Legume is viable as fodder
WHITEWATER Station near Mt Surprise has achieved remarkable results trialling a new legume fodder crop that has doubled weight gains compared to native pastures.
Working with the Department of Primary Industries, the University of Queensland, meat and Livestock Australia and the Leucaena Network, Tom and Christine Saunders have refined their strategy on their 25,000 hectare property and continue to modify and improve.
“We have been doing trials since 2014 and we have double the weight gains compared to native pastures,” Mrs Saunders said.
“We are growing it in trees – it is a legume and therefore beneficial to soil and traditionally grown on cleared land, but here in the north you can’t knock trees over, so we have done it within the trees.
“We’ve just come up with a new idea to cut it within the trees, we are designing a new cutter to cut from the front,” she said.
“We see gains immediately – the cattle have grass as well, the spans (for leucaena) are 10m apart and there’s native pasture in between.”
A DPI study at 50 hectares at Whitewater found after leucaena was established, steers in a leucaena paddock were gaining 600g per day compared with 300g for steers on grazing pasture.
The study concluded the challenges of establishing leucaena in lightly timbered but fertile basalt country could be overcome, so it would be feasible to establish leucaena on large areas of basalt country in north Queensland.
Leucaena is grown in tropical and subtropical environments – it stops growing if the temperature falls below 15 degrees and it needs more than 600mm annual rainfall.
Mr Saunders participated in a two-day agricultural forum at Georgetown last week where other graziers had the opportunity to learn about Leucaena.
Other topics covered included the North Queensland cotton gin feasibility study, sorghum crop trials at Prestwood station and cotton growing at Forest Home station, and table grapes at Tonks Camp.