young cattle until they are finished for slaughter, it means we are at the mercy of the market when it comes to selling them.

The first stage was to separate the calves from their mothers. This was quickly achieved, and the cows were put in the lane adjoining the yards. This seems to cause the least stress as the cows can go and feed, but come back and check on their calves frequently. We kept one cow in with the young calves to provide some guidance, especially when moving the calves. She had lost her calf to a possible snake bite a couple of months earlier.

The calves quickly settled into their new routine, and the cows also seemed to appreciate a little less demand on their nutrition. After a week or so, I moved the cows to the opposite end of the Rock Farm, and let the calves into a holding paddock behind the yards. To educate the calves, I moved them back into the yards daily with the help of our faithful wanna-be cattle dog Sapphire. It proved to be excellent education for both Sapphire and the calves. After a week or so, the calves would see me arrive with Sapphire and just about trot straight into the yards… although there were exceptions to this rule.

After five weeks, we sent the weaners into the local sale yards where they weighed an average of 255kg. And this is the bit that is hardest. After raising these cattle with care and compassion, we have lost all control of their destiny with the exception of two heifers which returned to our herd. They may return to someone’s paddock for a period of time before being finished in a feedlot, I really don’t know. As a small producer, it is really hard to make a market for small scale, ethically raised grass fed animals. And it is especially difficult when most people are struggling with the cost of living. There are a few options emerging, but in the short term, we rely on the local sale yards. The good news is the cattle sold, and whilst prices were better than the weaner sale the previous month, they were still well down on the prices we received last year.

On the other hand, the cattle continue to help me improve the health of the soil on the Rock Farm. I recently trialled some bale feeding on one of our slopes (read about it here) . After resting the paddock for around a month (and some welcome rain), there is a ring of green grass where the cattle trampled heaviest. I will likely resume feeding the cows sometime in winter and will continue this way of feeding the cows, as it seems to be an effective way of returning nutrient to the soil.

Perhaps the highlight of the whole process however was perhaps my offer to collect a “wheelbarrow” of manure for the vegetable garden. The weaners had left concentrated manure/straw in the yards where they had spent a lot of time over the past month. After 45 minutes or so of concentrated effort, I had filled our black falcon “wheelbarrow”. Another half an hour and the manure mix was spread in the vegetable garden. It should be great for our winter vegetable crop!

One day I will keep a steer for us to finish. I haven’t finished a steer before, but it is something I intend to do. It is one of my goals to provide grassfed beef for our family (it is hard with such a great butcher nearby who delivers top quality meat to our kitchen table). Sheep are another story, and we recently bought four wether lambs from a neighbour. These are currently enjoying roaming in a paddock that is fully fenced for sheep. It has been a long time since we have had sheep on the Rock Farm, and I am enjoying having them back.

Winter 2022 Update

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Recently I have written of some of the support and decision making tools available for small farmers like us. Over the past few years I have been actively seeking knowledge and making the most of opportunities to attend workshops and farm visits. I have found great inspiration in many of the people I have met and stories I have listened to, however there is still plenty to do on the Rock Farm. Pipes keep leaking, cattle need feeding, firewood needs carting – but there is great delight in sunset strolls around the property.

Over the past month or so we have been rotating our cattle every few days to a new paddock. I have been supplementing their feed with the odd bale of hay, just to help extend the rotations, and return some nutrients to the paddocks. The recent school holidays provided an opportunity to refresh the boy’s tractor skills, by getting them to start moving the big round bales safely to feed the cattle. It also means I don’t have to be here to feed the cattle every time.

We also had a bit of school holiday fun on the Rock Farm. After sitting idle for several months with a fuel issue, we got the buggy working again. After a bit of Google and YouTube, the boys gave the carburettor jets a clean, and the buggy roared to life. With two teenage boys (and a slightly older but no less enthusiastic Dad), we decided to test our driving skills with a time trial over a set course. It was great fun – but sadly the buggy wasn’t up to the work and only lasted a couple of circuits for each of us before retiring again to the shed!

It wasn’t all about hanging about on the farm though. The boys and I did escape to Sydney for a night in the big smoke. We had a great time kicking about the city, checking out Paddy’s markets, the food of China Town, the rides of Luna Park, and a Ghost tour of the Rocks.

One other project we worked on was replacing a 200 metre section of fence. We have planted dozens of trees in our ‘back’ paddock and have decided to keep the stock off that paddock for a number of years until the trees get established. This has also meant we haven’t been able to use a smaller paddock on the lower slopes as the original fence was in terrible condition. In order to utilise this ten acre paddock, we decided to replace the fence with a new one. The old timber posts literally fell over when we pulled the wire down. We replaced the fence with a new section of stock mesh. This means that effectively we will have a ‘new’ paddock of around ten acres in our rotation, which is fantastic.

I have a little more work to do before this paddock can be used again, and we will put in a new gate to make moving the cattle through this paddock easier. It will make a significant addition to our rotation, as it has good pasture, good shelter and good water.

But the most exciting news of all came on our evening stroll today. It was a wonderful surprise to find this beautiful healthy calf born bang on time. We hope the remaining 15 cows have healthy calves over the next few weeks. It is a wonderful time on the Rock Farm 🙂

Weaning Cattle – Autumn 2022

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Last year we weaned our calves late, and kept them over winter due to the exceptional season we were having. We made it work, partly because of the abundance of feed, and partly because we were rebuilding our numbers to around 15 breeding cows (https://rockfarming.com/2021/06/06/weaning-on-the-rock-farm/).

This year we have chosen a slightly different tact. We have decided to wean our calves before winter, to reduce the nutrition requirements for the cows, and to reduce the pressure on our pastures. The final stimulus however came when I saw there was a special weaner sale upcoming at our local sale yards – which spurned us to action.

Always eager to continue to improve our weaning system, I consulted a couple of wiser and more experienced heads than mine. John explained that he taught the calves to eat hay, buy first putting them in the yards with their mothers. The cows feed from the hay and teach the calves to eat it too. My other mentor Mac explained that the fences have to keep the calves from getting back to their mothers. They don’t have to stop the cows getting back to their calves!

We brought all the cattle into the yards, and spent a couple of days feeding them. The cows who were with us during the drought remembered the sound of the tractor (Pavlov could just as easily have done his conditioning experiments with hungry cattle!). We gave them access to a small paddock adjoining the yards giving them plenty of space to spread out.

A couple of days later we drafted the cows back to another adjoining paddock / lane where they could feed, but come back and visit the calves when they desired. The weaners all then got the latest fashion accessory (a beautiful white NLIS ear-tag). This RFD chipped tag allows the animals and their meat products to be traced back to the Rock Farm. This helps ensure Australian Beef is internationally recognised as being fully traceable throughout the entire supply chain.

The first few hours of separation saw calves and cows happily feeding, however by evening time, the udders filled. The cows returned to the yards and bellowed at the calves, and the calves bellowed at their mothers. This process repeated morning and night for around a week or so, but the intensity reduced quickly – and I felt it didn’t take long for me to feel that the cows were more interested in the hay I was delivering and not the calves!

The hardest part then came in choosing which weaners get on the truck and go to sale. In the end we sold all seven of the steers, and four of the heifers. The steers averaged 290kg, which was a great result considering they were only 7 months old or so. We kept four heifers, bringing our total head on the Rock Farm to 20. Our present holding comprises of 15 cows, 1 maiden heifer due to calve this spring, and our latest 4 weaner heifers.

We will reassess our stock holdings in Spring, but will be likely to sell some cow and calf units before next Summer. It all depends on rainfall, which is our largest determinant of carrying capacity (despite what the fertiliser company tells me). Whilst I love our cattle, I am also very conscious of being a custodian of the soil, and I need to put the need of the soil first. Healthy soil will lead to healthy cattle.

Special thanks to John and Mac for the advice, and a shout out to Jimmy and Kylie who loaded and trucked our weaners to the sale yards in my absence.

A wet spring – getting some science on

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James Rebanks in English Pastoral described the role of the farmer as one of close observation. Through examination of the interconnectedness of the landscape, Rebanks explains how farmers are able to build an intimate knowledge of every aspect of their farm. It requires farmers to walk their paddocks, getting their hands in the dirt, and examining the second and third order effects from their management decisions. It takes a lifetime to learn.

I don’t have a lifetime of experience behind me, nor do I have the time I would like to devote to unravelling this mystery. So I have to take a slightly different approach, and one method I can use to increase my understanding of my soil health is have soil samples analysed in a scientific laboratory.

I hope the analysis of our soil will answer one of the questions I have from an observation of the cattle’s behaviour. When I move them from a lush grassy paddock to another lush grassy paddock, the cattle seem to have a preference to chew the leaves from young elm suckers if they are present. This could be the cattle seeking roughage, or it could be seeking a mineral that the deep rooted elms have in their leaves that is lacking in the grass. Pat Coleby is a firm believer that the animals know which minerals they need, and their behaviour could be a clue to a mineral deficiency.

We had soil tests conducted not long after we moved to the not-so-rocky Rock Farm (https://rockfarming.com/2018/05/07/soil-analysis-results-are-in/) , so you can imagine when I saw the Local Land Services was offering a soil test program, I leapt at the chance to get onboard. It was three and a half years since our last test was conducted, and I am keen to see if there is a discernible difference in our results since we became custodians of our the 40 hectare Rock Farm.

The soil samples require multiple (around 30) 100mm cores to be taken along a transect. I chose two different areas, the first on our river flats, and the second on our shale slopes. Along the flats, the rod was easy to push in the required 100mm. On the slopes, the soil was barely more than 50mm thick, and I had to try really hard to find enough samples that met the 100mm requirement. After I had filled the buckets, I mixed the soil thoroughly, before bagging around 1.5kg of soil for testing. The colour difference in the soil samples was remarkable, but not unsurprising.

Since we bought this Rock Farm, we have not applied fertiliser to these paddocks. Our first two years experienced very low rain fall, and the last 18 months have seen much higher than average rainfall. We initially grazed sheep on the property, before buying our first cattle in May 2018. We sold our last sheep in January 2020 – just before the drought broke.

Instead of purchasing fertiliser, I have been happy to supplement the stock’s feed as required, bringing in hay and other feed as required, using the philosophy “If you want to run ten cows, feed ten cows until you can run ten cows“.

We have also practiced cell grazing or rotational grazing. This means we graze a paddock heavily for around a week or so, before resting the paddock for as long as I can. I have around 13 rotations that I cycle the cattle through, meaning each area is only visited every three months or so. It doesn’t always work that way – some sections are significantly larger and have better water supplies, keeping the cattle happy for more than a week, and others they chew out after a couple of days. I also want to keep the grass around the house short in preparation for fire season, meaning this area is eaten out more than the others.

One variable I am not sure how will be reflected in the results is soil carbon. We scored between 3 and 3.6% on our last results, and whilst advocates of rotational grazing claim it increases the amount of organic carbon in the soil, field experience is lacking (https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/land/topic/soil-carbon-dynamics). Soil carbon does increase the capacity of the soil to store moisture – but the amount of carbon may also be linked to soil moisture meaning rainfall may be the biggest factor in affecting our soil carbon levels. I will be particularly interested in this element of the analysis.

Either way, I am looking forward to the test results. Of course the ones who gain most benefit from healthy nutritious soils are completely oblivious of the science behind their condition.

The good news is they are fat as fools, healthy and happy. They show passing interest in a mineral lick I have available for them, which I take as a good sign. And it is such a pleasure moving them through the farm, especially when the grass reaches their bellies.