Our farm’s pastures & grazing

Multi-species perennial grasses, herbs and legumes are being planted on Moffitts Farm to produce year round green, high quality, and persistent pastures.

A late autumn break had implications for pasture growth and subsequently the lamb numbers available for Meat Smith. Despite the late break ewe condition was maintained on pastures through mating and pregnancy without supplementary feeding.

Brassica has been demonstrated as the most cost effective pasture species for finishing heavy trade lambs over summer, autumn and winter on Moffitts Farm. The alternatives such as supplementary feeding lambs with pasture silage, lucerne silage or pellets are in our experience more expensive per kg dry matter fed, more labour time consuming and result in more variable lamb growth rate performance.

The nine months from 1 July 2014 to 1 April 2015 have been unprecedented in terms of low rainfall and frequency of falls since we started our holistic grazing program in 2000.

Moffitts Farm has been used for trialing pasture varieties and grazing methods since 1993. The evolution of management methods developed into the concept we call “Comfortable Farming” – farming that is comfortable for the livestock, comfortable for the biodiversity and comfortable for the family.

Moffitts Farm first thunderstorm rain for the summer happened over 36 hours on 26 to 28 February. A total of 67 mm fell in two torrential downpours. Prior to this fall summer rain totaled 15 mm in December, 2 mm in January and 16 mm in February.

At ‘Moffitts Farm’ soil tests have been undertaken since 1989 and every year since 2002.

The “comfortable farming” program on Moffitts Farm is coping well with the extended dry season and high temperatures through summer 2012/13.