Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Prospect’s pastures pay
39
YEARS AGO
Keith Murray, a Merino farmer, improved his pastures by making the most of the local irrigation scheme.
The 1 350ha farm Prospect, owned by Murray, at Fish River now carries 2 500 sheep and 70 head of cattle.
By improving the pastures and making the most of the water from the Fish River Irrigation Scheme, he hopes to increase this during the next two years to 5 000 sheep and 100 head of cattle.
Murray is a member of one of the 13 minor water boards that operate under the Fish River scheme, the water for which comes from the Grass Ridge Dam and in turn via the Orange Fish River Tunnel from the Verwoerd Dam. He and five other farmers draw their water from the last weir on the Brak River.
This weir is no modern concrete job; dry packed and pointed after construction, it has a 7m base and is 5m high.
Prospect is scheduled for 1 350mm/ha/year for 192,17ha. At present, only 141ha are under irrigation. The water is led off nine sluice gates along the 8km of earth canal that runs through the farm.
Six weeks after Murray bought Prospect, the 1974 floods devastated the area. Overnight the wing walls of the weir were flooded and fences vanished. Willows along the canal were washed away. Unable to get into their lands, board members dropped everything and fixed up their weir and canal. Back on the farm, Murray employed men to chop up the willow logs and replant them in the mud.
Getting back into the lands was a slow process as some could not be worked for over eight months.
Water-logged after the floods, stretches of dead unproductive earth yielded very little barley and wheat. And with constant ploughing in the past, when the supply of water down the canal was more erratic, it meant that in some parts the soil structure had almost gone.
Stretched financially after the flood, Murray had no money to tacke the lands and refertilise. He felt that pastures were better than cash crops, and as he knew better how to look after sheep, he turned to pastures. The lands were planted to Palestine Strawberry clover, which brought back the nitrogen to the soil. Mixed with Kentucky 31 fescue, it is a high-producing feed.
Today, soil analysis shows a varying degree of brack, but when this is counteracted with gypsum, the stands are excellent. But old ways have their merits; on a brack pan so compacted that only saltbush was advised, Murray fed his sheep. They manured it, trod in the third-grade lucerne they were fed, and now this soil, down to clover and fescue, is well on its way to rehabilitation.
As lucerne grows anything from 500mm to 1m depending on the soil depth, the leaner soils now go to the pastures and the deeper soils to lucerne, which is never sold and produces six cuttings a year. Murray is having the thorn trees cleared and blocks of ground are being planted to lucerne under irrigation.
There is a 25% loss factor built into the water that the board members order. Murray is trying to get as much grazing from the water as possible, and kikuyu is being planted along the banks of the canal.
The sheep are rotated on the pastures at a stocking rate of 30/ha. The ewes run on the veld during lambing, which results in healthier lambs, less liable to pick up diseases and a mother that takes better care of her lambs because she is not under stress through overcrowding.