GIVEN a free rein, livestock will pick and choose what and where they eat.

Cattle will opt to eat better-quality grasses first, before moving on to secondary pasture and they will graze flat country before hills.

    AT A GLANCE
  • Who: Ken and Margaret Bridle
  • What: beef cattle
  • Where: Genoa, Victoria
  • Why: pasture planning


It can lead to an inefficient use of pastures and is a dilemma East Gippsland farmers Ken and Margaret Bridle hope to rectify with the help of Evergraze and land classing principles.

The couple run a 130ha beef farm at Genoa in Victoria. The country is evenly split between river flats and hilly terrain.

They run 200 Poll Hereford breeding cows and sell the top calves as forward stores at Bega in NSW.

The remaining calves are kept on a second farm at Wangarabell in Victoria for fattening. However, in the past few years most have been sold as stores because rainfall in the traditionally secure district has struggled to reach its 900mm average.

The Bridles' home farm used to be set stocked with just two paddocks, but through Landcare and Evergraze, they have developed a farm plan with land classes to activate a rotational-grazing system.

Land classing is the base on which farm plans are developed and it is a useful tool to optimise production and ecological efficiency.

Most farms come with a range of land types and land classing is about classifying certain areas with uniform characteristics such as geology, soil type, slope and aspect, which allow it to support a type and intensity of use.

A land class requires specific management to sustain it without damage to the land.

Ken said they had used land classing to separate hill country from river flats.

"There is a perfect example now of its success because one area of the farm is not done and you can see where all the cows are down on the flat," he said.

"They will eat it down until there is nothing left before they move on to the hills."

The Bridles have been careful to strategically place fences to ensure there is no risk to stock if there is an overnight flood.

"We have natural waterways and we want to use those, and subdivide the flat from the hill with an escape route for cattle," Ken said.

The long-term aim is to increase paddock numbers from six to 17 to better utilise pastures.

"We are already running considerably more cattle than when we were set stocked," he said. "But we want to control grazing on the hills and work a rotation through the hills so that in spring we can cut hay from the flats."

Hay production has slowly decreased in the past three years, from 150 bales to 70 last year and with the prospect of none this season.

Ken said being able to produce hay over summer was imperative.

"I want the whole show up to speed so I don't have to buy in fodder," he said.

The Bridles' project is part of an Evergraze trial and the first of its kind in far East Gippsland.

It focuses on producing more beef from native perennial grasses which naturally occur in pastures, and if encouraged and managed correctly, have a long list of benefits.

These include improved ground cover and soil stability, weed competition with high persistence, low-input grazing systems, increased water use to reduce groundwater recharge, improved soil structure and organic matter, reduced soil acidification rates and species diversity.

Native grasses have performed well on most farms due to their persistence in acid and low fertility soils, a greater tolerance to a wide range of soil texture types and drought and frost tolerance.

The Bridles' pastures consist predominantly of ryegrass and clover with kikuyu, ryegrass and clover on the river flats.

Cattle are weighed at weaning and again prior to sale, with weight gain acting as a guide to the success of the rotational-grazing system.

Pastures are monitored on a regular basis and soil tests taken from various points on the farm to gauge the effectiveness of the system.

Margaret said while there was a possibility they could increase cattle numbers further once the system was fine-tuned, they were more interested in being sustainable and self sufficient.

"The idea is to be sustainable in terms of self sufficiency and to make sure we don't have to buy-in fodder," she said.

"If the rotational grazing system works we shouldn't have to supplementary feed and the excess tucker in spring will end up in the hayshed for winter."