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

[som farmer]

Can't wait too see them for bodgespection

I bought some 19mm ali tube and some ali flat to make runners for my quad..... been sat in a pile for a year.
Trouble is that a poly stake held in one hand to push the fence down as you drive over is pretty easy too

if l am careful, can angle up to fence, and use my sticks to lift it over the cab of my truck, pays to be careful, slapdash hurts. l am very careful, once bitten 100x shy, mains fencer.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Out of interest pete why did you end up with no grass by may?
Was it down to grazing management at the time rather than animal species?
Or because of sheep?



We've always been fairly balanced with sheep and cattle, but the sheep numbers are growing ahead of the cattle for various reasons,
It's becoming very apparent how much the early flock peg the grass back, but on the other hand the lambs and culls are gone before summer drying out time.
At abit of a cross roads of what we want to do.... not sure lambing lots more ewes is the answer

Because we were using "conventional management" ie low density, cutting silage, hope

and sheep, the main issue is that you almost don't see what they're doing til they've done it already, and they keep you thinking about short grass and short recovery, especially if youre trying to grow them for someone else

 

[Kiwi Pete]

if l am careful, can angle up to fence, and use my sticks to lift it over the cab of my truck, pays to be careful, slapdash hurts. l am very careful, once bitten 100x shy, mains fencer.

Angle is good. I use my hoof to push the wire sideways until the tyre grabs it, then it springs back and up, rather than straight up.
Was always good to get the tractor and wagon over without catching a pin or the stand on the wagon.... good old days

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

if l am careful, can angle up to fence, and use my sticks to lift it over the cab of my truck, pays to be careful, slapdash hurts. l am very careful, once bitten 100x shy, mains fencer.

Only once bitten?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Finally got last of cows and calves out now into one big group
(big for me being 16 cows and 14 calves )
Love having them outside the house much more interesting watching them over tv

and we’re off with the cells today probably around 1/4 acre at the moment in here next field will probably be around 1/8 per acre moves
First time calves have seen wire so lots of stakes and wire on 2 sides for training View attachment 962571View attachment 962572

Starting to really show results there!

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Good stuff.

I think I've said that before

Outcomes are what matter most! Not necessarily the methods that gain these better outcomes for us.

Often feel the same way when I relive our journey, so much of the trial and error stuff was really just error, but the big thing is that we learnt and improved, which is the name of the game.

Like the wasting grass grazing thing, I'm really glad we did that, just as I'm really glad we learnt from it and kept looking for new stuff to try... one of the big things here is stocking rate and how that has climbed.

I think when Ian came here - @holwellcourtfarm, was that coming up 4 years?? we were grazing 400 sheep and 7 calves - and had no feed on the land to speak of in May after a pretty wet and bountiful year.
This year we are supposedly in drought conditions or "very dry" and have 38 sheep and are cruising along with 130 bovines in 300 paddocks and enough grass to get us to the end of September if it stopped growing today

but yeah, plans are useless in farming

Yep, 4 years in a few weeks! A trip that pointed me in whole new directions. I definitely want to get back to see your progress, chew the fat about so many things and see the boys again.

It'll happen...

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Yep, 4 years in a few weeks! A trip that pointed me in whole new directions. I definitely want to get back to see your progress, chew the fat about so many things and see the boys again.

It'll happen...

Sarah just showed me a photo of the boys that would have been from about then, I see why you say "gosh they've grown" because they have!
Big boy looks like he's been on a good paddock .

 

[Kiwi Pete]

All the neighbours are growing multispecies crops this year

 

[som farmer]

nutrition, costings and looking towards next winter today, looking at our grass crops, 'haven't seen that much grass here, for years', very impressed with h/rye and vetches, now tallest 6ft, and still in max gear, needs to be off, hopefully end of week, the vetches are 6/10 ins lower than the rye, she is estimating/guessing 12% protien.
Everything is in top gear, and taking another 10 acs out the grazing, for silage, all been grazed either once, or twice, and looks high quality grass. This is the balance between high quality grazing grass, and grass 'gone' well over, while perhaps not the ideal regen creed, but cows don't milk on heavy yields of cutting grass. Same old story, dry and cold, grass slow growing, moisture and heat, boom, great, but we have acres of grazing, all at the same stage- cutting stage, rather than our nicely planned rotational grazing, to keep it all high quality, a cut should give it a re-set, and we really don't mind a bigger heap of silage. l said back a while, if we had a growthy season, the problem would be where to put it all, well

 

[som farmer]

All the neighbours are growing multispecies crops this year View attachment 962953

there's a lot of feed there, better than ours last year, not a lot though, but enough to feed the dairy on x1 day, for 5 months, and dry/y/s for longer. Planning on not sowing any now, till after s barley, 2 acres in, but grass has stifled that, will be interesting to see what rape/grass ley does.

 

[jonnyjon]

# wasting grass Is this wise??

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

nutrition, costings and looking towards next winter today, looking at our grass crops, 'haven't seen that much grass here, for years', very impressed with h/rye and vetches, now tallest 6ft, and still in max gear, needs to be off, hopefully end of week, the vetches are 6/10 ins lower than the rye, she is estimating/guessing 12% protien.
Everything is in top gear, and taking another 10 acs out the grazing, for silage, all been grazed either once, or twice, and looks high quality grass. This is the balance between high quality grazing grass, and grass 'gone' well over, while perhaps not the ideal regen creed, but cows don't milk on heavy yields of cutting grass. Same old story, dry and cold, grass slow growing, moisture and heat, boom, great, but we have acres of grazing, all at the same stage- cutting stage, rather than our nicely planned rotational grazing, to keep it all high quality, a cut should give it a re-set, and we really don't mind a bigger heap of silage. l said back a while, if we had a growthy season, the problem would be where to put it all, well

Forage here is still near the bottom of the sigmoid growth curve. I'm hoping that the coming higher temperatures will kick it upwards.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

This 43 acres field has been intensively cropped for racehorse hay since 2006. We knew it would affect the soil despite keeping on top of lime and fertiliser but the yields fell over 50% over that time but it gave us much needed income at the time. Last year I ended the deal with the chap who took it as a standing crop and we didn't put anything on it at all, just taking a light silage crop in May then leaving it to rest. Although some of the grasses had already gone to head I threw an electric strand round it on April 24th and put the herd in as the grazing land was very slowly growing and I feared setting it right back. It has given us nearly 20 animal days per acre and given the grazing land space until yesterday.

Typically of such set stocking they have grazed very selectively but it has done its' job and now looks like this:

The herd are enjoying being back where they know and have quickly adapted to daily moves agin:

I was impressed that after only a week of training the 12 stores we had from Dad respected the silly string boundary all that while they were in that field. It ws a risk as, not having been grazed for several decades, the boundary fences are very "porous"

 

[Crofter64]

Always looks worse than it really is. Take another photo in a week and then 2 weeks. Ideal opportunity to get some new species in there.

Trashed this field last autumn and was worried when it looked like this March 25th

Today it looks like this:

It’s not fantastic, but better than I expected.
I plan to skip it entirely this round ,let stuff go to seed and then let the gang trample it down.

 

[som farmer]

contractors backed out of cutting our rye, mow rake and pick-up. He's organised a direct cut for friday ? Very nice of him, but he has his own rye as well. I haven't seen it for a few days, till today, the growth is staggering, bets are on for tallest, 7ft by cutting. Certainly seem to have the grass 'just right', so a different weather, different growth, the question, why. ln some ways another dry spell, would have been 'proof', very glad it didn't happen, and l hope we get a massive heap of silage, for buffer, if needed. One of the reasons there is a lot of grass, other than my fantastic management is the leys are so much thicker in the bottom, this could be because seeding is 'in house', and done properly, or it could be the greater use of non PRG grasses, smaller better seed ? Very little ploughing, min-til, or dd overseeding, improved soil structure, really don't know, better grass management, over on the 'all things dairy' thread, they are talking about 'longer residuals', mentioned it last year, and got ridiculed, bit of a change around.
We are quite happy with what we are doing, l don't think we will be going back to 'previous', there is only one new ley, regrowth not so good, tending acidic, dosed with lime, 1 ton, last year, as per rec, told son to put another 2 t/ac on, never been over happy with the 'modern' ph tests, l fully expect that might help it, it always needed lime, why should it suddenly stop needing it.
@holwellcourtfarm , just read your post, l think a re-set button on fields, time to recover, a very good tool, or a light skim, keeps it tidy, and leaves some rubbish on the ground, we intend to do a light skimming after 3or4 times round, and we have c/harrowed some behind the cows, to try and stop the 'green tall' patches around the pats.
@Crofter64 beginning to realise that we all might be a bit 'quick' to jump in, with reseeds, overseeding, it is quite amazing the speed with which nature can resolve issues, we don't give it time, or the reps are to hasty selling us seed !

 

[Crofter64]

I’ve been busy lately planting trees along the the middle of my longest paddock to create some shade( eventually) to the east of it. I have planted trees on this north / south axis in three other places for many obvious reasons but also to create a bird path from the trees at the top of the property to the river at the bottom.
Unlike Kiwi Pete I took an existing page wire fence and built another 3 feet away with a shallow ditch and tiny mound along the length of it. It has been very hot and dry so I am glad that I put the tree tunnels, newspaper, cardboard and wood chips around each of the 280 trees. I also planted bird and bee attracting flowers, herbs, sunflowers .

Cattle residual in the foreground

 

[Samcowman]

# wasting grass Is this wise?? View attachment 963360

It depends. . Should be getting some serious performance out there.
Will need something to either harvest the lot or trample it well and properly ‘waste’ it rather than saving it for later like now.

Suckler cows are good for taking everything. Went for the nettles when I shifted them today.

 

[exmoor dave]

Going on from the link @Farmer Roy put up regarding the 270 day recoveries, probably "the best" video on regenerative grazing I have seen

despite watching goodness knows how many videos promoting the alternative version, it's good to have the "eat ⅓" thing debunked properly and a good insight into critical thinking based on good old 'farm science'

well worth a peek

This is a really good video, helped me alot to understand high density long recovery and why it works Vs the 1/3- 1/3- 1/3 idea.
We dabbled with High density last late autumn, using a mob of inlamb ewes, on the lambing fields, so about 3mth or so recovery, those fields were fab after recovery.

Because we were using "conventional management" ie low density, cutting silage, hope

and sheep, the main issue is that you almost don't see what they're doing til they've done it already, and they keep you thinking about short grass and short recovery, especially if youre trying to grow them for someone else

After watching the above video, been thinking about this today while moving ewes and lambs...... ewes and lambs really aren't very compatible with a full high density system

But sheep are typically the best payer and best cash flow, at least how we currently farm, numbers can be made fluid relatively easy, unlike cattle in a TB area.
No real scope to increase cow numbers without shed investment- out wintering via bale grazing probably going to be unacceptable to landlords,
Taking in other peoples cattle for grazing season highly risky in a TB area, also technically sub letting so abit of a no-no, esp on our main tenancy.

It's certainly a cunumdrum trying to work a plan out, we can do HD grazing at times of the year using the cattle we have and dry/ in lamb ewes, maybe that's got to be a good as it gets....... I fear it's going to feel like we undo any gains made in the autumn, by the following (set stocked) lambing period

 

[Kiwi Pete]

This is a really good video, helped me alot to understand high density long recovery and why it works Vs the 1/3- 1/3- 1/3 idea.
We dabbled with High density last late autumn, using a mob of inlamb ewes, on the lambing fields, so about 3mth or so recovery, those fields were fab after recovery.




After watching the above video, been thinking about this today while moving ewes and lambs...... ewes and lambs really aren't very compatible with a full high density system

But sheep are typically the best payer and best cash flow, at least how we currently farm, numbers can be made fluid relatively easy, unlike cattle in a TB area.
No real scope to increase cow numbers without shed investment- out wintering via bale grazing probably going to be unacceptable to landlords,
Taking in other peoples cattle for grazing season highly risky in a TB area, also technically sub letting so abit of a no-no, esp on our main tenancy.

It's certainly a cunumdrum trying to work a plan out, we can do HD grazing at times of the year using the cattle we have and dry/ in lamb ewes, maybe that's got to be a good as it gets....... I fear it's going to feel like we undo any gains made in the autumn, by the following (set stocked) lambing period

Yeah ,,, now you see why we stopped and drove away from the cliff!

You can still play with it, I think the total grazing thing perhaps works with any stock IF you redesign a few things. Eg run your B flock that way with the intention of not finishing many lambs off them

Use them as landscapers and then get the lambs away so you aren't kicking as many own goals?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

The other big point is that when we think of "landscape function" and "eating as deep as possible" and things lie that, using that type of language, it suddenly opens new doors @exmoor dave

more "what I can do" than "I really shouldn't be doing this but OK"

and I particularly like looking for leading indicators vs lagging, that is what drove the U turn here

This same conversation would be wonderful to have with politicians, who have a fixation with lagging indicators like soil carbon