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

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
What does people do about coccidiosis in calves? We had our tb test last week, vet took a dung sample of a calf that had watery dung. Turned out to be a reasonably high level of cocci. Our usual treatment has been to dose with tolracol those that appear to have a dirty back end or have runny dung. Just wandering how others do it, do you give it a miss and try and induce resistance? A hangover from calving indoors i know. Yes moving calving season to calf outside might help, but thats a mindset I’m not quite sure of yet.
Drench them. This stuff was invented for a reason your bound to have breakdowns occasionally it's when you have to do it routinely there's a problem.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Disagree to some extent I'd much rather feed good silage to sucklers than rubbish, much easier to manage feeding and they are healthier. Try to keep ours at a fairly level condition and it costs the same to make good silage as it does bad...
I'd say it's much easier to balance good stuff with hay than bad stuff with bought in protein
Just because sucklers can eat crap doesn't mean they have to. Seems stupid to make crap on purpose for them.
Saying that I do let my silage or hay go mature and old because it costs just as much to mow, ted and rake those same fields to make a small high quality cut than it does a big bulky mature one. Mature grass doesn't always mean crap though.
 

Tyedyetom

Member
Livestock Farmer
Has anyone made or adapted a sprayer to spray out compost extract, liquid fert or bio fertilisers? Just wandering if i can get a quad bike sprayer gear to fit on a bigger tank and use a couple 12m nozzles to cover a decent area, but not sure if those 12v diaphragm pumps would be big enough for that?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I have wondered what to write, not really sure what I can add to it TBH. The feedlot they're referring to won't be too difficult to clean out, I had heard that if staff shortages hadn't bottlenecked their processing plant then they would have already had the space to do so.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Drench them. This stuff was invented for a reason your bound to have breakdowns occasionally it's when you have to do it routinely there's a problem.
This! (y)
If it needs done, get it done. We've had to drench calves for lungworm before, we just considered what it was that I was doing that was causing the issue so that it would be maybe less of an issue in future, but in the short term sometimes you just have to act
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Has anyone made or adapted a sprayer to spray out compost extract, liquid fert or bio fertilisers? Just wandering if i can get a quad bike sprayer gear to fit on a bigger tank and use a couple 12m nozzles to cover a decent area, but not sure if those 12v diaphragm pumps would be big enough for that?
I have a Teejet boomjet nozzle here, a Bertolini 2 diaphragm spray pump has almost enough flow to run it to 2 bar - it flows around 75l/min for 19.6m width. I haven't seen any 12v pumps that come within a bull's roar of that flow rate .

I am working on a plan there, I think it will need a decent Honda engine and 2 pumps - running off a layshaft maybe - a trash pump agitating and a pressure pump pumping to the "boom" in a similar fashion to the "Tow and Fert"

What may happen instead is that I just make a slurry tank with agitator, and apply it with a helicopter and slurry-bucket, but that's due to how our fence system is.
 

Tyedyetom

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thanks, I’ve been looking at the cheapest easiest way to get something made up. A local engineer could get all the parts for me to put on an IBC for about £700. At least I know it would work then!
not put any fert on yet but I think we’ll need a tickle of something late summer to keep it growing into the autumn.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thanks, I’ve been looking at the cheapest easiest way to get something made up. A local engineer could get all the parts for me to put on an IBC for about £700. At least I know it would work then!
not put any fert on yet but I think we’ll need a tickle of something late summer to keep it growing into the autumn.
Yes, it really depends what you want to be spraying. A lot of "living stuff" doesn't survive being pressurised very much at all, hence there are possibly constraints on what you can do if you're going that way with your "spray module"

But spraying liquid fert (eg melted urea, or liquid fertilisers) can be done with normal spray gear easily enough.
Just mix or melt it in a tank and pump/siphon it into your sprayer, to leave the sediment behind. Urea has funny grit/slag type stuff inside each granule and filters/ spray nozzles don't like that stuff at all.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Quite an interesting topic even as a standalone subject, one thing that is really noticeable when we dig soil pits for discussion groups is just how "tight" soils can get when they're "well fertilised" in a conventional sense.

Even crops of legumes seem to have this effect after a while, but I am yet to see any "effects of Nitrogen" have a more deleterious and damaging effect on soil structure/porosity than regular applications of superphosphate (most farms here would apply 250kg/ha+ 0.9.0 annually as a maintenance fertiliser).

Another thing that comes out of the soil pit digs is just how different the soil is where a "fungal dominance" or even a correct balance exists, the edge of a mushroom 'fairy ring' or patch of spreading thistle is usually far looser and more friable than surrounding areas.
 

cows sh#t me to tears

Member
Livestock Farmer
Quite an interesting topic even as a standalone subject, one thing that is really noticeable when we dig soil pits for discussion groups is just how "tight" soils can get when they're "well fertilised" in a conventional sense.

Even crops of legumes seem to have this effect after a while, but I am yet to see any "effects of Nitrogen" have a more deleterious and damaging effect on soil structure/porosity than regular applications of superphosphate (most farms here would apply 250kg/ha+ 0.9.0 annually as a maintenance fertiliser).

Another thing that comes out of the soil pit digs is just how different the soil is where a "fungal dominance" or even a correct balance exists, the edge of a mushroom 'fairy ring' or patch of spreading thistle is usually far looser and more friable than surrounding areas.
muriated potash (Granulated potash from big chem)is toxic for soil biology. Reactive rock phosphate is what I use in a blend on my lucerne.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
muriated potash (Granulated potash from big chem)is toxic for soil biology. Reactive rock phosphate is what I use in a blend on my lucerne.
Yes, it's horrible stuff.
Wouldn't dream of applying half of the stuff I spread on the land over the course of a year, here!
RPR is an exception to that, but we hardly ever see it - it's a VERY conventional, "best practice" type of farming area where we are.
Super, lime on everything; an MOP blend on silage paddocks, DAP/ serpentine with seed and urea when people want to dig a hole for themself, the fert reps have it made really
 
Calving is proceeding rapidly here, so I will soon be looking to move the cows out on rotation behind the sheep. Can anyone foresee any issues with cattle being behind single strand electric (top setting presumably) with sheep coming underneath to access water? Trying to plan an effective leader/follower set up with the minimum of investment in new water points and fencing until I find my feet.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
going around fields today, quite pleased, with this regrowth, behind the cows, one of our driest slopes, as well.
IMG_0692[1].JPG

and we have had a good soaking, should keep us growing, for another month, so a reasonable second cut is on the cards.
Our pp has seriously bulked up this past week, and will come of, as soon as possible now, the balsana in some of it, is there, how much it will effect yield/quality, not sure, but every time we look, seems to be a bit more.
We will have 50 ish acres, of ley grass here, that should fill up, our silage pit room, so anything else, will, weather dependant, be hay. And, most importantly, all grass so far, has been cut at ideal stage.
 

Gulli

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Calving is proceeding rapidly here, so I will soon be looking to move the cows out on rotation behind the sheep. Can anyone foresee any issues with cattle being behind single strand electric (top setting presumably) with sheep coming underneath to access water? Trying to plan an effective leader/follower set up with the minimum of investment in new water points and fencing until I find my feet.
Probably won't be any issues with the wire, might take them a while to get used to being in around each other and how are you going to stop the sheep just wandering where they like?
I've got sheep and cattle mixed at the moment and behind 2 strands of wire, may well experiment with a single strand for a couple of bits, works fine along hedgerows but not quite brave enough to split the field up with a single strand 😬
 
Probably won't be any issues with the wire, might take them a while to get used to being in around each other and how are you going to stop the sheep just wandering where they like?
I've got sheep and cattle mixed at the moment and behind 2 strands of wire, may well experiment with a single strand for a couple of bits, works fine along hedgerows but not quite brave enough to split the field up with a single strand 😬
It will be to split fields, so sheep are limited by conventional fencing.

With two strands to hold cattle and sheep, you'll need one near the top for the cattle and one in the middle. Do the sheep not try to crawl underneath? Although, thinking about it, I quite often have the bottom wire of three dead once the sheep are used to it to prevent the wire shorting out on longer grass.
 

Gulli

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
It will be to split fields, so sheep are limited by conventional fencing.

With two strands to hold cattle and sheep, you'll need one near the top for the cattle and one in the middle. Do the sheep not try to crawl underneath? Although, thinking about it, I quite often have the bottom wire of three dead once the sheep are used to it to prevent the wire shorting out on longer grass.
No i just set it up with the wires where you'd have them for sheep. Get a good fencer and plenty of grass and they won't bother the fence
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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

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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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