Sheila Cooke
Member
Another great movie from Australia.
Regenerative farming: A 'natural way' to help counteract drought | Charlie Massy | Australian Story
"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
- Location
- Cei newydd
Good job snow did'nt hang about, and that your revive drench worked. Will have to remember the recipe.
That is the bigest down side to bringing them in.
What would you have done if you did'nt have the shed?
At home we turned them in to the woods and choped a tree with ivy down for them.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Would probably have just turned them loose into the paddock around the duckpond and sit indoors getting very, very drunk.
Even with them inside I felt pretty hopeless TBH, not really a heap you can do at lambing time anyway, you just create 2 problems to solve one.
If I expected a repeat I'd just build a straw-bale stonehenge or something like that.
- Location
- Derbyshire UK
18 cow/calf units + 7 heifers + 1 bull on roughly .1 ha (32m X 32m) of deferred grass that had roughly 60 days rest (sheep broke into current block for half a day), it was set stocked in the spring to calve on then shut up for a couple of rounds. Moving every day, which feels good when the sun shines, today was wet & windy, they would have been sheltering under the trees normally, but not today on their postage stamp allocation!
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
Thats pretty much around thé stocking density that we have been running at this year. But we had to move twice daily to get that. Shelter has proven to be a problèm. Thérè were a few days in thé summer where we didn't run a back fence so they could return to thé Shade.
I'm going to reduce thé stocking raté a touch in thé cow herd next year to give us a longer reste période in thé autumn. I think i counted on thé autumn regrowth being faster than it is.
Very happy with thé rational grazing this year. Very happy to bé on this forum and to have shared this much of thé aventure with you guys.
Me? I calve sucklers all year round, grateful when ever I get a calf.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Thanks for being a part of it
I know exactly what you mean about the autumn growth rates, we were a bit greedy this year and it just put pressure on everything. I much prefer "cruisy" and will make some adjustments as well.
- Location
- somerset
we have just done a second cut, on some very roughly treated p/p, nothing has been done to it for years, other than we have been 'allowed' to cut it x1 year. Surprisingly, yield was way beyond expectation, weed burden was down as well, not what was expected, is this patch, reverting to the 'natural grasses', and competing with the weeds. After another drought this summer, where our leys have suffered, this has given us, a reasonable yield. We have had a similar result, in a 6 acre paddock, we cut x2, even worse, the owners scraped off, a lot of top soil, 15 yrs ago. Again we expected about 6/7 chopped silage bales, 12 ! We keep cattle on another field, where in places, you can see the 'rock', very thin soil, and yet, all through this summer, you could see the grass, growing, albeit very slowly ! All three pieces, are next door to us, and % ryegrasses, would be very low, makes me wonder why we haven't put the research, into some of these 'weed' grasses ! Accepting ryegrasses are highly productive, in good conditions, it's the not good conditions, that need research.
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
.We Calvé outsid et all year round too.
Do you run a bull if so
How do you manage..
PDing ?
Not getting heifer calves in calf ?
Not getting the cows back in calf to soon ?
No don't run a bull, all done with AI.
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
We run two bulls together. No AI.
Thé heifers are in another group. With thé beef heifers and full cows, (here thé market is for heifers and not steers).
We don't do any pding.
I should hope my cows get caught by thé bulls asap. If they are in good condition they often take on thé first cycle.
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
This is the first year that I am not providing shelter to the rams, cows that are calving and other cattle.When it is windy and wet I feel terribly nervous about all of them- they have some protection from trees and taller grass on the north- west( I always move my animals in that direction), and after seeing @Kiwi Pete ’s photos I am encouraged to keep going. If the weather gets really dirty there is shelter for everyone, I just don’t want to use it so early in the autumn.
Can you get portable wind fence there? It’s common here although quite large. I’ve been thinking of getting a smaller version made that I can easily tow around. That way I can move the bedding pack around in winter. I’ve found better cover build up with bedding than hay.
Of course that plan is for when there’s frost. Probably wouldn’t work nearly as well if the ground isn’t frozen. But it’d allow you to take them a wind break if they’re in a cell that doesn’t have one.
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
I’ve seen people making windbreaks with hay wagons etc., If I could find one cheap I might consider it.
I mean like these styles.
Portable Windbreak Fences | Cattle | Government of Saskatchewan
Learn how to make windbreak fences effective with general design and requirements, their usage and effectiveness on pasture and cropland and more.
www.saskatchewan.ca
I like the one made out of an old harrow frame! Handy.
If you had an old wagon you could just anchor some boards to it so no reason that wouldn’t work either. Biggest hurdle is making them easy enough to move but heavy enough they aren’t so prone to blowing over.
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
I wish I had seen this earlier. I built a permanent windbreak with a gravelled area in front to feed round bales on in the barn yard. My helper insisted that we needed a solid wall, so we found some used roofing tin and put it on one side of the angled wall. We ran out of tin for part of the other half ( on a 120 degree angle from the first) so we used spaced boards. I was worried that the force of the wind would rip the posts out (16 feet long with 4-5 feet in the ground) but my helper is an experienced farmer and I didn’t want to argue too much.. After reading this bulletin I see that I have just created a situation where the animals will be in a lot of turbulent air which defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.
If you ever want info on dealing with wind, especially in winter, Alberta and Saskatchewan farmers have that down
I’ve got photos from a year at the feedlot where we got buried in snow. It easily shows where the wind hits around those breaks because you can see where the snow piled up. There’s a nice, calm space 10-15 feet out from them that the snow piled up on. Wasn’t a good situation but storms like that are fairly rare. And the idea of them being portable is you can move them away from the 15’ snowbank you just created!
The solid ones definitely blow over more often here. Spaced boards have much better longevity. Not to hope that yours blows away quickly, but then you could make them all spaced boards.