Free Grass Seed

Most of our paddocks have rather poor grass.  Most of it is browntop, a thin, fairly short grass that the seems to sustain the cattle and sheep, but doesn't fatten them much. 

We've been wanting to improve the types of grass we have, but there are a number of issues around what types are best for our livestock, what will grow easily here, how much it will cost and when can we leave a paddock empty for long enough for new grass to grow.

We had a look at grass seed at the local farm supplies store.  $100 a 25kg bag. And that would do maybe our bigger paddock only.

Over the last two years, we've been getting hay from a local woman.  She has ten acres and three spoiled horses.  Most of the hay we get is her old horse hay.  Any sign of mildew at all and the horses don't like it, or it's potentially bad for them.  So she puts it aside for us.  She gives us all the opened and loose stuff for free. Every year she likes to clear out whatever of the previous year's hay is left before she gets the new lot cut.  Her horses might be fussy about the hay, but my cows love it.

A couple of years ago, we had a lot of rain all through December and so by the time they could cut and bale the hay, it was very seedy.  I noticed that where I fed out to the cows, we got much better grass growing. 

We started to shake out a lot of the seed into a wool fadge. Obviously there was a lot of small bits of hay with it. We got to about half full.

Mixed seed and small bits of hay

With the Autumn rains starting recently, we thought it might be time to sow some of the seed.  After a few conversations with the neighbour, we'd decided to just spread it out where there were thin patches in the paddock.  The small hay mixed up with it should act as a mulch.

We started in the front paddock, but didn't get any further.  While there are some pretty good patches of healthy grass, there are quite a lot of bare patches and spots where there is a lot of flat weed and no grass. 

Seed and hay spread out over thin patches 

Hopefully, this will lead to a much better paddock.