Have your grain, and eat it too

Dual-purpose winter wheat can be very profitable for farmers in the High Rainfall Zone. It can be grazed through mid-winter and recover to produce good yields of grain.

While winter wheat has a high nutritive value and can result in rapid weight gains by stock, a puzzling aspect has been that stock do not always respond as well as expected.

A team from the Murrumbidgee Grain & Graze project, including CSIRO's Dr Hugh Dove, was suspicious that low forage magnesium levels might be at least part of the reason for this variability. The team ran a field trial in which lambs grazing winter wheat pasture were either given a calcium/magnesium (Ca/Mg) supplement or no supplement.

The results were startling. By including the Ca/Mg supplement, liveweight increased by 54 per cent, or nearly an extra 100 grams per day. Subsequent analyses showed the wheat forage was adequate in Ca but low in Mg.

The degree to which Australian winter wheat pastures are low in Mg is not yet known, but a Ca/Mg supplement may be good insurance for graziers.

Further collaborative research will make the use of pasture, dual-purpose wheats and forage more profitable and predictable for Australia's High Rainfall Zone.

The Murrumbidgee Grain & Graze project is a collaboration between CSIRO Plant Industry, NSW Primary Industries, Charles Sturt University and the FarmLink Research farming systems group, and is part of the national Grain & Graze collaborative research and development program.

MORE DETAILS

Grain & Graze Murrumbidgee www.farmlink.com.au/gg.htm

Grain & Graze: www.grainandgraze.com.au