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

Has anyone grazed an area which has quite a lot of mares tail in it? Reading up on it, says it can be toxic to cattle it grazed. There’s a good few thistles and other things as well as a decent bit of grass. We haven’t grazed it before, we planned to earlier but after having seen this we ended up topping it to see if it would help. Apparently very hard to get rid of so wandering if it really does cause a lot of bother or not?

Jonny B88 said:

Has anyone grazed an area which has quite a lot of mares tail in it? Reading up on it, says it can be toxic to cattle it grazed. There’s a good few thistles and other things as well as a decent bit of grass. We haven’t grazed it before, we planned to earlier but after having seen this we ended up topping it to see if it would help. Apparently very hard to get rid of so wandering if it really does cause a lot of bother or not?

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We have quite a bit of it, Mostly in areas that were previously full of rushes. Quite toxic and the sheep won't touch it.

It's something that doesn't really come up at all if we can graze lightly enough in spring, easier said than done at lambing though, and then it takes full advantage of bare ground.

Full of silica I believe, so maybe doing an important job? Roots look to be making a good job of aerating wetter soils too.

old chap that worked for us, was an avid gardener, took him 5 years, to get rid of the mares tales, he only succeeded, by painting each plant, with neat r-up. Our neighbours, across the road, always ask us to cut their paddock, 5acres, only because they are to tight to pay for topping ! They are trying to get rid of the weed, with very little success, but, they will pay someone to come and spot spray it ! We don't have issues with it, so perhaps tighter management, as in grazing, and topping, or fert, keeps it at bay.
Has anyone in this thread, have any comments, do's and don'ts, on cool weather clovers, with the price of fert, and going more extensive, currently looking at balsana clover, and practical knowledge, is always better, than a reps ! Managed to get a price, £6.75kg, and apparently its better than red or white, for fixing N, coupled with better early growth, looks a useful plant.
Quite like planning, for a more extensive system, makes you realise just how much it actually costs, to run a more conventional system, 40 cows go this week, so very little chance of running short of grub ! We had a friend call in yesterday, he works for auctioneers, and tells us, the number of farmers, talking to the, re selling herds, is rising, other than genuine dispersals, retirement, end of tenancy etc, the herds have a common theme, labour, and profitability, or lack of, many are around 200 head, to much for 1 man, not enough to justify a herdsman, which are hard to find, anyway. Or, big high output herds, again labour, and profit, or, to many new buildings, to pay for, and the comment that many of those herds, are not producing what their buyers require, white water, is really not required anymore, one farm selling up, high yielding hols, is actually receiving 7ppl less than us, plus 2ppl higher replacement costs, than us, that is a 9ppl a litre difference, a huge figure, and that's before buffer feeding, extra feed etc, really scary figures, and those were the same figures, our accountant was talking about.
So, less fert, even less if £400 ton +, more clover, home grown grain, and spending more time, concentrating, on doing less cows better, and the final plus, probably a return to a more enjoyable type of farming.

Jonny B88 said:

Would you fec everything or do a representative sample and work from there? We currently do around 5% representative sample to give us an idea.

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Sorry 10-15% representative sample

Kiwi Pete said:

I'll admit, I had butterflies today. Stock agent announced he was bringing the owner to see his heifers..... I was a worried as I think they look like crap, some of them are great and some not

But the owner, wow, he is either easily impressed or easily impressed. Raved about how well we've turned them around considering how poor they were...

I said they'd be better placed if they hadn't arrived skinny, wormy, and early... but he's happy as a small boy with mud and trucks.

Going to keep paying us the higher rate if we "just keep doing what you're doing"

So maybe total grazing isn't a waste of time with youngstock @Fenwick and "only for adapted cows and old ewes"

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so, good management, planned worming/vaccine schedule, and good grazing management, is the answer, next question, how can we market the system, so, we to, can afford to buy funny coloured trousers !
How much money, have farmers, been talked into spending, that has ended up, so complicated, and expensive to do, that is so far away from sustainable farming. I feel we are still farming, the necessity of ww2, and the need to produce maximum product. I would have said those days of shortages were over, listening to the news, shortages will occur ! We may actually benefit from this, the just in time, business ethics are over, home product may be needed more, whether prices will rise, different story.

Kiwi Pete said:

It's funny . I am a lousy farmer and yet screwing someone elses stock (just keep them alive until we get the grass to grow them on with, was basically the motto) made one of the best dairy farmers in the district heap praise on us.



maybe I just have very high standards of what I think stock should be like? To me too many have rough coats and potbellies but I possibly look at the tail-enders with my "predator's eye" whereas the owner is looking at his future cows in a positive light.

Worming plan, an interesting one in this case as ⅓ of them were wormed when they went onto the truck here,, and the ⅔ that came from the other grazing didn't, and had been underfed to the point they were losing weight (not just condition) .

I never worm every animal in a group and because I was using a pour-on I just wormed some - if they looked up at me then they got missed, and if they looked ahead or down they got a dose. Crude but effective way to judge depression in animals?

The other "funny one" is that it seems the more we try to "feed the ever-increasing population" the less likely it looks... but the closer we get to whatever our natural carrying-capacity or yield is, the easier it all becomes and money drips out the bottom for our own people

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l have lived and breathed farming, since l could get out there, in those 50 + years, l have seen/done loads of different ways, to do the same thing, each costing a bit more, than the previous method, bit more production, more profit ? don't know, but we were told, progress, this was the way forward. In those days, we had a large, for then, dairy, 100 milkers, 70/80 breeding sows, every thing finished, sheds/lofts were deep litter hens, and we grew corn, old man and his bro, were happy, content to pay tax, if new ideas appealed, they tried some, cousin and l, were rather more 'go ahead', pigs/chickens went, cows up, and more corn, and, perhaps more importantly, higher yields from both, profits still good, but not increasing, so, higher yields, more imputs, but no more profit, and inflation, was eroding that profit, so, we spent more, to produce more, for a profit that was not matching inflation, one can see that now, in hindsight, we would have been better off, not doing a lot of it, it is actually worse than that, as with the static profit, we were not replacing staff, as they left, retired or died, so savings were made, from that.
And now, the new buzz word, sustainable farming, well we were probably doing that 50 yrs ago, and now, what are we planning, a system much less reliant on bought in imputs, and trying to maximise home produced grub, we grew some barley this year, rolled 10 ton last week, £205 cost to roll, 10 ton bought in conc, would be approx £3,000, plus we have the straw, now l know it's not as simple as that, but you can see our reasoning, and it is easy to see, which direction to go.

And the government still talks about making farms more efficient....Produce more for less , even if it's destructive long term

Treg said:

And the government still talks about making farms more efficient....Produce more for less , even if it's destructive long term

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wrong, it's produce more, so food stays cheap = more money spent on taxable goods = more for guv.
Well for better or worse, son has just ordered 25kg of balsana clover, off our local pearce seeds, they grew it in their trial plots, and were quite impressed, full results not out yet.

Treg said:

And the government still talks about making farms more efficient....Produce more for less , even if it's destructive long term

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farmers need to get efficient at looking after themselves

Kiwi Pete said:

Balansa is mainly used in places with a massive water surplus as the soil warms up in springtime

Grazing it down as you would with a garden variety white clover cultivar soon sees it off, but if you have soggy soils and the discipline to let it grow, it certainly does that well

Few things can hack our harsh frequent grazings like white clover can

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hoping you are wrong, but l doubt it, we'll give it a go, and see what happens, another advantage of having our own drill, keeps the cost down, we are going to overseed some of our new land, it's not so dry, our best fields here, if kp is correct, just overseeded them with timothy and w/clover.
Our organic neighbour, has just cut his clover, for the 5th time, thinking that might not be giving the plant, enough to 'overwinter', time will tell.

som farmer said:

l have lived and breathed farming, since l could get out there, in those 50 + years, l have seen/done loads of different ways, to do the same thing, each costing a bit more, than the previous method, bit more production, more profit ? don't know, but we were told, progress, this was the way forward. In those days, we had a large, for then, dairy, 100 milkers, 70/80 breeding sows, every thing finished, sheds/lofts were deep litter hens, and we grew corn, old man and his bro, were happy, content to pay tax, if new ideas appealed, they tried some, cousin and l, were rather more 'go ahead', pigs/chickens went, cows up, and more corn, and, perhaps more importantly, higher yields from both, profits still good, but not increasing, so, higher yields, more imputs, but no more profit, and inflation, was eroding that profit, so, we spent more, to produce more, for a profit that was not matching inflation, one can see that now, in hindsight, we would have been better off, not doing a lot of it, it is actually worse than that, as with the static profit, we were not replacing staff, as they left, retired or died, so savings were made, from that.
And now, the new buzz word, sustainable farming, well we were probably doing that 50 yrs ago, and now, what are we planning, a system much less reliant on bought in imputs, and trying to maximise home produced grub, we grew some barley this year, rolled 10 ton last week, £205 cost to roll, 10 ton bought in conc, would be approx £3,000, plus we have the straw, now l know it's not as simple as that, but you can see our reasoning, and it is easy to see, which direction to go.

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That's why I posted this comment yesterday in Janet Hughes's DEFRA Q&A thread when she gave a woolly answer to my asking how they intended to make good on their aim to get farms profitable without subsidy by 2028.

farmgineer said:

What do you use for hydrants? We are thinking of putting a pipe in but not sure what the connection looks like. We need alot more flexibility in the water supply to our paddocks for next year as it's easily been the biggest draw on labour this year moving the current system

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I'm not sure yet. I've seen the hydrants from Kiwitech and they look impressive. Also been told about 'quick coupling valves' (think theyre the same idea) from pipestock.com but they look more dear.

If anyone has any experience with either that would be great.

gellis888 said:

I'm not sure yet. I've seen the hydrants from Kiwitech and they look impressive. Also been told about 'quick coupling valves' (think theyre the same idea) from pipestock.com but they look more dear.
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If anyone has any experience with either that would be great.

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Using both

The kiwitech ones work fine with our blue pipe for the 2 side connections, just mind it is easy to push the pipe too far in which then stops the centre valve working.
Easy to fix (basically undo the oftening connection, pull pipe out and start again.
BUT the central valve connection doesn't work well with our blue pipe as its designed to work with NZ LDPE pipe, if you use blue pipe in the valve, it will connect fine, but when you do the 'twist and pull' move to remove the pipe, the guts of the valve will spring out!
The way round it if using non-kiwitech troughs, is to buy a 8m coil of black pipe from kiwitech and use that for your trough, or if using long lengths of pipe to a trough, just use a foot or two of black pipe on the end you'll connect to the hydrant.
High pressures do make disconnecting quite difficult sometimes- get round this by tipping the trough out then quickly disconnect.


Pipestock plasson quick connects are great, they are 3/4" threaded to fit to what ever pipe size you want.
But just mind that the system is two part, male on the trough side and a female quick connect hydrant.
The weak part is the little hook on the male part, it can snap under high pressures
and cattle playing with it can disconnect the hydrant.
The system also doesn't always seal very well on disconnect if under high pressure.

gellis888 said:

I'm not sure yet. I've seen the hydrants from Kiwitech and they look impressive. Also been told about 'quick coupling valves' (think theyre the same idea) from pipestock.com but they look more dear.
View attachment 987093View attachment 987092
If anyone has any experience with either that would be great.

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pipestock fittings, are both good and cheap, with excellent service, ordered monday evening, delivered wed morning, well worth a look, they do pay pal.
Just had a bollocking, from son, thought l had spent £400+ on the water fittings, no, £156, inc vat and delivery, water troughs, in grazing cells, are always popping up on here, so, save some money !

Kiwi Pete said:

When you take representative samples, do you take unrepresentative ones too?

Sounds dumb so I'll elaborate, say we are looking at lice, if we just look at the bottoms, the rough-coated or mangy looking individuals then we see one thing - but chuck in some "good healthy ones" just for good measure and you may see something else.

Having looked through a 750-cow herd for a Johnes carrier I wished someone had said that to me beforehand, we kept sampling the milk earlier and earlier and the bloody cow was always the first one onto the rotary, a bloody pet!

Gave the mole scratches in the yard for months, but we were always under the assumption the "trouble hangs at the back" IYSWIM and she was literally the last cow we'd have suspected as being the PI

your case is probably more clear-cut but I am always reminded that any test or even experiment is a lot more valuable if we follow the scientific method and not put too much spin on the ball

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To be honest Pete, I just stand there and wait for animals to start and dung, out of say 30-40 animals that i need to get a sample from, the first 5-7 or so animals that do it and fill my container are the ones done. Its just a pooled sample so I’m not keeping a record of who it is as such, which was probably the source of my original question to @Blaithin . I don’t have a prejudice shall we say in what animals i sample i leave it to whatever dungs first and the decision is made for me as opposed to seeking out the “good looking” animals or the “bad looking” animals.

Perhaps i am doing it wrong and not targeting the poorer looking animals or dirtier animals?