By growing leucaena, Tom and Ruth Wagner's extensive cattle breeding and finishing enterprise now has the flexibility to turnoff younger cattle to target the lucrative MSA carcase grade market.
The Wagner family operate Coreen, fronting the Mackenzie River north of Dingo, where they have 970 hectares of irrigated and dryland leucaena.
The Wagners bought the highly developed 4657ha Coreen holding five years ago and opted to transform 365ha of previously flood-irrigated cotton country and 607ha of dryland grain cultivation into leucaena-based pasture.
With 202ha of leucaena on their Arcadia Valley home property, Nuga Nuga, and a further 1012ha of well-established leucaena on their Banana district finishing block, Woolandoon, they strongly endorse the contribution of this high protein leguminous fodder shrub to their bottom line.
Coreen manager Lawrie Butler used a precision cotton planter to establish the Cunningham variety leucaena on 6m centre row spacings with twin rows 1m apart.
The irrigated stands were planted at 3kg/ha and the dryland at 1.5kg/ha.
A shielded sprayer applied a herbicide band over the leucaena rows to remove all grass and weed competition.
The interrow spacing was cultivated three times before it was planted with 1.2kg/ha of Gatton panic.
Mr Wagner said he was able to lightly graze the spring planted irrigated leucaena six months after establishment prior to winter but preferred to leave the dryland stands to grow out to 2.4m high over 12-18 months which also allowed the Gatton panic to seed twice.
Last year, the Wagners were marketing their steer turnoff at 460kg liveweight to Jap ox feedlot finishers.
"Thanks to a consistent liveweight gain of 0.8kg/head/year off the leucaena pasture, we have the flexibility to change our focus to the MSA market," Mr Wagner said.
"MSA grading demands a milk tooth steer or heifer at 180kg dressed weight with a fat cover range or 7mm to 22mm.
"We have had no problem meeting the MSA carcase specifications and with a higher turnover of younger cattle returning around $3.50/kg d.w., the leucaena is paying its way."
Coreen runs a 750 head breeding herd on its buffel country.
These breeders are mostly Charolais and Red Brangus cross females joined to home-bred Charolais bulls. Wagner Charolais stud was established at Nuga Nuga 12 years ago and supports 200 purebred breeders.
Two major flood events on the Mackenzie River last summer inundated 810ha at Coreen which interfered with the efficacy of the rumen bug.
10pc of each mob is drenched with the bug to counter the leucaena plant’s mimosine toxicity.
"Our herd management practice is to ensure some cattle are always in the leucaena to maintain the exposure to the bug, but the artificially cultured bug does not appear to be as robust," Mr Wagner said.
Mr Wagner said the Coreen leucaena pastures were stocked with 600 to 1000 weaners annually.
Animals were averaging 280kg liveweight gain a year at a stocking rate of a beast to 1.2 to 1.6ha on dryland and one to 0.6ha on irrigated leucaena.
"We are progressing the subdivision of the leucaena for a rotational grazing system using a centralised laneway in combination with 28-32ha paddocks," he said.
"Our aim is to minimise labour by mustering the cattle from one paddock to the next using a combination of controlled watering points and spear trap gates.
"To date, we have not required any mechanical leucaena topping as the cattle keep the plants at around 1.5m high but the huge volume of feed produced by Cunningham has placed pressure on the available grass.
"We require more roughage in the system to balance the high protein with the grass energy supply, so we are going to plant Sugargraze forage sorghum interrow following success with silk sorghum last season.
"Cattle grazing the leucaena will also be given access to molasses as a further energy source. This decision is based on North Queensland research that indicates 2kg/hd/day of molasses could add 0.5kg/hd/day liveweight gain if energy is short."
Mr Wagner said the challenge was to further fine tune the leucaena system to achieve a 300kg/head/year production goal.
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