Grazag

11/09/2026

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24/08/2026

Grass Tetany & Milk Fever: a timely reminder for the New England

G’day GrazAg clients,
With the conditions we're currently experiencing across the New England, I thought it was worth sending out a quick reminder about Grass Tetany (hypomagnesaemia) and Milk Fever (hypocalcaemia).
We're seeing short, green pick, cold conditions and plenty of cold drizzle to the east, while many operations have livestock with very high mineral demands, lambing ewes, calving cows, and lactating animals.
At the same time, many producers are still feeding according to the seasonal conditions and are well into their winter feeding programs.
Feeding commodities such as cottonseed, PKE, cereal hay, cereal grain and faba beans can all be very useful feeds, but an energy or protein rich ration doesn't necessarily mean the animal is receiving enough calcium and magnesium.

Grass Tetany: Low Magnesium
Keep an eye out for:
• Restlessness and nervous behaviour
• Muscle twitching, particularly around the face and ears
• Stiff or uncoordinated movement
• Increased sensitivity to noise and movement
• Excitability or sudden bolting
As it progresses, you may see staggering, falling, violent muscle contractions, convulsions, and potentially sudden death. Grass tetany can progress extremely quickly.

Milk Fever: Low Calcium
This is particularly important around calving and early lactation when calcium demand increases significantly.
Early signs can include:
• Reduced appetite and rumen activity
• Depression and weakness
• Stiff or uncoordinated movement
• Cold ears and extremities
As it progresses, animals may become weak and sit down, become unable to stand, lie flat on their chest or side, turn their heads back towards the flank, become comatose and eventually die.
Don't Confuse the Two
Grass Tetany = often nervous, excitable and twitchy.
Milk Fever = often quiet, weak and depressed.
However, both metabolic conditions can overlap, and an animal can be deficient in both calcium and magnesium at the same time.

Risk Factors
Pasture
• Short, lush green pasture, particularly rapidly growing ryegrass
• High potassium pasture, which can reduce magnesium absorption
• Young, actively growing pasture with low magnesium availability
• Low calcium availability
• High nitrogen fertiliser contributing to lush growth
• Cold, wet and drizzly weather
• Rapid pasture growth following rain
• Moving animals quickly from a restricted winter diet onto lush green feed

Feed and Ration
The other side of the equation is what we're feeding and the things we need to consider:
• The mineral contribution of all hand-fed feeds needs to be considered
• Extended feeding of stored feeds without a balanced mineral program
• Rapid changes in diet
• Low total dry matter intake during cold, wet conditions
• An overall unbalanced calcium and magnesium supply
The highest risk combination: late pregnancy and or early lactation + short, lush green pasture + cold, wet weather + winter feeding + inadequate calcium and magnesium supply. This is a mob worth paying close attention to.

Metabolic Challenge Management
Look at the whole diet
• Don't just look at the pasture. Consider the contribution from both pasture and commodities and work out how much calcium and magnesium the animal is receiving.
Identify your high risk animals
Pay particular attention to:
• Cows around calving and early lactation
• Ewes around lambing and early lactation
• Animals going onto short, lush green pasture
• Livestock under cold and wet weather stress

Review the mineral program before there is a problem
Where risk is high, make sure animals have access to a reliable and appropriately formulated source of magnesium and calcium at an intake that will consistently meet requirements.
This is a time of year when pasture conditions, winter feeding and animal requirements are all changing at once.

The combination of short green feed + cold, wet weather + late pregnancy/lactation + an unbalanced mineral supply is worth reviewing before we start to see clinical metabolic disorders.
If you're unsure whether your current pasture, feeding program and mineral supply are meeting the requirements of your livestock, please give us a call or have a chat with the team at GrazAg. We're always happy to work through the ration and mineral program with you.

Cheers,
Ed & the GrazAg Team

20/07/2026

🌧️The Autumn break was exactly what our pastures needed…unfortunately the red-legged earth mites agreed. 🕷️

The welcomed Autumn rainfall combined with cool winter days has triggered the opening of RLEM activity. Over the past couple of weeks we have inspected some severe infestations in both newly sown and existing pastures. The mites feed by rasping the surface layers of plant tissues and sucking up the released juices.

Key Symptom in your pasture:
🌱Random bare patches in your pasture.
🌱Damaged leaves have a silvery, bleached appearance .
🌱Twisted/distorted leaves.

How to identify RLEM:
🕷️About the size of a pin head.
🕷️ Dark black/blue body.
🕷️ Red legs.

Blue oat mites are very similar looking however have a distinguishing red spot on their back.

Now is a great time to check your paddocks. Early monitoring helps to identify issues before they become widespread and cause significant decline in pasture production. If you’ve noticed signs of mite activity or aren’t sure what you are looking at we can do paddock inspections.

Give Safina a call on 0460 001 164 if you would like to arrange a paddock inspections. Check out the comments below to see damage vs undamaged pasture in the same 12 month old permanent pasture paddock.

15/07/2026

Happy to help out this extremely talented bunch of youngsters. Good luck in your quest at the F Class Long Range World Championships at Bisley (UK). May the wind gods be kind, we can’t wait to follow your journey.

24/06/2026

Here we are sitting around in late June in T shirts wondering when the real winter weather will arrive. The few frosts have been sporadic and not that spectacular, but it is the New England and it will happen eventually.

The cold weather triggers a number of things on our pasture Agronomy calendar that allows us to work through a checklist and stay on top of them.

✅Sowing has recommenced

The recent rainfall had certainly given most areas a nice top up in our soils that had allowed the final paddocks to be sown, and has given those early planted pastures and crops a reprieve, ensuring they will survive and be productive. 8 weeks ago this was no certainty and we were looking down the barrel of a complete disaster.

✅The Rats Tail Tidal Wave

Our public enemy number one has made a late but spectacular arrival since the recent rainfall.

Vulpia is a real pest in germinating and establishing pasture seedlings due to its aggressive nature and sheer volume of seedlings 🌱.

When Vulpia germinates it is generally a carpet which tends to outcompete everything around it. It also has a competitive advantage as it produces an allelopathic chemical which leaches from its roots, affecting the species around it, especially legumes.

In annual crops we have a huge problem as there are no means of dealing with this germination, but in Perennials we have a few options available.

✅Insect alert

The first few frosts normally leads to a spectacular hatching of both Red Legged Earth Mites and Blue Oat Mites. The cold weather sees them emerge from their summer diapause and in large numbers will cause significant yield penalty in pastures.

These major pasture pests are not particularly hard to control, but do come with a grazing with holding period and the costs of an application.

Symptoms to watch are silvering of the pastures or forage crops leaves. The best time to check is in the early morning or late afternoon and they are easily distinguished by their distinctive bright orange legs.

✅Winter Growth Promotion

We have still been getting pasture growth in the past few weeks but this will slow down as we get more frosts.

Given how late some pastures were sown, we are not going to get real growth until Late September, but if pushed into a feed deficit there are a number of tools available to promote the extra winter production.

✅Winter weeds

The dropping soil temperatures bring with it the germination of winter broadleaf weeds. Whilst broadleaf weeds don’t have the same yield penalty as grass weeds, they still compete hard for sunlight, moisture and nutrients, taking up space in the paddock.

Like all weeds you are better off hitting them early as it is cheaper and softer on your pastures and crops. It then allows the pastures to get away where they will generally out compete weeds going into Spring.

Contact our Agronomy team in Armidale, Guyra and Glen Innes to arrange a paddock inspection if you suspect you have an issue with weeds or insects or need extra dry matter.

18/06/2026

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22/05/2026

The current seasonal conditions across the Northern Tablelands have meant a significant amount of fodder and grain is being purchased and trucked into the region. With tight on farm feed and rising input costs, we are regularly getting questions around feed quality, value for money, and how to compare different feed tests when buying. I have put together a guide below designed to help simplify feed test interpretation so producers can better understand what they are paying for and how to compare different feeds on a fair and consistent basis. Feed tests help explain what is in hay, silage, grain, or pasture and how well it will perform for livestock. All results are reported on a Dry matter basis, meaning water is removed so we can compare all feeds on their relative feed values, apples with apples.

When making these grain and fodder purchasing decisions we often get caught in the price per tonne trap as supply and demand levers get pulled all at once due to the ominous season in front of us heading into our New England winter. What we should really be asking ourselves when purchasing feed is… yes it’s cheap per tonne, but is it worth it? We should be buying feed and fodder based on its relative feed value and how much of that is packed into each tonne of feed that arrives in or on a truck.

What standard feed tests measure:

ME (Metabolisable Energy MJ/kg DM)
o What it means: Energy available to animals
o Why it matters: Determines how much production you get per tonne of feed purchased.
o Poor: 5 to 8 MJ/kg DM
o Good to excellent: 9.5 to +14MJ/kg DM

CP % (Crude Protein)
o What it means: Protein level in the feed
o Why it matters: Impacts value per tonne and whether extra protein supplements are needed
o Poor: 4 to 8%
o Good to excellent:
 10 to14%+ (hay & silage)
 18 to 36%+ (pulses & meals)

NDF % (Neutral Detergent Fibre)
o What it means: Total fibre content
o Why it matters: Affects how much animals can physically eat from purchased feed
o Poor: 60 to 70%
o Good to excellent:

22/04/2026