Prograze® - PROfarm testimonial

Rose and Graham Price

Maintaining a sound understanding of the interaction between pastures and grazing livestock has been a key to the success of the Price family’s sheep and beef breeding enterprise at ‘Marouan’, Glen Innes, in New South Wales.

Using a holistic approach, Rose and Graham Price, with the help of Graham’s father Jeff, run more than 150 Angus cows and calves for the feedlot market and around 1800 superfine Merino ewes over 500 hectares.

As Graham Price works off-farm during the week at Inverell, Rose takes care of the day-to-day management of ‘Marouan’.

Rose said that participating in a Prograze® course, developed by NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI), had been of great benefit in providing her with the basis for sound and effective grazing management decisions.

‘We have used the course extensively with our operation,’ she explained. ‘After we put our stock together in 1996 and began working under the regime of a holistic management system, the knowledge we gained from the course really taught us to eyeball and assess, very accurately, the amount of feed we did or did not have.

‘We can now visually assess our pasture, particularly at this time of the year when we’re taking stock out of the paddock, to know what we’ve got to come back to.  We can work out how much dry matter we have, which species are active and the digestibility.

‘Prograze has certainly given us a very good grounding in order for us to determine what we have and what we need to do to get the stock to a certain point. On weekends Graham and I consult and eyeball the condition of the pastures and discuss how things are going.’

Rose said while this year ‘Marouan’ had experienced a phenomenal season, last autumn was very dry and decisions needed to be made.

‘We sold cows and later bought back heifers to replace those we had to sell during the dry,’ she said.

‘But because we’d actually assessed all the pastures, we knew we didn’t have enough feed to carry them through and, as I wasn’t prepared to feed them, we decided to sell.

‘That put us in good stead for the months ahead because we weren’t running too many calves and cows through the winter and summer.  By carrying a little less stock we were able to build up again.’

Rose said that the tool for assessing pastures wasn’t all they came away with from the Prograze course.

‘It was actually the information from the whole program that helped, including animal husbandry and sheep and cattle production.’

Prograze is designed to help producers develop practical and relevant pasture and livestock assessment skills for improved profitability and sustainability of grazing systems.  Presented over eight half-day field days, three to four weeks apart, the course uses a hands-on-approach, with the days conducted on group members’ farms with a strong in-paddock approach.