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

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
next door farmer, and us, were commenting on the increase of hares, and how nice it is to see them.
Any change in our farming practices, causes a reaction, that reaction can be quite dramatic, in way's that could be either good, or bad, depending on what we actually do. My cousin farms a lot of land, we used to farm together, and is all arable, some of the worst arable fields, have been left, for the 'greening' element, that has now stopped, and he has cropped most of them this year, most of which have been uncropped, or fallowed, for five years, or more. The s barley in them, is a totally different colour, to the rest, it's still green, and a lot has gone flat.
In my thinking, that rest, must have done marvels to the ground, 5 years of letting it 'sort' itself out, has returned those fields to a better position, they would have done well in wheat, but he only grows s barley here, as the ground is 'poor'. So that flat, late s barley will be classed as rubbish, and not worth doing, he doesn't need the money. Try and rent some, it's the best soil in the UK !
What it tells me, is give the soil the help/time it needs, nature can do wondrous things, for free. Not all of us are able to leave land in long term fallow, but l think leaving grass in long term, unploughed grass, can help the soil fauna to grow/improve, again for free, that can be helped by growing grass varieties that are naturally suited to that soil.
Farming is being torn apart, on one hand, we have to produce cheap bulk food, the other, we are the cause of global climate change, and must stop using those methods, that allow us to produce cheap bulk food.
We have to find a compromise somewhere between the two. The obvious answer, is not politically possible, reduce population by 50%. Those imputs, that allow us to produce the cheap bulk food, are the opposite of what the green brigade want/demand. Those imputs will become increasingly more 'controlled' and expensive, or banned outright. We have to find ways to mitigate those imputs, which bring us straight back to this thread !
What the public has to realise, is, they cannot have what they demand, food wise, it's simply not possible to produce cheap bulk food, without those imputs. Ask them to pay more, and suddenly, those 'killing' imputs, are not that bad.
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
Funny we are noticing things popping up in fields. Spotted these mushrooms growing out of a dung pat on a shift today.
640AEA98-D4CD-4FFA-94A5-F7AAB8A20470.jpeg
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Funny we are noticing things popping up in fields. Spotted these mushrooms growing out of a dung pat on a shift today. View attachment 976594
have you done a risk assessment for RT on those ?
if you really want to impress us, what are they called ...
Joking aside, probably your soil is beginning to improve, more fungi showing above, means many more below.
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
have you done a risk assessment for RT on those ?
if you really want to impress us, what are they called ...
Joking aside, probably your soil is beginning to improve, more fungi showing above, means many more below.
No idea what they are called. My
Mushroom knowledge doesn’t get much further than field 😂.
With the litter laid down here first round it’s not surprising the soil will be shifting away from bacteria dominant.
 

crashbox

Member
Livestock Farmer
Here's a question for the tall grass grazers...

Has been a grassy year, so high residuals across a lot of the farm. But I'm not sure the stock are doing better on it...

What is typical DLWG people are getting off longer residual pasture? And are you finding a need to supplementary feed with older, taller grass?

TIA

CB
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Here's a question for the tall grass grazers...

Has been a grassy year, so high residuals across a lot of the farm. But I'm not sure the stock are doing better on it...

What is typical DLWG people are getting off longer residual pasture? And are you finding a need to supplementary feed with older, taller grass?

TIA

CB
Hard to say. We don't weigh. Yet.

Decent scales are on our list.

They seem to be doing ok by eye though.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Here's a question for the tall grass grazers...

Has been a grassy year, so high residuals across a lot of the farm. But I'm not sure the stock are doing better on it...

What is typical DLWG people are getting off longer residual pasture? And are you finding a need to supplementary feed with older, taller grass?

TIA

CB
Depends what the tall grass actually is - I'm not "being smart" but a lot of tall-grass grazing on the interweb is rubbish for youngstock or lactating cattle.

There's tall leaf grass and tall stem grass

Tall leafy grass (because you grazed it down to nubs and left it for weeks) is pretty reasonable, we've had mobs avg'ing 2.6kg/day.

Tall stemmy grass, maybe you top out at 1.3 or so, depends on the cattle and how the stemmy bit actually is, they do better on standing hay than standing tough-stuff

As you get higher stocking rates it levels out because the animals have the horsepower to maintain their feed properly, most of the struggle is getting things aligned so that you can achieve the higher stocking rates to maintain the quality, then getting some gone to maintain the big wedge they push in front of themselves
 

Nsoiled

Member
Depends what the tall grass actually is - I'm not "being smart" but a lot of tall-grass grazing on the interweb is rubbish for youngstock or lactating cattle.

There's tall leaf grass and tall stem grass

Tall leafy grass (because you grazed it down to nubs and left it for weeks) is pretty reasonable, we've had mobs avg'ing 2.6kg/day.

Tall stemmy grass, maybe you top out at 1.3 or so, depends on the cattle and how the stemmy bit actually is, they do better on standing hay than standing tough-stuff

As you get higher stocking rates it levels out because the animals have the horsepower to maintain their feed properly, most of the struggle is getting things aligned so that you can achieve the higher stocking rates to maintain the quality, then getting some gone to maintain the big wedge they push in front of themselves
Will said

What kind of stock are you running btw?
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Depends what the tall grass actually is - I'm not "being smart" but a lot of tall-grass grazing on the interweb is rubbish for youngstock or lactating cattle.

There's tall leaf grass and tall stem grass

Tall leafy grass (because you grazed it down to nubs and left it for weeks) is pretty reasonable, we've had mobs avg'ing 2.6kg/day.

Tall stemmy grass, maybe you top out at 1.3 or so, depends on the cattle and how the stemmy bit actually is, they do better on standing hay than standing tough-stuff

As you get higher stocking rates it levels out because the animals have the horsepower to maintain their feed properly, most of the struggle is getting things aligned so that you can achieve the higher stocking rates to maintain the quality, then getting some gone to maintain the big wedge they push in front of themselves
It'd be interesting to see the response of your average feed consultant to the idea of cattle averaging 2.6kg/day from pasture alone.......
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
sorting out dry cows last night, one very obvious fact, is becoming evident, dry or young stock, do better on old grass, than new grass. Our dairy, which grazes nothing over 4 yrs old, is rather 'loose' to say the least, and it is showing up, especially in the hfrs, although milk production is ok. So two different out comes, which some would say, should be the other way round. One easy obvious solution, is too feed hay/straw, which, although we don't want to, we will have to, and we have plenty of that ! We have 150big bales arriving now, which will be made from old pasture, or conservation acres, and will be ideal.
Going back to production, we have tried to leave longer residuals, and have, thinking cattle can utilise that bit of fibre, in the longer stem. That hasn't gone to plan, you have to graze much tighter, to get them to eat it, then you loose the advantages of the longer residual idea, pre-cutting, when we really lost the plan, wasn't really ideal, production dropped. The only constant theme, between both swards, is the fact that prg, has an insane desire to run to head, at every opportunity, that could also be said about chicory, at the moment.
Don't really know the answer, constant topping, is one, plus that keeps the weeds down, and stops prg heading, or, we keep reducing the amount of prg, in the mixes, concentrating on the latest heading varieties, which means you lose early growth, always say, farming is a balance, just need to find it !
Been putting a few handfulls of chicory seed, in the fert spreader, as we use it, certainly grows easy, sprouting up all over the place, makes you wonder about carefully prepared seed beds !
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
sorting out dry cows last night, one very obvious fact, is becoming evident, dry or young stock, do better on old grass, than new grass. Our dairy, which grazes nothing over 4 yrs old, is rather 'loose' to say the least, and it is showing up, especially in the hfrs, although milk production is ok. So two different out comes, which some would say, should be the other way round. One easy obvious solution, is too feed hay/straw, which, although we don't want to, we will have to, and we have plenty of that ! We have 150big bales arriving now, which will be made from old pasture, or conservation acres, and will be ideal.
Going back to production, we have tried to leave longer residuals, and have, thinking cattle can utilise that bit of fibre, in the longer stem. That hasn't gone to plan, you have to graze much tighter, to get them to eat it, then you loose the advantages of the longer residual idea, pre-cutting, when we really lost the plan, wasn't really ideal, production dropped. The only constant theme, between both swards, is the fact that prg, has an insane desire to run to head, at every opportunity, that could also be said about chicory, at the moment.
Don't really know the answer, constant topping, is one, plus that keeps the weeds down, and stops prg heading, or, we keep reducing the amount of prg, in the mixes, concentrating on the latest heading varieties, which means you lose early growth, always say, farming is a balance, just need to find it !
Been putting a few handfulls of chicory seed, in the fert spreader, as we use it, certainly grows easy, sprouting up all over the place, makes you wonder about carefully prepared seed beds !
I do think the inputs trade massively overemphasise seedbed quality for forage. I know nature uses the "throw loads of free seed on and enough will grow" approach but it does just make me wonder whether it's really about justifying high seed prices....
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
It'd be interesting to see the response of your average feed consultant to the idea of cattle averaging 2.6kg/day from pasture alone.......
That was only for a few consecutive fortnights (we weighed fortnightly, @crashbox) before quality went.
Mob average, they gained 400kg in 7¾ months here, so that's 1.7 day or so? Shows that the other weightgain periods were not so great (although you can still make good money at that).
Most importantly it gave us a bit of a baseline with low stocking rates (2 stores per ha) that we can work things out 'against' with different classes and stocking rates - eg we need to grow dairy heifers at .85/day to reach targets, so how many can we run to optimise things across a timeframe?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
sorting out dry cows last night, one very obvious fact, is becoming evident, dry or young stock, do better on old grass, than new grass. Our dairy, which grazes nothing over 4 yrs old, is rather 'loose' to say the least, and it is showing up, especially in the hfrs, although milk production is ok. So two different out comes, which some would say, should be the other way round. One easy obvious solution, is too feed hay/straw, which, although we don't want to, we will have to, and we have plenty of that ! We have 150big bales arriving now, which will be made from old pasture, or conservation acres, and will be ideal.
Going back to production, we have tried to leave longer residuals, and have, thinking cattle can utilise that bit of fibre, in the longer stem. That hasn't gone to plan, you have to graze much tighter, to get them to eat it, then you loose the advantages of the longer residual idea, pre-cutting, when we really lost the plan, wasn't really ideal, production dropped. The only constant theme, between both swards, is the fact that prg, has an insane desire to run to head, at every opportunity, that could also be said about chicory, at the moment.
Don't really know the answer, constant topping, is one, plus that keeps the weeds down, and stops prg heading, or, we keep reducing the amount of prg, in the mixes, concentrating on the latest heading varieties, which means you lose early growth, always say, farming is a balance, just need to find it !
Been putting a few handfulls of chicory seed, in the fert spreader, as we use it, certainly grows easy, sprouting up all over the place, makes you wonder about carefully prepared seed beds !
What they didn't graze, they won't graze next time.

That's really the "flaw" in the longer residuals regime when it comes to some grazing operations (like dairy, or lamb fattening) because the recoveries are so damn short (rotations so fast) that there is not much middle - there's ½ barely recovered and ½ crusty old stubble - whereas it could be all middle if shorter residuals/ adjusting recovery periods to match the last grazing could work better, much better

we will aim to mix it up, eg shorter and longer recoveries, shorter and longer residuals - so that we aren't getting into any type of groove, as such

it's really promising after a couple of years of wild, lax grazing to see the extra plant strength, but we need to compound that gain by shooting for maximum recovery time per year - this dictates the grazing depth must be "as deep as possible"
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I do think the inputs trade massively overemphasise seedbed quality for forage. I know nature uses the "throw loads of free seed on and enough will grow" approach but it does just make me wonder whether it's really about justifying high seed prices....
Chicken and egg? The more you spend preparing seedbeds, the less gripe you'll have spending big dough on little bags of seed, because as a fraction it is "less expensive"

likewise, after you spend hundreds on preparations, break crops so the "pests" that normally control your weed seeds don't eat the grass seeds.... you need good results. And it all hinges on timely rainfall 🤷‍♂️

One great thing about tough times (whether economic, climatic, or other) is that they really show these shiny-shoed 'experts' off for what they really are - people who work in sales, like the rest of us
 

Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
Here's a question for the tall grass grazers...

Has been a grassy year, so high residuals across a lot of the farm. But I'm not sure the stock are doing better on it...

What is typical DLWG people are getting off longer residual pasture? And are you finding a need to supplementary feed with older, taller grass?

TIA

CB

For our veal calves its pretty comparable to previous years (1,2kgs/day on average from birth to 4/5 months) But i think there are a few caveats.

Multispecies pastures so that there is a decent amount of something green.

Grazing deep to have a large amount of legumes.

Grazing deep to have a good leaf to stem ratio.

Full bellies! (i have found the timing of this hard, but i am getting the hang of it now).

frequent moves, for better appetite and better rumen function.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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