Stephen Warth, with son Freddie, 15 weeks, is seeing the animal health benefits that flow from a diverse multi-species feed offering.
A south-west Victorian farmer is getting help to deal withhotter, drier conditions.
As a part-time vet and part-time beef farmer, Panmure’s Stephen Warth is seeing the animal health benefits that flow from a diverse multi-species feed offering.
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This year, the farm’s multi-species pastures have been a “blessing in disguise” as the traditional ryegrass paddocks have failed to take hold.
Stephen has benefited from grants to fence off and revegetate 1.5km of his farm to create a wildlife corridor along the Mt Emu Creek and to direct seed the eastern and western boundaries of the family farm as part of a carbon offset project. He has planted trees through other parts of the property over the past four years to encourage diversity.
LandLife Southwest, a revegetation and regenerative agriculture program developed by Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Network (WCLN) designed to create a climate and drought-resilient agricultural industry, offers funding to increase vegetation cover and adopt regenerative agricultural practices to help repair the local environment.
Stephen and his wife Kate purchased the farm off her parents four years ago.
Originally from Zimbabwe, Stephen has come to the area with no pre-conceived ideas of what can or can’t be done. He has found from experience over the past four years that revegetation and the shift to multi-species have been beneficial.
“I can’t say to clients that I think this is what you should do for animal health reasons if I haven’t done it myself,” he said.
“I want to know that it is beneficial and now I know that it is and the cows love it.
“This year the multi-species has been a blessing in disguise. We have predominantly ryegrass paddocks and just nothing came up.”
Stephen Warth, pictured with Hughie, 3, and Freddie, 15 weeks, is seeing the animal health benefits that flow from a diverse multispecies feed offering.
While he can’t tie up every paddock with freshly-sown plants, this year the percentage of multi-species has skyrocketed to 30 per cent of the farm, with Stephen wanting to spread the system across every paddock.
“The benefit to me is a healthier animal,” he said.
“We direct market our beef so we want it to be as good as we can make it.
“A healthier animal is our primary goal but this last year has shown the vulnerability of ryegrass on its own.
“It would be nice not to have to spend so much money to establish it, but diversity is always going to be the winner in the long run.”
Other than boxthorn and hawthorn, the farm has little shelter and is benefiting from the riverbank and other revegetation works.
“There are benefits other than shelter from having that structure as it also attracts birdlife and insects and means carbon is getting injected deeper into the soil,” Stephen said.
Warrnambool Coastcare Landcare Network Senior Landcare Facilitator Geoff Rollinson said LandLife would help landholders to cope with the hotter and drier conditions that were now severely impacting south-west Victoria.
“We need to help landholders to build resilience on the farm and ideally head towards drought-proofing their enterprise,” he said.
“Revegetation will provide shelter and shade for stock, multi-species pastures with deeper roots will help soil moisture retention at greater depth.
“Multi-species will also reduce the need for feed by doubling, if not tripling, pasture yields and volumes. Ryegrass is yielding at most 1.5 tonnes per hectare whereas multi-species is somewhere between four and 10 tonnes per hectare.”
