Creating a feed wedge for winter

Ideally, autumn is when the pasture wedge should be getting established while growing conditions are warm and hopefully, moist.

A well-established pasture wedge will have the next paddock to be grazed (paddock with the most feed in it) somewhere near three green leaves and leaving pasture residuals of four to six centimetres after grazing.

The remaining paddocks will be evenly spread in pasture mass just like a wedge.

Unfortunately many farmers end up with no wedge, a small wedge (about 1.5 to two leaves) or a ‘football boot’ wedge where there are only a few paddocks of long feed (two to three leaves) left and the rest of the wedge way too short. In most cases the opportunity to allow the wedge to develop has been missed.

Setting up a wedge re- quires some pain in the form of extra supplementary feed to maintain the four to six cm residual or to keep cows off pasture to some extent by using a feed pad or sacrifice paddocks.

By adopting various techniques such as feeding cows on a feed pad before they go to the paddock, having access to the paddock for a day or night feed only, to being fully fed on sacrifice paddocks with negligible or access only to small areas of pastures.

Grass begets grass and pastures daily reaching and maintaining two to three leaves before grazing and being grazed to four to six cm, will surprise you how much feed is grown throughout winter.

Importantly, this extra grass either replaces some supplementary feed or extra milk is produced.

An extra ryegrass leaf grown on each tiller several times over the year is worth a lot of money, and can substantially increase profit.

Some farms are heading into winter with one of the undesirable wedges mentioned above.

There will be a lot of pain (extra feed) to keep cows reasonably well fed and even more to try to get a decent wedge. If the next best paddock is say 1.5 to two leaves, then the rotation length should be slowed down but this results in less area being offered to the cows.

If supplementary feed is not increased the pasture residuals can be too low and will cause paddock damage, especially when wet, which in nearly a given in Gippsland.

Practically, the better move would be to slow down the rotation slightly, add some additional supplement and achieve some gain from what extra pasture can be grown.

For further information on how to set your pasture wedge up, contact Frank Mickan (5624 2259) or email frank.mickan@ ecodev.vic.gov.au