Early Weaning Trial
Hillside Station
Lead: Tahree Kammann
Region: East Pilbara
Hectares: 653, 839
Environment: Spinifex, buffel grass, and perennials on red sandy clays and red loamy sands.
Challenge Identified: Weaners not making the trucking weight of 150 kg for transport to QLD prior to the wet season.
Status: Complete. Hillside’s management team plans to repeat the process with new research goals in 2026.
Approach
Tahree is trialling techniques to see how quickly weaners can be brought up to trucking weight and trucked to QLD holdings within Smoothy Cattle Co.
This reduces the carrying pressure on the land in two ways: the weaners are moved off station efficiently, and the cow’s energy needs are reduced once the calf is weaned. Alongside removing unproductive cattle, this project should improve land health and profit margins simultaneously.
Install weaner yards within the existing stockyards, including new troughs.
Install lick feeders in the weaner paddocks.
Purchase and integrate Sapien software for record keeping.
Purchase and integrate Optiweigh unit for real time weight records with minimal staff input.
Wean calves if they have reached 100kg when processing through the yards.
Induct the weaner mobs into the trial. All mobs received Ultravac 5-in-1, and Milne Early Weaner Pellets.
Protocol 1: Super Grade Rhodes Hay (high quality) + Multimin
Protocol 2: Super Grade Rhodes Hay (high quality)
Protocol 3: P2 Rhodes Hay (lower quality) + Multimin
Protocol 4: P2 Rhodes Hay (lower quality)
Yard wean the inducted mobs for 7-10 days.
Shift weaner mobs into allocated paddocks for 45-60 days with Optiweigh recordings at a specified number of days for each paddock.
Analyse and compare the results.
Key Insights
1
Feed quality not mineral supplementation was the main driver of weight gain across every mob of weaners.
2
Optiweigh provided real-time insights into which animals were close to or at trucking weight without having to yard the entire mob and weigh them manually. Or, guess via observation.
3
Undertaking a research trial on-station has given us new insight into how much information we can gather, and what kind of management techniques we can test. Especially since PEN has given us the skills to do it well.
4
Checking feed quality is a simple tool that can have large impact to your business. Different feeds have different places in our system now.
Impact & Results
There were a few hiccups along the way as we tried our hand at running a research project while mustering. Not to mention throwing a 2-day PEN event in the middle of it. We now know that we can boost the number of animals that reach trucking weight before the wet season. It’s not a low-labour-input system, but it is doable. We’ve also learnt where to focus next year, and what we don’t want to do next time we run a trial like this.
What was discovered:
- The time it took to maintain good science protocols in a functioning mustering program was more than we expected. We’ll be tweaking the system next time.
- Our crew had a more positive outlook on the yard work with a vested interest in seeing how they could provide input into getting weaners to trucking weight sooner.
- Multimin had negligible impact on the weights of the weaners.
- P2 Rhodes Hay (lower quality) did well in the yard setting, but the weaners struggled to maintain weight gain in the paddock setting.
- Super Grade Rhodes Hay (higher quality) performed better across the combination of yard and paddock weaning.
- We believe this leads to the conclusion that rumen maturity in the weaners is a key component to successful weaning at an earlier date.
- To that end, the Hillside management team is keen to look into ways to help weaners get to rumen maturity sooner alongside high-quality feed.
Benefits beyond Hillside:
Weaning early can be done for several reasons. We hope that, by showing how we went about trialling it, it can be translated into other management systems with a positive effect. Particularly when poor seasons necessitate weaning earlier than is traditionally done.