Hay Feeding Helps Improve Animal Health at Dunkeld

Improving the quality of homegrown hay has helped one Western Victoria sheep and cattle operation decrease its reliance on the grain market.

Making hay with higher energy and lower neutral detergent fibre (NDF) has also contributed to management changes which have improved animal liveweights, wool cuts and reduced health issues. Underpinning this new approach to fodder conservation has been a preservative called Hay Guard®, and Charles Blackwell said there’s no chance his family farm at Dunkeld would ever return to the “old-fashioned” way of making hay. 

“Using Hay Guard® in conjunction with a tedder has meant we can make good quality hay within a week,” he said.

“It also takes our reliance off the grain market, and there’s good animal performance with having an element of a grass-based diet, rather than that reliance on grain. It is worth feeding out hay now, rather than just rolling out 1000 bales of ordinary hay, now we can actually get performance out of it.”

Charles farms in partnership with his partner Bec, brother Edward and his wife Rachel and parents Bill and Cee at “Corea”, a 35,000 DSE wool, prime lamb and cattle breeding operation at Dunkeld. Feed tests have proven the value of the investment in a hay preservative, but out in the paddock, it’s also getting the tick of approval.

“I remember the first time we started feeding out the Hay Guard® hay,” Charles said. “The sheep weren’t leaving it; they were licking it off the ground.”

The 2020 spring fodder harvest was plagued by cold, wet and overcast days, but the hay feed test showed the conserved pasture had a metabolizable energy of 8.3mg/kg of dry matter, 10.6 per cent crude protein and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) of 65 per cent DM. The previous year, 2019-2020, was one out of the box. ME was 9.1mj/kg DM, crude protein was 10.3 per cent DM and NDF was 55 per cent DM. The Blackwells maintain a two-year fodder inventory and cut about 1000 rolls of silage and 2000 rolls of hay annually.

“A lot of our hay system is based around annual grasses which are dry-sown early in March and they fill a mid-winter feed gap which is our big pinch,” Charles said.  “Generally, this feed’s growing stock, and we graze these pastures heavily over winter, at high stocking rates, and then lock the paddocks up in late September and cut them for silage and hay.”

During summer and autumn, animals continue to graze pasture and supplemented with silage and grain until digestibility falls to less than 40 per cent dry matter and then they are moved into containment and fed a full supplementary ration.

Before introducing Hay Guard® into their fodder production system, this containment ration was dominated by grain- the hard feed accounted for up to three-quarters of the daily intake.

“That’s when we were finding some acidosis issues, subclinical losses and getting hot feet,” Charles said. “Just because we didn’t think we could get sheep to eat hay.”

Now diets are 50:50 grain and hay with ad-lib straw. Maintaining the “element of grass” in their feed has helped improve animal health, according to Charles. The move hasn’t just stacked up on paper, wastage has also reduced as feed utilisation increased. Animal performance underpins the “measure to manage” farming style at Corea, and investments are considered based on efficiency gains.

Hay production isn’t an exception.

The Blackwells have all their own hay equipment and recently upgraded their baler and Hay Guard® applicator. They now have a 100 litre Goldacres application tank with a pressure switch and Hay Guard® is applied to the pasture via a single orange nozzle mounted into the throat of the baler. The preservative’s applied after the pickup, spraying directly into the rotor feed. Charles said this application system eliminated drift and having the one nozzle, with higher pressure, stopped the nozzle blocking.

Hay Guard® is applied at 800ml/tonne for pasture hay. This preservative enables hay baling at a higher moisture content. Carrying out this practice involved a change of “mindset”, according to Charles.

“We baled at 18 and 20 per cent (moisture) and up to 25 per cent which was right on the knocker, but there was rain coming,” he said.

“But we were able to get it baled before the rain.”

Initially, the Blackwells were concerned that baling with higher moisture could have negative quality consequences, despite reassurances about the product.

“Once we started rolling out this hay, we saw it was as fresh as the day it went in there,” Charles said. “There was no mould and no heat, so we got confident after a couple of years of using the product that we wouldn’t have had any heat.”

Future hay production at Corea will no longer be the time-consuming and low-value job it once was.

“We wouldn’t go back to doing old-fashioned hay where it sits on the ground for three weeks,” Charles said. “The quality of the hay we produce now, speaks for itself.  Our goal is to lock in as much of the quality of the standing pasture, and Hay Guard® certainly allows us to do that.”