Agronomy

I’ll be running my horses on my property later on in the year so I thought it would be a good idea to know what pasture I’ve got, whether it’s any good and if I can run more than just my two horses as I would like to be able to agist another two.
Having 74 acres I thought that four horses could well be viable but according to Artie, a very well-respected agronomist, that ain’t gonna happen. Well, it can if I am happy to supplement feed them.
“Two is fine, three is pushing it”. Well, time for a Plan B.
We drove around the property while he identified the pastures that I didn’t know and the pastures I did. With that came the learning of new pastures I hadn’t heard of or knew very little about. On a piece of scrap paper I wrote down every pasture and stylo and other fodder of significance identified. Against them all I wrote a number with 1 being good, 1.5 okay, 2 crap and 3 needs-to-go.

Species	Value/ Desirability	Purpose	What Eats It
Annual Sorghum	2	Pasture	Cattle
Perennial Sorghum	1	Pasture	Horses, cattle
Cockatoo Grass	1	Pasture	Horses, cattle
Ribbon Grass	1.5	Pasture	Cattle
Blunt Spear Grass	1.5	Pasture	Cattle
Northern Cane Grass	3	Weed Grass	Nothing
Spiny Mud Grass	1	Pasture	Horses, cattle
Cynodydon racuatus	1.5	Pasture	Horses, cattle
Three Horn Spear Grass	3	Weed Grass	Nothing
Kangaroo Grass	1	Pasture	Cattle
Sedge	3	Weed Grass	Cattle
Buffalo Clover	1.5	Nitrogen Improver	Cattle
Seca	1.5	Feed/Nitrogen Improver	Cattle
Verano	1	Feed/Nitrogen Improver	Horses, cattle
Glen Joint Vetch	1	Feed/Nitrogen Improver	Horses, cattle

 

The overall outcome was that I seriously lacked perennials (seca, verano and perennial sorghum, cockatoo grass, kangaroo grass and spiny mud grass was the best I had). The rest were annuals or unwanted grasses. Artie suggested I fix this with Strickland Grass if I could keep the wallabies off it. I can’t see me being successful at that. I asked about whether I could fertilise my perennials but sadly native pastures don’t respond to fertiliser like introduced pasture species do.
The second dam I have (that being the smaller one) has always looked to me like it was natural. Thankfully, Artie agreed. It doesn’t hold like the other dam does, there’s no mess of earth in terms of walls etc. and the trees are quite close to it. And the spiny mud grass that grows all through it will be a feast for the horses.

If you’re in the Katherine region and would like to know more about  pastures and land conditions then come down to the Farm and Garden Day at Katherine Research Station on Saturday the 16^th of April 2016.
If you live too far from the Katherine region but would like to know more, DPI & F offer Agnotes on pastures and these can be found at this link:
http://www.nt.gov.au/d/publications/index.cfm?fi=Pasture

 

Spiny Mud Grass covers the Little Dam