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

crashbox

Member
Livestock Farmer
Planning on mob grazing this herbal ley with pre-bulling heifers to get them to bulling weight, probably one-day breaks due to labour, any tips?
Clover has taken over in the dry weather, but there is grass there...
20210907_174451.jpg
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Planning on mob grazing this herbal ley with pre-bulling heifers to get them to bulling weight, probably one-day breaks due to labour, any tips?
Clover has taken over in the dry weather, but there is grass there... View attachment 984244
Depends to an extent when you'll need to graze it again, and with what? 🤔
Unless there's a good reason to leave a bit, don't.

On that type of forage, first grazing at this stage looks to have virtually no yellowness at the base yet - from what I can see in the photo? So put everything green into the cattle, and hold them there as long as you can, aiming to leave it alone for as long as possible - I'm assuming it's quite dry there at the moment
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Depends to an extent when you'll need to graze it again, and with what? 🤔
Unless there's a good reason to leave a bit, don't.

On that type of forage, first grazing at this stage looks to have virtually no yellowness at the base yet - from what I can see in the photo? So put everything green into the cattle, and hold them there as long as you can, aiming to leave it alone for as long as possible - I'm assuming it's quite dry there at the moment
I should qualify that statement by saying I've not really grazed much of that type of crop at all, but when I did I looked at it as "a crop" and then looked at "harvesting it"

it helped me see what I did wrong with grass, in a lot of respects, ie "expecting recovery" when there is more to be gained IME by planning the recovery and then grazing in a way that gets us that recovery (y)

hence why I asked what people do when they notice it getting dry, ie plan more recovery or 'hope for it'
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
a few different responses, which is usual, each farm lives in it's own micro climate, so needs slightly different management. The bugger is, you cannot 2nd guess nature, and she can be rather vindictive. As we move forwards, many big changes are occurring, and we have to work through them. We will perhaps, get through these changes, by trying to work with nature, rather than against her. When you think that modern farming, has only really been about since ww2, and it has taken till now'ish, to realise things are going awry, on lighter ground, so the natural fertility of soil, must have been huge, all we have done, in many places, has slowed down the speed, of deteriation, with chemicals. That is a policy, that is not sustainable, either politically, or naturally
So, as we have a changeable, unreliable climate, that may, or may not, according to which thought train, shouts loudest, be killing us off, what is the '''best''' way forward. Not at all sure of the answer to that, but what l do think, is that we have to work with nature, there are plenty of examples, of not doing that, from what was the dustbowl, of America, to desertification of Africa, we must learn not to repeat the same mistakes, again, and again. Brings me right back, to our own farms, and how to manage them, as each farm is different, the answers will be different, which is what happens on here, but within all those different answers, a lot of sense is revealed, but, the answers for last year, are different to this years, which will be different, to next years, flexibility, is the buzz word, which is exactly what comes out, in this thread.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
This cell has rested since 17th June (81 days) and now looks like this
20210906_105029.jpg


Conventional wisdom would expect the grasses to have headed yet very few have.

20210906_113634.jpg


It's Hurrell's HM36 diverse herbal mix and was sown on the spread silt I removed from the pond in the trees in 2018. It's tempting to say I should have reseeded the whole 17 acre field at the time as this is the best cover by far but, thinking further, I doubt that the rest of the field would have responded the same as this little bit given the different prior management. It does show it's potential though.
 
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crashbox

Member
Livestock Farmer
I should qualify that statement by saying I've not really grazed much of that type of crop at all, but when I did I looked at it as "a crop" and then looked at "harvesting it"

it helped me see what I did wrong with grass, in a lot of respects, ie "expecting recovery" when there is more to be gained IME by planning the recovery and then grazing in a way that gets us that recovery (y)

hence why I asked what people do when they notice it getting dry, ie plan more recovery or 'hope for it'
Thanks KP, no rush to get around again this season, winter approaching so moisture will surely come in Oct.
Main objectives are
1. Good growth rates (happy to supplement with concentrate, need over 1kg per day to get there in time for AI block.
2. Feed the soil, it's a v. Dry gravelly hill, so I want to put some humus down. Got plenty of silage this year so happy to trample a bit in.

Will I be able to achieve both? Is 1 day breaks the right way to go?
Very new to grazing long covers, never used dry stock and I know with milking stock milk seems to go back...
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
Maybe a little tight for me especially with wanting to hit those growth rates. But you are definitely hitting your landscape goals there. 👍🏻
What length breaks are they on? The shorter the better as they will be able to take more of the cream and trample better of what they don’t want.
I’ll try to remember to grab some pictures in the morning of my ins and outs of where my 12 mo heifers are.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thanks KP, no rush to get around again this season, winter approaching so moisture will surely come in Oct.
Main objectives are
1. Good growth rates (happy to supplement with concentrate, need over 1kg per day to get there in time for AI block.
2. Feed the soil, it's a v. Dry gravelly hill, so I want to put some humus down. Got plenty of silage this year so happy to trample a bit in.

Will I be able to achieve both? Is 1 day breaks the right way to go?
Very new to grazing long covers, never used dry stock and I know with milking stock milk seems to go back...
If your cattle cannot put on 1 kilo per day on that feed, then it's not the feed at fault, but the cattle.

By keeping the plants very clean (I mean, leaving no shade behind the mob) then they will literally pump exudate every day between now and next harvest, and you'll also help to prevent one or two species largely taking over (get the most out of your seed and planting costs) . Plus there's good litter there, so they aren't hungry/bored enough to eat it

Shifting frequency is always a hot topic, you tend to get out what you put in - again, 1kg/day is quite a moderate gain, even on a new feed that will take them time to transition into. I'd be thinking 1.7 - 1.85 per day is quite doable, with more frequency it's easier to put weight on - and also strip weight off
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
That’s the next door one I posted the map of. Ended up splitting it in 3 and it has worked really well.
Lane 1 0.8ha lanes 2 and 3 1.2 ha each.
Interestingly there’s a field next to this about 0.5 ha. That I’ve experimented a bit and just hit really hard every visit pretty much making them take everything and it seems to be running out of steam now and not recovering as well in the same timeframe as everywhere else.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Cheers Sam

Yep, I'm always surprised by the effect of a couple of hard grazings in quick succession, if you nail a pasture hard 17 days apart then you can damn near stop growth in its tracks....

I think that this type of hard grazing better suits recoveries measured in weeks, than days, TBH (unless we're strictly talking springtime) because the main principle behind grazing hard is so that you can slow down.
One think that I've learned so far is that you sort-of have to have one goal for the whole farm/grazing system, otherwise you end up like the conventional guys with "a regen paddock" IYSWIM? It gets very underwhelming!
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
do you mean, it's easy to fall back into old habits ?
Yeah, absolutely!
Eg if we came from a pretty conventional management paradigm, then do the holistic management training then the habits kinda take care of themselves, because the only habit you now have is to use your holistic management to "think for you"

but, if you don't do that step in the middle which changes the mindset, then there maybe isn't the clarity - and we then tend to fuddle about with trying 'this' and 'that'

and it should maybe be 'that', 'more that', and 'see where that goes if we really push the boat out on it'
 

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

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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