THERE are multiple forage crop options available to Fitzroy River basin cattle finishers targeting premium markets, but the challenge for many graziers is to identify the most profitable forage system.
Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI) ruminant nutritionist Dr Maree Bowen is leading a project co-funded by DEEDI and Meat and Livestock Australia to examine the relative profitability of various forage options for finishing cattle in central and southern Queensland.
Dr Bowen said the first phase of the project called “High output forage systems for meeting beef markets” was launched in November 2009 and would conclude in August this year.
“The objective of the project is to provide better information to beef producers to support decision-making about how to best utilise the cropping country they have allocated to forage production,” Dr Bowen said.
A detailed analysis that compared cattle production and economic performance for six forage options was undertaken by a state-wide DEEDI project team that included as major contributors agricultural economist Rebecca Gowen, Rockhampton and pasture agronomist Stuart Buck, Biloela.
“One indicator examined as part of the economic analysis was ‘net present value’, which is the sum of discounted values of future income and costs associated with the investment in the forage system.
“The analysis looked at three Fitzroy catchment case study sites. Site 1 was in the Taroom-Wandoan area of the southern Queensland brigalow region; Site 2 was the Rolleston-Bauhinia-Theodore area in the central Queensland brigalow region; and Site 3 was the Capella district representing the central Queensland open downs.
“At all three regional sites, the three most important annual forages that were placed under scrutiny were sorghum, oats and lablab while the perennial forages investigated were butterfly pea-grass and leucaena-grass production systems.
Dr Bowen said the assessment of the high-output forage systems was compared with a baseline grass pasture at each of the regional sites with buffel grass examined at Sites 1 and 2 and Queensland bluegrass examined at the open downs site. Zero till and full cultivation methods were also compared for each of the sown forages.
DEEDI beef research and extension officers assessed the long term average cattle production performance for each forage type across good and bad rainfall years.
This involved an assessment of grazing days, stocking rate and daily liveweight gain for each forage type using a scenario of steers finished at the same target weight of 596 kg liveweight or 310 kg carcase weight.
“In an interim assessment from the project, annual zero till forage sorghum and perennial leucaena-grass pastures are the stand out performers from the central Queensland brigalow site,” Dr Bowen said.
“Compared with the baseline buffel grass pasture’s 30-year net present value return per hectare of $679, the forage sorghum grazed for 120 days at 3 head/ha returned a liveweight gain of 185 kg/ha/year valued at $2444/ha.
“When we looked at the leucaena-grass pasture grazed for 270 days at a stocking rate of 0.6 head/ha, the liveweight gain was 138 kg/ha/year to return $2080/ha.
“The next best return was from the butterfly pea-grass pasture system grazed for 250 days at 0.8 head/ha to record a liveweight gain of 104 kg/ha/year valued at $1184/ha.”
Dr Bowen said next phase of the project was to gather real data from commercial properties to validate the study. This will provide a better understanding of the factors influencing the relative productivity and profitability of high output forage options.
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