Five Things to Get Right for Autumn Sowing

It is coming up to a key time of the year for many of our dairy businesses, that being the autumn sowing period. There are many things to consider now to get the best outcome for your pasture production in the winter and spring period ahead. My guest this month is agronomist Josh Hack from Ag Farming Systems. Josh recently spoke at an autumn pasture and seasonal update day held on farm near Taree on the Mid North Coast of NSW which was organised by the Hunter Local Lands Services.

In this session Josh discusses the 5 key things he thinks every farmer needs to get right before sowing is considered and reinforces the need to be prepared and ready to sow when good conditions present themselves. We also touch on some of the challenges that farmers have faced with pastures over an unusually cool summer period for much of NSW. 

Useful resources related to this podcast:

Drought and Supplementary Feed Cost Calculator app

Feed Cost Calculator

Dairy Australia’s Feed Budgeting Tool

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It is brought to you in partnership the Hunter Local Land Services

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NSW DPI Dairy Newsletter

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The information discussed in this podcast are for informative and educational purposes only and do not constitute advice. 

Transcript

The Business of Dairy 

Episode #22 Transcript – “Five Things to Get Right for Autumn Sowing”

Sheena Carter: Welcome to The Business of Dairy podcast, I'm Sheena Carter, development officer with the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Dairy Team. It is coming up to a key time of the year for many of our dairy businesses, that being the autumn sowing period. There are many things to consider now to get the best outcome for your pasture production in the winter and spring period ahead. My guest this month is agronomist Josh Hack from Ag Farming Systems. Josh recently spoke at an autumn pasture and seasonal update day held on a farm near Taree on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, which was organised by the Hunter Local Land Services. 

In this session, Josh discusses the five key things he thinks every farmer needs to get right before sowing is considered and reinforces the need to be prepared and ready to sow when good conditions present themselves. We also touch on some of the challenges that farmers have faced with pastures over an unusually cool beginning to the summer period for much of New South Wales. 

Welcome to The Business of Dairy podcast, Josh, it's good to have you back. It's been about 18 months since you last spoke on our podcast where we were talking about feed costs with good spring pasture management. I guess we’re at the other end of that at the moment, we're now heading into autumn 2023 and we've had some pretty challenging periods in that 18-month period with, obviously devastating floods across, well, the majority of New South Wales and other states as well, down into Victoria and other regions, Queensland as well. So there's been some challenging conditions to manage for farmers, but now we are in that late summer period and I guess it's been an interesting summer coming out of winter. Do you want to tell us about some of the conditions that have been experienced around, well, let's stick with New South Wales, but around the state and what that's meant for pasture production through summer? 

Josh Hack: Thanks, Sheena, yeah great to be back. It has definitely been an interesting 18 months since we had this talk last time. Look last year, 2022, was in our area, especially on the mid-north coast, was obviously extremely wet, but it was actually worse conditions than the big flood the year before, going through the winter, just because it kept on staying so wet. So, whilst the flood was bigger the year before, at least it did dry out and then we could get planting and we got some feed in and then got going. This year was a lot more challenging because it just kept on raining every week, or every couple of weeks, and the opportunities were very, very slim. Lots of paddocks that went under water, lots of paddocks stayed under water, lots paddocks that went out of water and then come back under again. So it was very, very challenging, however, by the time we got to August, late-July August, most people were able to get some pasture in and get it established. And then spring was pretty good, early spring was really good – got up and going, we had some heat, good, stored moisture, obviously, from all those wet conditions. And there was some decent amounts of silage that was being cut through that spring period, which was great to see. 

 We finished that off and we had a bit of a field day up this way only yesterday and I’ve been pulling together some numbers and some experiences that we've had over the last three months, and it was a really interesting period to that late spring and early summer where I was going out on some farms in December, and  we had some decent moisture, like, it wasn't extremely high moisture, but it was good enough moisture there to grow feed. Ryegrass was still hanging on quite well, however, if you’d put early ryegrasses in, they’d finished and our summer pastures, kikuyu, setaria, paspalum, just wasn't responding and it was really interesting trying to work through that and I had some guys that were putting fertiliser on and there was just no response to fertiliser either. So, we, we looked at the temperatures and December was pretty much nearly the lowest on record for minimum temperatures. There was one day there, I think it was about eight or nine degrees of a night, so very, very cold for that time of year and our summer pastures need that heat and humidity to get up and going, so it was very surprising to see. But basically, from that November through to January,  we had temperatures that were really, really low, both of a day and of a night, which kept that soil temperature down, which,  if you had irrigation and long-season ryegrasses, it was actually quite good because we did have some really good growth of ryegrass pushing right up into that early summer period, which is great, but if you had dry land and you had,  annual ryegrasses that were finishing a lot earlier in that November period, our summer pastures weren’t kicking off and taking off, so that was very interesting. So, it was good then to go back to some clients and stuff and have a discussion and say, look let's stop putting the fert on because we're not getting responses. One of Richard Eckard’s things is, if you need feed and you can get a response, and that it's an economic response, you apply it, but we weren’t getting economic responses. It's really only been middle of January onwards that we’ve started to see some of that summer pasture react and get some heat. So that was a really interesting time and something that I haven't seen for quite a few years. 

I can remember about, nearly eight or ten years ago, having this conversation with Peter Beale, the local district agronomist, and saying,  it's 35 degrees outside why aren’t we kikuyu growing, and we had rain, but then you looked at the night temperatures and they were really, really cold and that cold shock really shocks those summer pastures, same as cotton and all those summer pastures, yeah, so really slows them up and I saw that in the corn, we saw it in the sorghum that's up around this area as well, and that was just taking a long time to get up and get going. However, now we’re into a bit of heat and we've had some good heat for the last three weeks – just need the moisture to come with it. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah, it's challenging, isn't it? Because we've had farms that've experienced these weather conditions and what that's doing with pasture growth but a lot of farms, you've already spoken about the flooding, they were behind the eight ball because of the condition of the paddock. So then to not have that growth coming through, I think… I certainly know of a few farmers that were having to buy feed in and feed cows on purchased feed, which is unfortunate normally, at that time, or this time of year, and it's also delaying things or,  you're not able to get on and capture those surplus feed amounts and make silage, which generally you do need coming into periods like now where you're going to have a bit of a feed gap and you don't know what the season ahead is like either, so you want a bit of back up in the sheds or in the pit. So yeah, there's a few things going on. 

Josh Hack: Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head with that. We can get that 100 – 200 millimetres and, look, we haven't had that up along the north coast here, so this is probably the driest part of the state at the moment, but down the south coast, they've had some good rain and especially inland as well, they've had some really good rain for summer crops if they've got them in, etc. But there are some issues around pugging and all that stuff too, so there's definitely a contrast of things going on across the state at the moment, of people have been a bit wet and some, getting some good growth and then some of this northeast country is dried out. And really, this time of year when we do get those 100 or so millimetres, which is, that January, February, we can get quite good rain, we can grow some really high-quality kikuyu feed and summer pasture feed or even summer crops if you got sorghum in, and store some of that feed for when we need it in winter. So look, I don't think the horse has bolted yet, I think,  there's every opportunity in the next month for those conditions to happen and I think that's the key is being prepared and being organised and make sure you get you're grazing rotations right, so if we do get some of those rainfall events and you get some fertiliser on, we can utilise that moisture to try and cut some late summer feed, going into autumn and that really sets you up too for planting if you can get organised to do that. 

Sheena Carter: So, I guess for most of our farmers, now is when we're coming into that autumn period where people do generally start to prepare and to sow, generally ryegrass, but other crops as well, so what are some of the key things that farmers need to be thinking about, you’ve said be prepared, but can you elaborate on that? What are some of the key things that farmers really need to be doing right now to jump when it's good to go? 

Josh Hack: It's different in different regions as to what species or whether you're doing tropicals or whether you're cropping, etc. but look, if you've got that kikuyu type pasture and that summer pasture, right now it can get away with this heat and if you do, jag a few 30, 40-millimetre rainfalls it can get away really quick. So, keeping on top of that thatch level, we don't want to get that thatch level out of control. Now's the time to be really working on it, resetting that residual down, so that when we come to want to plant, that we don't have that issue of too much thatch and issues with trying to get establishment. The other one, too, is if you've got crops in, or if you're out west, is a lot of people will fallow, or if they’re down south they’ll fallow some paddocks, so making sure they’re all nice and clean and ready to go and as soon as… it’s not going to be long before they start planting, and the further south you go, so as long as you’ve got those fallows ready and get excited and try and get them in nice and early so you’ve got early feed. 

There’s five things mainly, Sheena, that I like to try and stick to because sometimes it's very hard to know exactly what's going to go on on every single paddock and every single condition and you might do five different things on one farm just due to the different things through the season. So, if I can just talk about the five things that I would really recommend to focus on, no matter which paddock you're looking to plant or which one that you're going to look at to get ready for planting, there's five things that I really like to work through. The first one is light, the second one is temperature, the third one is moisture, the fourth one is nutrients, and the last one is oxygen. Now, that oxygen one I've never had there up until the last two years, only because it's usually not that big of a problem. But with the flooding conditions, we did see a lot of failures where people were putting… and it's hard because we want to get out there and sow, but sometimes waiting that extra one or two weeks for that water level to go down, whilst you can see summer passes through it, often you can still have six inches of water through the paddocks and putting the helicopter over and spreading a heap of seed, or you don't actually see how wet it is because the helicopter’s just flying around, and we can see a lot of losses with that seed, just not having the oxygen to be able to germinate and get going. So, oxygen is really important. We need to make sure we've got that. 

The light is really important, especially with most of the ryegrass that we sow. When you're putting oats and stuff in, they've got a lot more energy, so the bigger the seed you have, the more energy it has to be able to push up so it can go deep in the soil, it can travel through thatch a lot bigger, but when we got small seeds like clovers, ryegrass, these sorts of things, a centimetre in the soil is enough, but if they've got to come out and then get through six or eight or ten centimetres of thatch, they really struggle because they cannot create their own energy until they can see the sun. So, we need to make sure that, whichever paddock you’re walking into doing, if I put a seed in that paddock, can it germinate and see the sun? If you think about that, that's the key. Tick that one off. 

Second one is temperature, especially when we're early in the season. If we're early in the season and we’ve got soil temps of 25, 26, 27 degrees and there's a heatwave coming, my opinion is put the planter away, if you're looking to put ryegrass and things in. Our cereals can handle a bit higher soil temperatures so they can go in a lot earlier, also they're quite good at putting up a cover crop for your ryegrass, so if you do mix a cereal or brassica in, which can handle that heat, as long as those sowing rates are not too high, they can actually get up and protect that ryegrass a little bit as well. 

With the ryegrass though, to me it's about the 15 days after planting. So, I always say be prepared to make use of an opportunity, especially up here in the north east at the moment, we are very dry, we're 200 millimetres behind the average for the last three months, February, March is when we can get the most of our rain. So, February is not far away from gone. We can get some good conditions in March to plant. And my advice would be, be ready. Make sure your seed is sitting in the shed, it’s accessible, it's ready, so that if we get these conditions where a cold front comes through and,  let's say you're in the middle of March, you've got the ability to act on it and plant and then usually when there's those cold fronts you have a good 10 or 15 days of cooler weather, and then you’ll return back to a heatwave or hot period. 

What often happens, and I see it all the time, is one farmer will do that and gets success, the next farmer seeing that cool conditions and having that rain, he goes and orders his seed, two weeks later it turns up, starts planting, and then the heat waves return. So being organised, being able to use those conditions is really important. Peter Beale has done a lot of work up in this north region, looking at some of that heat stuff and opportunities for rain, and he's shown there’s some years where we can have quite a dry April May and you can miss those sowing windows.

I can’t remember the year, but it was about 2015 or 2016, I remember we had some good rain in March and then it was really dry in winter and people that had sowed in April, May, their seed didn't germinate until they got to August when we got some rainfall, so it sat all winter there sitting as seed. So sometimes that happens, I’m not going to say it’ll happen this year, but it's really important to make sure you’re organised. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah, it's a massive feed gap, isn't it, that period, and if you're in that situation you've got to be getting some alternative? 

Josh Hack: Yeah. So, moisture is really, really important. Obviously, we need moisture for imbibition, which is the take up of moisture to get that seed to grow. Obviously, that's a given, we need to have moisture to plant into or a good rain event coming if we're going to dry sow. Nutrients is really important. We need that nitrogen and phosphorus there, that good phosphorus background. So, if you have soil tests, do some soil tests, have a look at your phosphorus levels, see what they're like. We've shown as well, Peter Beale’s done some good work here on kikuyu, we were really worried about putting nitrogen with ryegrass seed because the kikuyu might take over, etc. What was shown is that the nitrogen that you do put down, yes, the kikuyu might take some of it and it may add to that yield in the first cut, but it definitely makes the ryegrasses stronger and better for that first cut as well. So, if you're putting some 30 to 50 kilos of units of nitrogen, at least near sowing or the week after or 15 days after sowing, anywhere in that period, you can get up to double the yield in that first grazing. So really important, especially after the wet conditions, that nitrogen levels have been leached and may not be there for you. So making sure you’ve got that nitrogen available for that ryegrass plant, so it can get up and established nice and early and give you that bulk. 

What we do know, and we see, if we get a really good first harvest of grazing off it before winter, those roots are very well established. They get through winter a lot better, then typically we can have dry springs, so what happens if we have dry springs and you haven't had good root growth the cows pull the plants out really early in spring because they can't chase that moisture down, where if you get those plants established nice and early, big root zone, they’ll push further into spring with you, giving you quality feed. 

Sheena Carter: Preparation pays off. Not only just for the immediate results that you're looking for, but it's that longer term payoff as well throughout the season. 

Josh Hack: Yeah, 100% Sheena. The last one I said is oxygen, and that's just really important because if you do have waterlogged soils and water above the ground for multiple days at a time, or weeks, that seed cannot germinate and then establish to get through the water. I have seen ryegrass and stuff establish in puddles of water, and if it's a few days here and there, or even maybe a week max, but when it's under for a period of time and you have hot conditions and the temperature of that water changes that really makes for a hostile environment to get that ryegrass up and established. So, if you can really think about those five things and tick them off, and that is light, temperature, moisture, nutrients and oxygen, whichever paddock you’re walking into to plant, you'll get a better chance of getting a good establishment. 

Sheena Carter: So, if I'm a farmer and I've ticked all those off my list, what if I'm sowing my seed using a spreader? You've mentioned thatch already and the importance of that, and I guess that's kind of applicable in those drought situations… sorry, flood situations you were mentioning earlier where we've had helicopters sowing seed out and it seemed like a good idea at the time but there was a lot of thatch about and it didn't have the desired outcome, any other points on spreading? 

Josh Hack: There was some really good results too, with the helicopters and spreading as well, so it wasn't all a failure at all, there were some really good results. I guess my point is, if you can strategically choose paddocks that you can do, think of those five things and you'll get a better outcome. For example, there was 300 hectares that was done with quad bike and a spreader last year, that all came up fine. We had James Lyon doing a lot of helicopter… sorry, a lot of drone work up and down the coast here in the floods and most of that that I saw was all success and really, really well done. But again, it was really trying to tick off those five things. 

So, if you are looking to spread, the biggest thing is if you're spreading seed on top of the ground and you have a high thatch level, just understand that that seed is going to sit in the thatch. What typically happens then is we go along and mulch that to try and shake the seed down into the soil, and the further we get into winter that works better because you’ve got to think of air as being your enemy. So, if you have a seed sitting in the thatch or even on top of the ground and it has air around it, it has the ability to dry out and it has the ability to get hot because air conducts heat. Where if it's in the soil with a direct drill, you've got a lot better chance of getting establishment because there’s soil around it, it has moisture, it won’t dry out, it doesn't get the temperature variance. If you have a 30-degree day, which is the air temperature, in the soil it still might be 20 degrees, so it will buffer that change in temperature. So, spreading and mulching definitely works, especially once we start getting into that cooler period in that late April, May periods, you get a lot better job. But if you're going really early with heat, I always recommend using a direct drill. 

Sheena Carter: Any thoughts on direct drills? Any tips, recommendations for farmers using direct drill? 

Josh Hack: There's plenty of good ones out there. Ideally, depending on conditions as well, so direct drills can be a problem in wet conditions, so if you have really, really wet conditions, it's hard to get a direct drill through, especially with double discs and things like that, because they smear, and they'll actually smear the dirt and create a hard pan and can cause issues with germination as well. So again, I always come back to those five things to try and get the establishment right, whether you're using the drill, but there’s single disc Connor Shea drills, they still do a really good job because they're parting that that kikuyu thatch, dropping the seed down onto the soil, and that's what we're trying to do – if we can get seed to soil contact, not have too much thatch or challenges, so that plant can see the light as quickly as possible, you have a better chance of getting establishment. 

Press wheels and rollers are probably the only other thing that I'd suggest if you've got a direct drill. Press wheels make a difference because they just push that seed and give that seed the soil contact and you’ll get a lot more even germination. The same if you're spreading, then mulching. If your mulcher has a roller, that actually helps too because the seed that gets shaken down onto the soil, the roller helps push that seed into the soil and it will help with that germination coming up nice and even. 

One of the biggest issues we have, if we don't try and do some of those things, is we can end up with three or four different germinations over different rain events. So different seeds have different moisture availability – being on top of soil, pushed in the soil, sitting in the thatch, etc. Then when we come to do our first grazing and we do the pull test, we've got a percentage of it that might be ready, 30%, and we have another 70% that's not ready. So, you've always got this challenging thing around, can I graze, or I can’t graze, or how much damage, how much roots will pull out? So again, that's why you're trying to get the best establishment as you can early and consistent, and it’ll give you a better outcome for your grazing as well. 

Sheena Carter: Just on that, we'll just go back one step. You mentioned the pull test. To those who aren't familiar with the pull test, what is the pull test? 

Josh Hack: Yeah, so with the planting of our ryegrasses, our first grazing is determined by the pull test. So, the pull test is, pretty much, go out into the paddock, act like a cow, don’t be gentle, get down to about six centimetres off the ground with your thumb and your finger and twist and pull at the same time. Be a bit rough with it – don't try to take scissors out and cut it off. Make sure you've being rough with your fingers because the cows are going to be rough, and you should be breaking that stem off. So that stem should break off and you should get the quality feed in your hand and the stem and the roots and all that stay in the ground. 

You walk through doing that in different parts of the paddock. If there's roots coming out, if you get the odd root here and there it’s not too bad, but if a lot of roots are getting pulled out, you've just spent 200 plus dollars a hectare putting that in – we don't want to be losing it. So, waiting that extra 1 to 2 weeks, or whatever it's going to take, before that pull, is ideal. What we don't go past is canopy closure. So, at the other end, if we leave it too long, you start to go past canopy closure, then we're going to start to shade all our new tillers that we want to get us into winter and get all that growth going – some may abort, okay. And also, the quality of the feed will drop quite significantly too. So, pull test is the earliest we can go, we don't want to go past that canopy closure for the first grazing.

Sheena Carter: Excellent, all fantastic tips, Josh. So, we're going to assume this is the ideal situation, we are in a position to sow, we've got weather playing in our favour and we can see some opportunities coming ahead to sow and match our timing to the conditions, like you've explained. So we've got that, better conditions once the seed has been sown. However, that may not play out. I don't want to be a pessimist, but the reality is, particularly for dryland farms, you haven't got control over all events. So, there may be the situation where people are having to buy feed in to get them through that period. Any thoughts on buying feed in in the current market? 

Josh Hack: So yeah, Sheena, I'd be advising for people to plan early. What we do know is hay supplies are quite low and the quality of that hay isn’t what it has been in past years. So, it's very hard to plan too early, but I think you need to be doing a feed budget on some different scenarios and then doing feed tests. Like, don't buy anything that you're not going to get a feed test on because the quality of the feed that's out there, some of it's quite poor, so making sure you get some value for money is really important. 

And the other one too, is if you're not real good at doing all those calculations and working out how much a kilogram is for protein and how much cost for mega joules and all sort of stuff, there's some really good apps and programs out there. I actually use the Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator. It's really, really good. You can punch in the feed that you've got available to buy or some that you may have, it even has some values in there already, so you can put your own values for megajoules and protein, but if you have some you can pop them in there and you can compare different feeds. So, if you've got the ability to source some lucerne or some wheaten hay or oaten hay, or whatever it is, you can pump it in there and then compare it based on the value that comes out per dollar value for the for the quality of it, not just dollars per tonne or whatever it comes as, and not knowing the quality. So, I'd recommend people to get on there and that's called the Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator. 

Also, if you're not into apps and stuff, you can actually go to the DPI and use the Feed Cost Calculator, which is very similar, but it's just basically a spreadsheet and you can punch your feeds into there as well and have a look at what can you get per value. I would be trying to do it as early as possible and trying to secure some because I think, look, let's say… we all want it to rain and whatever, but if we look at the forecast for the next three months, it is average to below average or somewhere around there. So, it's not looking favourable for a lot of rain but an average year would probably be pretty nice as well, rather than the well above average we’ve had for the last two years. Look, it's one of those things, everyone sees risk differently, all I'd say do it on a feed test, don't buy anything without a feed test. 

Sheena Carter: Yeah, that's great and I'll put a link in the show notes to those resources. So, the Feed Cost Calculator, the Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator app as well, and also there's some very good resources from Dairy Australia around feed budgeting that I’ll put in there as well. Whether it’s back of an envelope feed budgeting or using the spreadsheet, there's some great stuff there so we can put that in too for the listeners to be prepared. Just a quick one, seed availability and fertiliser availability is good at the moment? 

Josh Hack: Yeah, good one, Sheena. There has been some issues with carryover stocks, so a lot of the companies don't have a lot of carryover stock. So, if you are going early, like in the next month or so, make sure you’ve got seed secured because it is short, especially if you're looking for treated seed and things like that to deal with insect pressure. From what I'm hearing, as we go through the season stocks should come through. But if you are looking to go early and you're not organised, I'd be definitely getting on there and trying to get organised, especially for that early stuff that's going to be from now through to that middle of April. 

I'd make sure that I've got my seed secured because there is some issues and on rye grasses and things like that, but also clovers this year, clovers seem to be very hard to find and get a hold of so legumes, I believe, are really important in most systems and if you can get some legumes and Persian clover and things established it really helps with that fixing nitrogen but also the diet as well. If you're looking to do that make sure you’ve got your seed secured. 

Sheena Carter: Fantastic. All right, that's been a really good chat, Josh, thank you very much for that. You're always full of great suggestions and tips and you're out there walking through the paddocks and seeing what's happening in the region, so that's great to get your perspective on all that. Greatly appreciated, thank you. 

Josh Hack: Thanks, Sheena, and I hope the weather goes all well for all you listeners. 

Sheena Carter: Yes, well and truly. Not 40 degrees that we're going to get this weekend. Anyway, thanks, Josh. 

Josh Hack: Thanks very much. 

Sheena Carter: Thank you for listening to this month's The Business of Dairy podcast produced by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Dairy Business Advisory Unit. This series is brought to you with funding and support from the Hunter Local Land Services. The show notes to this episode include links to the resources mentioned, including New South Wales DPI's Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator app and Feed Cost Calculator and Dairy Australia's Feed Budgeting Tool. We'd love you to share this podcast with your networks and feel free to send any feedback or suggestions for future episodes to thebusinessofdairy@gmail.com. You can also subscribe to our Facebook and Twitter feed and view or subscribe to our DPI Dairy Newsletter using the links provided.