"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
A couple of reasons - firstly, to increase the recovery time. This sounds dumb, right?
"We want more grass, faster, cheaper" is the usual priority for grassland management, especially when we have our 'rotational grazing' hat on.
But, we don't. If we just undergraze it now and have no stock in two months, then it will be rugged stuff by the time we stock up again.
Probably what most people see when they Google holistic grazing TBH.
So that's the first part of it... we don't want rubbish in March, especially for calves.
The second part of it is more correcting the sward itself, because we've been undergrazing (and thus, under-resting) the pasture and not topping; it's really benefitted the early-seeders (meadowgrass, fog, dogstail) but it's also hurt the late bloomers (timothy, red clover, etc) that pop up later. Especially as we used to top things about now, as did the last however many farmers here, what it means is that you eventually end up losing some of your better species.
Summary: if we want to take a break and just let the grass feed the soil, then we need to wax it off quite a bit . Most of those early bloomers are seeding now, the ryegrass will seed again "aftermath heading" and so will the timothy, and the red clovers and plantain etc.
So we're evening up things so that all the species get the same chance to grow out and seed, instead of just the more weedy ones.
The big plus is that just growing nice leafy grass for 80-90 days feeds the soil a lot more energy than setting it back every 30-40, so the roots can grow bigger and better.
And that's really the main idea of doing it right now, it'll grow like stink, as if it were topped
- Location
- West Somerset
Here you go Pete, we're a wet hill farm on the edge of Exmoor
We do drain well though!
Jan 175mm
Feb 298mm
Mar 150 mm
Apr 25 mm
May 25 mm really checked the grass growth this month herbal leys were good mind.
Jun 194 mm
Jul 85 mm
Aug 239 mm
Sept 35 mm
Oct 398 mm
Nov 144 mm
Dec 386mm
Total 2154mm!
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
You should join the Gun forum I'm on, it appears that the average member on there has two of each
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Wow. That's more like where I came from.
The "dry" months were still "wet" but the grass still used to baulk if it didn't get it's weekly water. I tried to turn it around... but...
apparently you must top the grass and you must apply x units of NitrogenI got f**ked off with that, because we could see it was working. But the neighbours were the real managers. f**k'em
Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I think the principle behind non-selective grazing makes perfect sense but obviously @Kiwi Pete has been making a decent fist of his system up to now. Interesting to see what happens.
The pics don't do justice to how up and down this field is, when we were fencing it I had the trike sat on its arse, luckily the stake carrier stopped it going back over, I wasn't on it got more sense than that just walking by it working the throttle and trying to keep the front down
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
- Location
- somerset
we have been experimenting a bit with old/pp grass, in so much as taking it right down, and backfence, hoping to alter grass type, the most notable thing is they will eat docks to the root top, but generally can say grass has improve, and it gets a long rest, but our trial was pretty small, and were using y/s. As i have said before, we had had 1 cut/yr, no fert or anything, off 16 acres, so that would be the ultimate ground level/long rest, this (last!) year we were allowed to cut x2, yield and quality have certainly improved. Now we have 'full' control of that field, it will be interesting to dig a few holes, and see what's underneath, the next question, what can we put on it, to replace what's been removed over the last 20+ yrs, that will be a combination of sh1t cattle and fert.
I find the whole concept of improving crops/soil through management changes fascinating, a bit like a dog with a bone, i can't seem to 'let go' of the ideas flowing from that concept, the worst, i'm at the latter end of my farming career, so i probably won't see end results long term. Whatever you look/read about farming now, the word regenerative appears everywhere, so at least people are realising the enormity of the problem. The final outcome of structure destruction (like that) is desertification, and that can be seen in many areas. Take the fact that the sahara, was once green and fertile...... There are many successful experiments that show desertification can be reversed, when looking at an aerial photo, showing 1 green farm, amongst lots of brown ones, shows what is possible. It took about 80 yrs, here in the UK to start showing the problems, i wonder if it will take 80yrs to reverse them ? Nature is very forgiving, and i think you can start that reversal, in relatively few years, probably starting with the decision to do 'something'. Another long waffle.
I find the whole concept of improving crops/soil through management changes fascinating, a bit like a dog with a bone, i can't seem to 'let go' of the ideas flowing from that concept, the worst, i'm at the latter end of my farming career, so i probably won't see end results long term. Whatever you look/read about farming now, the word regenerative appears everywhere, so at least people are realising the enormity of the problem. The final outcome of structure destruction (like that) is desertification, and that can be seen in many areas. Take the fact that the sahara, was once green and fertile...... There are many successful experiments that show desertification can be reversed, when looking at an aerial photo, showing 1 green farm, amongst lots of brown ones, shows what is possible. It took about 80 yrs, here in the UK to start showing the problems, i wonder if it will take 80yrs to reverse them ? Nature is very forgiving, and i think you can start that reversal, in relatively few years, probably starting with the decision to do 'something'. Another long waffle.
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
- Location
- somerset
all you need now, in that wilderness, is a guardian dog, greg judy has some for sale..................
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
It's just a part of the journey.
We made our little farm 'bigger' by using density to create more impact and it works.
You can make fast changes with high density that would take years at low density, or not at all.
And now we can use density/ impact to increase our other input, photosynthesis. Every day is more sugar for the biome.
The big thing is that weak plants don't have big roots to bounce away from severe grazing with.
So we needed to let them have their head for a while in order to get them able to take "severe" grazing and not just roll over, it's fairly well accepted that if you take most of the plant then the roots stop for about 17-18 days and then they recover.
[Thus you should immediately add that into your grazing/recovery plan]
But when you get your head around the idea that grazing is actually stimulation and stress for the plants, then light grazings that happen to close together are not ideal for all the plants.
It's better than set stocking, but it's still not the ideal.
The ideal for the plant is that they get pruned and whoever did it doesn't come back for a long while so they can keep feeding the soil and the soil keeps feeding them.
And by pruning them properly, it affords us even more time before they should come back.
I look at my roadside verges now, red clover to the knee and big tall strong plants. That's real "expression". We still have a way to go.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
This was us for 2019 and 2020:
Note: I record "trace" as 0.1mm and occasionally estimate 1/4mm readings when that's all we get hence the few decimal results.
And the 2020 rainfall chart:
So much for averages!
- Location
- Devon
Here's ours. Average about 1200mm
Think actually we had a bit more than that. A couple of times we've had gales with it and others around us have recorded more than me. I've moved my gauge now as it was a bit sheltered during southerly gales.
Think actually we had a bit more than that. A couple of times we've had gales with it and others around us have recorded more than me. I've moved my gauge now as it was a bit sheltered during southerly gales.
Its an interesting place thats for sure, the ewes seem happy in there though, there is plenty of trees for cover and dry places to lye down, hell of a mat of grass and stuff so they won't be in the mud for a while.
honestly some of the places we end up grazing most wouldn't bother
Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
I took some ground rougher than that next door when we came. Took it down hard with sheep late winter. You wouldn't know it now.
yep its amazing what can be done
Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
It was a real win-win. My landlord gets a modest rent for land that was sitting earning nothing, plus it's a lot nicer to look at and I get 10 acres for reasonable money
or a fence line or 2 ? which i had that much keep atm ...even tho is carp old grass species......like from the road verges ..
