Confessions of the Sheep/Beef Cattle/Pig Addicts

[neilo]

Not in 3 years. Couldn’t stack up the sums growing 170 ish acres on a stoney upland bit at barely 2 t/ acre. Gotta a local arable guy does a straw for muck job with me ,now . What is barley these days ?

It's come back up a bit the last few weeks. About £150/t now, did get to about £130 a few weeks ago I think.

I'm not planting any Spring Barley this year, and the Winter Barley is looking hungry and wet.

 

[Bill dog]

It's come back up a bit the last few weeks. About £150/t now, did get to about £130 a few weeks ago I think.

I'm not planting any Spring Barley this year, and the Winter Barley is looking hungry and wet.

Oh wow !
Up horn , down corn !

 

[Guleesh]

Personally I think the deferred grazing system is more suited to the semi arid and drier end of temperate climates.

The oxidation rate of the winter storms here is pretty high (ever left a fencing tool out over a stormy weekend? Ages 5 years!), it’s very hard to keep any nutrition in grass, but like you say, the more stemmy stuff, ie heather, can cope just fine, and the fresh short stuff you get in the years following a good burn is top notch gut fill during the winter months.

Ideally you would have utilised all your green ground and bared it by December, and then cleared the ewes off it until you start turning ewes and lambs out onto it in late April/May. A nice slatted shed would be just the ticket for the job.

Happily my fencing tools are now all red with rust, changed days from when the pinch bar and post knocker handles were gleaming clean steel... Not disputing what you say, I suspect many people using deferred grazing won't comprehend what continual muggy wetness looks like, and we're stuck within the same limitations, nearly all of our green ground has been fairly heavily bared off before December. But fact is the rushes grow most vigorously and moss accumulates the fastest on the ground that is bared too early, acidification and compaction from the wet is made worse and spring growth is retarded, leading to inevitable overgrazing in spring just to keep everybody fed. Perhaps it's unavoidable to have some ground in this state each year if stock are to remain all winter. My ideal system would be rotations within rotations, so the same bit of ground being used at different times of year from one year to the next.

IME annual systems just end up continually punishing the same species, the useful ones that happen to be growing at whatever time it is you need to graze them, do it for long enough and you need to to factor continual remedial work and reseeding into your costs.

There's something really nice about feeding nice dry hay to nice clean sheep bedded on nice clean straw but realistically the shed will never pay for itself, the feed or the labour needed to run it unless food becomes a valued commodity again.

I dunno, it's not that hard to just have some sheep doing some grazing, it's not un-profitable to just leave them well alone and sell a few lambs off them each autumn. Without any input everything eventually reaches a level of equilibrium, that is often once it hits rock bottom, I can't help but see some land and systems to be in this state. To me the job/challenge is to do little more than tweak the timings of grazing to lift output from what the baseline equilibrium has to offer. Cheap electric fencing has made things possible that were previously totally impossible, seems obvious to fully explore the possibilities.

 

[Macsky]

Happily my fencing tools are now all red with rust, changed days from when the pinch bar and post knocker handles were gleaming clean steel... Not disputing what you say, I suspect many people using deferred grazing won't comprehend what continual muggy wetness looks like, and we're stuck within the same limitations, nearly all of our green ground has been fairly heavily bared off before December. But fact is the rushes grow most vigorously and moss accumulates the fastest on the ground that is bared too early, acidification and compaction from the wet is made worse and spring growth is retarded, leading to inevitable overgrazing in spring just to keep everybody fed. Perhaps it's unavoidable to have some ground in this state each year if stock are to remain all winter. My ideal system would be rotations within rotations, so the same bit of ground being used at different times of year from one year to the next.

IME annual systems just end up continually punishing the same species, the useful ones that happen to be growing at whatever time it is you need to graze them, do it for long enough and you need to to factor continual remedial work and reseeding into your costs.

There's something really nice about feeding nice dry hay to nice clean sheep bedded on nice clean straw but realistically the shed will never pay for itself, the feed or the labour needed to run it unless food becomes a valued commodity again.

I dunno, it's not that hard to just have some sheep doing some grazing, it's not un-profitable to just leave them well alone and sell a few lambs off them each autumn. Without any input everything eventually reaches a level of equilibrium, that is often once it hits rock bottom, I can't help but see some land and systems to be in this state. To me the job/challenge is to do little more than tweak the timings of grazing to lift output from what the baseline equilibrium has to offer. Cheap electric fencing has made things possible that were previously totally impossible, seems obvious to fully explore the possibilities.

With the grant money still available for townships under the ccags scheme, it’s a shame that more don’t come together to utilise it better. Build a cracking big shed for wintering and then work out a grazing system round all the ready-fenced crofts, I think it could work really well……if folk would work together. You could take one croft a year out of production for (Gov funded) full renovation and reseed, imagine how the place could look in 10-20 years.

 

[Guleesh]

With the grant money still available for townships under the ccags scheme, it’s a shame that more don’t come together to utilise it better. Build a cracking big shed for wintering and then work out a grazing system round all the ready-fenced crofts, I think it could work really well……if folk would work together. You could take one croft a year out of production for (Gov funded) full renovation and reseed, imagine how the place could look in 10-20 years.

And there was me thinking my ideas were fanciful....

 

[Macsky]

And there was me thinking my ideas were fanciful....

Imagine the hype that could be generated! ‘Community efforts’ ‘Regenerative Practices’ ‘mob stocking’ ‘cunning crofters’…..

 

[Guleesh]

Imagine the hype that could be generated! ‘Community efforts’ ‘Regenerative Practices’ ‘mob stocking’ ‘cunning crofters’…..

It must've been absolutely hellish here in the past, fighting with your neighbours over which lamb belonged to which ewe, etc.. Some townships were renowned for their grazing meetings descending into hitting each other with crooks. Even when I was little some of the fallings out thanks to 'working together' were pretty awful, imagine what it would be like in the past after a bad year with poor and hungry people... Sharing land is sh!t, good fences make good neighbours.... which probably explains my popularity...

 

[Macsky]

It must've been absolutely hellish here in the past, fighting with your neighbours over which lamb belonged to which ewe, etc.. Some townships were renowned for their grazing meetings descending into hitting each other with crooks. Even when I was little some of the fallings out thanks to 'working together' were pretty awful, imagine what it would be like in the past after a bad year with poor and hungry people... Sharing land is sh!t, good fences make good neighbours.... which probably explains my popularity...

It would need to be run as a stock club, with members taking a share and no one owning individual animals. If you go back far enough I think you’d find folk working together more. The more they needed it to work the more it worked. I’m nothing if not a dreamer.

 

[Anymulewilldo]

So that’s how the stock clubs work. I see them on the catalogues but wondered how they operated

 

[Macsky]

So that’s how the stock clubs work. I see them on the catalogues but wondered how they operated

Not sure if they all work like that, but the ones that seem to work well have a few folk that actually want to do the job, that have majority control over the enterprise (some have members living overseas taking dividends!) and run the stock as if the place was one unit. The badly run places have innumerable members, all of whom want their pound of flesh and few of whom want to actually contribute in any meaningful way.

 

[Guleesh]

It would need to be run as a stock club, with members taking a share and no one owning individual animals. If you go back far enough I think you’d find folk working together more. The more they needed it to work the more it worked. I’m nothing if not a dreamer.

Not sure what alcohol consumption would have been way way back, but alcohol has obviously had a big part to play in more recent generations dramas. Hard to know what control was exerted from above, my interpretation of history is really of a population of slave labourers that were given insufficient bits of crap ground to fight over. Stock clubs are quite an enlightened idea compared to previous systems.

 

[Guleesh]

Not sure if they all work like that, but the ones that seem to work well have a few folk that actually want to do the job, that have majority control over the enterprise (some have members living overseas taking dividends!) and run the stock as if the place was one unit. The badly run places have innumerable members, all of whom want their pound of flesh and few of whom want to actually contribute in any meaningful way.

yep, needs one good guy at the helm, with two characters clashing the whole thing seem to descend into nonsense quite quickly.

 

[Guleesh]

It would need to be run as a stock club, with members taking a share and no one owning individual animals. If you go back far enough I think you’d find folk working together more. The more they needed it to work the more it worked. I’m nothing if not a dreamer.

We would get on fine in such a system, I insist on blackies for starters btw...

 

[JockCroft]

You've not sold barley lately...

Friend telling me today £140 and dropping. Sounded like the Gluten free Oat bubble has burst too.

 

[JockCroft]

So that’s how the stock clubs work. I see them on the catalogues but wondered how they operated

There's a difference between Stock Clubs and Grazing's Committees. The Skye lads can explain.

 

[Macsky]

We would get on fine in such a system, I insist on blackies for starters btw...

Ok you chose the ewes…..and I’ll choose the tups

 

[Guleesh]

Ok you chose the ewes…..and I’ll choose the tups

You can take responsibility for managing the deferred grazing. I'll handle the monies.

 

[Macsky]

You can take responsibility for managing the deferred grazing. I'll handle the monies.

I’ll cover all medicinal interventions, lambing and shear them too, you deal with the neighbours.

 

[Rich_ard]

Happily my fencing tools are now all red with rust, changed days from when the pinch bar and post knocker handles were gleaming clean steel... Not disputing what you say, I suspect many people using deferred grazing won't comprehend what continual muggy wetness looks like, and we're stuck within the same limitations, nearly all of our green ground has been fairly heavily bared off before December. But fact is the rushes grow most vigorously and moss accumulates the fastest on the ground that is bared too early, acidification and compaction from the wet is made worse and spring growth is retarded, leading to inevitable overgrazing in spring just to keep everybody fed. Perhaps it's unavoidable to have some ground in this state each year if stock are to remain all winter. My ideal system would be rotations within rotations, so the same bit of ground being used at different times of year from one year to the next.

IME annual systems just end up continually punishing the same species, the useful ones that happen to be growing at whatever time it is you need to graze them, do it for long enough and you need to to factor continual remedial work and reseeding into your costs.

There's something really nice about feeding nice dry hay to nice clean sheep bedded on nice clean straw but realistically the shed will never pay for itself, the feed or the labour needed to run it unless food becomes a valued commodity again.

I dunno, it's not that hard to just have some sheep doing some grazing, it's not un-profitable to just leave them well alone and sell a few lambs off them each autumn. Without any input everything eventually reaches a level of equilibrium, that is often once it hits rock bottom, I can't help but see some land and systems to be in this state. To me the job/challenge is to do little more than tweak the timings of grazing to lift output from what the baseline equilibrium has to offer. Cheap electric fencing has made things possible that were previously totally impossible, seems obvious to fully explore the possibilities.

It depends who you speak to. Dairy farmers on here say sheep are a nightmare for grass then the contractor who does my silage says he thinks sheep make the grass grow better. I imagine timing makes the difference. Sheep on all winter isn't going to give early grass but if it then gives it a boost for silage time I don't know.
I'd think the days of spending money on reclaiming ground are past. All the grants that there were any ground that was worth doing would have been done. Without gov funding I'd be doubtful. Every farmer probably wants to do it but is it a sensible way to spend money.

 

[Rich_ard]

Anyway to opt out of the apha messages. some reason i dont care about an outbreak in suffolk/Kent or norf**k