Grass loss to wild grazers?

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
Biggest downside we find with giving longer rest periods for grass is that we seem to be feeding more wild deer and geese than ever. Its particularly annoying at this time of year when the grass is just getting started and we're keeping in-lamb ewes on harder ground to let grass get a good start before lambing. I sometimes think I may as well just let the sheep overgraze it rather than the wildlife.
I'm curious to how others on here deal with, or just how they view this problem.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
Fill your freezer with a few, they’re delicious in the hands of a good cook. They soon get the idea there’s a predator around and move on to quieter pickings.
Not really into guns I used to shoot a few rabbits with an air rifle until licensing came in but its not something i'd want to spend money on really. the deer aren't so bad as the geese. I know a few folk that use bird scarers/bangers but I don't think it's worth upsetting all my neighbours so I've ruled that one out.
The other issue is that my fields are about the freshest in that area for the resident greylags.
 

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
No problems with geese but we do host between 30-40 red deer through the year. Nuisance, yes, but I guess that's part of nature. We have a couple of local lads who come to thin them out through the season. As @DanM said above, they are a good freezer filler and a very healthy meat at that too
100% grass fed!
IMG-20190727-WA0009.jpg

This handsome chap was on the menu for our son/daughter in law's wedding feast ?
 

Bones

Member
Location
n Ireland
The geese and deer probably been in that area for thousands of years and are fed up with the sheep eating there grass. Or fill the freezer and forget about it.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
The geese and deer probably been in that area for thousands of years and are fed up with the sheep eating there grass. Or fill the freezer and forget about it.
It's my grass now. Freezer is pretty full of sheep. The idea of growing grass was to fill up the bank account a bit.

I know I just have to put up with it but it just really annoys me at this time of year.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
more likely i'll be the one paying for somebody to do the shooting... a deer stalk on 18 acres open grassland wont last long and the shooting rights for surrounding ground aren't mine to sell.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
my dilemma is that I'm trying to get covers up before I graze at lambing, which means keeping sheep out on rough hill ground- to their detriment and mine I may add.
Maybe better to give up on that and just overgraze? I dunno wether what i'm gaining from giving the grass a headstart is more or less than what i'm losing to wildlife?
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
Nearly took a pic tonight of some deer I'm sharing grazing with. Bunch of 30-40, spend most of their time on a 40 odd acre block where I take the grass.
Thankfully I pay per head per week so I'm not paying for what the deer eat, but when grass is short like this spring I'd rather they weren't so plentiful.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
You'll be gaining heaps from it, even if it represents a loss of feed in the short term.
Safe to say the deer don't know that you're trying to make a buck (sh!t pun intended) out of that feed you're resting, maybe it's time to take your share of it with your livestock?
We don't have deer but it's not uncommon to find upto 100 hares on 100 acres, saves me the trouble platemetering and brix testing pastures to find out where my stock should be
 

Bones

Member
Location
n Ireland
You'll be gaining heaps from it, even if it represents a loss of feed in the short term.
Safe to say the deer don't know that you're trying to make a buck (sh!t pun intended) out of that feed you're resting, maybe it's time to take your share of it with your livestock?
We don't have deer but it's not uncommon to find upto 100 hares on 100 acres, saves me the trouble platemetering and brix testing pastures to find out where my stock should be
100 hares, lucky you, good eating, nice country
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
You'll be gaining heaps from it, even if it represents a loss of feed in the short term.
Safe to say the deer don't know that you're trying to make a buck (sh!t pun intended) out of that feed you're resting, maybe it's time to take your share of it with your livestock?
We don't have deer but it's not uncommon to find upto 100 hares on 100 acres, saves me the trouble platemetering and brix testing pastures to find out where my stock should be
Up to 40 geese that are there all day everyday and there's night time raids by herds of red deer that roam a huge area- many thousands of acres (I see them often on the tops of hills in groups of up to 50 when i'm gathering) 11 months of year its not a big problem its just as the first flush of green comes -to my mind the worst possible time to graze it.

We can keep our fields at home clear by chasing everything we see and having dogs barking at anything that moves helps but problem fields are about 3 miles away.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
I see no real numbers of geese or deer on the set-stocked fields neighbouring us and when I used to set stock myself I never seemed to have so many. We seem to have attracted most of the geese and deer burden for that little area. It is definitely a price we're paying for our attempts at holistic style grazing.
I don't expect to find a solution. More its just something else to try to manage, but its good to know to what level others are experiencing this.
Anyway i'm not happy if i haven't got something to moan about.....
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
1/3 for me, 1/3 for the wildlife, 1/3 for the plant and soil.

Whether they're eating the grass or using it as habitat, an increase in wildlife is on par with an increase in biodiversity and an increase in biodiversity means an increase in ecosystem resilience. You can't aim for increased biodiversity but think you're going to be able to leave out animal species.

Factually, most animals prefer different parts of plants and different kinds of plants which is why grazing animals can compliment one another so much. What one doesn't eat is what another will, etc. It's only when it's down to being overgrazed (or in drought instances) where their choices are taken from them that they become directly competitive. You may notice more animals on your land than others because that other land is overgrazed and therefore doesn't have the things those animals would regularly choose. As ecosystems balance out, populations disperse. Populations will also experience times of peaks and dips where they will seem overpopulated to you for a season or two but they will balance themselves out if left. When we step in to manage them is usually when they really go out of whack.

Here there is currently a brouhaha going about them pulling strychnine off the market to control gophers. "They're going to eat all our grass!!" say the producers. Do you know where gopher populations tend to absolutely explode? In overgrazed pasture where they can see as far as their eyes can see and can easily notice predators. If producers were to keep grasslands taller, the predators of the gophers - coyotes, fox, hawks, ravens - would have an easier time catching them and thus controlling the population. By overgrazing the pasture, gopher populations can explode and then they become an issue. (Coincidentally, this ease of catching more natural prey will directly decrease those predators pressuring livestock. Handy)

Go thank those geese for all the wonderful fertilizer they're supplying you for free.
 
Last edited:

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I see no real numbers of geese or deer on the set-stocked fields neighbouring us and when I used to set stock myself I never seemed to have so many. We seem to have attracted most of the geese and deer burden for that little area. It is definitely a price we're paying for our attempts at holistic style grazing.
I don't expect to find a solution. More its just something else to try to manage, but its good to know to what level others are experiencing this.
Anyway i'm not happy if i haven't got something to moan about.....
Sometimes the only solution is to change the questions.
If I saw all the wildlife at my neighbour's instead of here, I'd be asking myself what he's doing better than us!
Without boundaries hampering movement, wildlife are great indicators of health, just as "weeds" are.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
Thanks for this, very interesting.
It does seem to be an issue that many holistic graziers don't mention, maybe the wilder, more remote places have bigger problems. It seems pretty obvious that without complete exclusion by fencing or continual culling wild populations will thrive on this system until their numbers grow large enough to make it unworkable. Without predators moving wild herds on they just hang around till they eat everything and eat and breed themselves until population collapse and then the cycle repeats.
 

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