THE Paulet family utilises cereal stubbles and beans to improve conception and marking rates in its livestock and grains agribusiness in Gippsland.
Running about 3000 ewes at Toongabbie and Flynn – 2000 Merino and 1000 Merino-Border Leicester cross – they turn off 2000 prime lambs from April through July.
“Sheep in the system provides diversity,” said Tim Paulet.
“They clean up volunteers and weeds in summer, spelling pastures and grazing earlier sown wheats.”
The cereals and beans provide quality feed at key times in the year.
About 2500 hectares of a combination of freehold, lease and share country is used to sow 1100 ha of cereals – wheat and barley with canola as a break crop and beans – run the self-replacing sheep flocks and a herd of 250 F1 cows joined to Limousin bulls for the vealer trade. Trade cattle are utilised as seasonal conditions allow.
Most of the property is dryland with some irrigation on key forage and silage crops.
Merino rams are Bindawarra bloodlines, Border Leicesters are sourced from Womboota and – for the second cross lambs – Poll Dorset sires are bought from Pinora stud. Southdown rams from Rathjen are joined to maiden and old ewes.
Harvested cereal grains are sold direct to dairyfarmers in the Macalister Irrigation District, canola is sold and processed in Melbourne and faba beans are grown for sheep feed and human food.
All lambs and vealers are sold over-the-hooks – lambs at 22-24kg and vealers at 200kg-plus. Ewes are run on the faba beans pre-joining. Weaners are run on the cereal and bean stubbles, to finish the lambs for the prime lamb market. “Sheep complement cropping,” Tim said. “Ewes are run at condition score 2.8-plus and we’re not shy of supplementary feeding with beans to improve ovulation.”
Both Tim and Rowan, at separate times in the past decade, completed the two-year Lifetime Ewe project.
“It reinforced the importance of a bit of extra feed and protein to improve cycling and increase the number of foetuses; and the benefits of scanning for multiples and feeding accordingly,” Tim said.
They normally mark 100 per cent of Merino lambs and 125 pc out of the first-cross ewes.
Joining is six weeks and they scan the ewes for single and multiple lambs.
“We run the twin mobs in 150 and the single bearing in mobs of 200. It means we allocate better shelter and feed to the ewes expecting twin lambs,” Tim said.
“We focus on maintaining a ewe condition score of 3.25.”
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Managing the cropping side of the business to enable ewes to graze early sown cereals and canola builds a post lambing feed wedge in the pasture paddocks.
“Grazing wheat ensures the ewes are in good condition pre lambing. Then we sow summer crops so the lambs can be weaned onto that,” Tim said.
Beans, sown as a break crop for the cropping program and to fix nitrogen into the soil, are harvested as stock feed for the lambs.
“The stubbles are also a fantastic protein source, without acidosis issues that other supplementary feed can have,” Tim said.
“The lambs graze the stubbles from Christmas onwards. You see their weights take off – growth weights are measured at least 250g/week, we aim for 300g/week.”
Post shearing in February, the prime lambs graze an irrigated summer forage crop. At 90-100 days, the first 400 lambs are sold off property over-the-hooks.
