Double the stock and built-in drought resistance: How Woodburn nailed regen ag

In a decade, Woodburn has doubled carrying capacity in its best breeder paddocks, lifted overall capacity by 20 per cent and built an operation able to return to normal stocking numbers within two months of drought-breaking rain where it once took more than a year for that sort of recovery.

It's average percentage of soil organic carbon has gone from a low of 1.6 per cent to 3pc.

But while it seems like a straightforward formula for success, the rotational grazing and soil health principles employed at Woodburn did not come without a lot of lessons learned and significant investment.

The 2555 hectare Woodburn, north of Walcha on the New England tablelands, was purchased by Wilmot in 2011 to breed home-grown grassfed beef.

Wilmot, which spans four properties and is renowned for pioneering carbon farming, is owned by MacDoch Agriculture Group.

Woodburn has an annual average rainfall of 730mm and is 1120 metres above sea level with lightly timbered country comprising of basalt and sandy loam soils.

With a self-replacing Angus herd, its main job is to send weaner steers to Wilmot's home property at Ebor for finishing.

Now that it has built its soil health, and thus carrying capacity, it is also turning over some trade cattle as seasons permit.

It is currently running 800 cows plus 200 replacement heifers, with 800 females pregnancy-tested-in-calf.

That's a long way from the 450 it was down to in 2015.

Big investment in water and wire went into switching Woodburn over to a rotational grazing model and the genetics required to perform at the current level are high-end but for Woodburn's managers, Grant and Tanya Wickham, the real secret to success has been in observation.

Asked what his key piece of advice would be to anyone else looking at taking a similar path, Mr Wickham said: "Keep looking at your paddocks and at your stock - they'll always tell you what you need to do."

"See what cattle target in paddocks and what they leave behind.

"When you put cattle in a paddock, look at where they go first. We've observed cows bypass clover entirely which tells you they are looking for a change in their diet. That tells you the value of a big variety of species in a paddock."

The sales pitch on Woodburn claimed it could run 1200 head but Mr Wickham said it became clear pretty quickly that was not going to happen.

"In the beginning we made poor decisions not matching stocking rate to rainfall and we had no subdivisions of paddocks," he said.

"It was effectively a man-made drought."

So the rather drastic decision was made to destock right back to 450 head and work on paddock recovery.

"We went through a lot of pain to learn these lessons," Mr Wickham said.

At a cost of around $400,000, Woodburn's owners have put down 28 kilometers of pipe, put in 57 extra water troughs and 56km of single hot wire fence.

From the initial 46 paddocks, they now have 134, with the breeder paddocks around 20ha and the others ranging from 12ha to 15ha.

The water tank capacity is now 247,000 litres.

The doubling of capacity in the front cell has allowed for trade cattle to come in, and the past few seasons some of those were also sent onto Wilmot for grass finishing.

In the growing season, Woodburn can now take on up to 550 trades.

The average daily weight gain of the trades is between 0.5 and 0.8kg.

They are mainly yearling steers but Woodburn also dabbles in a few cows and calves.

While the increased production is phenomenal, it has been post-drought recovery that Mr Wickham says has been the most impressive.

After the 2019 drought, he estimated a 12-month recovery would be required before Woodburn could return to that level of stocking.

"Within two months we had enough feed to go from 200 females to 450," he said.

"As the good season continued we went up to 1200 in total and we could've gone harder but we wanted to protect paddocks.

"That sort of post-drought performance blew us away - to see what country managed this way can do. It's stuff you couldn't imagine."

Woodburn's turnaround was guided by Maia Grazing consultant Bart Davidson, who said the rest period sweet spot on the property seemed to be 60 days.

Superphosphate fertiliser was traded in for some sulphur and lime, and more recently chicken manure.

Mr Wickham said as the new management philosophy kicked into gear, plants came back that hadn't been seen before, like red clover, and there was far greater volumes of cocksfoot and fescue.

Mr Davidson said Woodburn had massively increased feed quality and quantity ahead of grazes and was still leaving a good amount of feed behind.