BlackburnAgri 

Profitable Grazing Systems

Alan Blackburn commenced his career in agriculture working in the “Department of Agriculture”.  He spent 3 years as a sheep adviser and helped run several stocking rate experiments.  In 2006 he completed the “Train the Trainer” course More Beef From Pastures

Grazing Management

 

Most properties have the potential to increase the productivity and profitability of their grazing enterprises. Nationwide programs such as “More Beef From Pastures” and “Prograze” have provided producers with tools for achieving this.

 

Alan Blackburn & Associates Consutling can help you deal with the challenges to successfully implement these and other important principles on your property

 

We assist clients in the following areas:

1.  Review your profitability and your direction

• Review economics of current and proposed system including reviewing gross margins and projected cost of production for grazing enterprises

• Decide mix of grazing enterprises to run

• Identify areas of possible economic gain

2.  Decide stocking rate

• Estimate feed supply and stock demand

• Compare stocking rate against theoretical potential

• Analyse the impact variation in seasons has on stocking rate choice and profitability

3.  Calculate cost of production for wool, lamb and beef enterprises

• Comparative cost of production

• Total cost of production

4.  Review drought strategies

• Historic frequency of droughts

• Calculate size of reserves needed for different droughts

• Decide drought reserve policy

• Decide Farm Management Deposit policy

5.  Review options for manipulating feed supply

• Estimate whole farm carrying capacity

• Estimate feed supply and demand on a monthly basis

• Predict pasture availability

• Review options for manipulating pasture growth and feed supply

6.  Adopt key principles affecting profitability and sustainability

• Adopt practices that improve water use efficiency

• Improve pasture utilization

• Identify principles of pasture utilisation

• Identify farm lay out (eg paddocks, water points, laneways) required

7.  Putting the principles into practice

• Feed budgeting

• Strategic feed budgeting

• Tactical feed budgeting

• Apply grazing principles

8.  Risk management strategies

    Higher stocking rates carry risks but strategies can be developed to help manage risks.     These include:

• Identifying and monitoring “critical control points” in your management system

• Putting in place drought risk strategies

Wool, Lamb and Beef Cost of Production

 

Why calculate cost of production? Profit is made when prices received exceed costs of production.  Consequently many farmers are interested in their cost of production, and also how it compares with other farmers.

 

We calculate Cost of Production for Wool, Lamb, Beef and Crop enterprises in two ways;

 

1. Comparative Cost of Production - In this case we do not include interest costs, thereby providing a fairer comparison between farms.

2. Total Cost of Production - In this calculation interest costs are included providing the true cost of production for your farm.

Our Farm Business Farm Planner Software makes the calculations simple. The stock schedules and other data we prepare as part of business planning, provide information which is required in calculating cost of production.  Our Farm Business Planner software automatically feeds this data into the cost of production calculations thereby simplifying the process. 

Drought Strategies

 

I have long been of the opinion that the intensive grazing management story has had several important elements missing.  One is it has not put sufficient focus on strategic drought planning.  Intensive systems carry higher risk in drought years and this risk needs to be assessed and planned for.  Consequently we assist clients to do this as follows;

 

1. Assess drought risk - I use the “Rainman” software to demonstrate historic drought frequencies.  Also it is often of considerable interest to see how twenty year periods can have much different average rainfall patterns.

2. Calculate size of reserve - Our Farm Business Planner software enables us to calculate the size of drought reserve you need to feed stock for droughts of different durations eg 3 months, 6 months, 9 months.

 

You then decide what size of reserve and or what size of Farm Management Deposits you plan to have for strategic drought planning

 

Feeding Strategies

 

Feeding livestock sometimes pays and other times it does not. Feeding is profitable so long as the extra revenue from feeding exceeds the extra cost of the feed.  Only in specific circumstances is feeding profitable. We assist clients define those circumstances. We have prepared budgets that assist in planning and defining when feeding is profitable.

Enterprise Gross Margins

 

Farm profitability is greatly affected by:

• Enterprise choice

• Efficiency with which an enterprise is run. 

Gross margins are a key tool used when deciding which enterprise to run and to evaluate the efficiency of an enterprise.
Gross margins provide information for comparing the relative profitability of alternative farm enterprises and for comparing one farm against district and 10% averages.

 

We have prepared gross margin models which enable us to quickly evaluate projected gross margins for clients.

Gross margins include:

 

CATTLE

• Breeding Cows Hsd:    Self Replacing

• Breeding Cows Hsd:    Bought in Replacement

• Steer Trading, 1 to 2 yo

• Steer Trading, 2 to 3 yo

• Stud Cattle

  

SHEEP

• Merino Ewes: Self replacing

• Merino Ewes: Percentage joined to BL Rams

• Merino Ewes: Percentage joined to Dorset Rams

• Prime Lambs from 1st x Ewes

• Wether flock

  

CROPS

• Wheat

• Sunflower

• Barley

• Lucerne hay

• Malting Barley

• Lupins

• Triticale

• Chick Peas

• Linseed

• Peas

• Canola

 

Contact us today and let us show you how we can help!