Animal behaviour and nutrition course with Prof Fred Provenza - Bungendore

Why do some farms have fewer weeds than others? Why does some research on grazing shows large effects and some none? How can you reduce worm burden through pasture management? This course represents a rare opportunity to get practical solutions to these questions and more from Emeritus Professor Fred Provenza, Dr Dean Revell and Bruce Maynard.

Professor Provenza from Utah State University will present more than 30 years of research on animal dietary mixing and self medication. Professor Provenza and the BEHAVE team have made ground breaking discoveries about how animals learn to balance their diets and medicinal needs from diverse grasslands and pastures.

Understanding how animals learn enables us to train animals to fit our landscapes rather than having to modify our landscapes to fit our animals. Unlocking the full value of grazing as a tool will reduce our use of expensive machinery, fossil fuels and herbicides..By understanding how animals learn we can use their natural behaviours to manage weeds, enhance biodiversity, improve feeding systems, minimise use of riparian areas and much more.

 Through this course, you will learn:

• That plants have more compounds than protein, carbohydrates and minerals - they also contain small amounts of potent secondary compounds that are critical to animal health and that can be used beneficially to enhance production


• That animal preference for plants is more than a matter of taste, crude protein or digestibility and how this can increase the performance of the whole flock or herd


• How animals are able to self medicate


• How to ease the foraging challenges faced by grazing animals to increase individual performance


• How animals learn to balance their nutritional requirements and how this can reduce costs


• How to manage and train animals to:
  
  
  
  • not over utilise riparian areas,
  
  
  • avoid eating poisonous plants,
  
  
  • better utilise invasive plants, and
  
  
  • rejuvenate landscapes for the benefit of both wild and domestic animals.

The course fee is $1,650 per person, with a 10% discount for people who book and pay before 16th April. The fee includes morning and afternoon tea, lunch, personal stockmanship coaching and workshop notes.

For more information, or to register, visit The Mulloon Institute website: http://www.themullooninstitute.org/courses-events/BEHAVE