Wiltipoll ewes excel through dry conditions -seasonal update September 2025
With 176% lambs born, Moffitts Farm Wiltipoll ewes have demonstrated their exceptional resilience through one of the driest summer, autumn and winter on record. That lambing percentage is even better than the previous two years which achieved 174% lambs born. What stands out is how the ewes maintained their body condition (score 3 or higher) from mating through to lambing in mid-August. And all lambs were born in 25 days despite a five week ram joining.
Given the negative BOM rainfall outlooks from the beginning of 2025 we introduced a revised grazing rotation with each mating flock.
Note we have developed two different types of pastures with different multi-species composition to serve two livestock nutrition purposes using different grazing management to suit the species present:
* Maintenance pastures: These are grass dominant comprising perennial grasses such as cocksfoots, tall fescue, phalaris, and ryegrass with 10 – 20% perennial and sub clovers content. These are the post weaning, mating and pregnant ewe and replacement ewe paddocks. Objective of these pastures is to provide sufficient nutrition for body weight replacement for ewes to ensure they maintain body condition score 3 or better from late November through to late July. These paddocks tend to produce large quantities of dry matter, more than their carrying capacity and may need topping in summer. They are stocking rate resilient within our carrying capacity objective and never fall below 1000kg dry matter per ha.
* Grower pastures: These are being managed to try and maintain around 50% clover and chicory and 30% perennial ryegrass and 20% cocksfoot or tall fescue or phalaris. These are the lambing paddocks and weaner finishing paddocks. Their objective is to provide optimum metabolisable energy, digestible protein for lactation, sucker lamb growth, weaner lamb growth from August through to May and reduced methane emissions per kg of liveweight gain while supplying their own plant available nitrogen from legume nitrogen fixation. These paddocks need careful stocking rate management particularly to optimise chicory and perennial clover utilisation and content persistence. It was interesting to read in the September 2025 Beef and Sheep Networks e-news that our grower pastures concept is the subject of new Agriculture Victoria Hamilton Smart Farm research project called ‘MultMix’. The reference to this project states “We are aiming to improve productivity and persistence while reducing methane emissions and input costs from sheep grazing systems by using perennial multispecies pastures.” The photo supplied with the article is virtually a replica of our grower pasture.
Figure 1A: Grower pastures start with a high chicory component which provides high quality, high digestibility feed from mid-September to May. Even over dry summers chicory will continue to grow slowly due to its tap root accessing moisture deeper down the soil profile. This pasture photographed on 3 January 2025 was sown on 3 December 2024 based on BOM outlook of high probability of summer rain. That rain did not eventuate but the chicory provided sufficient quality feed through the dry first six months of 2025 to finish some lambs. Photo: Patrick Francis.
Figure 1B: The same pasture on 30 September 2025. Over June, July and August wood ducks and kangaroos targeted this pasture while being rested from sheep grazing but it recovered from 1200kg DM/ha on 1 September to 3000kg DM/ha. Note how the perennial clovers have become an important component of the pasture mix given time to express their growth potential and the MLA ruler is a double one showing pasture height approximately 24cm. Photo: Patrick Francis
Post weaning we usually return all ewes to one flock on the Maintenance Pastures and rotationally graze them on a 7 to 10 day basis. This year we kept the ewes in their mating groups to reduce the stocking rate in each paddock post mating. And we rotated the three flocks on a four to six week rotation supplying silage rolls as required to maintain body conditions scores.
The objective was to retain 1200kg pasture dry matter per hectare in each paddock. The four to six week rotation with two paddocks allocated to each flock enabled the perennial grasses some chance to recover after each grazing taking advantage of occasional rain such as a 17mm fall in March, 14mm fall in April and a 10mm fall in May.
Pastures on Moffitts Farm include summer active varieties of tall fescue and cocksfoot and these are the ones that respond to the small rainfall amounts above.
In contrast to the ewes pastures, the weaned lambs are being finished on the Grower Pastures. As the dry continued into autumn the perennial clover did not recover post grazing while the chicory with its tap root did to some extent. To ensure adequate finishing pasture was available lambs were sold at 20 – 22kg carcase weight rather than our preferred 24 to 26kg carcase weight. This strategy enabled us to quit 75% of lambs by the end of March. The lightest lambs while still gaining weight were sold off chicory at 18 to 21kg carcase weight in early June.
With no lambs left the chicory clover pastures were then set aside for lambing, giving them 8 – 10 weeks to recover and reach our target lambing paddock 2000 – 3000kg green dry matter per hectare.
This lambing paddock target was assisted with a rare intervention for us, spreading urea at 125kg/ha plus spraying the plant growth hormone gibberellic acid. These products have a synergistic effect on perennial grass growth so combining them gives the optimum winter pasture growth response. As a combination they can boost winter growth rate per day by 50% but need a minimum of six weeks to have greatest impact so both were applied across all lambing paddocks in mid-June.
A MLA Producer Demonstration Site 2024 trial on pastures similar to those on Moffitts Farm found “A 75kg/ha urea application (in mid-June) lifted growth rates to 17 kg DM/ha/day and the 100 kg application lifted growth rates to 23 kg DM/ha/day (compared to 5kg DM/ha/day without urea). This showed a three- and fourfold increase in pasture growth rates, respectively. The increase in pasture accumulation due to a single urea application made a huge difference to available feed. For context, 6 weeks after the initial observation, pasture that received no urea measured around 3 cm in height, while areas treated with 100 kg of urea/ha were approximately 10 cm.”
We would agree with this level of pasture growth increase with a June application. Without the urea and gibberellic acid applied in June we would have struggled to meet the nutrient requirement of lambs carrying twin ewes in the last three weeks of gestation and into lactation in mid- August. We don’t think nitrogen is worth applying in August as soil temperature rising and day length increasing is stimulating soil biology induced mineralisation to begin providing nitrogen to plants and stimulating their growth. Most years we would not need this urea induced pasture growth in winter, but this year because of the failed autumn rain pasture growth was behind where we like it to be by 1 June when lambing paddocks are locked away to produce a feed bank for lambing ewes.
Figure 2: In mid-June it was clear pasture growth in lambing paddocks would not meet late pregnancy and lambing ewes nutritional requirements without feeding energy supplements like pellets or grain. We opted to spread urea (48% nitrogen) at 120kg/ha and spray gibberellic acid (a natural plant hormone) at 10gram/ha in June to give pastures the growth rate boost needed to reach our lambing paddock green dry matter target by early August. Photo: Patrick Francis.
While we have usually purchased chicken manure as fertiliser in recent years, it has become more difficult to source due to quarantine around avian influenza. Even if it is available it would not have achieved the outcome we needed for pasture growth in June and July. Manure needs soil biology to mineralise the nutrients and when soil temperature is low mineralisation does not happen. In cold soil plants will utilise available nitrogen the available nitrogen in urea. The other consideration with urea is timely application. We can purchase a bulk bag locally and apply it ourselves without having to negotiate the delivery of manure and finding a spreading contractor and possible delays associated with heavy trucks accessing paddocks. Contractors are not interested in spreading small amounts such as a 1 tonne bag. Timing of urea application is critical – needs to be done when soil moisture conditions are right and just before rain. Spreading it your self allows this to happen.
Ewes were transferred to their high green dry matter lambing paddocks on 1 August, a week earlier than usual but important to do to ensure their condition score did not drop below 3. Ewes carrying twins have two and a half to three times the energy requirement of a non-pregnant ewe. If this nutrient requirement is not met ewes are susceptible to pregnancy toxaemia or twin lamb disease. No ewes were affected.
Figure 3: Pregnant ewe on high quality perennial grass and clover pasture which had urea applied on 20 June. Twin bearing ewes grazing such a high energy, high digestibility pasture meant twin lamb disease was avoided. Photo: Patrick Francis 1 August 2025
Lambing over in 25 days
Another strategy we find helpful for successful lambing results especially given the high proportion of twins is spreading ewes from each mating group into small flocks across multiple paddocks. This way we know exactly what is happening in each flock, with at least four inspections to record lambing results each day.
We record:
* Lamb birth weight and sex
* Ewe lambing ease score
* Ewe maternal behaviour score (how close the ewe stands to the handler when weighing and checking the lambs).
Our lambing result was a record, 176% live lambs and all born within 25 days.
Fox attacks significant
The most unfortunate part of lambing this year was fox attacks, our greatest number of losses ever. This was despite a FoxOff baiting program which started in July and continued throughout lambing. 20 baits were taken. Night patrols help to scare foxes and shooting is rarely an opportunity given the number of small paddocks used and all are surrounded by conservation biolinks. Lambs taken were 0 to 2 days of age, nothing older.
Fox predation is a community biodiversity protection responsibility few land owners recognise. Its impact on wildlife must be enormous given lambs are a target for just a few weeks each year and sheep flocks are rare in the district. Neglected farms with out of control patches of noxious weeds such as gorse and blackberry providing cover and breeding sites for foxes and rabbits are a feature of peri-urban farming zone land which local governments refer to in policy documents but fail to take any action on.
Biodiversity report
Early September we started preparing two biolinks as part of the second generation of Moffitts Farm planting this time favouring flowering shrubs instead of trees. The only tree species included was E. viminalis – Manna gums which are an important koala food source. Each biolink comprised four rows 3.5m apart so slashing could be undertaken to keep grass growth in check between rows for the first three to four years. Two rows were devoted to tube stock and two rows to direct seeding. John Robinson from the Upper Maribyrnong Catchment Group and his brother Jim helped with the planting on 6 October as the planting day was to be a demonstration for local landcare group members of planting methods applied on Moffitts Farm since the mid 1990s. As it turned out there was insufficient member interest in the idea and the landcare network cancelled the event. But the shrub tube stock planting sourced from treeproject.org.au and ecodynamics.com.au and manna gums from Western Plains Flora along with direct seeding shrubs was still undertaken as per our farm plan. Direct seeding is a low cost, ‘mystery’ outcome method of seeding. We have been using it since the mid 1990’s with reasonable success. It can take up to three years before the plants become obvious.
Figure: Two rows of tubestock comprising a combination of shrubs and small number of Manna gums and two rows of direct seeded shrubs were planted into two new biolinks. Photo Patrick Francis 6 October 2025.
Figure: Direct seeding can be a highly successful and low-cost method for planting biolinks. Photo Patrick Francis.
In autumn we designed a wombat gate to put in the boundary fence to encourage wombats to use one under fence opening rather than having multiple tunnels. It is also designed to deter foxes using wombat tunnels as it has a two way swinging gate which wombats have no trouble pushing open. There is evidence from scats wombats were using the gate but they also persisted using their own under fence tunnels. These have been closed but it’s too early to tell if our wombat gate is the only access point into the eastern side of Moffitts Farm.
Figure: Our boundary fence wombat gate is showing promise. The swinging mesh is held open to encourage wombats through the gate, it can be lowered once they become familiar, the idea being foxes won’t push the mesh open but wombats will. Photo: Patrick
Francis.
One of the most exciting bird experiences over summer was the attention a sparrow hawk paid us to ‘protect’ its nestlings. Their nest was in a riparian zone Manna gum and whenever we walked through the adjacent paddock one of the pair would swoop us flying at immense and quiet speed.
Figure: Sparrow hawk (we think that’s right) swooping. Photo: Patrick Francis.
Good to find we still have whip snakes in one of the early direct seeded biolinks. They seem to like habitat with rocks so the pioneers stone fence we direct seeded either side of in 2006 has become their home.
