Reports

Hibrix – Increasing Pasture

Pre-Hibrix farmers apply 30 – 100 kg of phosphorus to the soil. A large percentage of which is lost and much of it ends up in our lakes and rivers. Not only is this wasteful it is expensive.

At Waroona in the Peel region of Western Australia in 2014, 18 by 1m square wire cattle cages were placed at random to evaluate the effects of Hibrix pasture treatment combined with a reduced rate (50%) of NPK fertiliser.  The trial was split into three variants being dry land pasture, pivot irrigated pasture and flood irrigated pasture.  Hibrix was applied to the pasture by spray boom in 12m strips. Each cage was harvested with hand shears, weighed on site, dried and analysed for digestible energy and mineral content. The biomass of the Hibrix treated plots was significantly higher than the non-Hibrix plots.  With the pivot irrigated pasture showing the most significant increase.  On average Hibrix increased the pasture biomass yield by 44% across the farm.