Lush lucerne can lead to red gut In lambs

摘要

Use of lucerne as a break pasture in a crop rotation system has many advantages including better weed and disease control, improved physical properties of soil and enhanced productivity of the following crops. However, farmers who have tried grazing lambs on lucerne only pastures have frequently observed poor growth rates. These rarely exceed 250 grams per day when compared to predicted growth rates in excess of 350g/day based on metabolisable energy (ME) and crude protein (CP) composition of the lucerne forage. Somehow this growth rate needs to be boosted before farmers will adopt lucerne as a break pasture in order to finish prime lambs.