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

[Kiwi Pete]

No dungbeetles? You do surprise me. Do you know why?

They were released in 1956 but soon retreated to the far north.
The ones that will handle our climate were only approved 2 years or so ago, if I recall correctly... NZ has (rightly, but lessons learned the hard way) pretty strict biosecurity when it comes to imports.

Thanks to an incredibly dim-witted bunch of settlers from the British Isles, who brought basically every weed and pest along for the ride it is now understood and accepted that you don't just bring stuff in and expect it to meld into the ecosystem..... as I said, they took their time working that bit out.....

 

[Poorbuthappy]

They were released in 1956 but soon retreated to the far north.
The ones that will handle our climate were only approved 2 years or so ago, if I recall correctly... NZ has (rightly, but lessons learned the hard way) pretty strict biosecurity when it comes to imports.

Thanks to an incredibly dim-witted bunch of settlers from the British Isles, who brought basically every weed and pest along for the ride it is now understood and accepted that you don't just bring stuff in and expect it to meld into the ecosystem..... as I said, they took their time working that bit out.....

Ok, so I didn't realise they weren't native. I suppose you didnt have large mammal herds. What bugs were processing your native animals dung then? Reliant on the worm?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Ok, so I didn't realise they weren't native. I suppose you didnt have large mammal herds. What bugs were processing your native animals dung then? Reliant on the worm?

I assume that to be the case, yes. Earthworms, arthropods etc

Most of the native animals here are birds, flightless ones ruled the landscape before the gits showed up with cats and rats and mice.... and rabbits, because "it wasn't like home" without rabbits... and hares, and some deer would look good too.

Then they all bred

So they brought over stoats and ferrets and then possums stowed a ride from Aussie..... gorse, broom, thistles, ragwort, docks, dandelions.....
varroa mites decimated our bees.... really a painful history to tell.

So - that pretty much undid evolution, and put most of the NZ native species to the endangered or extinct list
It takes less than 40 years to wreck a promising new country, if you don't think about the bigger picture

(Small wonder I have little time for these arrogant wänkers that spout away on the forum, eh? )

"Oh they won't ban neonics/ glyphosate/ diesel cars.... we grow cheap food"
"it'll mean we aren't competitive"

My heart pumps custard .

So much for unfair advantages - but, back to topic, that's why we can't/don't just import biological controls and beneficials with ease.
Bringing in gorse mites and rabbit calicivirus were examined for all impacts on the ecosystem, which is an extensive expensive process, but VERY necessary.
Assumption being the..........

 

[Blaithin]

Sucks to be an island doesn’t it.

Such specialization to make them unique but such vulnerability when exposed to the rest of the world.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Sucks to be an island doesn’t it.

Such specialization to make them unique but such vulnerability when exposed to the rest of the world.

Hindsight is gin clear... but to be honest, the early British settlers really couldn't have done a worse job if they had made a concerted effort to wreck the ecology and ecosystems.
About the only thing they forgot to pack were adders, foxes, and badgers.

They basically saw the opportunity for rape and pillage, and cared not, it was just the way things are
seals, whales and gold.... native people without guns..... too easy.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Sorry for the rant everyone....

I guess it shows how important holism and context are

Simple fact is, I am quite looking forward to the arrival of dungbeetles.
Their main concerns are centred around the spread of bTb m. bovis etc, and also that they would be a food source for possums. But, the same department use 1080 or sodium fluoroacetate, literally flown over our conservation areas and dropped, kills everything in the foodchain basically.... while people choose not to work, and the anti-fur folk make trapping unfashionable.

A pretty cute way of dealing with problems

 

[Blaithin]

Hindsight is gin clear... but to be honest, the early British settlers really couldn't have done a worse job if they had made a concerted effort to wreck the ecology and ecosystems.
About the only thing they forgot to pack were adders, foxes, and badgers.

They basically saw the opportunity for rape and pillage, and cared not, it was just the way things are
seals, whales and gold.... native people without guns..... too easy.

Well there’s a fair bit of archaeological evidence that supports the Australian Aboriginals starting/speeding up the extinction of Australia’s Megaflora and fauna after they arrived there. Can hardly lay ecological destruction on just British settlers.

Ecosystems are constantly evolving based on new introductions, either from humans or other methods. It’s only a human trait to consider them negative and lay blame.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Well there’s a fair bit of archaeological evidence that supports the Australian Aboriginals starting/speeding up the extinction of Australia’s Megaflora and fauna after they arrived there. Can hardly lay ecological destruction on just British settlers.

Ecosystems are constantly evolving based on new introductions, either from humans or other methods. It’s only a human trait to consider them negative and lay blame.

This is true. The Maori did actually have quite a culture of preservation, all the same, being of polynesian descent they were very nomadic and realised that opening up areas with fire was very counterproductive to their food supply, Moa were the easiest feed around so they had methods of ensuring they didn't get too greedy.... but their numbers slowly increased, and moa etc slowly decreased over time.

But as you said, islands evolve in special ways, and so did the people.
The western diet doesn't help the Maori people, at all, they are drastically overrepresented in all the wrong statistics.

It is interesting to see how the base foods have bearing on the human populace, where corn and cereals form the base obesity and health issues are astounding.

(Just don't say so in front of a corn or cereal farmer)

It's this abundance of "anecdotal" evidence that dictates our "pasture-only" values in our context, I don't wish to be any bigger part of the problem than is possible.
It's why I don't have shedding sheep, too, because I value the fibre (although crossbred wool is crap compared to the oldenday Romneys and Leicesters, and has less value, it is still a natural fibre)

On that subject, if NZ had stuck with selecting for wool instead of mainly meat, it would probably have 6 or 7 times the value of the modern sheep fleece.
Farmers are as culpable in wool's decline as the consumers, really.

 

[ShooTa]

heres a snap from yesterday - i think i might be a touch tight - they are in 0.2 of an acre. gave em a touch more today - but the areas are well squished down - couple of areas that had clover are very tight but nothing less than 4 inches which im pleased with. great dung coverage.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

How's the grass growing? Have you had some moisture now?

 

[ShooTa]

Yes we had a fair bit recently -couple of inches in the last few days - http://www.gaugemap.co.uk/#!Detail/7873/3204/2018-07-01/2018-08-31
this is what @Yale and @hendrebc and I have recieved recently.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Sorry Pete didn't mean to set your stress levels soaring! But quite understand where your coming from. But @Blaithin is right too, nothing stays the same. We have to try and make sure our influence is an overall positive one. Difficult sometimes to quantify, and sometimes nature surprises us in its resilience to our meddling, though sometimes not. As we've said elsewhere, we are part of the ecosystem, not simply an outside force upon it. But it's learning to work with it not against it that will make the difference.

Happy to report good rainfall amounts here over the last few days and more heavy rain forecast tonight. - will be grumbling about the mud soon enough

 

[Farmer Roy]

Hindsight is gin clear... but to be honest, the early British settlers really couldn't have done a worse job if they had made a concerted effort to wreck the ecology and ecosystems.
About the only thing they forgot to pack were adders, foxes, and badgers.

They basically saw the opportunity for rape and pillage, and cared not, it was just the way things are
seals, whales and gold.... native people without guns..... too easy.

yeah, same story here as well, but we got the foxes as well

 

[Crofter64]

Literally allsorts. He buys reject spuds from a potato farm, welcomes donations of fathen bales, he goes around cutting and baling nettles and weeds with a wee Davy Brown and about the earliest Class baler, one of the old string-tie ones, the locals take him scraps and he sends them away with bottles of the stuff for their gardens

I am tempted to try something here but to be fair I collect quite a bit from my compost heap, I bulldozed a channel to collect any runoff and just pump it out with my submersible pump into drums and any spare tanks I can get, have a couple of thousand litres

I am going to give that a whirl when the paddocks get drier, along with the last of the seaweed/fish brew I have left from autumn, will give my silage paddocks a liberal dousing

I took your advice and set up a few drums with seaweed and other weeds. Dreadful stink. I wasn’t thinking when I placed them at the barn entrance. I will spray them in early autumn.
Btw, I was told that the brown liquid coming from worm composting systems is not worm compost tea ( I thought it was) but possibly noxious junk leaving the system. The real worm compost tea is when you take the solid compost and put it is a tea brewer. Is this just a way for us to invest in a compost tea brewer? If so, it worked, because I bought one, albeit a small one to experiment with. I’m not crazy about using it. It is just one more thing to do.

 

[ShooTa]

@Crofter64 plent of youtube videos DIYing your own - dr elaine ingham has a few

 

[Farmer Roy]

I took your advice and set up a few drums with seaweed and other weeds. Dreadful stink. I wasn’t thinking when I placed them at the barn entrance. I will spray them in early autumn.
Btw, I was told that the brown liquid coming from worm composting systems is not worm compost tea ( I thought it was) but possibly noxious junk leaving the system. The real worm compost tea is when you take the solid compost and put it is a tea brewer. Is this just a way for us to invest in a compost tea brewer? If so, it worked, because I bought one, albeit a small one to experiment with. I’m not crazy about using it. It is just one more thing to do.

to be honest, ive never heard of worm juice here being called a ' compost tea ', its always know as worm juice or worm wee & is basically the liquid that runs out the bottom of the worm farm
you can go into any hardware or gardening shop & buy small scale worm farms & very popular with gardeners.
never heard of anyone then putting it through a compost tea brewer - the wee is generally just diluted with water & applied to soils or foliar

im just wanting to do that on a bigger scale

 

[Farmer Roy]

err, biodiversity anyone ?
or do you prefer a pasture or arable monoculture ?

 

[Blaithin]

I prefer feed for my animals. Some years that means I can’t be picky about how it was grown.

 

[Farmer Roy]

many of the concepts discussed in this article will be familiar to visitors here

Defying the drought: Farmers who have braced for the big dry
Share

Landline


By Marty McCarthy, Aneeta Bhole

Updated about 2 hours ago
First posted about 9 hours ago

Many farmers face difficult decisions during times of drought — and having a 'disaster plan' for the 'worst-worst' situation can make the upturn during good weather much quicker
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

Many farmers face difficult decisions during times of drought — and having a 'disaster plan' for the 'worst-worst' situation can make the upturn during good weather much quicker

Landline: Marty McCarthy

There is a drought spreading across eastern Australia and while it is severe it is not our worst. At least not yet.

Drought story stream
Australia's drought coverage





Farmers face difficulty across NSW and QLD with costs of stock feed and transport spiralling.

There are two major droughts which are stuck in the Australian psyche.

The 1895 to 1902 Federation Drought, during which the Darling and Murray Rivers ran dry, and the Millennium Drought which ran from late 1996 to mid-2010 and severely affected most southern cropping areas.

In southern parts of Australia, droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been found to be the worst in the last 400 years, and experts predict they will become more prevalent in the future.

For some farmers, the millennium drought was a turning point where they realised that if they wanted to keep farming in Australia they needed to embrace rather than battle an often unpredictable climate.


Dams are drying out in drought stricken parts of Australia.
(Landline: Ben Deacon and Marty McCarthy)

Dams are drying out in drought stricken parts of Australia.

Landline: Ben Deacon and Marty McCarthy

Spending money when there is none
In NSW's central west, farmers Laurie and John Chaffey have seen and read the stories about farmers in drought shooting starving livestock that they cannot afford to feed.

The Chaffeys don't ever want to be in that position, and that meant being prepared for this drought and future ones.


The Chaffeys said they came up with a plan in November to preg-test their cows and anything not in calf went, even though they were loved dearly.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

The Chaffeys said they came up with a plan in November to preg-test their cows and anything not in calf went, even though they were loved dearly.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

Cash flow is low at the moment, but the Chaffeys are investing in building drought lots — small pens where the mothers can give birth and still have access to plenty of food and water.

"You have got to have ewes in a good condition that they want to stay with the lamb and not toddle off where it's dropped," Mr Chaffey said.

"The lots will increase our lamb survival, so at the end we'll hopefully have a good lambing percentage and we'll protect the ewes with good nutrition.


Sheep eating grain on a drought affected property in New South Wales
(Marty McCarthy)
Share

Sheep eating grain on a drought affected property in New South Wales

Marty McCarthy

The Chaffeys livestock nutritionist, Nikki Henderson, says she wants to see more farmers in drought-affected areas plan ahead to avoid having animals starving in paddocks.

"This is definitely [an] uncommon thing for this area but it's great what the Chaffeys are doing," she said.

"I've spent a lot of time in Victoria and South Australia and other areas and I see a lot more people setting up this sort of drought-lotting infrastructure for lambing and drought feeding."

In addition to the new drought lots, the Chaffeys also have two sheds full of hay, and three years ago installed silos to store grain as well as grain they wrapped in plastic and buried 20 years ago.

"Every drought is different and it is all about compromise and adjustment, the further you get the further you need to think about how you can prepare next," Mr Chaffey said.


Figures from the Department of Primary Industries show that all of NSW is affected by the dry conditions, and almost one-quarter classified as being in 'intense drought'.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

Figures from the Department of Primary Industries show that all of NSW is affected by the dry conditions, and almost one-quarter classified as being in 'intense drought'.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

Ms Henderson, who has clients throughout the central west, said many people are still holding out for rain rather than putting a long-term feeding strategy in place.

"There are people out there that I'm going to see who you set up with plans and talk about costs to feed through calving and they are still sitting back waiting and not planning ahead far enough to budget those feeds," she said.

Heidi Austin, a district vet with North West Local Land Services, said it can be difficult for farmers faced with the stress and pressure of drought to forward plan. They are just trying to get by day to day.


It might be dry now — but there is always hope and having diversity in property means you can work with the weather more.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

It might be dry now — but there is always hope and having diversity in property means you can work with the weather more.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

He lets his pastures rest by reducing most of his livestock. Currently, he only has 20 per cent of his usual herd.

Instead, he "flogs it" when it rains. That doesn't necessarily mean waiting for autumn or winter. It means waiting for rainfall, regardless of what time of year it comes.


"When it rains it's like bringing in the herds across the Serengeti — when the grass is there we move them on, and when it isn't we move them off," Mr Kerin said.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

"When it rains it's like bringing in the herds across the Serengeti — when the grass is there we move them on, and when it isn't we move them off," Mr Kerin said.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

"The animals put on weight quicker, which if you've matched stocking rate to capacity, means you've got them at a saleable weight a lot quicker before the season turns on you again."

As state and federal governments tinker away on policies to encourage farmers to prepare for drought, Mr Kerin says the push should come from farmers themselves.

"It's not so much about what governments can do. It's about if you want to change, if the need for change inside of you is enough to make you want to build a better future," he said.

"The adaption part. You have to tip out everything you know and re-establish a new paradigm of how to do business."

Grass growth and green days
Grazier Ardie Lord from Sutherland Station in north-west Queensland doesn't like to use the word drought, even though he's technically been in one for five years.

This year he's only had half his annual rainfall — which he refers to as a "light year" — but he looks for the positives in it.


"I might be running a small number of animals but it just feels more comfortable for me to acknowledge I'm just having a light year and to be in balance with that," Mr Lord said.
(Aneeta Bhole)

"I might be running a small number of animals but it just feels more comfortable for me to acknowledge I'm just having a light year and to be in balance with that," Mr Lord said.

Aneeta Bhole

Mr Lord uses grazing charts to plan 12 months in advance. If he doesn't think he has enough grass to feed his current herd through to the next wet season he begins to destock.


The cost of feeding those animals and physical demands of getting food to the animals each day tires many farmers during drought.
(Landline: Aneeta Bhole)

The cost of feeding those animals and physical demands of getting food to the animals each day tires many farmers during drought.

Landline: Aneeta Bhole

The stress during drought often comes from trying to maintain a large herd size even if they don't have the pasture to feed it.

"If we are having a light year and we're running the appropriate amount of animals it's pretty stress-free," Mr Lord said.

He cautioned farmers against letting their livestock get skinny, to a point they can't be sold.

"It's risky because that's our cashflow and that's our future, so if the animals are losing weight it means we're losing cashflow," he said.


"We know what it's like to go through drought previously, so I feel sad for those in that position of being tight financially," Mr Marshman said.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

"We know what it's like to go through drought previously, so I feel sad for those in that position of being tight financially," Mr Marshman said.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

"Trees are fairly resilient so they continue to grow even when rainfall is deficient, but with livestock we all know once it gets dry the money also dries up," Mr Marshman said.

Carbon farming for Mr Marshman means letting mulga regrow in paddocks where grass once did, and sheep used to graze. He can keep the cattle, because they don't pose a threat to the mulga.


Mulga growing near Bourke in New South Wales as part of carbon farming project
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

Mulga growing near Bourke in New South Wales as part of carbon farming project

Landline: Marty McCarthy

The mulga stores carbon, and the Federal Government buys that storage space off him, through the Clean Energy Regulator, in a bid to reduce Australia's overall greenhouse gas emissions.

"I would hate to think what sort of position we'd be in if we didn't have the regular income stream from the carbon farming," Mr Marshman said.


Sights like this dry dam on a farm in New South Wales make it hard to stay positive — but 'putting wood on the fire' won't help.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy and Ben Deacon)

Sights like this dry dam on a farm in New South Wales make it hard to stay positive — but 'putting wood on the fire' won't help.

Landline: Marty McCarthy and Ben Deacon

Geoff Dunstan, a grazier from Cunnamulla in Queensland who also has turned to carbon farming, agrees.

"In a drought you're usually going backwards financially and rapidly working flat out, but at least being in the carbon trade you've got income coming in over that bad period," Mr Dunstan said.


Agricultural flexibility is key if you don't know how much or when you are going to get rain.
(Landline: Marty McCarthy)

Agricultural flexibility is key if you don't know how much or when you are going to get rain.

Landline: Marty McCarthy

"We've moved a percentage of our cattle there to feed them, it's a lot easier to manage a smaller acreage when feeding livestock," Mr Marshman said.

He's also bought a third property at Narromine in NSW — it's insurance against drought, but also any potential collapse in the carbon-farming sector.

"We have a property in a higher rainfall area now and when it's dry here we can move livestock there. We have gone for more livestock properties so we aren't just reliant on the carbon farming," he said.

"You never know when the next drought will hit you so be prepared, invest in infrastructure that helps you be a bit more resilient in dry times that are not expected."

You can see the story on Landline on ABC TV at 12:30pm or on iview.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

https://thisnzlife.co.nz/6-pasture-plants-will-make-drought/

Thought you might like this link @Osca

Despite well intended advice that Timothy may be a drought tolerant species

You may wish to Google the NZ Grassland Association publications too, most of them are in PDF format and I am too idiotic to post links to them - it's above my pay grade.
I will let the experts discuss the pros and cons on the other thread, it really boils down to grazing management as @Treg mentioned.
Chewings fescue was developed for the purposes you describe, it is still apparent here some years, and others not so much - the joys of diversity really.

I really don't think much of the advice you've received from

such is life .