The Farmers Club

The “Club Notes” for Saturday, the 17th of August, 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

We forgot to ask the Sheep

We were driving around the Eyre Peninsula (EP), and in between the wall-to-wall Cropping, we spotted a stand of rowed Saltbush. Saltbush was supposed to be the big drought-saving fodder that never really got going because it was a system where the parts never gelled together. Many people over the years planted rows and rows of Saltbush, hoping to make their properties drought-proof. There were even nurseries dedicated to growing Saltbush seedlings for the market. It was great in theory, but nobody consulted the Sheep as to how they were going to graze these pastures. So what happened was you would put a mob of Sheep in your Saltbush stand, and what they would do was graze every blade of grass in between the rows before they would even touch the Saltbush, and once the rows were bared out, they would then start on the Saltbush. So then you would have these bared out and dusty paddocks that were nuded of all the grasses. Do this a couple of times, and you end up with a pretty unproductive paddock. The selective grazing model of the Sheep was the culprit as to why the Salbush system never worked. It's a good lesson that everything we do in Agriculture doesn't always work because one little part of the system can bring the whole model tumbling down. If the Sheep had of grazed the Saltbush first, the model would have worked. Have you seen a system where one part of the model breaks down and destroys the whole thing?  Reply to [email protected]

What’s in the paid section today:

Story 2 - Coming home on the Farm is a given for some, but this guy says you have to prove yourself.

Story 3 - The Butcher buys the Baker.

Number of articles and images - 59 in total with 13 funnies.

Number of Farmer replies - 3 in total.

The Farmers Club - 6 Times Weekly

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