Brandon

I am spending the weekend with Ryan Boyd. Ryan and his dad grow crops and breed and trade cattle. When you are driving around the area it is easy to know which paddocks are theirs because they are the only one with fences around them. Ryan felt that they were pouring money into their cropping land and not getting the returns, especially with all the capital tied up in machinery. So they now background around 400 calves a year on lucerne based pastures. As the pastures are rotated back to crops, they are growing much healthy crops that require fewer inputs. The cattle also have access to the stubbles post harvest, this allows more pasture cover going into the winter and then quicker access back to the pastures in the spring. The system was a win-win for both enterprises. I was amazed firstly at the amount and maturity of the pastures the cattle were going into and secondly at the residuals he was leaving post grazing. You could be excused for thinking he was under stocked but it is all part of the holistic management approach and building soil fertility.

Once again a lot of weather damage here. This canola was falling over and will be windrowed, or swathed as they call it here in a week or so.