Thanks to everyone who has asked how our season is holding up ( in one way or another) . Traditionally August and September are the driest months for us, with lots of very windy days. As you can see, grass and forbs have dried off. The wind will break off and blow away some of the more annual types, but Mitchell grass (most of what you can see in photo 1) will mostly hang in there for a good while yet. Photo 2 – the Buffel grass is only in some of the creeks, and like all the other dry grasses, has lost much of its nutritional value, but still has plenty of bulk, and will do wonders for keeping creek banks stable when storms do start.
Photo 3 – a mix of Button grass and gidgea burr. The Button grass is a very useful annual but by now some of its looking pretty black and it will disintegrate quickly when rain comes.
Our stock are in good condition, (except for a couple of bulls that’re currently on health care hay) and have access to a urea based lick to help them get the best benefit from what they are eating. We don’t anticipate any feed or water problems between now and Christmas, but small falls of rain and/or very hot and windy days can change the pasture outlook quite quickly.
Photo 4 – cows that went from an open grassy paddock to a mulga paddock after cattle work, behaved as though they’d been starving for mulga! They were being drama queens though, because even our open grassy cattle paddocks have a plentiful supply of mulga trees around the edge!
We have plenty of mulga leaves that the cattle can reach, but at the moment they also have plenty of dry grass and that is still their main diet.
