Chicory – a proven champion. “In the thirteen years we have grown chicory we have naturally had dry years, but the year on year reliability of chicory has been proven to be a real champion” There was often a dramatic need for extra feed during the autumn months, so in 2003 I began planting Chicory. As the farm being mostly red soil it was hard to grow home grown feed at that time of year. Back then we planted full paddocks of chicory at a time from early to mid-September. The chicory grew really well, and with this spring planting and moisture available we would often be grazing within seven weeks of sowing. The chicory was grazed from late spring, […]
Tag: Testimonial
Farm Chat with Dave Barry – Labertouche
With our calving pattern we have a big requirement for late summer and autumn feed, so chicory delivers a large amount of quality feed when we need it most. Chicory give us the extra feed in autumn and assists us to create our own autumn break. We began growing Chico chicory fourteen years ago with the aim to get the most out the 22ML of water available on our farm at Labertouche. We were originally irrigating summer pastures, however the results were only average with the pasture suffering from rust and plant pulling. Yet the results we saw from irrigating the chicory were outstanding, and when effluent was applied the growth rates were even higher. I have used a number […]
New maize option yields well at Loch
A first time try of the Pioneer® hybrid P1070 maize produced excellent yields in two different locations for dairy farmer Ian Hooker, of Loch in South Gippsland, Victoria. Mr Hooker said he’d been growing maize for 15 years although it was the first time he had planted P1070. He said they put in 23 hectares all up with the 13 hectares off-farm producing yields of 26 dry matter tonnes per hectare of silage. “The 10 hectares of the dairy farm was almost as good,” he said. Maize is planted as the weather warms up in November and is normally taken through harvest as silage in April. Mr Hooker said the away block was about 20 minutes from the dairy farm […]