Plants have been stripped of all their edible leaf to determine the amount of feed in the Rhagodia paddock at Don Nairn's, Binnu. Pic 31 August 2007

This Rhagodia was planted in August last year & has established and grown despite the drought. This site at Don Nairns is one of 5 sites with the Northern Agri Group. This small paddock will be grazed by sheep soon. The sheep will be monitored closely as this will be the first time a pure plantation has been grazed. Pic 31 August 2007

An ' Enrich' trial site at Badgingarra Research Station. This site has a range of fodder shrubs (tag, salt bush, Rhagodia, Saligna), perennial grass and annual pasture. Sheep will be given access to all these at the same time. There grazing preference will be observed by CSIRO staff. Some sheep will be pre trained on pure stands of specific shrubs to see if this affects their grazing behaviour.

Dr Fred Provenza (centre) is a researcher from Utah who is leading the field in animal behaviour when grazing. He was recently at Badgingarra inspecting the Enrich trial being run by Dean Revell of CSIRO. Fred has being finding that it is possible to train stock to eat specific plants in a mixed pasture while avioding others. He has recently found that the order in which plants are grazed may be important. Eating plants with alkaliods prior to eating plants with tanins may bind with the tanins with the alkaliods and improve digestion. A WA application may be to get animals to eat green blue lupins before the consume tag in a mixed stand.

DAFWA and NAG farmers soil sampling for Carbon on Cheela Plains, Paradurdoo. Paired samples either side of a boundary fence is showing that intense rotational grazing has increases the soil Carbon (0 - 10 cm) and ground litter. Pic August 2007

A perennial grass and legume trial at len Metcalfe's, Dongarra has been over sown with wheat this year. The perennials were sown 2 years ago. Pic 20 July 2007

Metcalfe's site on 20 August 2007. The middle strip is Bermuda couch, and the strip on the right has lucerne.

Chicory plot

Lucerne on left, siratro on right. The site was grazed prior to sowing and most of the siratro and lucerne was grazed right back. The lucerne has regrown through winter but the siratro remains dormant. Intesetingly, the seeding operation in June stimulated a lot of siratro seed to germinate.

This 4 year old trial site at Kojonup is showing just how persistant Winter Active Tall Fescues can be. Most of the other temperate species have declined in density over the last 2 very dry years whereas the winter active tall fescues appear to be as dense as ever. Photo 27 June 2007.