Turnips clean out weeds

The cheapest and cleanest way into a pasture renovation is through a summer crop, says Waverley sharemilker Damian Roper.

Damian and Jane milk 850 cows in two herds on their 50:50 sharemilking job with the help of Warren and Mano Clark and Cindy Crump.

They grow 20ha of Barkant turnips each year to plug a summer feed gap on their Kohi Road property, then drill new grasses into the spent crop paddocks.

Damian drills the turnips with his direct drill into poor performing paddocks where the grass is running out or the pasture has been damaged by pugging in the winter and needs levelling. Establishing the crop for around 7c/kg DM, Damian budgets on 13.5-14t DM/ha.

He says he drills the crop at half the pace of other contractors and a rate of 3.5-4kg seed/ha, which he says gives the best ratio of leaf to bulb and the most DM/ha.

He says turnips provide a digestible, high ME and economic feed during the summer. Cows are offered 4 to 6kg/day for a 40 to 50-day period.

“Every turnip goes into the vat.” The turnips are breakfed from January 10 for four weeks, then the paddocks have one or two passes with a spring tyne cultivator to break up the compaction and ensure a good seedbed.

Sowing turnips at slightly higher rates smothers many of the weeds like Californian thistles and wireweed. The crop is almost a natural way of cleaning weeds out of the paddocks without expensive weed sprays, Damian says.

Farmers who do not have the summer dry feed gap may choose to go straight into pasture renewal. Each farmer should be able to work on 5-6% renewal of the farm each year without dropping stock numbers, Damian says.

If the season goes dry in January-February (and farmers don’t have a crop) he suggests doing an early cull to take the paddocks out of the rotation and drill new grasses in March.

“In a good season you are on to a winner.”

Published courtesy of Country-Wide October 2009