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

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Our calving mob halved today.
20201016_183828.jpg

One to go, and about our due date to start calving 😂🤫🙄

I readily admit, I'm not much of a farmer 🤷‍♂️
Screenshot_20201016-193950_Files.jpg
 
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Rob Garrett

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Derbyshire UK
Very very good tool and I found it to be almost bang on with the predicted covers as long as I'd balanced it properly. But.... It takes a lot of time to balance it properly (hours sometimes when your transfering stock from one mob to another) and is a pig to do if it doesn't want to then it just won't and I couldn't get it to work sometimes. Could be made much more user friendly if they tried. I think they made it complicated to make you think you needed a consultants help to do it so you spend more money with them.
Don't think I'll bother with it now all it ever told me this year and last was I needed to sell as many lambs as possible before the autumn when growth slows down. I already knew that. When it comes to when to get stock off the grazing platform in winter or back on in spring you can just watch the farm cover and when it gets to where you think it needs to be put them on. Running all breeding stock I don't see the value in it so much as if you ran a flock of ewes and say bought in cattle to keep on top of the extra grass. It would be perfect to tell you how many extra mouths you could feed or how many to get rid of and when.
But I can't sell breeding ewes or cows when the computer tells me to because they might be rearing lambs it calves or pregnant. That's what bales are for feeding when there isn't enough grass to eat.
Would be handy to find the maximum stocking rate but you can't magic breeding ewes out of thin air anyway without buying them so I'll just stock what I think I can get away with and cull a bit harder if I go too far. That's what everyone else does anyway 🤷‍♂️
The lite version sounds interesting not heard of that. If it just did the forecast cover and demand graph it's all I'd need. It's all I used it for anyway.
Agrinet on the other hand is very good if you don't use that.
Great post, thank you. Good to hear an honest product assessment and not just the "all forward thinking progressive farmers have one" twoddle. We were close to going with Farmax/kiwi Tec UK, but couldn't face spending the brass!
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
As a planning tool it does seem a really good tool to predict what is possible on a holding
I need to add, Dave, that I didn't use it myself so can't really comment on the user-friendliness of it. Chris (AgFirst) helped develop it so I just delegated it to him - we have tweaked it slightly since though!

I think it's like using a bore-sight to set up a riflescope, in that saves you conpletely missing the target with a box of very expensive ammo for a start. Then you can dial it in but being on the middle of the paper is a good place to begin, it was for us.

A small business like ours needs that cashflow and we just couldn't see a sustainable one with "farming" as a main enterprise, hence the grazing is a very important part of our setup, it can generate the cashflow to service the debt and spread our risk. The Farmax just showed us how much better it would be than breeding and trying to finish a heap of stock.
That would be the logical thing to do, but it's so logical everyone else is doing it too
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Last day to cast your vote in NZ
 

Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
Last day to cast your vote in NZ

Anyone following this thread should take thé time to read that article.

Thé future is bright.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Great post, thank you. Good to hear an honest product assessment and not just the "all forward thinking progressive farmers have one" twoddle. We were close to going with Farmax/kiwi Tec UK, but couldn't face spending the brass!
I don't understand why it's so expensive in this country. I saw it advertised on their NZ Facebook page that it was only $200/year so about £100. Here we were quoted £600/year if we wanted to pay for it. Lucky I was given a free trial for a year through our grazing group and I still have never been charged any money but can still access it 🤷‍♂️ wouldn't have paid for it that's for sure.
If it was £100 half arsing it wouldn't matter so much but because it was going to be so expensive I thought I'd better do it properly and use the free trial to learn how to do it. If it was only £100 then I'd likely still use it but not for £600.
But if you were running a grazing system with flexible stock numbers and could trade them easily to fit in with grass supply and demand I could see it being very good value. £600 is only 2.5tonnes of cake and that wouldn't feed very many stock for very long at all. It is very good for that but don't feel like it's for me.
 

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
I don't understand why it's so expensive in this country. I saw it advertised on their NZ Facebook page that it was only $200/year so about £100. Here we were quoted £600/year if we wanted to pay for it. Lucky I was given a free trial for a year through our grazing group and I still have never been charged any money but can still access it 🤷‍♂️ wouldn't have paid for it that's for sure.
If it was £100 half arsing it wouldn't matter so much but because it was going to be so expensive I thought I'd better do it properly and use the free trial to learn how to do it. If it was only £100 then I'd likely still use it but not for £600.
But if you were running a grazing system with flexible stock numbers and could trade them easily to fit in with grass supply and demand I could see it being very good value. £600 is only 2.5tonnes of cake and that wouldn't feed very many stock for very long at all. It is very good for that but don't feel like it's for me.
Haven't quite picked up on all of this conversation, but this £600, is it for a grass/grazing program/app? What does it do over and above Agrinet (£75/year approx)
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Haven't quite picked up on all of this conversation, but this £600, is it for a grass/grazing program/app? What does it do over and above Agrinet (£75/year approx)
Also cashflow forecasting and stock reconciliation for budgeting - all linked back to the feed supply/demand curves for your property - so you can fiddle about with all different scenarios
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I don't understand why it's so expensive in this country. I saw it advertised on their NZ Facebook page that it was only $200/year so about £100. Here we were quoted £600/year if we wanted to pay for it. Lucky I was given a free trial for a year through our grazing group and I still have never been charged any money but can still access it 🤷‍♂️ wouldn't have paid for it that's for sure.
If it was £100 half arsing it wouldn't matter so much but because it was going to be so expensive I thought I'd better do it properly and use the free trial to learn how to do it. If it was only £100 then I'd likely still use it but not for £600.
But if you were running a grazing system with flexible stock numbers and could trade them easily to fit in with grass supply and demand I could see it being very good value. £600 is only 2.5tonnes of cake and that wouldn't feed very many stock for very long at all. It is very good for that but don't feel like it's for me.
I should probably have another play with it now, and see what we could do going forwards. Have 40 heifers due to be dropped off on Monday sometime and we can see what that does in the immediate term.
Having a decent stockagent is a massive help, he got me $14/week for them as well (which is $4 too much, but nevermind).
Also got my bull back today from his winter holiday to fatten up - and let his swimmers free, as the cows come back on.
20201017_112934.jpg

Gave them time to settle and then made them a little paddock of their own.
Screenshot_20201017-225110_Chrome.jpg

Lambing mob are fairly well sorted so I can concentrate on spreading poop while the weather is fit for that
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
I should probably have another play with it now, and see what we could do going forwards. Have 40 heifers due to be dropped off on Monday sometime and we can see what that does in the immediate term.
Having a decent stockagent is a massive help, he got me $14/week for them as well (which is $4 too much, but nevermind).
Also got my bull back today from his winter holiday to fatten up - and let his swimmers free, as the cows come back on.View attachment 914667
Gave them time to settle and then made them a little paddock of their own.
View attachment 914668
Lambing mob are fairly well sorted so I can concentrate on spreading poop while the weather is fit for that
👍🏻 £1/day that’s pretty good going for summer keep. Why bugger around having your own stock when you can get that. What are the targets you have to meet for that?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
👍🏻 £1/day that’s pretty good going for summer keep. Why bugger around having your own stock when you can get that. What are the targets you have to meet for that?
Nothing in the way of targets, just "feed them" (y)
the calves we've had for months were pretty average when they arrived; chap lost his son and kinda lost interest in farming for a while so they weren't that great.

But you're right, why would you bugger around
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
I remember when Dad had his new
You didn't know they actually made them new did you ;)
New ? Eh :scratchhead: ..never ..

🤣
Actually Dad used to buy secondhand 100's because they were obviously lower than 150' s and would just go under a ramp we had, sh I te used to slip right in lovelly. One or one and a half load a day used to be spread 365 days. All through winter , into 434 on the front, very little damage if you chose the right field in december and january happy days 😍
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
New ? Eh :scratchhead: ..never ..

🤣
Actually Dad used to buy secondhand 100's because they were obviously lower than 150' s and would just go under a ramp we had, sh I te used to slip right in lovelly. One or one and a half load a day used to be spread 365 days. All through winter , into 434 on the front, very little damage if you chose the right field in december and january happy days 😍
back in the day we seemed to get more frost enough to hold the tractor up, Dad would very often go spreading after milking then come in for breakfast when the frost give out
 

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