00:00So this paddock here, when we purchased a property, was wall-to-wall rat's tail.
00:06It wasn't the best buy, but the potential was here to improve it.
00:11Previously, we spent a lot of money on granulars doing rat's tail in other areas with not much success.
00:18Spot spraying, which is labour-intensive, and it's over and over.
00:22So we looked at the root cause.
00:24So the compacted soil is a big one.
00:27The fine seed, we realise the seed's that fine.
00:30It needs to sit on the surface to germinate.
00:34Also, the overgrazing doesn't help, and fertility.
00:41So we thought, we did trials on compaction, so deep ripping.
00:48Now, the most success we've had was with the dozer through, with the deep ripping.
00:57And then power harrows.
00:59The other is your more conventional ways with your discs.
01:04The main thing is to get down deep.
01:06So any runoff, the moisture is captured, and that allows the grass roots or your more softer grasses to be
01:16able to drink.
01:17Because you'll find where rat's tail is, is where it's hard ground, the water runs off, nothing else can sort
01:23of survive strongly.
01:25Then, obviously, your nutrition, which is up to every farmer, whatever grasses they're doing to what they're going to add.
01:32This paddock, four years ago, was wall-to-wall.
01:34We, first of all, burnt to try to clean up some of the heads.
01:40The burn here wasn't great.
01:42It wasn't a real hot burn.
01:44Whether you need to burn, I'm now unsure.
01:47We also sprayed out, so we used haloxiflop, which is used in cropping situations where it kills grasses.
01:55We know with the Roundup and haloxiflop, it really drives home a good kill for a lot of the rat's
02:04tail.
02:04We found just using glyphosate just wasn't quite doing the job for us, but the haloxiflop absolutely barrelled it.
02:14So then, after the paddock was ploughed up, power harrowed, we looked at a chemical, which is haloxiflop again.
02:22What could we spray out grasses and what crops could we sow?
02:26So we chose to use lucerne and planted lucerne.
02:30Now, what we did do, because the humidity and the rainfall here are dry conditions, so we silaged lucerne.
02:41The crop was that good.
02:43We couldn't graze our cattle, obviously, which was a bit of a bugger, but we got silage off it.
02:48With the year of doing that spraying haloxiflop to kill up any grass, especially come that,
02:54we found that the rat's tail seems to strike early in that late November.
03:00You get the few plants and then it always has a big burst in about April when everything else is
03:07becoming dormant.
03:08So we covered that.
03:13Once that was done, the following season, we put some ryegrass in over winter and then after that, at the
03:20end of that season, we put it down to straight roads.
03:24Now, what I thought I'd do, I did a Mekon trial on the other property, straight Mekon, but I thought
03:30I'd just throw a few seeds in.
03:32And now we've got this lush roads Mekon mix.
03:37Now, the Mekon is obviously growing and I think it will take over, to be honest.
03:47We can see these plants poking up here, there and everywhere, whereas, you know, it was only a handful of
03:52Mekon seeds that I put in.
03:54And, yeah, it's becoming quite, this paddock, as I said, was full of rat's tail and, you know, we might
04:04have to spend a day, a month, just go around and spot spray the odd piece that comes up.
04:10Now, when I say spot spray, what we do is we look for a black seed head.
04:15They're quite easy to spot when they, you know, there's only an odd one comes up.
04:19We cut the seed head off, put it in a bag, then we spray it with the Roundup hyloxiflop and
04:25that's about all we do.
04:27So anyone that's got rat's tail, I recommend get someone into deep rip and make sure you get that moisture
04:34down so you can get those other crops or grasses to be able to thrive.
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