The right pasture for your area

Table 1. Pasture options for different environments

KEY POINTS

• The environment and the farming system determine how suited a pasture species is to a particular area.

• Pasture species vary widely in their seasonal pattern of feed production.

Authors: Trevor Lacey, Keith Devenish and Clinton Revell, Department of Agriculture, Northam.

Pastures for different areas and situations

There are environmental and management factors that determine where particular pastures will perform best, including length of growing season, soil pH, cropping intensity and water availability.

Self-regenerating annual pastures like sub-clover, medic and yellow serradella, are best adapted to intensive cropping systems.

Pasture systems are now evolving to include short periods of ‘phase’ pastures in between periods of continuous cropping. Phase pastures may also include self-regenerating annual species but the use of longer periods between crops also allows the use of perennial species such as lucerne. Work through Table 1 to identify the pasture options that are best suited to your specific environment. For detailed variety recommendations see the Farm Budget Guide.

Seasonal feed availability

In working out management strategies for sheep meat production it is important to consider the availability of feed during the year. As is shown in Table 2, there is considerable variation in the availability of feed for optimum production. The suitability of the particular feed will vary with farm location and rainfall. The increased availability of moisture (ie summer rainfall, ground water discharge,) will increase the feed availability from perennials and warm season crops, but will adversely affect the quality of pasture residues.

Further reading

Maximum meat: the complete guide to producing quality sheep meat. Department of Agriculture. 1998.

Pasture legume recommendations.

Farm Budget Guide, Farm Weekly.

Table 2. The seasonality of the availability of pastures as a source of feed for sheep