This is Seeds for Success, a show where we have a good yarn about ag life with producers who are having a go. On the show, you'll hear from farmers in New South Wales who are out there battling the elements, making tough calls, and getting the job done. You'll get a laugh out of some of their stories and also pick up some know- how along the way. I'm your host, Neroli Brennan. Today we're having a yarn with Sam Johnston. Sam helps manage his family properties alongside his father and
family 20Ks west of Forbes. While primarily focused on trade, lambs and lucerne hay production, in recent years, the Johnstons have made a move into breeding composite meat sheep in order to maximize profitability. In this episode, Sam talks to us about how their high- performance pastures, including perennial grasses, lucerne, clover, and chicory help them trade between 3 and 4, 500 lambs
on approximately 150 hectares of river country. You'll also hear how dry land and irrigated lucerne hay production is a large part of their operation, which sometimes conflicts with their lamb production. And as Sam explains, can disrupt cash flow depending on the season. Local Land Services mixed farming advisor, Rohan Leach, sat down with Sam in the middle of haymaking to bring you this episode.
Good day listeners. Today I'm with Sam Johnston from Forbes. Sam, welcome to the Seeds for Success Podcast.
Thank you Rohan. Very excited to be here. I've listened to a few of the podcasts and yeah, fired up to be on today.
Great. Love to meet another fan. Mate, can you just start off by giving us a bit of a rundown of your operation here at Walla Wallah?
Yeah, so where dad and I run a family show here, 20K is west of Forbes, which is where he and I are both based. He's been in the Forbes area since the mid 70s, moved up to Forbes from the western suburbs of Sydney, looking for a viable irrigation farm and kept coming west until he landed out at Corinella where he farmed for 35 years and then got a little bit tied up in the corporate space for 3 or 4 years and then more recently got out and relocated a little bit closer back to Forbes,
which is at Walla Wallah where he is now. Then I've recently returned home to the farm after a stint in Sydney for schooling, university and 3 years of work, and recently in 2020, so 4 years ago now. But we're at the moment, got about 570 hectares between 3 parcels of land or 3 different farms. The one we're on today is dad's place, Walla Wallah, which is about 80 hectares or 220 acres. I'm next door on 60 hectares,
which I've had for 4 years. And then we've got another dryland block right next door to the east of the Central West Livestock Exchange, which is about 430 hectares. So that gives us 570 hectares all up and our operation is a mixed farming enterprise, but probably more swaying
towards the livestock and the hay production. And whilst we run a few cattle, we're mainly sheep so we trade or we're going to try and trade now after recovering the flood, sort of anywhere from 3, 500 to 4,500 trade stock and probably have about 1, 000 breeding ewes on farm at the moment in conjunction with our hay production business, which is trying to grow about 1, 000 tons of lucerne hay each year and also a little bit diversified with a few
other off- farm business interests, which include rural property sales and marketing, and a few other investment divisions that dad runs as well. So something different every day, but makes for an interesting week.
Got a bit on there mate. So roughly, rough figures, probably about 150 hectares here on the river across the 2 places.
Yeah, so about 150 hectares here and then-
The dryland block. So can you talk me through the differences basically in the two, we'll call this one farm and then the dryland farm as well?
Well, at the river blocks, which is the stuff on the Lachlan River, South Condo Road, we're primarily high performance pastures, mixed pastures and lucerne hay production. So it's all mainly that sort of heavier, darker alluvial river flats. We're very lucky in this little pocket we have being upstream of the Jemalong Weir that we've got quite a bit of free watering seepage loosen flats, which keep the growth window
right open and save on having to irrigate. We get about 17 hectares of irrigation on some of the weaker country further away from the river, which just keeps obviously the ability to irrigate open for us. So we irrigate
out of the river. And then the dryland block, which is next to the sale yards, was probably bought about seven years ago and it was set up as a wall to wall cropping place that had been back to back cropping for quite some time and we've spent the last probably three to five years fencing that down into smaller parcels and sort of setting it up as a livestock breeding
and fattening enterprise. So we put quite a bit of new pasture in there, obviously done a fairly big tree planting project there and yeah, just trying to subdivide it up into more manageable paddock sizes, which has been a very exciting project. Been on foot for three years now, which is nice to be coming to the end of it.
So there's a few things there that I want to circle back to. The seepage paddocks on your river blocks here. You mentioned when I was talking to you last week that they've actually been outperforming your irrigated blocks.
They have been, which is disappointing considering what water pumping costs and what water costs are at the moment. But yeah, the yields, we've been running at pretty decent in the extensive Excel spreadsheet across all the paddocks here, which is
something dad used to do a long time ago. But we've just re- engaged in doing and yeah, the yields and I guess the profitability off the seepage floods has been well above what we're doing on the irrigation country, which is good in one way, but it makes a good case for country along the Lachlan River, that's for sure.
Yeah. So how did you identify that those paddocks were going to be seepage or is it sort of a happy mistake?
Well, I think that dad being in this area for such a long time, would've been driving past this area for many, many years and thousands of thousands of time each year, and he's always been a big lucerne hay
producer and land producer as well. So he always identified an opportunity where there are self- watering seepage flats, just making sure that you're using that land for the right purposes and obviously through trial and being here for 12 or so years now he's been able to demonstrate that this lucerne does grow significantly well, obviously being able to tap into that water aquifer underneath it and obviously it's yielded good hay cuts for us over that period.
The other thing you'd mentioned was that you're trying to cut down your blocks on the dry land property, cut down your paddock size. What's your optimal paddock size that you're going for there?
We're sort of looking at 20 to 30 hectare as opposed to 60 hectare paddocks, which is probably better for us in terms of our breeding mobs. Obviously being part breeders, part traders, we're buying in a lot of lambs each year, which makes induction and drenching programs really important, especially when you've
got small paddock sizes. Also being able to rotate our grazing and evenly graze paddocks as opposed to I guess overgrazing one area and under- grazing another, as well as being able to run our breeding ewes in multiples and singles and different mob sizes like that. So it just gives us a bit more flexibility. And then also mob size as well, so 4 to 500 head mobs as opposed to 800 head or bigger.
And you also talked about pastures, which I love getting into. What's your sort of general mix on your river blocks and on the dry land?
So on the river blocks we've been running a mixed pasture species, which fortunately after losing a lot of the good stuff after the flood, we've been able to reestablish again with a pretty reasonable last 12 months. So we generally try and get feed all year round, which includes having a lucerne, so we've got L70 lucerne, Cavalier Medic, origin fescue, and then a couple of clovers in there
as well. So dalsa , arrowleaf and balansa clover. And then on our dryland block, which has got a little bit of gilgai country on it, we've just got lucerne and a couple of clovers and obviously the clovers do well in the wet areas where the lucerne doesn't make it and that sort of gives us a bigger feed window than what we would have just with straight lucerne, especially in those wet areas and wetter years.
So why no perennial grass on the dryland block? Why just the lucerne and clover?
There's still plenty of perennial grasses over there and we probably have some weaker pasture paddocks over there that are maybe 4 or 5 years old now that are coming to the end of their tether, which we might look to rotate out and put a dual purpose weed or something in
in the next 12 months. But we sort of like to have a little bit of a balance between straight lucerne and some paddocks with lucerne and clover and then some paddocks with some lucerne clover and grasses and then obviously some more paddocks for locking ewes up before joining whatnot.
Some unimproved paddocks with some native grasses-
Sort of hedging our bets each way I'd say.
Cool. So I also wanted to talk about your lamb trading enterprise as well as your breeding enterprise. So can you talk me through those a little bit?
So might start on the breeding ewes first. It's probably something that I've had a bit more to do with as I only came back four years ago. We got probably more involved in the breeding side just because of what the profit margin were in the trade lambs at the period when I was coming back. So we got onto this composite breed of ewe, which is a meat
plus breed bred by Tony Rutter. Basically we've been building up our numbers and we're now sitting at about 1, 000 breeding ewes and basically that the reasoning behind going after that breed was the dressing percentage or the meat yields. So I think MLA's average dressing percentage is about 47% and these meat plus lambs sort of aiming for that 50 to 52%, which obviously probably goes a little bit unnoticed in the
sale yards, but selling over the hook. And we send quite a few to breakout river Meats over at Cowra, which they love them. So I think Tony Rutter, he's had a few different career ventures, one being a meat buyer, had a big feed lot, obviously MLA commentator and obviously a breeder of the meat plus sheep. So they've been very good for us. We've found their fertility's been great, we've found they're very sound,
they've handled a couple of very wet years. We've found their good mothers and their temperament is good, which is important for us handling them in the yards and that sort of thing. So we're sort of getting anywhere between 1,200 to 1, 400 lambs out
of those each year, which is good. And then in terms of trading, we've probably been taken out of the trading space for the last two years with the floods here in Forbes, but we're just looking back into trying to get some repeat buying opportunities now that we've invested a little bit more into ag tech and we've got
ourselves a handler. So being able to measure what weight gains we're getting from said producer might give us the opportunity in the future to go and make repeat purchases of those guys year round and in the future.
Yeah, cool. So diving into your trade enterprise a bit more, can you tell me what are your goals when trading lambs? What are you after?
I would say good quality lambs that require as little work as possible. We're pretty diligent on our induction trenching vaccination programs. So we've bought about nearly 2, 000 lambs in the last 10 days, obviously following this wet spell here in Forbes where we've got 200 mils in a week or so.
In late December, 2024.
Which is a massive rainfall event. So we want obviously as little outgoings as possible and to have them on farm for as least as possible. So obviously we're guided by our agents a lot there and they know what we sort of expect and what we want, but obviously weight gains are important. We haven't been able to measure that to date as much as we would've liked and we've always been ... Dad and I share the same view that you can't manage what you can't measure and hopefully now that we can
measure it, we can make better purchasing decisions. But at the end of the day, second cross lambs are probably our sweet spot and with a bit of mixed pasture and some high performance lucerne paddocks, generally just looking after weight gains and that sort of thing is important to us.
So just buying them in at 30 odd kilos and selling at 50?
Yep, that's the rough plan. The stuff we've been buying at the moment, sort of that 32 to 34 kilos, and we want to sell at 42 to 50 kilos depending on where they're selling and where they're going to.
Yeah. You mentioned that you're finishing these lambs on lucerne a fair bit. That must conflict with your lucerne operation. Can you sort of talk me through the trigger points that you decide, right, we're locking this paddock up for hay or this is going to be used for lamb production?
So all the river country here, Walla Wallah and surround, we've got about 65 hectares that's locked up at the moment purely for hay. Obviously with that 200 mils, the demand over the December, January period for hay's pretty much nonexistent. So there's seasonal triggers for us as well as obviously if there's a buying opportunity where the trade will net us a better result than what the hay will, we'll
go after that opportunity. But it's a really ... You play it on the run and if you've got consistent buying from the hay and you can move the hay, that's all good and well, but what I've learned this season is, and I said to dad, I said, " There's one thing about hay. Whilst it might make really good money for you if you can sell it, if you're not selling it it's not like sheep where you can just take them into the yards and get rid of it like it's on
your farm and in the shed." And you might not sell any hay for two or three months, which can disrupt cash flow and cause additional challenges. So if we get to a stage where all our sheds are full and no one's buying hay, we might forgo the fifth cut this year and say, " Look, we're going to go and put lambs on those paddocks," or maybe there's some paddocks, we go say, " Well look, it's been a challenging cutting season and the fourth cut in a few paddocks we might not go for."
So we generally aim for five cuts per year. Obviously this 200 mils came right when we wanted to go for our second cut, which has meant second cut's been a little bit overgrown, but we still think it's going to make good hay and it's been hot and windy and good hay making weather. So hopefully we'll get stuck in and bale quite a bit of it tonight.
So talk to me about hay making. What's your process?
Well, my goal for 2025 is to learn more about hay. We're very fortunate that most of our tractor and contracting work is done by contractors. We've got very minimal gear. So we're very fortunate in the fact that our contractors are all very hardworking people with lots of experience and I'm very good at breaking things as dad would tell you from this week, I've wrecked about two things. So we try and stay out of the machines if we can, but in terms of making hay, I'd like to learn
a lot more about it. And obviously when you're not in the machine and you're not on the baler at three o'clock in the morning, it's hard to learn from the house when they're all out there working. But we try and pick it all up and get involved as much as we can.
No, that's a great segue into Local Land Services. Probably going to be running some top fodder, silage and hay making courses in late February.
I'll be there for sure.
So grazing your lambs on some of your hay country during winter and when it's not locked up, is there anything to consider there with lambs grazing on the lucerne for your hay?
Not particularly. We're very diligent. We supply a lot of hay to a big racehorse stud up in the Hunter region and with such high value animals and product users, we've got to be very diligent with our foreign material in paddocks. So we're very much on top of, we control making sure that there's no foreign material. If an animal dies, which sometimes that happens where you've got livestock,
you've got dead stock. So making sure that we're on top of picking up carcasses, bones, any foreign material, sticks, rocks, we're always out there picking up things that a lot of people probably wouldn't. But that all makes for clean paddocks. And clean paddocks means happy contractors and happy contractors generally means good hay. So we're very diligent on our paddock biosecurity, very diligent in when we bring stock onto the farm
and that sort of thing with our induction programs. And probably one of the game changes for us in the last probably three or four years has been purchasing a slasher. So we had a little one before that, but we've just got a 15. 5 foot batwing slasher, which we use to top our pastures following grazing events. And it's just like when you mow the lawn, it just goes berserk after that.
So the slash has really replace the need for cattle for us, especially on a bit more of this fragile country where you've got irrigation channels, levee banks and that sort of thing. Cattle can make a bit of a mess when it's wet. So that's why we like to stick to sheep and we can get most places without slashes. So just pasture topping, even mechanical management of weeds. When I took my place over, it had quite a few scotch thistles and we're slowly getting on top of those.
Obviously chemical control is one thing, but mechanical controls been another string in the bow for us, which we've found, yeah, yield very good results.
Yeah, good. So just on that, with purchasing of machinery, you're obviously consistently making hay year in, year out. Can you talk me through the decision for employing contractors rather than getting your own machinery?
Well, when I touched on the fact that I wreck everything I'm in, I meant that. Dad's always been probably more in favor of someone else owning the machine. Anything with steel wheels is not for him. We find that with the contracting space, it's very hard to get people to come in and work in small paddocks. Obviously a lot of the contractors have had to get big or
get out. So to get someone to come in and spray three hectares of oats or a seven hectare paddock with a heap of trees in it, they just go, " It's not even worth the effort of us decontaminating the tank." So that sort of probably pushed us into a position where we've had to buy a bit of our own gear. So in the last 12 months we've bought a 15- meter 3- point linkage croplands sprayer, which also meant that we had
to go ahead with GPS for efficiency's sake. We didn't have to, but we thought that if we want to go down the line of getting into chemical application ourselves, we should be doing that. That's probably given us the opportunity to make better in production year decisions and be more efficient because we can get on it and do it when it needs to happen and not
when the contractor can get here. But in terms of machinery, all we've really got is attractor, slasher and a boom spray, a couple of front- end loader attachments and otherwise we're
run pretty lean on that space. We find that obviously as technology's evolving and products are getting better that a contractor with a modern machine with better tech in it is probably better than us buying something that we'd want to keep for 15 or 20 years to get a return on investment on as opposed to having that outlay on equipment finance and whatnot.
That's a very well- thought- out answer, but I still keep coming back to you are just a crap tractor driver mate.
I think that's exactly right and that's probably why dad hasn't taken on any of my business cases about getting any other gear. In saying that though, we have just invested in a fair bit of ag tech, obviously GPS being one of those, which has been fantastic and we've used it for a lot more things than what we thought we would use it when we're slashing, used it ripping all the tree lines for the LLS project over at Westwood, and there's just so many things we've used that for
as well as the sheep handling. The sheep handle that we've just bought as well, that was only purchased as a part of a rebate program, which was offered through the RAA. So that's all been something that we've been investing heavily in the last 12 months or 24 months.
So your auto steer guidance on your tractor, was that just a retrofit or you've gone out and bought a new tractor or what's-
No, no, we just went and retrofitted to the existing loader, which was pretty straightforward. Obviously came at a cost. But yeah, when we started thinking, well look, we're going to be spraying high value crops as in for us, high value lucerne and pasture paddocks right next door, you've got to be pretty careful, and over- spraying and under- spraying are big no nos in paddocks. So we just thought, oh well if we're going to go and get this boom sprayer , we'll go into the GPS.
Yep. Just before we move onto the last topic I just thought, and I probably should have started with this, but just your fertilizer and soil sort of strategy for your lucerne?
Probably, the lucerne countries generally pretty good, like the Alluvial River flats are pretty healthy soils.
No acidity there really that you have to manage with lime .
Not as much so as some of the scalded areas on the place, like some of the higher ridges on, especially my place and dad's place. When we first got them, we spent a lot of time putting lime and gypsum in, cow manure as well. And we've found we've been able to manage those scalded areas and those weaker areas of paddocks better. I'm not an expert on soil, like you would be, but you've seen a few of the soil tests, so obviously the weaker areas when you're running livestock you're at
risk of overgrazing. So I think through a bit of fencing and the lime, gypsum and cow manure, we've been able to reclaim those areas and get them back to as close
to balanced as we can. So that's an ongoing program and something that we're still trying to work out with soil tests and whatnot and we're just waiting for some more to come back for a low patch in one of dad's lucerne paddocks that wasn't doing as well as it should be, which was a bit of a head scratching moment because it was the lowest point of the paddock.
And when you see the ridges outperforming the low patch, you sort of go, I wonder what's happening there, but we're still waiting for those results to come back.
That's it mate. Test and measure and we'll make a soil scientist out of you yet. Something else that I wanted to talk to you today about was you've had obviously had quite a bit of involvement with LLS through various sort of conservation projects. Can you just quickly talk me through your replanting efforts here at your property?
Yeah, so I guess dad's been a big fan and if you have a look at that photo behind you there, that's him and I, when he did a planting out at Marymount , his old place out at Corinella and he reckons he's planted about 15,000 trees in his time and
I'm trying to catch him. We've planted 2, 000 in the last 12 months, so I've still got a little way to go, but that recent tree planting project was part of the Swift Parrot Habitat Enhancement project through the LLS or the Healthy Landscapes Project Initiative, which has been sort of a little bit of an ongoing thing that we've been doing with you guys in terms of, I guess, improving grassy woodlands and box habitat for this critically endangered
swift parrot, which I'm told there's only 2, 000 of them left in the wild. And that's basically meant that on that wall- to- wall cropping place, we've re- fenced about 9Ks of laneways, planted 1, 850 trees plus and put a lot of shrub in. So that's all been gray box, yellow box, mild river red gum and casuarina. So all conducive to the swift parrot's habitat and what they like. Yeah, so far so good. It's been good with this last lot of rain.
We haven't had to do too much watering over the summer, which has been nice with some hot days, but dad's always been a big fan of planting trees and I can see the value in it in terms of I've seen what he did when I was very young, as a young kid and when there's no trees, stock do better with shade and water and wind breaks and this is all part of that
as well. So as well as obviously enhancing the riparian areas on the river blocks here at home, we've done quite a bit with LLS over the last five years in terms of removing some invasive species like the Osage orange, which has reclaimed a lot of country for us. And through fencing off the waterways, it's meant that we've been able to manage our river banks and that vegetation area which would generally get over grazed, especially in summer months
and therefore degrade the banks. So it's been an eye- opening experience for me to see how quickly we can return that area of our place, which is a significant amount to what it would've been 150 years ago or longer. So it's been certainly a couple of good projects there.
My next question before I can even ask it, and it was sort of more of a personal question about what conservation or replanting and that sort of stuff means to you. But it really sounds like you are, kind of apart from the nice fuzzy feels that you get from it, that it's a fair bit of production performance increases from the work that you're doing in terms of fencing off and managing the landscape better?
For sure, and I think it all comes back to we like seeing things grow and obviously we're very fortunate on some of the soil types here that stuff grows very quickly and if we can leave the landscape a little bit better than we found at the end of our tenure, at the end of the day, that's what it's all
about for us. I get great satisfaction of reclaiming areas of places that were little to no use and people would write off as basically a wasteland to have it back as part of a productive part of the land, whether that be for stock production, cropping production, or just native habitat for animals.
It's nice. I love birds and I love seeing all the native animals that are flying around and I know when a lot of our friends come up from the city and come and visit, they just cannot believe how peaceful it is and how much habitat, native bird life there are flying around the house. So it's very exciting to show them that and show them that that's why we love it out here so much.
Yeah, we live in a pretty special part of the world. Mate, I've had a great time today, but before I let you go, I'd just like to ask a couple of questions about what your opinions of ag at the moment. So what do you see as the big issue in Australian ag at the moment?
I think for us and the greater ag industries is definitely the labor. One of the big challenges we have is the intermittency or the intermittent requirement of labor. Like daddy's getting to an age now where he reckons he's drenched a million sheep and he doesn't want to do another million. And I said, " Oh, you might get 200,000 or something." But to go and find someone that wants to spend three or four hours in a day coming to help you do some work in the sheep yards,
you just can't get those people. And I think it's a challenge because you've got so many other industries competing for those people and if someone can go and sit in an air- conditioned office or a machine on the same sort of money, why would they want to come and stand out in the sheep yards with me in
40 degree heat? It's just I know which one I'd be taking, but I think it is just a challenge that I don't know what the solution is and how we get more people involved, but as machinery gets bigger, obviously labor requirements aren't as much and when you've got that intermittent requirement, it's always going to be a challenge.
Yeah, I think a mix of technology there that you've already said you bought a handler. I think we're going to be forced into that more and more and maybe a bit of old technology in the form of a good Kelpie.
I think that's exactly right and that's probably one of the big reasons we went ahead with that purchase was the fact that both my sister and I, which we're 33% of the workforce at that stage, we both got hurt in the sheep yards and both ended up in the Forbes Emergency Room together side by side. And I said, " Oh, well can you save us a seat for dad? We might have our office meeting in here today." If you've got such a small workforce, if someone gets hurt or injured,
how can we be safer? How can we be more efficient? And whilst I wouldn't say the handler is necessarily quicker, but I know we did 800 sheep through it, I double drenched them, clicked them and vaccinated them all by myself, like doing the application. Dad was there helping push up, but it wasn't overly labor- intensive for him. He was just making sure the dogs were doing the right thing and opening and closing the gate so that the sheep had come up to me in
the handler. But at the end of the day I wasn't completely buggered and I was happy to go back and stand in the sheep yards again the next day. Whereas if I had to do that on my own without anyone else there, I'd probably need a spell for a month. I'd go on a holiday somewhere and don't know if I'd come back. So yeah, whilst it's not as quick possibly, it's certainly a good decision for our business and we're reaping the rewards of that already.
The second part of this question, what do you see as the big wins for agriculture?
I think ag tech is a space that we've been dabbling a bit. I've always been a big fan of technology and I think it's certainly come a long way. It's still got a long way to go and it is a bit of a double- edged sword. Connectivity is a big issue that comes with ag tech and whilst it might work in an office in a larger regional center or a city, that doesn't necessarily flow down to the farm if people can't get connectivity and whatnot. But I think it's one
solution to the first question, which was labor shortage. If I can do the drenching, and the vaccinating, and the drafting, and the weighing as one labor unit and it takes me an hour and a half, or we can do it with two people without the handler and it takes us an hour, whilst it might be a little bit longer, if it's one person for an hour and a half,
that's better than two people for an hour. So that's what we did this week and that's where we've said, " Well look, that actually was a beneficial decision because I was there for longer, but it allowed dad to have an hour that he wouldn't have to go spraying or do something else or have a meeting with someone."
Yeah, great answer mate. I've had a cracker today. We'll leave it there. Thanks for joining us, Sam.
Thanks for having me on. Had a great time.
Thanks for listening. This podcast was brought to you by Central West Local Land Services. Local Land Services delivers advice and support to farmers, landholders and the community across New South Wales. To learn more, you can find us online by searching for Central West Local Land Services. If you'd like more information about the topics we discussed today, as well as links to relevant articles, fact sheets, events, and other helpful resources, we've added those into the show notes
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