Silage growth patterns improve groundcover

The 233-hectare Fleurieu Peninsula property, where they milk about 160 cows year-round, is owned by Nick's grandparents Carmine and Lydia Mignanelli.

"Oversowing annual ryegrass as a forage crop meant summer growing pastures on highly-fertile soils provide extra winter and spring grazing," he said.

"We aim for that 3 tonnes/ha, sometimes we get two cuts and if we do it's great.

"Most country, especially the dryland, we probably average about 5t/ha or just over."

Nick said the irrigated pastures then have more than double the expected yield.

"Under the irrigation, we are the aiming more for 10-12t/ha per year of dry matter," he said.

"The chicory has already done about 11t/ha and I am hoping it will give me about 16-17t/ha of dry matter once we go through spring.

"I have utilised 11t/ha so far with the chicory.

"I oversowed the annual grass into the existing Victorian perennial ryegrass in April, but the earlier you can get onto it, the better."

Nick said time of sowing was critical to get the best results.

"You don't want to be sowing in February and then have a rain," he said.

"It starts to germinate and then dies because it gets too dry too quickly.

"You have got to find that happy medium."

Nick said fertiliser had great results for the grasses.

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"I used a lot of chicken manure this year as a cheaper source of pasture booster and it has many other added benefits" he said.

"I work out what nutrients I am taking off the land.

"When it comes to working out what I put back out it would be as much as I have used to grow my feed.

"There's no one size fits all as it depends on the type of soil and acidity of the soil across my paddocks."

Nick said agronomist advice had made decision-making easier.

"We normally work on between 0.7 to 1 kilogram of nitrogen to the hectare per day," he said.

"In terms of PKS, we are covering the maintenance and do a soil test to work out what is already there and what needs to go on, to get the best result.

"The chicken manure is super labour intensive to spread because it's so light.

"You've got to put out so much that you can end up doing 10 times the work."

Nick said there was a quicker return on synthetic fertiliser.

Preventative measures to reduce over grazing and save detrimental impacts to the environment, is top of mind for Nick Mignanelli.

Mr Mignanelli changes his hot wire temporary fencing twice a day for the cows to have access to different sections for grazing of the paddock, after each time milking has been completed.

"If you overgraze the ryegrass pastures, it takes longer to recover," he said.

"But you don't want to under graze, as the quality depreciates.

"Our cows use to overgraze and it looked like we had gone over it with a lawnmower.

"That doesn't drive pasture production, nor does it drive milk production."

Mr Mignanelli said a 2.5 to three-leaf stage grass was the best time for it to be grazed or cut.

"I'm chasing cows to graze the grass at about half its growth," he said.

"Leaving half behind is pretty perfect in my eyes.

"If a cow comes along and bears it down because there is nothing to eat - it's super high in neutral detergent fibre and there is no protein in that."

Mr Mignanelli said the three-leaf stage gave the best return for milk and the best return for pasture recovery.

"After three leaves, the bottom leaf starts to die off as the stalk can only support three leaves," he said.

"Old school farmers aim for a high stalk to cut more, but it slows down the rate of passage and a cow cannot eat as much and cannot make the desired energy to produce more quality milk."