19 April 2004: The Crawford family runs a mixed cropping and beef cattle operation at Kumbia in the South Burnett. In November last year, they planted five hectares of Pacific BMR as a forage crop to finish steers. Peter Crawford said last summer was the first opportunity they have had to try the recently released forage sorghum variety.

"What we've noticed is that the BMR is a lot more palatable," he said. "In another paddock, we planted 12 rows of BMR in the middle of Sweet Jumbo. The stock went to the 12 rows and grazed it to the ground before they started on the Sweet Jumbo; they kept coming back and mowing down the regrowth."

Mr Crawford said the cattle have done well on the combination of BMR and Sweet Jumbo forage sorghums. "Years ago, you couldn't really finish stock on forage sorghum," he said. "But using BMR and Sweet Jumbo, it's a lot more palatable and rather than keeping cattle in store condition, you can finish them with it."

One paddock was stocked at a rate of two head/acre, which was fed off then grazed a second time. In another paddock, stocked at 1 head/acre, Peter said they could leave the cattle on continually this season. Very pleased with the results, Peter said grow Pacific BMR again. "It will fit into our program well."

Being a mixed enterprise, the Crawfords also planted grain sorghum, corn and peanuts last summer. For their dryland sorghum crops, Mr Crawford said they chose to plant Pacific MR43 as the main variety, with MR-Buster as a companion variety. All seed was Elite treated. "The sorghum is just colouring up now," he said. "The crops did it tough early on, but got good moisture last month so there is a very reasonable crop there now." Over summer, the Crawfords also planted Hycorn 675 as one of their corn varieties. Mr Crawford said the crop has just started tassling, but is looking promising. "It was very good out of the ground for a feed corn variety," he said.

Caption: Ian and Neville Crawford in the Pacific BMR forage sorghum crop which was planted in November 2003.