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

[Kiwi Pete]

That's why I ask if you had a specific use; this grass over the fence has been over-rested IMO. Last grazed in the autumn.
Great maintenance food, but this is to be used for growing lambs..... where's the clover?
Would be better suited to growing out mature cattle IMHO.

Whereas this was grazed a fortnight ago, hard enough but not too low... I see more money in this one.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Thanks Pete. Sounds like a cool place.

How did I not know about this when I was in NZ? I reckon I must've missed out on so much.

It is well off the beaten track - as most of NZ agriculture really is.
(You'd zap up the east coast of the south island and not see a poofteenth of a percent of the inland area) but because the Alps are high, they look very close!

Most of the big stations are quite remote, hence the usually touted "massive expansion after subs went" baloney that Diddlefarmer and Goooth spout out is really quite inaccurate - although the intensively farmed areas may be subject to this, that's only because they are exceeding the limits of what the land can do.

There's a fine line between what is sensible, and what is exploitation.... it's as easy to overgraze either type of farm.

It all really boils back to fences, or a lack of them, as I alluded to a couple of days ago; stock need subdivision, the land needs subdivision, it's only when things are on that downward spiral that the squeaky wheel gets some grease.

So we can learn from that!!

 

[Blaithin]

What’s my use of grass in the spring? For it to grow.

Ideally I wouldn’t put cattle on grass until June to give it a good start. They calve in the sacrifice area while on hay. I’ve done some quick moves through areas in the spring but this year I’d like to have enough hay to get them well towards June before letting them out of the sacrifice area.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

What would you expect your covers to be, by June?

I'm roughly equating that to late October, here... and I hope to have taken my silage by then.
So it's difficult to get my head around a really short, explosive growing season as you must have, (most of my grass would be like a hay crop unless I seriously get some stock cycling it, and to a degree I'm losing sugar, more than gaining anything)

My only thought is that you may almost be on the late side, for that first grazing, but I definitely don't have a grasp of your conditions - thanks to your picture thread, I'm getting there!

 

[Blaithin]

Grass in June has just had a chance to establish and get ahead of grazing, it’s maybe half of its potential. Grass won’t start to really grow until mid May usually.

If you’re equating it to a stage where one would harvest it - either silage or hay - then it’s not even close.

First cut hay won’t come off until at least mid to late July. Silage are similar but usually push into August.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Oh wow. That's quite a different context alright.
I've cut silage in September too

Just put my bigger calves in a new paddock.

You see now what I mean by an entirely different context, this spot was grazed at the start of August

and the middle of June.

6 weeks is a long time, here.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Oh wow. That's quite a different context alright.
6 weeks is a long time, here.

Land of milk and honey

 

[Samcowman]

Land of milk and honey

It’s so unfair

 

[Crofter64]

But this is my source of information so who knows

View attachment 716954

They’re talking about trees and shrubs here, not grasses. No problem speading your manure in the autumn, just wait till the moisture is reliable, otherwise it will all just dry up and lose all its good biology.
As for the grass- as said above you can either keep it to get a head start on spring- each mouthful the cows take will have fresh green grass as well as hay to buffer it. I have taken the pastures right down in the autumn. The grass is definitely set back in the spring, but if you manage it properly- one day moves with a back fence and therefore therefore a bit of residual and trample , you should have no problems . Its the repeated pounding that is hard, not the quick visit and then move on.
The leftover grass will help protect the soil from the cold wind and might help catch some snow. Hard to imagine all that as it is still 30 C with high humidity,but I know its coming.

 

[Blaithin]

It says perennials too so figured the grass could technically be a perrenial. Although a much tougher, ground encompassing perrenial

It’s already snowing here

 

[Crofter64]

It says perennials too so figured the grass could technically be a perrenial. Although a much tougher, ground encompassing perrenial

It’s already snowing here

Horrors!

grasses- much tougher perennial than other kinds

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It says perennials too so figured the grass could technically be a perrenial. Although a much tougher, ground encompassing perrenial

It’s already snowing here

Have you had much snow?

I quite agree with the assumption made about perennial pasture, in that if you think perennial it lasts - if you think "crop" then it doesn't

(I try to maintain that same thought process, rather than seeing a group of individual animals roaming about I tend to just see them as "the livestock", "the farm", "the machinery" "the soils" etc etc)
I only tend to break down the man-made part of the equation: costs!

But I'd assume the cost of overgrazing dormant pasture would be the lesser cost compared with overgrazing recovering pasture you can only do the best for the whole, if it means sloughing some roots to keep the wheels going round, so be it.

It sure beats taking it all out of the foodweb to wrap it in layers of cost

 

[Blaithin]

It snows at night and rains during the day. Hard to say how much we’ve had. Snow always looks like lots but ends up being less than 1/10 of rain Definitely stalled harvest though.

It’s kind of funny how happy the grass looks. 4 above but it doesn’t care!

 

[Farmer Roy]

David Mattinson shared a video.
SpSonSsoSredS
· 1 hr


Johnson's experiments have found that above all, fungi to bacteria ratios have correlated more with plant growth and carbon flows than what nutrient levels of N, P, K and organic matter had. In an unhealthy soil plants will put 90% of their carbon into the soil to ensure a healthy return (at what detriment to the plant itself?) whereas if the soil is healthy, it only puts 45% of its carbon into exudates and the rest goes to growing plant shoot roots and fruit. https://www.facebook.com/soilsolution.org/videos/10155969204549260/

 

[Farmer Roy]

So here's a question about stockpiling forage.

My grass was/is horrid. Awful. Chewed way to far down. Most of it I haven't had animals on since July. Some areas have come back quite well, some not as much. My plans were to not really let anyone touch it until it has a good start next year.

BUT

I was thinking the other day.

This time of year they say be careful what you graze and mow. The grasses are getting ready to go dormant, if they send resources towards growth right now instead of dormancy, it can be damaging. However, what about once they're truly dormant?

Now I live in an area that they do truly go dormant, not just slowed growth, absolutely no growth. In another month there won't be any risk of that grass thinking it should try to grow a bit more. It won't want to live for at least 6-7 months. Once it's in this completely dormant stage, how much will it damage the growth next spring to graze it? Once it's dormant, grazing the top lower than I'd like during growing shouldn't kill off the root system should it? The plant won't come out of dormancy and go "Oh no, I've been grazed more than 2/3!" and lose root mass, it will just use it's reserves it built for dormancy and grow. Correct?

I've also been putting off spreading my barn cleanings on the ground because I haven't wanted it to go 'Oh nutrients! Grow, grow, grow!' but I do swing back and forth on that one thinking I should be feeding it so it can get through winter as well Figured once it goes dormant I'll spread the barn stuff out to help give an insulating cover that will break down well and give a nice boost in the spring.

I may be completely wrong here, but this is what I was thinking . . .
if the plant is dormant, its not photosynthesising, not growing, the leaves or above ground material isn't actually doing anything ( for the growth of the plant anyway. Obviously it is still performing the function of groundcover etc ) The energy reserves are in the roots, reading to spring into activity once conditions are suitable. The plant has shut down. So, my guess is what you do to the above ground vegative bits is largely irrelevant, as long as you don't cut / graze below the crown or the future growing points ??

Our native grasses go dormant during periods of extreme dry & seem to spring back, in fact they seem to recover better, if that large bulk of dry oxidised lignin material is removed, either by trampling, fire, grazing or mowing

looking at examples here of "cold" weather dormancy, both grain sorghum ( a grass ) & cotton shut down completely when the temps drop, but unless the plant was terminated somehow previously they get regrowth in spring. This regrowth doesn't appear ( just from casual observation, never actually measured it ) to suffer if the plant was cut off near ground level, as long as it wasn't below the growing point. In fact, regrowth sorghum appears to be thicker if the stalks were slashed, but that could be just an illusion . . .

so, following my dodgy logic, id say grazing the dormant plants hard probably wouldn't affect the root mass, it may even encourage better growth if a lot of the above ground parts were older oxidised & high in lignin anyway. The only real negative would be loss of groundcover - but that's a different discussion

 

[DanM]

As @Farmer Roy says, a dormant grass will have its energy stored in its roots. By removing the senescing top growth you are benefiting your animals with a feed now and also you’ll be allowing the growing tips and new shoots better access/ light penetration to the spring sun. This may well give you earlier or stronger spring growth when the snows gone.

 

[DanM]

@Blaithin
If your unsure, then great opportunity for an experiment
Graze some and leave some as is. Report back in the spring

 

[Farmer Roy]

there is no such thing as mistakes or stuff ups - just trials & experimentation

 

[Kiwi Pete]

there is no such thing as mistakes or stuff ups - just trials & experimentation

And take comfort that someone somewhere else has probably worked harder to achieve a worse outcome
...that's IF it goes wrong!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

As @Farmer Roy says, a dormant grass will have its energy stored in its roots. By removing the senescing top growth you are benefiting your animals with a feed now and also you’ll be allowing the growing tips and new shoots better access/ light penetration to the spring sun. This may well give you earlier or stronger spring growth when the snows gone.

Shading and senescence make a large difference with lower sunlight, not so much with summer's intense light.
But that's the only flaw with the old saying "grass grows grass" as @Treg pointed out early on.
You can sort of see a similar effect here with forage maturity esp. in dairy operations where the cows are calved down on grass, after a run of frosts and a lot of shading that stockpiled grass in the spring has really lost its goodness, the spring regrowth is too short and immature.... so the cows struggle either with low sugar diets - or low sugar diets

So a prune-back of sorts is a good thing even without the actual dormancy Blaithin describes, in trying to maintain the balance between quality and quantity.
It's still better to have a lot of average food than very little great food.