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

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
School of life taught me much more, mainly my old man pointed it out.
But when it comes to ANY pasture course I can think of, it reads like sickstock&forage on TFF - you MUST have PRG, all else should be forcibly controlled

Nothing wrong with that, if you can afford or desire tractor hours, in fact it probably is the favourite grass amongst tractor drivers
Theres plenty of different types on shown on tff as far as I can see, although the majority will be prg i guess,yes.

But I think you will find a fair amount of the pics say for instance in tdaw... are of more native grasses that are just there, in areas where it's not common for differing reasons ...to reseed .
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Theres plenty of different types on shown on tff as far as I can see, although the majority will be prg i guess,yes.

But I think you will find a fair amount of the pics say for instance in tdaw... are of more native grasses that are just there, in areas where it's not common for differing reasons ...to reseed .
I honestly haven't looked in there for months, I suspect you're right though... I don't "work" so

I think if I had to have a favourite grass it would be crested dogstail, tough as nails that stuff and an absolute powerhouse, I can see why the old boys put it in their mixes. It's indestructible
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
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Our facebook ad seems to have worked out well, we thought it would be a better way to get a decent herd of animals here at the right place, right time if we didn't involve stock agents and grazing contracts - deals must be win-win IMO

Just had a 90 minute phonecall from a chap discussing how we can work together in future to achieve great things ?:cool: they are pretty prone to summer-dry conditions and also struggle with weaned calf performance some years, which is I think something we can definitely help with; there's probably more scope for improving our landscape if we (as an example) ran 300 cattle here for one month than 100 cattle for 3 months.
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
I was browsing Facebook and something triggered an idea. Can’t remember what the trigger was now though...

Since you UK fellas feel wet ground is your biggest challenge when placing feed out for winter grazing. (I’m thinking placing bales spread out in a field for bale grazing vs daily delivery of feed here) Has anyone ever looked in to using or used something similar to rig mats?


They’re super common here in the oil industry so you can never use the excuse your equipment is too heavy for them and tracks don’t rip them to shreds quickly. They are great at eliminating rutting and reduce compaction. If left too long or used too much they can and will alter the plants growing underneath and cause a lot of compaction but that would take a lot of use. They’d probably work slick to make a quick driveway through the centre of a field so that you can jump off and place a bale without having to drive so far on wet ground, minimizing your damage. When you’re done you’d just pick them up and stack them until next time.

If only used for a day or so I doubt it’d even set back grass growth.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I was browsing Facebook and something triggered an idea. Can’t remember what the trigger was now though...

Since you UK fellas feel wet ground is your biggest challenge when placing feed out for winter grazing. (I’m thinking placing bales spread out in a field for bale grazing vs daily delivery of feed here) Has anyone ever looked in to using or used something similar to rig mats?


They’re super common here in the oil industry so you can never use the excuse your equipment is too heavy for them and tracks don’t rip them to shreds quickly. They are great at eliminating rutting and reduce compaction. If left too long or used too much they can and will alter the plants growing underneath and cause a lot of compaction but that would take a lot of use. They’d probably work slick to make a quick driveway through the centre of a field so that you can jump off and place a bale without having to drive so far on wet ground, minimizing your damage. When you’re done you’d just pick them up and stack them until next time.

If only used for a day or so I doubt it’d even set back grass growth.
A pylon line runs through our farm and a few years ago they needed a 100 tonne crane near one of them so put some aluminium ones down across 2 fields to get to there. They set up CCTV along the whole run and I assume it was because the crane or their tools were worth a lot of money. It wasn't. Every panel of the access mat was worth a minimum of £1000 as scrap and at least twice that as it was. There was 150 of them in those 2 fields :eek::woot: they were worth more than the land was!
But your right they didn't leave a mark behind even after that 100 tonne crane came through and was there for a couple of days working.
They left me some brand new 5 foot plastic electric fence posts behind too :giggle:
I imagine there are cheaper alternatives than those aluminium ones though.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
We got badly caught by a lack of frost and preparation the year I started working for Josh, to get the bales out we made a "road" out of straw across the fields to help minimise soil damage

Helped by the fact that the straw left in the barn was absolute rubbish, we also carted a load back to the dairy to bandage the worst bits of cow track and improve their comfort walking to and from the dairy

Then scooped it up and composted it all when we were done

Pretty cheap and nasty, but it works well enough in a pinch
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
We got badly caught by a lack of frost and preparation the year I started working for Josh, to get the bales out we made a "road" out of straw across the fields to help minimise soil damage

Helped by the fact that the straw left in the barn was absolute rubbish, we also carted a load back to the dairy to bandage the worst bits of cow track and improve their comfort walking to and from the dairy

Then scooped it up and composted it all when we were done

Pretty cheap and nasty, but it works well enough in a pinch
I saw someone make a road out of waste woodchip too. That seemed to work well enough to walk cattle down. A friend's farm I can see from the main road has AstroTurf down one track that looks like it works well but is too far to see properly. Might be a bit rough underneath? Would be fine as a temporary measure but it would be a dirty bitch of a job to roll back up (n)
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Always it's interesting to discuss "do we just drive on the same bit and bugger it, or take a different line each trip" :eek:;)
Yes we have that same discussion every winter. I prefer going a different route every time because it looks like it recovers better but I'm not sure it is. If I had a digger to level ruts I might prefer that option. But as it is I could take you to a few places where there are shallow ruts that are several years old where there used to be a ring feeder and the mess got too bad to keep going a different route.
I'd prefer not to drive on the fields at all.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Yes we have that same discussion every winter. I prefer going a different route every time because it looks like it recovers better but I'm not sure it is. If I had a digger to level ruts I might prefer that option. But as it is I could take you to a few places where there are shallow ruts that are several years old where there used to be a ring feeder and the mess got too bad to keep going a different route.
I'd prefer not to drive on the fields at all.
Compaction is always an interesting discussion
I can't even bring it up without tagging in @Clive just so we can reminisce... as you say no traffic is ideal, and getting soil conditions "right" rather than "it'll have to do" is probably the biggest factor of all

We probably think 'bone dry' is the best time but the boys in Oz have a different definition of dry to us, bone dry soil is only relying on aggregate stability to have any resilience to the weight above
Down here we'd tend to put the bales off to the side and drill the crop, place the bales (or place the bales, shut the gate in our system) but this in fact could be missing the time to do least harm.
If the soil's stressed from dry, are we doing more harm (eg killing a greater % of the biology due to less biology in the dry)?

A bit like saving drenching for a wet-day job, great idea until you consider the worms are up at the surface on a wet day, ready for your worm-poison to take them out? :unsure:

That's why HM is such a great decision-making framework, I'd venture that the "same track and bugger it" would lead to bare soil faster than the "different track each time"?
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
View attachment 847654
Our facebook ad seems to have worked out well, we thought it would be a better way to get a decent herd of animals here at the right place, right time if we didn't involve stock agents and grazing contracts - deals must be win-win IMO

Just had a 90 minute phonecall from a chap discussing how we can work together in future to achieve great things ?:cool: they are pretty prone to summer-dry conditions and also struggle with weaned calf performance some years, which is I think something we can definitely help with; there's probably more scope for improving our landscape if we (as an example) ran 300 cattle here for one month than 100 cattle for 3 months.


Like it! :cool:

If you can get a good response of potential paying customers, it just makes the idea of buying your own cattle look daft ?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Like it! :cool:

If you can get a good response of potential paying customers, it just makes the idea of buying your own cattle look daft ?
It's a huge amount of expenditure on "consumables" if you look at livestock mainly as a landscaping tool.

We always planned on playing opposite to "the big boys" or at least the low-debt boys who have different pasture management regimes to us, there's plenty of opportunities around; for example cull ewes, a line may range from $140 to $200 and we could boost those bottom-enders up very smartly and share the gain in value with the owner

I think the future lies more in collaboration than competition over who can race to the bottom, without getting into strict (limiting) structures such as deciding "we're just going to finish lambs/store cattle" - there's probably better opportunity to simply build a working relationship with a like-minded farming family, who sees that it's more effective to shuffle stock around than feed.
This gives them more effective area, and it gives us access to all the stock we need, when we need them, without the ties to the stock.

Maybe it isn't exactly "sentimentality" but in our belief the main thing limiting farming growth is inflexibility with regards to matching carrying capacity to stocking rate - this will mean we can run 7 cattle/ha for short periods and then rest it properly, rest ourselves properly.
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
It's a huge amount of expenditure on "consumables" if you look at livestock mainly as a landscaping tool.

We always planned on playing opposite to "the big boys" or at least the low-debt boys who have different pasture management regimes to us, there's plenty of opportunities around; for example cull ewes, a line may range from $140 to $200 and we could boost those bottom-enders up very smartly and share the gain in value with the owner

I think the future lies more in collaboration than competition over who can race to the bottom, without getting into strict (limiting) structures such as deciding "we're just going to finish lambs/store cattle" - there's probably better opportunity to simply build a working relationship with a like-minded farming family, who sees that it's more effective to shuffle stock around than feed.
This gives them more effective area, and it gives us access to all the stock we need, when we need them, without the ties to the stock.

Maybe it isn't exactly "sentimentality" but in our belief the main thing limiting farming growth is inflexibility with regards to matching carrying capacity to stocking rate - this will mean we can run 7 cattle/ha for short periods and then rest it properly, rest ourselves properly.


Talking it over with you the other week and seeing what you're doing was abit of a light bulb moment for me, I'd already been thinking that the amount of breeding stock we are carrying here is a major stumbling block to our wintering capacity.

You put it well in your last paragraph, there is abit of sentimentality, but overwhelmingly its inflexibility.
A good example of this is us finishing all our cattle, we devised a plan (or more had the reality of long term TB Force us to get our planning caps on), we've got our plan in place, we've mega improved our skills at finishing cattle in the last 3 years.
But we're now really inflexible (in big part to tb restrictions) because we're always carrying alot of cattle of all classes, our plan is always at least a year in advance because we've got to assume we'll still be under restrictions (IMO too many people have brushes with TB but continue to always plan for the best rather than hope for the best but plan for the worse, then get in a world of pain when they get hit by a breakdown in the autumn when they need to destock).

Which then neatly leads to your point about moving stock to feed rather than feed to stock..... like how apparently it used to be (according to dad), here we are finishing cattle on two upland farms, using bought in concentrates, while there's hundreds of thousands of acres of good lowland arable ground that could do the job miles better.
But it's treading a fine line pushing the idea, because we (as hill farmers) don't want to see breeding stock established in arable country.
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
I honestly haven't looked in there for months, I suspect you're right though... I don't "work" so

I think if I had to have a favourite grass it would be crested dogstail, tough as nails that stuff and an absolute powerhouse, I can see why the old boys put it in their mixes. It's indestructible
ive got some of that , seems tough yep. good ground cover soil protector on track areas.

most of the legumes ive got re bought in seed and not natural but the thrive and do different things than grass, and then theres things like chicory.
besides i like growing seeds and new stuff.
our mixed soil type and lie of the land suits mixed farming, ie bit o arable compliments the job and to no detriment if done seensitively.
and if you cant finish stock here somethings very wrong and thats another thing i like to do is breed stock and finish it. all the way through, very satisfying and i know where they end up.
i must admit to selling the odd breeding Ram tho..:whistle:
courses for horses really we've all got our vices and mine isnt skiing or shooting:oops:
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
One of my big "lightbulb moments" has been how the average Joe responds on social media to news of adverse weather elsewhere; the "I wish you could have some of our rain/sunshine :sneaky::love::confused:" type of "thoughts and prayers" hogwash

As you have seen, it varies wildly from area to area here so why not embrace that diversity.
Don't send me your hopes and prayers, send me your livestock and some cash :ROFLMAO:
Farms here used to drive their stock between holdings, now they cart bales between holdings, and I don't necessarily see the need to do that
 

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
Talking it over with you the other week and seeing what you're doing was abit of a light bulb moment for me, I'd already been thinking that the amount of breeding stock we are carrying here is a major stumbling block to our wintering capacity.

You put it well in your last paragraph, there is abit of sentimentality, but overwhelmingly its inflexibility.
A good example of this is us finishing all our cattle, we devised a plan (or more had the reality of long term TB Force us to get our planning caps on), we've got our plan in place, we've mega improved our skills at finishing cattle in the last 3 years.
But we're now really inflexible (in big part to tb restrictions) because we're always carrying alot of cattle of all classes, our plan is always at least a year in advance because we've got to assume we'll still be under restrictions (IMO too many people have brushes with TB but continue to always plan for the best rather than hope for the best but plan for the worse, then get in a world of pain when they get hit by a breakdown in the autumn when they need to destock).

Which then neatly leads to your point about moving stock to feed rather than feed to stock..... like how apparently it used to be (according to dad), here we are finishing cattle on two upland farms, using bought in concentrates, while there's hundreds of thousands of acres of good lowland arable ground that could do the job miles better.
But it's treading a fine line pushing the idea, because we (as hill farmers) don't want to see breeding stock established in arable country.
You are so right. This TB situation that we are in is probably one of the single biggest factors holding back the industry, both arable and livestock.
As a dairy producer, we generate roughly 250 beef sired calves/year. I would love to team up with an arable farmer who wants a serious mob of grazing cattle to compliment their system, but every time it's the risk of a rogue TB test that holds the deal back. If nothing else, it's the regulations on restricting grazing that limits options.
Everyone is losing out.
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
One of my big "lightbulb moments" has been how the average Joe responds on social media to news of adverse weather elsewhere; the "I wish you could have some of our rain/sunshine :sneaky::love::confused:" type of "thoughts and prayers" hogwash

As you have seen, it varies wildly from area to area here so why not embrace that diversity.
Don't send me your hopes and prayers, send me your livestock and some cash :ROFLMAO:
Farms here used to drive their stock between holdings, now they cart bales between holdings, and I don't necessarily see the need to do that


Dad used to walk stock to keep all over exmoor, anything up to 15/20 miles.


We now stuggle to cross a main road because the public simply won't stop, a new record this summer was multiple cars weaving between all 3 traffic stoppers!!!


I would say light traffic is a "unfair kiwi advantage"..... but then again choked roads here is at least a massive consumer market on our doorstep
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
You are so right. This TB situation that we are in is probably one of the single biggest factors holding back the industry, both arable and livestock.
As a dairy producer, we generate roughly 250 beef sired calves/year. I would love to team up with an arable farmer who wants a serious mob of grazing cattle to compliment their system, but every time it's the risk of a rogue TB test that holds the deal back. If nothing else, it's the regulations on restricting grazing that limits options.
Everyone is losing out.


And to keep with the theme of the tread..... testing every 60days doesn't half bugger up trying to keep to a grazing plan
 

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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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