GSSA Pasture Roadshow 2025: Picking a cultivar is only half the job, grazing it right is the rest

Article summary: The Grasslands Society of Southern Australia Pasture Roadshow (Victoria, 17–18 Sep 2025) is a timely reminder that cultivar choice is only the starting point. This guide breaks renovation into three steps: Choose (fit to environment), Establish (timing and early grazing), Persist (residuals, rest, weed pressure). It also shows what success looks like at 30, 90 and 180 days, and how to use Pasture.io to compare paddock performance pre- and post-renovation across seasons.

The roadshow lesson: trials show potential, grazing decides reality

The GSSA Pasture Roadshow (Victoria, 17–18 September 2025) is built around seeing pasture cultivars in real trial sites, across real environments.

That’s exactly why it’s such a useful reset for pasture renovation thinking:

A cultivar can be “right on paper” and still fail if it’s established poorly or grazed the wrong way in year one.

So if you’re planning a renovation this autumn, don’t start with seed. Start with the three-step job:

Choose → Establish → Persist

Choose: match species and cultivar to the paddock, not the catalogue

Step 1: Decide if you really need a renovation

If a pasture is thinning out, it’s tempting to jump straight to resowing. Agriculture Victoria suggests using perennial grass composition as a simple guide: if desirable perennial grasses are above 70%, the pasture is still productive; if they’re below 50%, reseeding is likely to lift yield and feed value.

Before you resow, ask: what caused the decline? If it was fertility or grazing pressure and you don’t fix that, you’ll repeat the same outcome.

Step 2: Use “fit criteria” to narrow your options

Keep it simple. The best mix on your farm is the one that fits your constraints:

• Soil and drainage: waterlogging risk, acidity, compaction history

• Rainfall reliability: do you need summer activity, or winter reliability, or both?

• Grazing intensity: how tight do you need to graze, and how often can you rotate?

• Livestock class: set stocked lambing paddocks behave differently to high-demand dairy or finishing stock

Step 3: Soil test before you spend money

Pasture renovation is easiest to get wrong when soil constraints are ignored. MLA recommends assessing soil and nutrient levels using paddock history plus soil testing as part of establishment planning.

If you’re in Victoria, Agriculture Victoria notes phosphorus is vital for early root formation and that Olsen P is commonly used for pasture soils.

Establish: timing and early grazing that builds density

If establishment is shaky, persistence becomes wishful thinking.

The early establishment priorities

1. Even emergence and strong anchoring

2. Fast canopy fill (so weeds don’t own the paddock)

3. A smart first graze that encourages tillering and lets clover see light

MLA’s establishment guide emphasises post-emergent management as the phase that sets up a persistent pasture, including close monitoring for weeds and pests.

First grazing: the “right time” is about anchoring, not the calendar

A practical rule from NSW DPI: first graze when grasses are 10–15 cm tall, soil is moist, and plants are well anchored, then leave a protective residual (at least 5 cm is suggested in that guide).

MLA’s guide uses the same readiness cues (10–15 cm tall and well anchored) and stresses managing first grazing carefully, especially if growth is slow or conditions are dry.

The common point: graze to help the pasture, not because the paddock looks “ready enough”.

Persist: residuals, rest, and weed pressure keep the good species dominant

Most pastures don’t fail because the seed was wrong. They fail because:

• grazing gets too tight for too long, or

• rest periods are too short, or

• weeds get a free run early

Residuals and rest are your persistence insurance

Rest periods should expand when growth is slow and shorten when growth is fast. MLA’s grazing guidance notes that when growth is slow (winter/dry), rest needs to be longer; when growth is fast (spring), rest can be shorter, but generally not less than 20 days.

Weed pressure: act early, not perfectly

The most expensive weeds are the ones you let establish while you’re waiting to “see what happens”.

Both NSW DPI and MLA emphasise monitoring weeds and pests soon after emergence and then regularly (weekly or 10–14 day checks are commonly referenced) so you can act early.

What success looks like at 30, 90, 180 days

Pasture.io tie-in: prove the renovation worked (and whether it persists)

Renovation ROI is rarely decided in the first month. It’s decided over seasons. The easiest way to stay honest is to measure pre- and post-renovation performance paddock-by-paddock.

A practical Pasture.io workflow:

1. Baseline the paddock before renovation: typical covers, seasonal growth pattern, utilisation issues, and how often it creates “feed gaps”.

2. Post-renovation, track weekly: paddock cover trend and growth rate compared with similar “control” paddocks.

3. Review by season: does it outperform in the months you renovated for, or only look good in the easy months?

4. Watch persistence signals: if performance drops back after the first year, treat it as a management or fertility clue before blaming genetics.

Better visibility also reduces the classic mistake: grazing a new pasture too hard because it “looks like there’s plenty there”

The takeaway

The roadshow will show you what cultivars can do. Your farm will decide what they actually do.

If you treat renovation as Choose → Establish → Persist, and you measure paddock performance over time, you’ll get more wins from fewer renovations, and you’ll keep the good species dominant for longer.

- The Dedicated Team of Pasture.io, 2025-10-02