Holistic Grazing event in Berwickshire

[ShooTa]

Made it home - very enjoyable - got a fair amount of catching up to do now here - takeaways - fixed field paddocks, i prefer being more mobile with my choices... bit more holistic in my own head anyway - less measureable being the downside...
tails and docking convo was interesting... and as wooless said pedigree may be less a good choice - as a pedgiree llyen person whos not made any money off them being pedegree ill probs agree..
and the key one was make sure you have a family of youngsters who can do all the hard work....

 

[d-wales]

We've found that kale and bales probably works the best of the forage crops for our heifers. However this winter has prompted me to take a more serious look at deferred grass with bales on.
The stock were so much happier on it this winter (as was I moving the fences and water!) The ground seems to have come out of the winter much better. The key thing I need to do though is build a bigger cover ahead of the winter.

What number of bales/ length of grass / area would you be happy on running sheep on? And would you have to plough up the grass after the winter or do you think it could cope. Thanks

 

[onesiedale]

We ran a group of 120 R1 heifers (spring born) Through January and February they had 2 bales/day. These were placed out on a block of around 9 acres. Won't be ploughing, will spray off and DD grass/herbal ley back in this spring.
As for sheep... Don't really know. Work it out on a DM demand basis. So if a bale is 600kg @33% dm then there's 200 kg/bale. If a sheep takes 3% of bodyweight dm/day then that's 2.5kg/hd on 80kg+ sheep - so your bale would feed 80-100 sheep/day.
Plus of course any stockpile of grass.
You could of course just pile in with the stock (like I did) and gague it on a day to day basis. You won't get it right every day, but you'll soon learn! ?

 

[d-wales]

We ran a group of 120 R1 heifers (spring born) Through January and February they had 2 bales/day. These were placed out on a block of around 9 acres. Won't be ploughing, will spray off and DD grass/herbal ley back in this spring.
As for sheep... Don't really know. Work it out on a DM demand basis. So if a bale is 600kg @33% dm then there's 200 kg/bale. If a sheep takes 3% of bodyweight dm/day then that's 2.5kg/hd on 80kg+ sheep - so your bale would feed 80-100 sheep/day.
Plus of course any stockpile of grass.
You could of course just pile in with the stock (like I did) and gague it on a day to day basis. You won't get it right every day, but you'll soon learn! [emoji846]

I'm more of a pile in person and then worry after [emoji16]

 

[Sheila Cooke]

Made it home - very enjoyable - got a fair amount of catching up to do now here - takeaways - fixed field paddocks, i prefer being more mobile with my choices... bit more holistic in my own head anyway - less measureable being the downside...
tails and docking convo was interesting... and as wooless said pedigree may be less a good choice - as a pedgiree llyen person whos not made any money off them being pedegree ill probs agree..
and the key one was make sure you have a family of youngsters who can do all the hard work....

Well done Shoota. Fixed field paddocks enable you to control plant recovery time which will grow you a whole lot more grass!

 

[Poorbuthappy]

It was really fun to meet @Woolless, @ShooTa and our lurker, who grows deer, yesterday.

There are many people all over the world who manage only sheep holistically. One of the people we trained has herded thousands of sheep in France holistically. Here is one of his videos.

Fernhill Farm in Cheddar Gorge, near Bristol are also using Holistic Management for their thousands of sheep. The short video below shows images of their sheep, fencing and grass.

FERNHILL FIBRE

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vimeo.com

Thanks for that Sheila, oldest daughter did her shearing course at Fernhill so knows Andy. She works for a local shearing contractor wool rolling in her vet uni spare time!

 

[ShooTa]

Well done Shoota. Fixed field paddocks enable you to control plant recovery time which will grow you a whole lot more grass!

As does a solid recording of how many days youve been in a field - assuming you record well that is - because then you can accurately have your planned rest.. (this is what ive been doing so far as i alter paddock sizes to either target specific areas, or to de-target specific areas (wanting to avoid heavy hitting on say clover) but i guess i could use time in this instance ... i guess this is why i try and stick to 1 day shifts.

 

[Sheila Cooke]

It was a pleasure to speak at the Graze event put on by Farmers Weekly.

What is holistic grazing and what are the benefits? - Farmers Weekly

Mimicking the natural behaviour of herds and wildlife and the way they graze land could help farmers increase their grass productivity by up to 300%

www.fwi.co.uk

 

[Woolless]

It was a pleasure to speak at the Graze event put on by Farmers Weekly.

What is holistic grazing and what are the benefits? - Farmers Weekly

Mimicking the natural behaviour of herds and wildlife and the way they graze land could help farmers increase their grass productivity by up to 300%

www.fwi.co.uk

Thanks for posting @Sheila Cooke. I meant to buy a hard copy of the FW with the report as a thank you for my free day oot but I completely forgot.

 

[Sheila Cooke]

Thanks for posting @Sheila Cooke. I meant to buy a hard copy of the FW with the report as a thank you for my free day oot but I completely forgot.

I bought a copy yesterday at Morrisons. Here is a scan:

Farmers Weekly Holistic Grazing.pdf

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com