Thirty landholders from across the region attended a field day at the Walcha Showground recently to hear a range of speakers present on the latest techniques and ideas in pest management and winter care for stock.
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To start the day Jason Siddell told graziers how they can use the cheapest fodder to get the best results by using the latest free apps available to calculate feed conversion rates.
Australian Livestock Scanning owner Dr Doug Fowler, of Glen Innes, spoke about scanning pregnant ewes and how to lessen single and twin lambing deaths through strategic paddock stocking and feed restriction.
Woolbrook landholder John Scott said he found the day informative and strongly industry related.
“Strategies for hanging on to lambs, cutting down birth defects and the timing of lambing was all well explained and helpful to the industry, and I was surprised when Dr Fowler said to date the uptake of these strategies has not been as high as expected,” he said.
“Pest control and livestock health aren’t separate issues for most landholders, so we took a holistic approach to the farm enterprise,” said Brett Cameron, field day organiser and Northern Tablelands Local Land Services biosecurity officer.
Mr Cameron said using Canid bait ejectors loaded with Para-aminopropiophenone (or ‘PAPP’) the active ingredient used in new toxic baits developed for the broad-scale management of wild dogs and foxes, was one of the latest tools in pest management.
“In Australia, cats, foxes and wild dogs are the animals most susceptible to PAPP. PAPP will complement 1080, so land managers will have a choice between two toxins rather than being restricted to just one,” he said.
Rabbit was also on the menu with an update on the RHD Boost project to release a new strain of the calicivirus across the area.
“There were no Walcha landholders who applied for this trial, but we released in the broadscale sites north of Armidale just before Guyra and the eastern side of Armidale,” Mr Cameron said.
“We should have seen results ten days after the release, but unfortunately we didn’t see any. This might be because of the timing and the rabbit breeding cycle. While they got good results out west at Hay, we might need to look at a different time of year in this area.”
More successful data was presented by Department of Primary Industries project officer Dr Guy Ballard who reported the results of a Fox collaring project that has been run in the Walcha District over the last few years in the Moona/Winterbourne area and the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park around Tabletop Mountain.
Dr Ballard said the LLS and Fox Coordinators need to work together with neighbours to get back to the basics of a couple of good solid baitings each year and follow up with shooting and trapping to remove animals that aren’t interested in baits.
“We began the project in 2012 and we’ve added to that data set overtime, working with neighbours and National Parks and Wildlife Services to collar a sample of foxes each year to see how those animals respond to management programs and to really see how far they move so we have an understanding of the size of management programs that are required to do something about our ongoing fox problem,” he said.
“We’ve found that there is a really wide range of behaviour in the fox population round the place, so while there are some that are living over an area as small as 170 hectares we’ve got others living over thousands of hectares.
“So when you have multiple animals living over thousands of hectares you really need lots and lots of people working together to undertake baiting programs at the same time to make sure most foxes have a chance of encountering a bait. Then you need to follow up later in the year to get the job done.”
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