The holy grail of grazing pastures isn't just grass... It's a multi-species perennial & annual pasture
Our family's recipe for growing some of the tastiest regenerative lamb is a combination of brilliant genetics, holistic management, and highest-quality, natural diets... Plus the dedication, passion, and endless hard work our family does on the farm.
So, do you want to know the real secret behind our juicy, flavoursome, second-to-none lamb? It actually starts with the soil!
The recipe for salubrious soil & perfect pastures
Great pasture is made up of a mixture of plants including grasses, legumes, flowers and herbs. Our family focuses on selecting perennial pasture species, meaning they grow all year round. Furthermore, we also ensure that the specific cultivars we choose are suited to our farm's growing conditions and climate. Pasture plants usually have a number of cultivars available – the physical characteristics of the individual plants vitally important to ensure persistence and productivity. To give you a couple of examples:
- Ryegrass cultivar used on an irrigated dairy farm would not be as well suited to dryland paddocks.
- Plantain and chicory tend to grow well in warm, dry summer conditions when other species, such as ryegrass, do not grow as well.
A diverse pasture – also called a mixed sward – provides livestock with a variety of plants to feed on and, therefore, a healthy, high intake of a variety of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.
We nurture healthy soil, full of microbes and fungi, which restore water and nutrient cycles in the soil. These cycles are what support plant growth and resilience. We add natural, biological fertilisers to feed soil microbes, which then in turn feed the plants. And what plants do we want to feed? Yes, grass, of course, but we don't want just grass - we want a great, diverse variety of other plants flourishing in our farm's pastures too. Plants such as chicory, plantain, clover, kikuyu, ryegrass, serradella, vetch, and many different grass species.
Our family tends to regenerate our farm's pastures through a combination of holistic planned grazing to use animal impact (think hooves stomping, mouths chewing, and bums pooing) all over the paddock.
This feeds the soil and adds moisture and nutrients back at ground level, where the microbes can break down the plant matter and cycle the nutrients through the soil and into the plants. Pasture plants rely on good soils – the right levels and balance of nutrients. Soil structure helps to regulate the movement of air and water and influences root development.
Our regenerative farming practices can also include us seeding a paddock with a seed mix to introduce perennial and annual plants into the system.
Good pasture management is incredibly important for optimal production and the overall health of the land and the animals it supports. As farmers, we need to be aware of what pasture plant species are growing, how much of each is growing, and the feed quality of each – the energy value of the pasture as feed for our sheep. The feed quality of each and every pasture plant species changes during the seasons. For example, ryegrass feed quality falls in late spring when seed-heads start to develop.
Holistic managed grazing for better pasture regeneration
Holistic managed grazing - or high-density rotational grazing - refers to grouping grazing animals together in a tight group, giving them a small amount of space to graze, and moving them as often as possible. Holistic managed grazing mimics the way large herds behave in the wild, when they are put under pressure from predatory animals such as wolves. They bunch together for safety.
This means that they are eating the grass in one place down to the ground in a couple of mouthfuls, and then moving onto the next area. The grass has the intense animal impact of the plant being eaten, the residue being trodden into the ground, and the sheep pee and poo landing on top.
The plant then begins to grow again and regenerates itself.
This is quite different to conventional set stocking or leaving the animals in one large paddock for a long amount of time, where plants are consistently eaten down again and again as they try to regenerate, before they run out of energy and ultimately stop growing and producing leaves.
A frequent, hands-on farming approach for better animal welfare
In holistic managed grazing, our sheep have daily contact with us farmers, sheep dogs and vehicles - so they become well acquainted to us. Not only that, our sheep quickly pieced together that the arrival of our ute and/or Polaris means that they are about to be moved into a new paddock filled with more fresh, yummy pasture for them to feed on. So they’ll often line up at the fence ready to be let into the next paddock!
This familiarity with people, vehicles, and other animals means that our sheep are calmer and happier when we are around them, when they are rotated to new paddocks and moved through the yards, are less likely to hurt themselves, and have much lower stress levels in general. They simply become quickly familiar and comfortable with us having regular contact with them and having different types of farming activity going on around them. In the long term, this also translates into better flavour in the lamb meat, as they are less likely to be stressed both at the abattoir and on the livestock transport truck on the way to the abattoir, which would normally (if not raised and cared for the way we do) spike adrenaline and cortisol in their systems and lead to tougher meat.
The secret is, there's not just one magic, fix-all farming practice... It's about creating an entirely new & innovative regenerative-farming system
Like having healthy soil full of diverse microbes and fungi, or lush pastures full of different species of plants, grasses and forbes, there is no one "magic" thing that makes our sheep and lambs great and our lamb meat some of Australia's best. The secret is, there's not just one magic, fix-all farming practice... It's about creating an entirely new and innovative regenerative-farming system, that's filled with a combination of tried, tested, and effective regenerative farming practises and management skills that ultimately come together to create some of the best lamb in the country.
