South West NRM is hosting a free Rumen8 workshop in Bunbury on 15 December to help producers allocate feed effectively this season.
Local producers have been having great success using the program over the past few years with many saying it’s really easy to use.
Before using Rumen8, farmer Paula Carrol said she used a few formulas to work out what her cattle should be getting, but the formulas were really basic and didn’t take into account the quality of the hay they were feeding, so there was a lot of guess work.
“With Rumen8, I can input our data, our type of cattle, pregnancy and lactation status, and feed analyses that we’d done ourselves,” Paula said.
“Factoring in all that detail tells us exactly what we need to feed.”
Serpentine-Jarrahdale beef farmer Mark Thomas said one of his biggest gains had come from using Rumen8.
“I have several different types of feed I can use, from dry feed in the paddock, kikuyu in summer, old hay, new hay, silage, and pellets, all with different feed quality and protein,” he said.
“I use Rumen8 to balance what I am feeding to each class of stock so they get enough nutrition without wasting feed.”
The workshop will cover how to use the free computer program Rumen8, co-developed by Dr Martin Staines, a ruminant nutritionist with over 26 years of experience in Western Australia.
“Having a good understanding of nutrition helps you make better decisions to increase farm profit and make the most of the feed resources you have,” said Martin.
The workshop will be run by Jeisane Accioly from Western Beef Association.
Places are limited so jump on the booking page to sign up.
The FEaST2030 project is supported by the Australian Government through funding from the Natural Heritage Trust under the Climate-Smart Agriculture Program and delivered by South West NRM, a member of the Commonwealth Regional Delivery Partners panel.