So exciting watching the grass grow

Gerard and Elizabeth Lyons find watching the grass grow on their 1500ha Majors Creek property “Four Mile” to be one of their most exciting pastimes.

And that’s not because they’re bored.

Since moving to Four Mile in 2015, the graziers have focused foremost on their land, rather than their cattle.

The result is nothing short of spectacular.

By regularly moving herds through their paddocks, they were able to implement a grazing regime that included a lot of rest for their pasture.

They made headway and participated in the Grazing Best Management Practices (Grazing BMP) program, before, in 2023, signing up to the Queensland Government’s Grazing Resilience and Sustainable Solutions (GRASS) program.

Gerard Lyons with his new GRASS-funded fence.

When NQ Dry Tropics’ Carleigh Drew visited Four Mile in 2023 to develop a GRASS Action Plan, the three of them identified several areas of C and D condition land (about 440ha altogether), a relic of sustained historical set stocking on the property.

Gerard had been experimenting with electric fencing to cut two paddocks totalling 550ha into six and was convinced he could promote recovery of native 3P species if he could implement a more intensive rotation of a mob of 300-400 head alternating grazing with long periods of rest.

NQ Dry Tropics supported the idea and through the GRASS program, helped with the installation of permanent fencing.

Thanks to Gerard’s electric fence experiments, watering points in each of the new paddocks were already available.

Gerard’s philosophy is pretty simple when it comes to paddocks, two is better than one, four is better still (and often the sweet spot between cost and return in the early stages of implementing a new grazing regime) but the ideal is eight.

If he has eight paddocks, at least one paddock will get 12 months rest at the end of each seven-year cycle. Then it will be grazed and rested, the grazing becoming a little more intense each year until once again it is in line for a year off. Working on that seven-year cycle, there is always a “spare” paddock in case something happens.

He said that sort of regime encouraged the proliferation of native grasses, sometimes with dramatic effect.

He said pangola, for instance, had increased six-fold across the property since they started spelling paddocks in 2017.

It also helps control weeds.

“The more the grass moves in, the more the weeds move out,” he said.

The couple has been very determined to tackle degraded areas of the property and as a result, they have a healthy ecosystem with a thick carpet of ground cover over almost every square metre.

“We’re right on the river, so we can’t afford to have bare country,” Elizabeth said.

One of the happy lessons learnt since implementing his rotational grazing regime is that the cattle love it.

Moving mobs of cattle hasn’t increased their daily workload on the property. In fact, it’s easier, because the job of flushing cattle out of dense scrub is a thing of the past.

“The cattle go looking for change,” Gerard said.

“They’re ready to move before you’re ready to move them.”

And while they’re waiting at the gate, knowing they’re going to be moved onto fresh, green pick, it’s easy to see how well they’re holding condition, even towards the end of the dry season.