Dr. John Gilliland:

I will add to that. We measure the herbage levels on a weekly basis. We have very robust data that we can share with the committee, which our PhD student, Jane Shackleton, has led. It is very comprehensive. We find that even though the multispecies sward is slower to start in the spring, especially the legumes, we are seeing better livestock performance. When we let out our heifers in March, their live weight gain is higher from the multispecies swards then from rye grass, even though we know the legumes are slower to kick in.

The Chairman asked about reseeding. Our multispecies swards were all established by discing. We deliberately did not plough because we are a UNESCO world heritage site. We were encouraged not to plough for fear of damaging the heritage we have, but we still got a very good establishment. Running alongside our big grazing trials, we have small trials that we cut. In those trials we looked at three different establishment methods, including the equivalent of plough-till, direct seeding on top and shallow cultivation through discing. We saw that we had good establishment right across those methods, but the one benefit we got from direct seeding was far fewer weeds once the crop came through. Ploughing actually brought a new crop of annual weeds up.

For us, we actually got a win. There were fewer weeds and less disturbance to the carbon. We are expecting that we would replant the multispecies swards at about the same time one would plant perennial ryegrass. The sward is a dynamic thing and the diversity of the sward does change. As the sward changes, the residue left is a ryegrass sward with a lot of clover in it. It actually leaves us with what most farmers would have anyway. The key point is when do we make the decision to go back and put more of the herbs back in again. We have not got there yet. We expect that we will get there. We have done two full grazing seasons. Key to this is the measurement of the quantity of herbage on a weekly basis. The lambs are weighed every two weeks and the heifers are weighed once a month.