Late Spring and El Nina

 Hello and thanks for reading this rather belated blog post. Things have been ridiculous this year, haven't they? COVID-19 seemed to be making things easier to start - no more travelling for work or horse events - but then things just got out of control with home schooling and working at home. I've been taking photos for this post though, so at least there's a consolation prize there!

This was shaping up to be a wet and relatively mild spring and summer with an El Nina originally slated as a 50% chance but this has firmed up to about 80% which is pretty fantastic. The rain and warmth has meant an absolutely bumper grass growth season and a lot of friends and farmers around the district are baling hay like their lives depend on it!

Our grasses have really flourished and we are very pleased with how the property looks at this stage, after only 4 years. The first two photos were taken in the first spring we moved onto the property. This was in 2016 and remains one of the wettest winters/springs on record for this area. It literally rained every day for 4 months. But even with this rain the ground cover is patchy and the majority of plant growth was flat weed (false dandelion) and cape weed.

Winter 2017

You can see the bare patches in both the older photos - there was some good grass there but a lot of dirt and this is always bad. It is far more preferable to have something growing - even weeds - than nothing. The earth is not designed to have no plant matter growing in and through it. 

December 2019

But then you look at these photos taken a couple of weeks ago and we're looking at a vastly different land health rating. The grasses are diverse with a few weeds (you can see a little cape weed in the photo below) but the grasses are out-competing anything undesirable. The wind literally moves through the grasses on the slopes like waves. 

November 2020

October 2020

How did we do it? It's a combination of time, rest, judicious weed spraying and use of foliants and soil conditioners, and dung beetles. We only re-seeded small sections of the paddocks where the weeds were really thick and died off to leave bare earth, the rest is just natural seeding and fallow time. We have instituted a very strict system of rotation that means we have de-stocked a little, and will be selling three more horses in January, as well as resting and spraying for flat weed at certain times of the year. We use the Goode's Organics NPK with the MCPA selective herbicide, but also the Cal+Mag spray with a oil sticker in summer when not using a herbicide. Not much, to be honest, as spraying is so labour and time-intensive, but we think it's making a difference.

We are always learning more about plants, weeds and soils. We had a pretty serious infestation of storks bill, which is a nasty weed that invades hard and produces these ingenious pointy seed heads with long tails that burrow into the fur and wool. I panicked a bit the first early summer we saw this plant as it just took over, like cape weed. I did some reading on it and found it wasn't toxic to horses and they would sometimes eat it (though it does cause photosensitivity in sheep). Best of all, I knew from last summer that come the hot weather this weed would simply disappear. Also, healthy grasses just outcompete it.

And lo and behold, that is precisely what happened. I did spray two paddocks that were choked with it but I probably shouldn't have bothered. The paddocks are lush with grass and there is no discernible difference between the paddocks I sprayed and the ones I didn't. The MCPA is actually only partially effective on stork's bill anyway, so I was probably better not to bother. 

The photos below show the way we still have to go before the paddocks are optimal.

Weeds are better than nothing - cape weed just starting to grow in bare earth

These two photos show stork's bill in action, though not at the height of it's growing period. The pointy green pods (like big sperms!) hold half a dozen seeds each. We'll probably never eradicate it but you can see that it is an early coloniser, like most weeds, and covers bare earth. It is in competition with grasses and a bit of sub clover in the lower pic and eventually loses to the grasses and the heat. 

Much like cape weed, this one just fades away and does  no real harm. The worms love cape weed and I think this seasonal invasion of these two weeds is just part of the cycle now. The horses avoid them if they don't like them and there's not so much of either that they have no choice but to eat them.

We are excited and proud of the way the place is looking now. The grasses are so healthy and the horses in turn look wonderful. The only problem we've had this year, that we've never had before, is some laminitis in a few horses. Not full blown founder, but just some tenderness in the feet. We think this is due to the levels of clover in a couple of the paddocks and we've been spraying it back a little so that the horses can manage it. An ideal upper limit of 15-20% clover seems the way to go and we've been up over 30-35% in some paddocks!

More on that in the next blog!

Hope you're all well and safe and looking forward to more life getting back to normal as COVID restrictions are eased. Thanks for reading!

We are looking at hosting a couple of half and full day workshops on our property for those of you interested in learning more about how we are doing what we're doing. Get in touch if you'd be interested in coming along.

Winter Projects and Updates

Brrrrrrrrr! It's been a pretty cold and wet winter here at Pine Hill. We love the rain, of course, and our dams and tanks are full to overflowing, but it's starting to get a bit old now. Bring on spring!

This post will showcase our major creek rehabilitation project, funded with a grant from the local water management authority. It's a project that would have involved tree planting parties and working bees had COVID not shoved its snout in and stuffed everything up! So, it's just been me and Charles doing all the hard work, but actually it's turned out really well. There's nothing quite like planting in a beautiful quiet space with a running creek in the background to get your mind off the troubles of the world.

I've been putting videos and pictures up more regularly on our Facebook page - Pine Hill Equestrian - if that is something you're interested in. Apologies to those who have been following that because the images are reproduced here.

This photo shows the bottom half of our creek and you can see the fencing on either side. This area of creek does not run often - only after significant and consistent rainfall. You can't seek all the planting (yet!) but our hope is, once those grasses, bushes and trees start to take hold, the water table will be brought more consistently to the surface and the creek will run more regularly. Maybe even all year round!

You can see the young wattle tree growing in the left foreground. This was planted about 18 months ago and the pond you can see mid-picture is actually a large eroded area that may slowly fill in (or not!) as the creek recovers.

The big tree is actually two trees almost entwined - one a Blackwood (I've planted a heap of those now!), and the other a gum of some kind. These are the only large, mature native trees for at least 300 metres.

 This is the new loafing area the clever Charles built. The water trough is installed here (not visible in this pic as it hadn't been installed when this was taken) and the horses already enjoy hanging around in here instead of on the pasture. Eventually, the 'back paddock' that is on the right of the picture, and is currently about 30 acres, will be divided into four paddocks connected to this loafing area. One paddock will hopefully produce hay, down the track.

The creek runs down the left of this shot, and you can see the big trees in the background. I have planted several trees around the loafing area and the pond though we are looking at shade options for the next few years while those trees grow.

 This is the midway point of the creek and, as you can seek, a favourite area for the kids to play in - even in winter! The creek runs over large rocks and forms this little pool. There is always water in this pool, even in the height of summer.

I planted a lot of rushes, lillies, and a water-loving species of tea tree here to help slow and filter the water as it runs down the hill. There are always frogs and birds around here.

In the rocky surrounding areas, I planted various plants and grasses with some red gums and apple boxes. This place already looks so much healthier now the horses can't get into it and wreck it.

My office!

 This video and the two photos showcase the most beautiful part of our property. This is nearing the top of the creek area, where the water runs all the time - though often dips below ground level in summer.

Water so clear you can't see it!

You can see how green and lush it is after a wet winter. I planted a lot of rushes, lillies and shrubs along the bank to help stabilise the banks and slow the speed of the water as it runs over rock. This area is already home to a lot of little creatures and hopefully the planting will help provided habitat for even more.

 This photo shows one of the sites where we have placed dead branches and boughs to slow the water. This is an approach we have found really effective in mitigating erosion damage and helping the water spread and stay for longer. Without trees and plants holding the banks together (the grass has been great but can't withstand fast-flowing water for long), the banks would erode further. This also stops stock stepping in your watercourse if you haven't been able to fence it off yet.

The mosses on the right are just stunning and hold an incredible amount of water. You can see several species just in this small area. I've been working hard to protect mosses at our place, particularly on the big chunks of rock in the middle of soaks (ie areas where the water table is close to or at the surface/ground level).

Only 63 to go! This was my dumping site for the tube stock containers. 1000 plants all up. I can't believe I managed to get them all in!

 It has been absolutely fascinating to watch the performance of our pastures over the past three months. Given how wet it has been, I decided not to undertake any weed spraying so as not to contaminate our precious wet areas (half the farm becomes waterlogged at this time of year!). This is also in keeping with my belief that winter is a time of dormancy - for me as well as the land and animals. I don't think winter spraying is a good use of herbicide as nothing grows to replace the weeds at this time, except more weeds!

You'll notice the different species and colours of grass and plants in this photo. The larger green areas are capeweed, the long reddish grasses are red grass and the other grasses are various native and introduced species such as wallaby grass, kangaroo grass, cocksfoot, phalaris and clover. This is early winter and the grasses (and capeweed!) are much more lush now as this paddock gets very wet in winter. As a result, I decided not to put horses in it while it's so wet and the pasture is loving it.

My view on weeds has really crystallised over the past year. All weeds tell you something about your soil, and most weeds are only half bad. For example, flat weed and capeweed hold our soil together and provide a great habitat for worms. They LOVE the weeds! Over the past few years, as we have increased the pH of our soil, encouraged dung beetles and practiced rotational grazing, the weeds have decreased and the species of weed has changed. I will definitely have to attack the false radish (also called storks bill) this spring as it is very invasive, but the others I won't bother much with. Capeweed just dies off in the heat of summer and tends to be easily out-competed by grasses. Flatweed has really reduced now so I just ignore it.

Lastly, my beloved dung beetles. The pic below is of a big healthy B. Bison boy that we captured in a trap at the beginning of winter. I was ecstatic to find him (and a few of his friends and family!) as this is a great sign that our dung beetle-friendly horse management program is working. B. Bison is a wintering beetle that will remain active all winter, during manure up to 40cm below the surface and effectively conditioning our soil. Go little guy!

Unfortunately, as the fox scat on the left shows, our resident fox/es eat dung beetles. You can see in the bottom third of the picture the black body parts of the beetles in the grey remains of the scat. This is something to watch out for if you have an abundance of foxes. Just one more reason to work on controlling and eliminating feral animals.

And lastly, more evidence our management approach is really paying off. This picture is one I took when I moved a horse tyre feeder last week. See all those worms? They just weren't there two years ago. I recall planting trees and never seeing a worm in any of the holes I dug. Worms really do tell you how your soil is going and this seems to be a pretty big tick!

Dung Beetles and Horse Wormers

Well, it's been a while, but considering we have lived through catastrophic bushfires and now a global pandemic, I think I have a good excuse not to have written a post in a few months! I hope all who read this stay well and sane and that we all come out the other side of this incredible upheaval soon enough.

Here at Pine Hill, though, the work hasn't stopped. And I wanted to collate my last few months of research and reading on the effect chemical wormers have been found to have on dung beetle populations. I started this little side project when I realised I would absolutely need to worm my horses this autumn for bots, given the number of eggs I was seeing and trying to remove (and with over a dozen horses on the property, spending hours a day removing bot eggs just wasn't feasible!). The list of 'safe' wormers I had been given by the Landcare dung beetle group only mentioned cattle and sheep worming products so that was no help whatsoever.

I had wanted to undertake worming as needed using Fecal Egg Counting, however I realised there are significant problems with this approach. The first is that not all invasive worm species leave eggs in dung - bots are a good case in point. Second was that I would have to either send specimens off fairly regularly for examination, or drop a cool $500 or so on my own microscope (which I DO plan on doing when I can!). Lastly, it was a very troublesome and time-consuming task to identify manure from individual horses, grab it before the beetles did, wrap it in damp newspaper and a plastic bag, label it and stick it in the freezer. I wanted to have tests connected to individual horses rather than just herd samples so I could really target my worming program. Given that I work full-time and have two kids, this just wasn't working.

So, I began to research horse wormers. Here's what I found (all sources listed at the end):

The active ingredients in wormers used to be fairly simple and basic: ivermectin was by far the most common, and still forms the active ingredient in most wormers on the market - in one form or another. Ivermectin has since been formulated into more potent (and therefore lower doses can be used) compounds such as avermectin and abamectin, as well as eprinomectin (safe for dairy cows) and doramectin (produced less discomfort to the animal on administration). Ivermectin and related drugs are very toxic to dung beetles in Australia. From here on in, when I refer to 'ivermectin' I'm including all the variations listed above.

I focused on research conducted in Australia and other like countries with dry summers and cooler wetter winters (ie South Africa, parts of America, Spain etc) rather than UK studies or studies in tropical countries. It appears rain and humidity have a significant impact on the mortality/adverse effects of ivermectin etc on beetles. Studies showed that:

• As horses aren't ruminants (ie they don't digest their food to the same stage cows do, for example), they excrete their food much faster and don't breakdown/metabolise the wormer in their gut at the same rate. This means that horse dung contains much higher concentrations of toxins than cow manure and is therefore more toxic to dung beetles.
• Ivermectin significantly reduces dung beetle brood emergence and brood take roughly 2.5 times longer to emerge than normal. So, this slows the beetle breeding rate significantly.
• Ivermectin kills all the dung beetles ingesting treated dung for at least the first 24 hours post-worming and this mortality rate gradually reduces to no apparent effect on the beetles by day 6. 
• Ivermectin-treated manure is actually really attractive to dung beetles for up to 30 days! So, if you treat one horse with ivermectin but the others in the paddock aren't treated, the dung beetles will prefer the treated dung and this obviously results in higher mortality. 
• Specific species of dung beetle are more susceptible to ivermectin than others. For example,   O. Binodis is highly sensitive - ivermectin is 100% lethal to Binodis for the first week and it takes over eight weeks for ivermectin to have no measurable effect on this beetle. 
• The ecotoxilogical effects of ivermectin are much more severe in drought conditions.
• Abamectin/ivermectin remain in dung samples for up to 180 days. Abamectin is particularly nasty for dung beetles in any concentration at all. Similarly, eprinomectin is highly toxic to dung beetles, reducing the next generation by 25%-30%.

From this research I could ascertain that, if you must use ivermectin-based wormers:

1. Keep your horse away from your pastures and pick up and bag all manure from that horse as quickly as you can, for at least the first couple of days and this will drastically reduce the effect on your dung beetle population. 
2. High rainfall appears to mitigate the detrimental effects on dung beetles - so if you are considering using an ivermectin-based wormer, wait til it's about to rain and this will help alleviate some of the toxicity to dung beetles.

However, there really isn't a safe way to use ivermectin and its variants in relation to dung beetles. Ivermectin stays around for over four months, though only abamectin, the most toxic variant to dung beetles, is still harmful by this time.

Why don't we just use wormers that don't contain ivermectin, I hear you ask? Well, there really aren't many that don't, and those that don't generally don't treat horses for all known worms, including bots. I have an annual worming program - ie I only worm all the horses once per year - in Autumn. There is really no way to get rid of bloody bots, so I must use a boticide. The usual 'dung-beetle safe' or 'rotational' wormers don't do bots too.

The main wormer I had used before was 'Strategy T', manufactured by Virbac, and containing oxfendazole and pyrantel as dual active ingredients. Oxfendazole appears to have no observable effect on dung beetles (yey!) and pyrantel is similarly benign for invertebrates but the thesis is that it may adversely effect your soil microbiome and potentially earthworms. Either way, it doesn't do bots, and this made it a bit useless for me.

With regard to boticides, there is one active compound mentioned in the research that seems to be less toxic to dung beetles. Moxidectin, at recommended dosage levels, appears to have little effect on dung beetles, particularly after 2 days. However, at higher levels this compound is problematic and it seems to be somewhat toxic to dung beetles for the first two days at least. This is one of the active ingredients in Equest Plus Tape, made by Zoetis.

The other active ingredient is praziquantel. This is non-lethal and appears non-toxic for dung beetles. I could only find one study that tested praziquantel but it showed a definite lack of lethality until extremely high doses. 

I receive absolutely no sponsorship from Zoetis (or, for that matter Virbac) and have no relationship with either company. I found the array of wormers on the market completely baffling and decided to sit down and do my own research to make sure any chemical wormer I'm giving my horses is as safe for my beloved beetles as possible. So, I'm giving Equest Plus Tape a go for this round and will closely monitor my beetle populations.

I have just discovered our very first B. bison, a wintering beetle. This means we finally have dung beetles working on our property all year round! The bison is a great beetle, burying its brood in balls of manure 20-40cm below the dung. This is some deep soil conditioning going on all winter long. Love it. However, this is also worrying if I'm using a chemical wormer that may have an adverse impact on those beetles. I think at this point it's a matter of weighing up your options and just doing the best we can!

Please leave comments or questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Or just email me at pinehillpastoral@gmail.com.

References:

Jacobs, C.T. & Scholtz, C.H., 2015, ‘A review on the effect of macrocyclic lactones on dung-dwelling insects: Toxicity of macrocyclic lactones to dung beetles’, Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research 82(1), Art. #858, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ojvr.v82i1.858

Alexander, M. & Wardaugh, K., 2001, 'The Bardon Report' (Workshop on the Effects of Paraciticides on Dung Beetles', CSIRO Entomology Technical Report No. 89

Hempel, H. et al, 2006, 'Toxicity of four veterinary parasiticides on larvae of the dung beetle Aphodius Constans  in the laboratory' Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Vol. 25, No. 12 pp 3155-3163

Summer Pastures

Wow. What a summer it has been so far here in country Victoria. Between the heat and the fires and now the beautiful temperate weather with a decent bit of rain, it has been a really weird summer full of stress and uncertainty. We have been very lucky here at Pine Hill to escape direct fire threat, though it looked bad for a few days there, and we are very mindful of our friends and communities around us that are doing it tough right now. Summer is not over, though, so we are not relaxing just yet! To be honest, it feels like we'll never be relaxed again.

But on to more blog-relevant things! I thought I would do a post about managing pastures in the hot dry of summer. When I say 'pasture' I mean the grass that is growing in your paddocks, I don't mean the 'improved' green stuff that farmers/croppers grow for hay or cattle. I specifically want to talk about the mix of mainly native with some introduced species of grasses we have actively encouraged on our property. This mix of grasses seems optimal for horses and we have never had a case of laminitis, obesity or colic in our horses while grazing on this kind of pasture.

The following two pics are from late spring. We obviously had OK rain (still below average but far better than our friends in NSW and QLD) and we made a really concerted effort to rest paddocks for a number of weeks to give spring grass the opportunity to grow. We have found the number one thing we do that makes a big difference to grass coverage and quality is spelling. When grasses have a decent opportunity to recover, they do it with a vengeance. All the fertiliser, foliant and soil conditioner in the world won't do squat if the stocking rate is static and your grass never gets a chance to grow.

This paddock had a good 10 weeks' rest. You can see the green shorter grass and longer yellow grasses in there. Both are natives - I think the yellow is 'hairy panic' (I shit you not, that's its name!) and the green is either kangaroo or wallaby grass. I talk more about this paddock further down as its taken a lot of work to get it to this point!







The paddock on the right (featuring the gorgeous Irish girls Annie and Rose), had a big spell of about 4 or 5 months over winter. This paddock is a bit of challenge because of the stand of radiata pines that grows on the top of the hill off to the left of this photo. This species of pine, commonly used in plantations for decking and playgrounds, really acidifies the soil. Nothing but weeds grow beneath these trees, unlike the native pines that grow around our place. So, I sprayed this paddock for flatweed in the autumn and left it. It's already quite improved. That black rock is granite and there is a lot of sub-surface water in this area. Don't be fooled by the green strip - that's flatweed I missed! The whole paddock looked like that.

The second big thing that affects our pasture is when the dung beetles really kick off. The manure on the left has been 'dung beetled' and you can see the flattened, chewed up appearance of the dung. The beetles have essentially processed the manure, sucking the water out of it and burying it in the soil underneath in a series of holes, some up to 10cm deep. This obviously conditions the soil over time and provides much-needed organic matter. We LOVE our dung beetles.

A by-product of dung beetles is the protection it gives the soil and grasses underneath the dung from the drying heat of sun and wind. You can see the green grass shoots pushing up through the manure and around the dung pile itself. Yes, some of this is nutrient-driven, but the manure acts as a mulch, too, and I think this has quite a positive effect over summer.

Good for our native birds, but not so good for the dung beetles, but the beetles are a great source of protein! The magpies, along with the water birds that flocked to our place this summer because of the drought to the north, liked picking through manure for the beetles. Bummer, but hey, I can't speak ill of the maggies. They are wonderful birds and they didn't do much damage to the beetles population!

The dung beetles were really late and a bit patchy this summer. I heard from other dung beetle monitors that the beetles were not at usual levels by December, and it was interesting that we had a really high number of E. fulvus but very few of our other, more common species, like O. aygulus, O. binodis and O. taurus. However, by mid-January, O. fulvus was on the definite decline (or at least back to more usual levels) and the other three species were in much more abundant numbers. Not sure what to make of that. We had a couple of very cold nights quite late in the year (November) and some very hot days very early in the summer (40 degrees plus), so that may have affected the breeding and emergence of some of the beetles.

 These next two photos show the grass cover we've managed to maintain this summer. You can see the smoke haze in the distance - this was before the big fires really took off to our south and we couldn't even see those hills in the distance! This paddock had been spelled for about two months and had received about 10mm of rain in that time.

The diversity of grasses is pretty clear in this lower photo. This is a different paddock, one that has been pretty difficult to get to this point (this is the paddock I mentioned at the start of the photos). Situated on a big open slope, with no mature trees to date, this paddock was just choking with flat weed. I have sprayed it at least four times over two years with MCPA, mainly to knock out the flatweed, but also twice in spring as stork's bill really took off.

There is a big soak running through this paddock and I planted five trees when we first arrived, all of which are now established and three feet tall now. The big black lump is a granite rock and you can see the gully we are now fencing off and rehabilitating off in the distance at the top of the photo. Because of the water within the soil, I have had to be very careful about timing of the herbicide application. Too wet and it will contaminate the water course, too dry and the dying weeds will just leave big bare patches of dirt that will either blow away or be colonised by other weeds.

The take home message here is that, once summer hits its really too late to do much to improve the grasses you have. Summer is not the time to be putting down fertiliser or trying to grow grasses. Unless it rains a lot! But putting the work in during the Autumn to Spring seasons planting trees, spelling paddocks, applying soil conditioner or foliant, moving away from chemical wormers to encourage dung beetles, all of this will vastly improve your likelihood of maintaining grass cover over summer. Drought is a whole other thing, but there is now an expanding area of research into approaches like natural sequence farming that essentially drought-proof your property. That's our next holy grail!