Farm open day teaches the benefits of nutritious grazing Incorporating perennial chicory into your grassland sward can significantly improve liveweight gains in lambs. That was the main message at a recent farm open day at Cefn-y-Bryn near Sarn in Powys.

The open day, which was a joint venture between Coleg Powys and Wynnstay, was attended by local sheep farmers as well as a group of agricultural students from the Newtown campus of Coleg Powys.

Ben Wixey , Wynnstay’s herbage seed manager and Stuart Edwards, farm manager at Coleg Powys, were on hand to talk to the visitors and to explain the benefits of adding perennial chicory to their usual grass seed mixture.

Perennial chicory has been in commercial use in the UK for the past two years and has already been shown to deliver lamb growth rates of up to 300-400 grams per day. Varieties such as Puna II have grown in popularity as a valuable source of protein. In fact, Wynnstay has already sold large acreages of grass seed with chicory mixed in, and a lot of customers throughout Wales and the border counties are intending to use it time and time again.

At a very low cost per acre, chicory provides a really cost-effective solution to the increased feed and concentrate costs that many of the region’s sheep farmers find themselves facing,, chicory is an ideal high protein grazing crop that can give lambs a real boost.

Chicory was first introduced to commercial farming operations as a solution to drought conditions. Its deep tap root makes it tolerant to dry soil conditions and can help to sustain a lush and nutritious sward even in the driest of summers. But it is its ability to provide rapid liveweight gains that has added to its popularity over recent years.

" Since we started grazing our lambs on chicory two years ago we have seen significant improvements in liveweight gains,” explains Stuart Edwards. “Our lambs would usually slip backwards during July and August, but since sowing chicory in with the normal grass sward, they have kept moving forwards and the usual mid-season dip in performance has been eradicated.”

Chicory doesn’t like overly heavy soils, and it needs a decent soil depth to grow properly. As such, it isn’t suitable for every farm, but anybody that is finishing lambs off grass in the summer or autumn should certainly consider using it.”

Chicory can help to reduce the effect of gut worms, trials in Scotland have shown that sheep fed on a pure sward of chicory commonly have a suppressed faecal egg count. Reduced parasite activity can improve the gut function and give an additional boost to liveweight gains.

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