Reboot your grazing: Online Course August 2023

Want to implement planned, rotational grazing on your property?

Already doing planned or holistic grazing and looking to make improvements and take it to the next level.

Deepen your understanding of how plants, animals, landscapes and people can all work together for resilience and productivity.

Get tailored support to develop a Grazing Plan for your place.

Join one of Australia's leading grazing specialists, Dr Judi Earl, along with agroecologist David Hardwick from Soil Land Food, for this fantastic online 7 part course from Soil Land Food. It will give you all you need to know to reboot the grazing on your place!

This course is suitable for anyone with grazing animals: from northern and rangeland Australia pastoral enterprises to tablelands grazing and dairy farms in south-eastern and Western Australia. 

Course Content:

Webinar 1 - Your Grazing Landscape - Part 1: we explore what are you managing - Climate, Geography, Water, Soil and Vegetation. How much pasture can you grow? How grasses and forbs grow. The effect of grazing intensity and frequency has on a plant's biology and life cycle. 

Webinar 2 - Your Grazing Landscape - Part 2: we look at how grazing influences landscape function, resilience and productivity. How grazing and vegetation influences energy flow, nutrient and water cycles and biodiversity. The different approaches to grazing management - set stocking, rotational, planned, high density, time controlled, cell grazing etc. How the different approaches influence pasture dynamics. The key concepts behind successful ecological based grazing - herbage mass, growing and non-growing periods, stocking rate, carrying capacity, utilisation rate, stock density and recovery periods.

Webinar 3 - What ruminants need. We explore the nutritional requirements of ruminant animals - energy and nutrients, including protein. We also look at the rumen and how to feed it. Then we look at how to plan annual feed requirements to match animal needs to pasture growth annually and in key periods like calving etc. We cover supplementary versus substitute feeding and finally introduce the importance of epigenetics in feeding behavior, nutritional efficiency and adaptation of animals to your local grazing landscape. 

Webinar 4 - Your Grazing Plan - Part 1: the management steps to success in planned rotational grazing. Setting goals. Monitoring your pastures: herbage mass: what it is, why it is important and how to measure it. Estimating pasture growth.

Webinar 5 - Your Grazing Plan - Part 2:  Feed budgeting: working out how much pasture you need season to season for your enterprise. Planning for critical times, growing and non-growing seasons. You will start a feed budget for each of your paddocks and your whole property.

Webinar 6 - Your Grazing Plan - Part 3: Pulling it all together for your whole property. In this session we will help you fine tune your plan for success. Monthly, seasonal and annual planning.

Webinar 7 -Q & A session: in this session you have a chance to get further questions addressed with Judi.

Dates & Times:

Tuesdays (AEST)

• 15th August 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am,
  
• 22nd August 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am,
• 29th August 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am,
  
• 12th September 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am,
• 19th September 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am,
• 26th September 2023 -8.00 am to 9.30 am,
  
• 3rd October 2023 - 8.00 am to 9.30 am

Presenters

Dr Judi Earl

Judi is one of Australia’s leading grazing and pasture specialists and has worked around Australia on planned grazing and pasture projects and research for over 20 years. She has a PhD in pasture ecology and grazing management and is a Certified Holistic Management Educator. A highly experienced botanist she has a detailed first hand knowledge of plants, pastures and the influence of grazing on plant diversity in landscapes across Australia. She also owns and runs a beef property, Glen Orton, on the northern slopes of NSW, where she has been monitoring the change in diversity with grazing management for over 10 years. Judi co-developed The Grazing Game, a fantastic planned grazing board game, along with Imogen Semmler. As well as providing technical advice to government agencies and Landcare groups, she runs grazing courses for landholders across Australia and partners with Soil Land Food to help us deliver the best courses we can for landholders. Her consulting buisness is AIMS where you can find out more about her work: www.aimsag.com.au

David Hardwick

David is a professional agroecologist. He has been doing soil and regenerative agriculture extension and consulting all over Australia for nearly 20 years. He completed a degree in Ecological Agriculture at the University of Sydney with focus on regenerative and organic farming systems, land management and rural change. He started his career on the mid Norh Coast of NSW  where he completed a dairy traineeship. He completed a Dairy Diploma as well as Grazing Land Management Training with the Queensland DPI for extension staff and the BEHAVE course with Professor Fred Provenza. David has worked with different graziers across Australia on many extension and Landcare projects for nearly 15 years wher he has been exposed to a wide range of grazing approaches and situations.

How the Course works!!

This is a small group course with a maximum of 12 properties. So you have a chance to get tailored support for your situation and to learn from your peers. You will need to complete a pre-course questionnaire before the course. Providing a property map is also recommended. These will help us help you get the most from the course. 

The Course is 7 Zoom webinars, run one each week over 7 weeks. Each session will be recorded so if you miss a session you can catch up on Zoom via the Event Hub. We will also provide you with a Grazing Plan Workbook and Spreadsheet to help you develop a Grazing Plan for your property. The course needs a minimum of 10 participants to go ahead. We reserve the right to cancel/postpone the course if minimum numbers are not achieved. Full refunds are given if we cancel due to low numbers.

Check out an overview to planned rotation grazing with Judi on this video!

What people say about some of our other online courses

"Informative, helpful and easy to understand. I would highly recommend this to both beginners and more knowledgeable people. These guys are a wealth of information." Jason NSW

"This course topped up prior self learning from reading about Gerry's SPICE composting online. I have made several batches of the SPICE compost in the past few months on my horse property. The knowledge of Dave, Gerry, Wes and Carl was terrific and filled in so many gaps I had and will now be able to pursue the development of a much better product." Robyn WA 

"David’s humour and way of speaking made this course really easy to follow along and get so much out of." Donna