mob stocking

cows250 · Sep 2, 2016

Oh no, I am far too poor and lazy to reseed. I would guess that my place hasn't seen a plow for 15 years now after they stopped milking cows and sold off the farmstead. I did apply a thick layer of manure in July, but they eat under the break wires in the middle too. This particular fence was a mess of barb wire 2 years ago, and is a property line, but they do the same thing all around the farm and I moved all the fences.

Thanks for saying it looks like I have an "expensive ley" guys that is going to make my day. That field was the last one in my 3rd rotation for the year and cows left the field after I took the picture. They are grazing about 16" high stuff as I start my 4th rotation...it really isn't long enough. Manure is a bit loose for my liking, but they seem to be doing OK. "Next year I will do better" should be my new motto.

mikep · Sep 2, 2016

Probably less crap near the fence.

Feldspar · Sep 5, 2016

Who needs fences for mob grazing anyway?

[There is no fence.]

http://bashny.net/t/en/269915

cows250 · Sep 5, 2016

Hmmmm. I am willing to bet there was a fence there previously. Otherwise I need to get some of the "world's easiest to contain sheep" and carefully explain to them where they can graze today and what they should graze tomorrow. It would save me loads of time building fence. And they should train the cows and goats too...can't be building fence for animals that don't follow directions.

dontknowanything · Sep 5, 2016

Feldspar said:
Who needs fences for mob grazing anyway?

View attachment 394034

[There is no fence.]

http://bashny.net/t/en/269915

Really?

Clearly there are fence posts, I bet there are wires there too.

Feldspar · Sep 5, 2016

dontknowanything said:
Really?

Clearly there are fence posts, I bet there are wires there too.

Think you may be right. This is the original source and they make no mention of anything special going on: http://scottbridle.com/my-images/brenda-station-2012

cows250 · Sep 27, 2016

Just wanted to give an update about mob grazing sheep to finish. My 5 sheep who arrived at 45 pounds live weight (a guess) were slaughtered 142 days later at 57-66 pounds hanging weight and just over 60 pounds average. If the yield was ~50% then I gained 0.53 pounds a day liveweight, which I think is awesome. No worming, no drenching, no hard feed. They had access to a generic sheep salt/mineral block from a feed store, water, and grass....that's it.

I'm still very new to the concept of grazing, much less mob grazing, but I think there is a huge opportunity to use healthier grass and tall grazing and still obtain good growth at very low cost. 75% of my land did get some dairy manure spread on it this July, but otherwise no inputs were used at all.

RushesToo · Sep 27, 2016

cows250 said:
Just wanted to give an update about mob grazing sheep to finish. My 5 sheep who arrived at 45 pounds live weight (a guess) were slaughtered 142 days later at 57-66 pounds hanging weight and just over 60 pounds average. If the yield was ~50% then I gained 0.53 pounds a day liveweight, which I think is awesome. No worming, no drenching, no hard feed. They had access to a generic sheep salt/mineral block from a feed store, water, and grass....that's it.

I'm still very new to the concept of grazing, much less mob grazing, but I think there is a huge opportunity to use healthier grass and tall grazing and still obtain good growth at very low cost. 75% of my land did get some dairy manure spread on it this July, but otherwise no inputs were used at all.

Clean ground is a great advantage. Anything with stock on it for a while gets problems from parasites getting used to having hosts so keep those fast moving fences going. Great stuff..

cows250 · Sep 27, 2016

I agree being a sheep free farm before this is a definite advantage. I really wonder with mob grazing: if the animals are only on a piece of ground for 3-9 days total a year (followed by our hard winters) if I can avoid any worm buildup whatsoever? It would sure be nice. I will be running at least 60 acres next year, up from 10 this year, so that will make longer rotations, more moves per day or week, and larger mobs more feasible.

Currently moving my 3 steers 3X per week, but the 9' wide, by 350' long strips look kind of silly, oh well. They will be getting only grass until the snow gets too deep or ice gets too hard. I would guess that they are gaining 2 pounds a day currently, but their manure is still too loose and the 12-16" grass is just too lush.

RushesToo · Sep 27, 2016

cows250 said:
I agree being a sheep free farm before this is a definite advantage. I really wonder with mob grazing: if the animals are only on a piece of ground for 3-9 days total a year (followed by our hard winters) if I can avoid any worm buildup whatsoever?

The answer to this is a loads of tests with isolation between herds / grazing, great vet or lots of reading. Of all of these - lots of reading is probably going to lead to the quickest answer, isolated herds over grazing takes years to prove as does finding a great vet - and they retire once you've latched on to them. Read about the parasites, life cycles, hosts and work out what should succeed. You *may* have the added advantage of cold winters - but my suspicion would be that the hosts are as well adapted as the parasites and is a false assumption from my experience of warmer climes.

If you decide to do a test - report on here on the plans because there are loads of parasite / vet type wonks that would help with the experiment design.

cows250 · Sep 27, 2016

I may end up testing eventually, but, well, that costs money...and I'm real cheap. It would be interesting to see what the worm load coming in was and what the worm load at slaughter was and do a comparison.

There are almost no sheep in the entire county, so finding more "clean" ground is very easy. It's rather sad...I can see rotted off corner posts all around the country, but all that good grass is currently going to waste. 60-90 years ago there would have been sheep and cattle in every ditch, woods, and field from what I have read in old farm reports. Instead short day corn (80-90 days) was developed, along with cheap fertilizer, so they plow the living crap out of the soil. Lots of fields around me are starting to look like straight sand with poor or no crops growing in parts of them. I guess that is also an opportunity for me, because if mob grazing actually builds soil OM like some say it can, that would be a huge bonus to the landowner.

I have read that garlic and pine trees are both natural dewormers. Garlic costs money, but I do have a dozen small pine trees divided between 2 pastures that the sheep and cattle eat on. Does it do any good...I don't know, but it didn't seem to hurt them any. Both of the additional places I am grazing next year have a fair amount of pine trees available to munch on, so here's hoping next year's crop of lambs grows just as well.

robo watson · Sep 28, 2016

trying mob grazing with some lambs at the moment it is working quite well. I think!!!!!
It is amazing how quickly how the animals learn what the go is. I went to the groundswell show in the summer jill clapperton advised to stitch in other plant types to get some different types of plants in the system ie brassicas. I have tried this summer to stitch in chickory and red clover using one of those pasture rejuvenaters. It has not been that successful has any one else done this what have they used.

martian · Oct 9, 2016

@robo watson regarding your stitching in experiments...don't be too quick to write it off, we've found that clover seeds can sit around for years before deciding it's the right moment to grow. Some of our pastures are now very pleasing clover/grass mixes which yield well.

Others aren't and I can't yet put my finger on why they seem not to be improving under the mob system. We've almost eliminated thistles from some fields which were choked with them before, without spraying a drop of herbicide, ditto buttercups. Then another field will suddenly become infested with buttercups. They are dynamic ecosystems of course, there are many factors all joshing against each other to allow individual plants to thrive or decline, I suspect it will take a long time, if it ever does, for a stable 'climax' vegetation to establish on England's pastures green.

Meanwhile, I've been having an interesting time with our big mob, which peaked at about 230 head of cattle, cows and spring born calves, yearlings, 15 month and 21 month old stores. They are looking very well, but they don't half hoover up the forage. The problem has been keeping enough water in front of them, especially in the hot weather. They destroy those useless plastic 300 gallon tanks as soon as they empty them so we've been planting some 300 gall concrete ones out (bizarrely, they are cheaper than the plastic, around £300 each) which they can't move so at least they can slowly fill up so that they all get a drink. Unless we can think of a way to water them more efficiently, I think this is as big a mob as we can manage.

Dan Powell · Oct 10, 2016

John, we have similar problems with a smaller mob and a smaller trough but only when the trough is a long way from the cattle. If the trough can be kept in the cell that's being grazed there is less tendency for them to all want to drink at once.

Would it be better to spend on water pipe and a couple of moveable troughs rather than using water lanes?

@The Ruminant

ollie989898 · Oct 12, 2016

martian said:
It's surprising what they'll eat. Got some bracken around one of our headlands. Some cows head straight for it when let in. Before:View attachment 390096and after:View attachment 390100
We have hardly had any rain here for weeks, which has made harvesting a joy, but has slowed grass growth. We have a nice stockpile ahead of the mobs though and are finding that the trampled after-mob forage grows back quicker than grass grazed down to the ground. It feels like you're wasting a lot of potential cow food, but this litter protects the soil and holds what little moisture there is, really well.View attachment 390108
Although here they seem to have eaten this cocksfoot practically to the root.
When they are like this I could happily watch them all day
View attachment 390112

Bracken is poisonous, no?

martian · Oct 15, 2016

Dan Powell said:
John, we have similar problems with a smaller mob and a smaller trough but only when the trough is a long way from the cattle. If the trough can be kept in the cell that's being grazed there is less tendency for them to all want to drink at once.

Would it be better to spend on water pipe and a couple of moveable troughs rather than using water lanes?

@The Ruminant

It's still very dry here, the mob have just shoved a 300 gallon plastic tank under the wire having drained it. It was in the cell where they were grazing, doesn't seem to make much difference to them, they all seem to want to drink at the same time. Our water pressure is a bit low perhaps. At least with concrete tanks they just have to wait for it to refill, they can't do too much damage.

ollie989898 said:
Bracken is poisonous, no?

If it is, then no-one has told the cows. They all look very well on it...

The Ruminant · Oct 28, 2016

We've had a scientist visit every few weeks through the year to take faecal samples to check for parasitic infection. He says the cattle (suckler herd including youngstock plus yearling steers and heifers) have an extraordinarily low level of parasitic worms, etc.

He's going to try to determine whether its solely down to the mob grazing - moving onto clean pasture every day and not grazing too low - or whether there is also some inherent resistance within the cattle.

Very interesting all the same. The cattle get a single dose of dectomax at housing, to combat lice and mange.

choochter · Oct 28, 2016

The Ruminant said:
We've had a scientist visit every few weeks through the year to take faecal samples to check for parasitic infection. He says the cattle (suckler herd including youngstock plus yearling steers and heifers) have an extraordinarily low level of parasitic worms, etc.

He's going to try to determine whether its solely down to the mob grazing - moving onto clean pasture every day and not grazing too low - or whether there is also some inherent resistance within the cattle.

Very interesting all the same. The cattle get a single dose of dectomax at housing, to combat lice and mange.

what were the levels? i.e. the nematode egg count results

I took part in a Moredun survey in 2012 and did 12 cows , heifers and calves. All the cows and heifers were 0 or 1 epg and the calves were between 10 and 138 epg, with only 2 being over 100.

The Ruminant · Oct 28, 2016

choochter said:
what were the levels? i.e. the nematode egg count results

I took part in a Moredun survey in 2012 and did 12 cows , heifers and calves. All the cows and heifers were 0 or 1 epg and the calves were between 10 and 138 epg, with only 2 being over 100.

Highest was 15 - this is from samples throughout the grazing season

cows250 · Oct 29, 2016

I was looking online, but couldn't find any info: How long do adult worms live in the gut of an animal? Months or years? I ask because mob grazing for me should extremely limit the amount of new parasites being consumed, but I am not going to use any chemical wormers to kill the adults. My dung beetle and beneficial fly populations are thriving now. Within minutes of coming out each manure pie has dung flies (Sphaeroceridae) covering it and within two weeks the dung beetles have removed all trace of manure from the pasture surface. Simply amazing what nature can do.

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