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

I am not opposed to quicker lighter rotational grazing as long as the pressure is off when the rams go out? Maybe just take a quarter off the whole grazing area as opposed to half the leaf off half the area - help maintain good levels of cover, feed quality, and performance?

I hadn't ever heard the phase 1 2 3 before until recently, so I've always thought of the growth stages as sulking, growing, and slowing
sulking grass leads to seeds
So I try to keep everything in the growing stage, from what I determine the upper end, right back to the lower end of it

Anything else seems to be "lesser" - and I definitely don't aim for yellow residuals at any point of the year, keep it in the green zone.

That probably serves as a better answer to what you asked earlier, Sam? If there is still green then there is still photosynthesis, yellow is stress/overgrazing as per what Greg Judy said to you

With having sheep out over winter they tend to maintain things to a point that heading is quite late, I see on my travels that the foxtail in some wetter areas has thrown up its heads, so ryegrass would head here in another month.... so I am more mindful now of not overgrazing than beforehand, we have gone from winter mode to spring / summer mode
Past that "heading date" then cover can be maintained or slowly reduced as need be

But these are all complex decisions to be constantly making and breaking, it is purely a context thing - no point going broke having a farm full of grass, overgrazing is a good way to make a withdrawl from the soil ie a fast flow of carbon from the soil to the livestock/silage pit/bloke down the road

Carbon flows are something that really stopped me and made me think about what I was doing and how I was doing it... hence the whole "do nothing" farming instead of trying to manipulate stuff too much.

There probably aren't really many common pasture species that you should count out for bloat, as an example of my backwardness I'll tackle your last question first... clover dominant pasture does have that risk but generally only when hungry cattle are gorging immature clover - straight away there are two things that you can easily change!
Fully fed cattle on clover at the stage you can see the odd flower have very little frothy bloat risk.
One of the joys of older pasture is it generally is pretty well adapted to your conditions (or it wouldn't be there) and so I wouldn't discount simply stitching in some extras - things that will fill gaps in your current feed supply are often good value.
If you struggle to maintain summer quality, most of the herbs and legumes will provide that while the grass is on holiday.
Many older species are as good if not better, it depends on management.

Crofter64 said:

André Voisin in his classic 1959 ‘Grass Productivity’ says that pastures really don’t come into their own till about 40-50 years. Just as @Kiwi Pete says they are by then well adapted to your location and many plants you didn’t seed have migrated there on their own. I think Pete’s suggestion of seeding some deep rooting herbs( newman turner, fetility pastures (1955)and robert elliot ‘ clifton park system of farming’ (1898) is according to the books mentioned the way to go. These books might seem out of date but these last two men were very successful farmers whose opinion was sought out by their peers. Then the noise from the ‘conventional’ mob drowned them out. To be successful nowadays I think we have to re-learn what those old boys had to say and adapt it to our present situation. I think a lot of us on this thread are trying to do just that. Thanks Pete for all your photos and descriptions of what you are doing. A picture is worth...

Click to expand...

With me, you get the thousand words as well...

I am really enjoying this thread, all the little flecks of knowledge that come out along the way, the clues, the thought processes - thanks to everyone else who has a say or a question, even a memorable saying!

I do really enjoy the pictures, especially from really different climates / contexts to my own - it helps reinforce the message that the principles are the constant part of nature - we control most of the variables whether we understand that or not...

awkward said:

Pete you should take a look at sainfoin..If your not familiar with it already

Click to expand...

I have made a heap of enquiries about it, but can't get it here without importing it myself from Europe.
Shame they don't have it in Japan or I would get them to fill up one of the next cars I bring in (one of my little ventures is importing used electric and hybrid vehicles) but for now it will have to wait.
It may be a little wet for it here, as lucerne struggles here with wet feet I imagine sainfoin would too?

That's why I don't stress about docks, they perform such a similar function.

Crofter64 said:

what function is that, besides filling an empty space?

Click to expand...

Extracting minerals from depth, providing condensed tannins in high levels to reduce bloating and increase intake in the stock, and leaving a big root channel in the topsoil.
And, they are quite easily managed, not as temperamental as a lot of the herbs you'd plant to do the same thing, certainly the seed is cheaper...

• Did Grandpa have a better way?

In our effort to produce more, inputs have increased, ranchers have exited the business and rural communities have become ghost towns. Perhaps the secret to success in agriculture is looking at how Grandpa managed the farm and then do more of that.
Amanda Radke | Oct 14, 2018

“Burke’s challenge: Find a better way to ranch.” In that article, he wrote about how, in our progressive efforts to advance the industry forward to achieve greater efficiencies and produce greater yields and more beef, we haven’t found an increase in profitability at the same rate as our advancements.

Teichert writes, “Yes, with our current model, we are increasing yields, animal size and growth rates; but we aren’t any more profitable. And significantly fewer people live and work in rural America. Our rural communities are dying, schools are closing and our children are leaving agriculture.”


To lower input costs, he urges producers to work more closely with nature to create a system that is less reliant on costly machinery, fossil fuels, pesticides and herbicides.

By doing this, he says, we can then focus on profit per acre instead of yield per acre or profit per cow.

READ: 9 management concepts to improve your ranch

This got me thinking about how agriculture has changed over the years. In our efforts to grow, expand and produce more, we’ve seen a reduction in diversification and a heavier emphasis on specializing on just one or two cash crops with cattle or hogs on the side.

Rewind to two generations before me, and things looked a little bit differently. My grandparents, who purchased the ranch we live on today in the late 1950s, were very diversified with a full rotation of crops, cover crops, hay, hogs, cattle and chickens. This supported their family and allowed them to expand with additional land purchases.


Grandpa was on the right track in many ways, but the farms and ranches of yesteryear were still lacking. When the 1980s farm crisis hit, it wasn’t just Grandpa’s frugality and wise investments that helped him weather the storm.

It was my dad, a fresh college graduate at the time, who introduced purebred Limousin cattle to the ranch. During that time, they transitioned from a commercial Hereford and Angus outfit to a business that merchandised bulls at a premium.

Fast forward another generation, and I’m back on the ranch with my husband Tyler and our three children. Today’s agriculture is so advanced that we now have the opportunity to improve our genetics through DNA technologies faster than ever before.

READ: Profitable ranching necessitates both mental and physical work

There are so many tools at our fingertips today that it’s almost dizzying. In implementing these tools, sometimes I wonder if my children will one day look back and say the decision that our parents made during the early 2000s were a pivotal time for our family ranch.

So that places a lot of pressure on the management practices we employ and the areas of the business we focus our energy and our capital investments on.

Even more scary is there are fewer and fewer millennials getting into the cattle business, or sticking around for very long. Many of us require off-farm income to cash flow the enterprise. This makes me wonder if perhaps Burke is on the right track when it comes to the future of agriculture.

Today’s consumer is more focused than ever before on the sustainability of cattle grazing and beef production. Without question, cattle producers have an amazing story to tell in that regard. By following regenerative agricultural practices, we improve the land and renew the natural resources at our disposal while also producing nourishing beef and life-enriching byproducts.

Will the secret to finding success in the decades to come be determined by who can harness solar energy and native grasslands the most effectively? Perhaps so. And if that’s the case, then I think Grandpa was on the right track with his diversification of lifestyle and his multiple crop rotation.


Maybe it’s time for us to get back to the basics of land management. There will always be innovative tools for us to test out, but I’m cautious of chasing trends, increasing my input costs and ending each year with thinner margins than the year previous.

We can’t turn back the clock. Nor would we want to. However, we may need to embrace what’s made it work for centuries and master that. Thanks, Burke, for the challenge to find a better way. On my ranch, I’m making plans to do just that.

The opinions of Amanda Radke are not necessarily those of beefmagazine.com or Farm Progress.

TAGS: RANCHING OUTLOOKGRAZING SYSTEMS

Studies demonstrate how cattle grazing reduces wildfire risk
OCT 16, 2018

National 4-H Week highlights the importance of agricultural education
OCT 11, 2018


On industry division & export growth
OCT 10, 2018





Amanda Radke
LIVESTOCK>GRAZING SYSTEMS
Studies demonstrate how cattle grazing reduces wildfire risk
While environmentalists would prefer our nation’s expansive grasslands remain untouched, cattlemen know that responsible grazing is a critical tool to proper land management that reaps many benefits for a healthy landscape and wildlife habitat.
Amanda Radke | Oct 15, 2018


Last week, our four-year old daughter Scarlett came home from preschool with lots to talk about. The local fire department had visited the school, and she was excited to tell me all about the firefighters who spoke in her classroom and how big the fire engine was. She gave me a stern lecture about ways to safely exit a home in the event of a fire, and she dramatically demonstrated how to stop, drop and roll.

Always a “beef ambassador,” I asked Scarlett if she knew that cattle are firefighters, too. She rolled her eyes and told me, “Mom, that’s impossible. Cows can’t drive fire trucks!”

Granted, Scarlett made a good point, but I really wanted to explain to her how cattle grazing can reduce and slow the spread of wildfires.

Contrary to what some environmentalist groups would like folks to think, letting land sit idle is a recipe for disaster. Underutilized grasslands just need a lightning strike to become blazing, fast-burning fires, quickly consuming acres and acres of ground.

Livestock grazing can be used as a tool to lower wildfire risk, as well as reduce the ultimate impact of the fire, by slowing down how fast the flames spread and how hot the fire burns. They do this by grazing down the annual and perennial grasses, promoting new growth and leaving far less dead underbrush that acts as kindling to a fire.

READ: Improving burn management with wildfires

In the wake of the California wildfires that burned nearly 7,000 acres of land, researchers are looking at ways to use grazing as a tool to reduce future fire risk.

According to an article written by Brad Carlson for the Capital Press titled, “Researcher establishes grazing as fire tool,” scientists are looking at ways to lessen the catastrophic impacts of large scale wildfires.

Carlson writes, “Kirk Davies and his fellow rangeland scientists in southeastern Oregon for years produced studies showing earlier grazing reduces future fire risk while benefiting native plants.

“Now they are working to figure out how to apply these lessons on the larger scale that the vast sagebrush steppe landscape often demands.”

Despite the proven benefits of livestock grazing on reducing wildfires, Davies said there are certain limitations to applying this theory of applied, targeted grazing on large plots of ground. These limitations include coordinating people, cattle and equipment, having enough livestock to graze expansive rangelands and facing public opposition to public lands grazing.

“We are hoping to work with more landscape ecologists, looking at how it applies across the landscape,” Davies said in the interview with Capital Press. “That would include investigating, long-term, how rangeland plant communities respond to fire whether they are grazed or not, and deriving a grazing approach to suit a location’s unique fire risk — deciding how much to graze and in which season, for example.”

READ: Fire and ice: Surviving the effects of natural disasters

To address ongoing criticism from environmentalists who oppose allowing cattle to graze on federal lands, Davies has decades of research that prove the benefits of cattle grazing for native plants.

“We saw that long-term ungrazed areas, when they were burned, were subsequently invaded by exotic annual grasses,” he said. “We found moderately grazed areas recovered to the native plant community. They didn’t have that invasion and were much better off.”

What’s more, Davies’ research shows that in ungrazed areas, the severity of fire was much more intense.

Of these ungrazed areas, Davies said, “We found we had larger and hotter fires, and those fires caused higher mortality of desired native annual bunch grasses. We also found ungrazed areas were much more likely to ignite with an ignition source and more likely to spread with higher flame heights and faster-moving fire.”

Now I’m not sure Scarlett grasped the concept of cattle serving as natural firefighters; however, it’s a message our consumers need to understand. The reality of leaving the expansive federal lands of the West untouched and unmanaged results in catastrophic fires that devastate homes, communities and the landscape we all love.

READ: What's the best way to defeat brush and improve range?

To the point — responsible cattle grazing (not to mention the timber industry, too) are ways to manage these lands properly. Grazing promotes new growth of native grasslands and removes dead brush that serves as kindling for fires. Plus, as cattle graze, they fertilize and aerate the soil and capture carbon by ensuring the grasslands remain intact instead of being modernized or farmed.

I believe the beef industry’s environmental stewardshipand sustainability story is a great one. When cattlemen are in synch with nature, amazing things happen. Now we must get that story in front of the folks who need to hear it the most. I’m talking about the folks who are very concerned about cow burps destroying the ozone layer.

The opinions of Amanda Radke are not necessarily those of beefmagazine.com or Farm Progress.

TAGS: RANCHING OUTLOOK FARM OPERATIONS

Did Grandpa have a better way?
OCT 15, 2018

National 4-H Week highlights the importance of agricultural education
OCT 11, 2018

On industry division & export growth
OCT 10, 2018

How reducing risk factors for BRD attracts buyers
OCT 09, 2018

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