A NEW generation of farmers could safely be underway, going by the achievements of Samuel Tiller, Balaklava.
The 20-year-old completed his Certificate III in Agriculture at the Clare TAFE last year and is now embarking on his third year working full-time on the family farm with his father Michael, cousin Jarrad Seiboth, and two workers.
In February, Samuel was asked by the South Australian No-Till Farmers Association to make a presentation about using sheep to get rid of chaff, at the Glencore Grains 15th Annual SANTFA Conference at the Barossa Valley.
The Tiller family crops wheat, barley, canola, peas and lupins on 3600 hectares in the Lower North. They also run about 2000 ewes, with 60 per cent mated to Merinos and 40pc to cross-bred rams.
Five years ago, the Tillers decided to confine 2000 ewes to an on-farm feedlot at seeding time, after incorporating the sheep into their zero-till cropping system.
"It was hard to have the sheep out in the paddock while we were seeding," Samuel said.
"So we decided to put the sheep into a feedlot over seeding to make it easer to look after them, and after seeding we put them out on pasture mainly in our dryland country. The sheep work well with that regime."
The Tillers use a disc seeder to sow inter-row and retain stubble.
"Because we already had sheep for a couple of years before we got our disc seeder, we knew we were going to need something to manage our straw and stop hair-pinning," Samuel said.
"So we put stubble management wheels straight on the disk as soon as we got it, because we knew we would need them
"The Aricks (stubble management) wheels are in front of the discs and just push the straw to one side.
"Most people who have disc seeders around us don't have them on their disc seeders. The rest have tine machines with a knifepoint and press wheel seeding systems.
"But they work well for us, and that helps the disc work in a cropping and sheep program."
The Tillers apply liquid trace elements to their crops, such as zinc and sulphur, and use a chaff cart during harvest.
Samuel says carting chaff behind the header is one of the key benefits of the operation.
"It does a really good job at cleaning up our weed seed banks at harvest time," he said.
After harvest, some chaff is collected and put in a bunker to feed sheep.
It costs about $30 a tonne by the time they get it there and results in sheep entering the feedlot to eat a chaff ration costing 14 cents a day each, compared to 19c/day for straw-based ration feed.
Lactating ewes on chaff cost 28c a day compared to 43c for straw-based feed.
Less grain is fed in the chaff-based ration because of the grain already within the chaff, which is why the straw-based ration is more expensive.
"We feed the sheep chaff from the back of our header and that's the reason we can feed them cheaply," Samuel said.
"They do well on it.
"Even the shy feeders are able to eat at some point during the day because they don't have to compete over a feeder."
Towing a chaff cart behind the header does, however, slow harvest down a little, use more fuel, and add about three weeks worth of work to burning or carting chaff piles.
Since building the feedlot, Samuel says a couple of farmers have come over to look at their ewes in the feedlot during lambing.
"One bloke from the Yorke Peninsula came over because he is thinking of doing it, and thinks it might work for him as well," he said.
"So there is some interest in what we're doing."
Locking sheep up during seeding makes it easier to feed a lot of them quickly and also uses the chaff caught at harvest.
The chaff cart also helps the Tillers manage weed-seed burdens, making it a useful tool for the sheep and cropping side of the farm.
"But you just have to be careful where you put the chaff later so you don't spread weeds," Samuel said.
*Full report in Stock Journal, March 21 issue, 2013.
