Hunter Local Land Services is offering cattle producers across the region a free video and podcast series designed to help them recover from last year's devastating run of bushfires and drought.
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The multimedia series is the product of four workshops Hunter Local Land Services held across the Manning in early Autumn.
The workshops focussed on pasture management for beef production and improved farm profitability.
Extension and advisory officer in sustainable agriculture, Albert Mullen, said pasture management was critical in the wake of the catastrophic bushfires over summer.
He encouraged producers to take advantage of the recent rainfall and break in the season to get farm businesses back on track.
"Pastures are the lifeblood of any livestock enterprise and how we manage these pastures will dictate cost of production per hectare," Mr Mullen said.
"Some of the key points from the workshops included putting recent replacement female prices into perspective for those understocked and rebuilding using home grown replacements as a 'mix and match' strategy to average out costs and to provide adequate nutrient to achieve the best outcomes.
"The longer term outlooks for pasture growth and to fill winter and dry season gaps in feed availability were discussed through a pasture portfolio system that identified energy needs of stock numbers and available pasture. Concepts from forage, perennial and winter pasture systems were slotted together over a period of 12 months to address individual farm climates, topography and rainfall."
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SciBus representative, Neil Moss, who works extensively with the dairy industry, talked to the workshop attendees about livestock nutrition with energy and protein requirements of different classes of livestock and types of fodder/supplementary sources to meet production requirements.
"Pasture portfolios is a mixture of pastures across your farm to fill the various energy gaps and has been adapted to this system for a beef herd over a typical year," he explained.
"With most beef producers now targeting performance based markets that have key targets for weight and fat, this information will assist you with cost structures and profitability."
Pinnacle Ag beef herd consultant, Nikki Henderson, also presented at the workshops, discussing herd rebuilding and heifer requirements.
The videos from the workshops are available here.
Download the podcasts here.
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