"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
How about this for deep grass roots?

Apparently American native prairie grasses

IMG_0941.JPG
 
More suited to drier areas no? Would maybe be better substituting it for a fescue or something that would hole together well underfoot. Open to ideas
I think it grows well in damper areas too. (Maybe not waterlogged though) Tolerates acidic ground, grows in cooler temperatures, early to get going.
graze it regularly though!
I've put in quite a lot of creeping red fescue, that's going well, good for covering the ground.

Do you know what grasses you have growing just now? (I'm slowly working out what I've got)
 

Macsky

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
I think it grows well in damper areas too. (Maybe not waterlogged though) Tolerates acidic ground, grows in cooler temperatures, early to get going.
graze it regularly though!
I've put in quite a lot of creeping red fescue, that's going well, good for covering the ground.

Do you know what grasses you have growing just now? (I'm slowly working out what I've got)

Hard to tell when it’s only 10mm high, place is not in my care yet.
 
How about this for deep grass roots?

Apparently American native prairie grasses

View attachment 745418
I've a few feed bags of washed silica sand outside the workshop, nice big clump of grass growing in it, I'll take it out and see what it's roots are like. Had a cocksfoot clump in a ton bag and the roots were impressive!
 

Agrispeed

Member
Location
Cornwall
wet as feck here and really like cocksfoot. It seems to grow when it's too hot/cold/dry/wet for anything else. Ryegrass is great in May but crap for the other 11 months.

Cocksfoot is also ideal with herbal leys as it can be quite upright and aggressive, ryegrass seems to just throw up a seed head a give up when the chicory starts motoring and is 6' tall. A bit of extra fibre is no bad thing, especially when there are a lot of very low DM herbs and clovers in the mix IMO. Fescues also seem to do well, as do festuoluims, although they are a bit ryegrassy for me.

I've just set some seed reps on making me a cocksfoot, red and white clover silage ley. Will be interesting to see what happens...
 

Macsky

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
wet as feck here and really like cocksfoot. It seems to grow when it's too hot/cold/dry/wet for anything else. Ryegrass is great in May but crap for the other 11 months.

Cocksfoot is also ideal with herbal leys as it can be quite upright and aggressive, ryegrass seems to just throw up a seed head a give up when the chicory starts motoring and is 6' tall. A bit of extra fibre is no bad thing, especially when there are a lot of very low DM herbs and clovers in the mix IMO. Fescues also seem to do well, as do festuoluims, although they are a bit ryegrassy for me.

I've just set some seed reps on making me a cocksfoot, red and white clover silage ley. Will be interesting to see what happens...
What’s your annual rainfall?
 

Agrispeed

Member
Location
Cornwall
What’s your annual rainfall?

About 1200mm. But it's consistent throughout the year; August normally has the same average rainfall as December.

being warm and wet (we get 1 or 2 frosts a year) our farming system is based on expecting rain every 3 or so days this year we had less than half our average rainfall - 1 rain event; less than 6mm in July, June-August was 20% of average rainfall, which is something we really were not prepared for. Most of our grazing is herbal leys and they stood up much better than the more traditional leys to both the wet spring and the dry summer. I'm hoping that some different, more traditional(?) grass mixes will help with what looks like a period of less reliable weather, and in my experience, they don't perform any worse, certainly under organic management anyway, where ryegrass is always a bit limited by lack of applied nitrogen.
 

Macsky

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
About 1200mm. But it's consistent throughout the year; August normally has the same average rainfall as December.

being warm and wet (we get 1 or 2 frosts a year) our farming system is based on expecting rain every 3 or so days this year we had less than half our average rainfall - 1 rain event; less than 6mm in July, June-August was 20% of average rainfall, which is something we really were not prepared for. Most of our grazing is herbal leys and they stood up much better than the more traditional leys to both the wet spring and the dry summer. I'm hoping that some different, more traditional(?) grass mixes will help with what looks like a period of less reliable weather, and in my experience, they don't perform any worse, certainly under organic management anyway, where ryegrass is always a bit limited by lack of applied nitrogen.

That’s good to hear, we’re about 1800mm annual average here, but will get a few frosts, but mainly mild and wild weather off the Atlantic.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Interesting that they say shallow incorporating the crop residue is beneficial when all you hear everywhere else is that anything that disturbs the soil is a had thing. But I suppose if the residue is on top oxidising then it does no good to the soil either? Frank Newman Turner who wrote fertility farming was a big fan of incorporating crop residue and any green covers before a crop but I thought it was more because he didn't have any other way of doing it back in the 1940s and 50s before there was glyphosate to be able to get a start for any seedlings. He maee incredible improvements to his soil so maybe tillage of some sort does have a place after all?
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Interesting that they say shallow incorporating the crop residue is beneficial when all you hear everywhere else is that anything that disturbs the soil is a had thing. But I suppose if the residue is on top oxidising then it does no good to the soil either? Frank Newman Turner who wrote fertility farming was a big fan of incorporating crop residue and any green covers before a crop but I thought it was more because he didn't have any other way of doing it back in the 1940s and 50s before there was glyphosate to be able to get a start for any seedlings. He maee incredible improvements to his soil so maybe tillage of some sort does have a place after all?

If you think about it, the herd impact of cattle hooves trampling vegetation could be a form of shallow tillage ? I think the main benefit is getting the vegetation in contact with the soil & the bugs . . .
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I think it grows well in damper areas too. (Maybe not waterlogged though) Tolerates acidic ground, grows in cooler temperatures, early to get going.
graze it regularly though!
I've put in quite a lot of creeping red fescue, that's going well, good for covering the ground.

Do you know what grasses you have growing just now? (I'm slowly working out what I've got)
What grows on your verges, and places like that?
Here, it is mainly cocksfoot, timothy, red clover, and buttercups.
The closest thing it gets to fertilised will be diesel fumes, but possibly one of the better indicators to me that some species don't really do being unfertilised, certainly not to the extent they can outcompete those species.
Over in Southland, you'd see much more tall fescue, as the soils on the plains are obviously quite different to here

But it is quite interesting to note just what is about the place, and seldom do you see ryegrass elsewhere than in a farmer's paddock.
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
If you think about it, the herd impact of cattle hooves trampling vegetation could be a form of shallow tillage ? I think the main benefit is getting the vegetation in contact with the soil & the bugs . . .
Aye, we're up to soil capacity moisture wise here now,and if cattle were out on the loam over clay we would, in very short space of time have the equivalent of a well rotavated park (y):cool:
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Interesting that they say shallow incorporating the crop residue is beneficial when all you hear everywhere else is that anything that disturbs the soil is a had thing. But I suppose if the residue is on top oxidising then it does no good to the soil either? Frank Newman Turner who wrote fertility farming was a big fan of incorporating crop residue and any green covers before a crop but I thought it was more because he didn't have any other way of doing it back in the 1940s and 50s before there was glyphosate to be able to get a start for any seedlings. He maee incredible improvements to his soil so maybe tillage of some sort does have a place after all?

Err, the authors also were coming from a more organic perspective I think, as well
 

CornishTone

Member
BASIS
Location
Cornwall
noted a couple times on here that tractor wheeling's are bad, but hooves are good to trample some crop in, why is this ?

This (roller)...
IMG_8140.JPG

Vs this...
IMG_8141.JPG


Sheer weight, action of movement, distribution, also depends on the surface I should imagine? If cattle are walking on a thick mat of thatch and OM, they probably wouldn’t disturb much of the soil beneath. It would act like a shock absorber. Conversely, people spread sh1t in the rain with big gear, on grass that’s been freshly cut or grazed down to the deck and, well, you know what’ll happen.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.2%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.3%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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