Ah, the old "lack of peer reviewed science" attack...
Plant species need to be considered.
Could put it in the WTF thread as well
No drought plan here, try to have about 4-6 weeks grazing in front. If it slows down i cull some ewes, sell fat at lighter weights or stores.
we have, and still do, very tight grazing, on older or pp, the shock factor, by doing this, is the huge increase in stocking capacity, while still keeping the cattle in the correct body condition. This does lead to sward improvement, as well as teaching cattle to eat docks, a major plus. At the other end, we leave longer residuals, behind the dairy, because we discovered that shallow rooted ryegrass, dies quicker with tight grazing, in very dry conditions. Again, with more 'robust' grasses, herbs and clover, perhaps tight grazing, and longer recovery time, may well work as well. We would not try that with milkers though, to much income potentially lost ! Probably the answers become evident, as we find out which plants do well, on our farms, as we continue to experiment. Going back to tight grazing, with dry/young stock, the increased stocking rate is seriously greater, with no detriment to stock growth rates, but improves swards as well, something that could well be of interest to beef farmers, sheep would just breakout !
The force is strong in NZ.
I also think it's nice for the cows to have change, who wants the same meal every dayThat’s me. Full of input about what I’m not actually doing
Everyone has their different ideals and goals for the holistic approach. One of mine is native grassland conservation. You can’t conserve native prairie if you’re only utilizing tame forages that can take a good beating. However native prairie has great bonuses. It’s a lot of warm season so can perform better in the dry summers here, it’s good stockpiled winter grazing, it has exceptional root mass, it’s endangered, it’s a great habitat for native critters, etc etc.
But it’s downfall is that not many species can take heavy grazing regularly and can require long rest periods.
So a prime recommendation here is have fields of both. Tame, cool season grasses that take off in the spring and offer good, early grazing. Then native fields of warm season forbes to transition to in the heat or even in the fall once dormant. You can sometimes get a second growth of cool season in fall to graze as well.
Much like rotating up and down the hills based on your rainfall and saturation and where you want to build soil and where you’re willing to punch out, having fields of opposing forages can offer advantages. They won’t necessarily work when all planted together as they’ll gradually phase into just what’s liking the conditions, but when planted in similar groupings but different pastures they can provide grazing in different conditions. Sometimes diversity isn’t about how many species are in one sward, it’s about how many types of swards you can have. Resilience doesn’t always come down to having one pasture that has at least one kind of plant that can survive anything, but having different pastures with different strengths and weaknesses.
Must have made some money then,
That's right. I'm quite glad that we subdivided across so many different pastures as they all seem to have something different to offer, and then of course you struggle to do the same thing with the grazing twice running, so the variation is there even if you're running with one major goal in mind.That’s me. Full of input about what I’m not actually doing
Everyone has their different ideals and goals for the holistic approach. One of mine is native grassland conservation. You can’t conserve native prairie if you’re only utilizing tame forages that can take a good beating. However native prairie has great bonuses. It’s a lot of warm season so can perform better in the dry summers here, it’s good stockpiled winter grazing, it has exceptional root mass, it’s endangered, it’s a great habitat for native critters, etc etc.
But it’s downfall is that not many species can take heavy grazing regularly and can require long rest periods.
So a prime recommendation here is have fields of both. Tame, cool season grasses that take off in the spring and offer good, early grazing. Then native fields of warm season forbes to transition to in the heat or even in the fall once dormant. You can sometimes get a second growth of cool season in fall to graze as well.
Much like rotating up and down the hills based on your rainfall and saturation and where you want to build soil and where you’re willing to punch out, having fields of opposing forages can offer advantages. They won’t necessarily work when all planted together as they’ll gradually phase into just what’s liking the conditions, but when planted in similar groupings but different pastures they can provide grazing in different conditions. Sometimes diversity isn’t about how many species are in one sward, it’s about how many types of swards you can have. Resilience doesn’t always come down to having one pasture that has at least one kind of plant that can survive anything, but having different pastures with different strengths and weaknesses.
so your saying there was nothing to eat them ? that can't be right can it
There must be more to this than meets the eye isn't there ?
Pretty much. There were no ruminants, rodents, canines or felines pre- invasion/ settlement, only really birds and reptiles.
There isn't really much more to it. There's 90% producing diluted product that want to believe it's "best in the world" and 10% who want to do much better than that, and so there's always division amongst the ranks.
No. Most of the land was either alpine plants, desert type - or wet forest with closed canopy - or tussock/scrub
www.pnas.org
Edmeades seems a favoured scientist of the MPI as his work all supports the policies they've run for decades. In that video he seems to have forgotten that a basic tenet of science is to challenge what you believe as evidence emerges. Well the evidence emerging from farms is contrary to his understanding and he appears unable to follow the scientific response to that.
