Another busy month at Willarah Farm!
This month we finished the farm tracks, installed the rest of the troughs and planted 100 native trees along the ridgeline of the Hill Paddock.
The trees will provide a much needed windbreak to protect the cattle from those crisp South Gippsland winds and provide some nice cool shade in the middle of Summer. To give the small tube stock the best chance of survival we used Planting Systems tree guards. These guards are made from 100% recyclable plastic, are Australian made and claim to have a 96% success rate when using their Plant me system that includes a tree starter mix, mycorrhizal powder, Root and Shoot tonic and a Rain Catcher dish. The Rain Catcher Dish delivers 1ltr of water to the tree from only 4mm of rain. It also stops weed competition while the plants establish.
Now that we have all troughs installed we can start dividing up our paddocks, this has a lot of benefits; increased stock density, increased rest time between grazing as well as giving us the option of taking a paddock out of rotation for pasture improvements. Smaller paddocks also mean the cattle don’t have to walk as far to access water, more time is spent putting on kg’s!
The farm tracks were completed just in the nick of time! as I’m writing this its 7 degrees outside and raining sideways. The new tracks will allow us to feed out hay in the middle of winter without making a huge mess. they also give the cows a place to dry off out of the wet mud.
Stay tuned for the next update on our Gippy Dryland pasture and the progress of the steers that will be processed at the end of the year!
Stay warm!
Willarah Farm
