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

[Kiwi Pete]

You make money buying not selling, or so they say..

there are a couple of calves here in the grazing mob that I don't think will go very far in life, but the bull will fatten them if feed can't. It's quite good that it isn't really my problem, but I still feel a bit bad for the guy paying me to keep those ones here. Would be better on free keep at home, in my mind

 

[som farmer]

You make money buying not selling, or so they say..

there are a couple of calves here in the grazing mob that I don't think will go very far in life, but the bull will fatten them if feed can't. It's quite good that it isn't really my problem, but I still feel a bit bad for the guy paying me to keep those ones here. Would be better on free keep at home, in my mind

we dabble about, buying/selling milkers, it's the buying, that always dictates the profit. We like buying mid lac, back in calf cows, and knowing the reason for sale. There are a lot of cows, come down west, from the 'eastern counties', all sold, as out of calving pattern cows. Good cows, trouble is, to many have realised that !
Another big change, at the end of dispersals, are the 'not very good', or empty etc, they used to be cheap, with the coming of marteye, they are now well overpriced, the reason, simple, those away buyers, need to fill the lorry.
Getting away from KP's point, it is all in the buying, more so beef, than dairy, you can milk a cow round, beef, just milks your pocket.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Yes, it could do. Things have got to the stage that one shift is too slow and two shifts isn't getting the work done, so after pondering it ... I'll make 2 calf mobs from 3, and put our own cattle in the spare system.

I think raising the SR is the most logical and necessary thing to do at this point, as we certainly can play with the speed but it's really just fighting against it.

Swapping from 4/ha up to 6/ha or more, should really allow us to tune it by giving us more shifts per week.
We can still reduce area, eg we drop 20 cells for each mob, it's close to double the stocking rate we're on now, and I think it's the way forward at the moment

if we have 43 ha total, 7 ha is out for renovations, then what I described just above (all the stock on 18ha or so) actually means the density is doing something worthwhile for us - allowing half the remaining area to have a rest.

Then we can simply put them on that, while the new grass grows and start our stockpile from quite a clean slate

SR? Shift rate?

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

SR? Shift rate?

Sorry, got it.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Friendly Fire
November 3, 2021
Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, PhD
Executive Director, Ecdysis Foundation
Owner, Blue Dasher Farm

When bees fight, it isn’t a pretty picture. A ball of bees, biting and stinging each other. Wings and legs are amputated. You can feel the tension in the combat, and the unheard screams. Until one or the other is dead. The loser seldom escapes.

I have been hearing with increasing frequency that honey bees are contributing to the decline in native bee populations. I had one colleague explain to me at the Entomological Society of America Meeting that honey bees were the “bad bees”, and natives were the “good bees”.

Let’s get something out of the way. Honey bees eat the same thing as many native bees. They also share the same diseases and plagues. Therefore, these two groups of insects compete with each other. Probably in ways that we don’t even understand. Is this competition what is killing native bees?

If the goal is to preserve and promote native pollinators, perhaps a good idea would be to get to the root of the problem here. What would happen to native bees if we eliminated all of the honey bees from North America?

We cannot truly know the answer to this question, but I think that the evidence supports the notion that if honey bees weren’t in the picture, that native bees…well, the native bees would probably be in exactly the same state as they are right now. Maybe even worse.

A growing graveyard for the many-legged: Native bees are insects, and the planet is losing all insects at an alarming rate. At the current extinction rates, most life on Earth will be gone in around 60 years; about the same time that most of the planet’s topsoil will be gone. And this species loss isn’t because of the honey bees.

Our food system is at the crux of this problem. It can be the source of species loss, or the solution to species loss. Food production is a destructive process. At its least, agriculture replaces life from a habitat with life that we choose. This can be done well. Or this can be done poorly. Right now, it is often done poorly.

Industrialized agriculture removes plant diversity from the landscape at unprecedented scales. It replaces it with a monoculture of a single crop or livestock species. The natural resource base is destroyed, along with all the ecosystem functions that drove the productivity of this habitat. Agrichemicals are then used to restore some of this habitat’s productivity. But these chemicals remove additional life from the farm, forcing the need for additional reliance on agrichemicals. And so cranks the treadmill.

This treadmill of industrialized agriculture functions to benefit and perpetuate only itself; not the farmers, not the agricultural communities, not animal or human wellbeing, but the companies that stand to profit from the ever-increasing use of inputs to sustain it. Farmers are ensnared. The initial products of industrial agriculture are mostly grain that humans don’t eat, and beef. A long-term product of industrial agriculture is carbon emissions, and removing the ability of the biological community to sequester carbon. Another product is desertification of habitats. Another product is pollution of water and land. Another product is reduced nutrient density of foods and immunocompromised species, including humans. Another product is species loss.

The product of industrialized agriculture is vastly fewer insects. Fewer native bees. And fewer honey bees.

As landscapes have changed, we are living through a massive evolutionary experiment, selecting for a very small sliver of species that can survive within a depauperated, toxic landscape.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Innovation comes from the fringe. And the planet desperately needs innovation right now. On the outskirts of agriculture, there are farms that are changing things. Driving through eastern South Dakota this fall, there is less tillage than there was even five years ago. There are green cover crops instead of broken, black dirt. These species of flowering plants and grasses that are never harvested; they are planted to feed the life in the soil. There are cattle grazing these plants, cycling nutrients and crushing crop pests under foot. In rangelands, animals are kept in smaller pastures and moved frequently. Then the pasture is allowed to rest. The plant community thrives.

The practices on regenerative farms are creeping onto a wider swath of the farming community. And where plants proliferate, life swells. All groups of microbes, fungi, and animals diversify according to the number of plant species and their biomass in a habitat. Where plants proliferate, bees thrive.

The way to save native pollinators is to adopt approaches that can save all insects. Including honey bees.

The best that we can do is minimize the impact that our food system has on the natural resources of this planet. One of the strongest tools for reversing planetary scale problems is our food system. 40% of the land surface of the planet is managed by farmers. This managed land is the best shot we have for reversing species declines. And farmers all over the planet are developing regenerative agriculture. They are a minority, but won’t be for long.

We are actively studying how bees respond to regenerative orchards, rangelands, and cropland around North America. The results are that regenerative agriculture looks like it is the best shot we have at reversing the declines in insects and bees, regardless of their shape, size and color.

I think it might be a good idea to redirect the dialogue on the native bee/honey bee topic a little bit.

Bee enthusiasts and bee keepers are allies, and we need to be acting as such. Let’s focus on real and practical solutions that can help everyone, rather than bickering which species get to stay on an ever shrinking life boat. Given the circumstances, I am not sure we have the luxury of deciding which bees are “good” and which ones are “bad”.

 

[som farmer]

well said
50% of population are overfed, 20% just about ok, and the rest starve, it's them that starve, are the cause, of desertification, erosion etc. A simple food balancing, would seriously help them, and the climate, but, it will never happen, just as the 50% wont want to lose 'free choice', of what food they eat. To make that happen, a major major world disaster would have to occur.
As individuals, there is very little we can do, big business has that under it's thumbs, probably a fair few politicians, as well.
What we can do, more so as farmers, we can alter what happens, on our little patches, and hope neighbours look over the hedge, and think.
We started out, looking for solutions, to overcome our 'mini' drought problems, and sort of drifted into a regenerative type of farming, the biggest surprise, it's not expensive, simple changes, rapidly produce results.
The other point, is to realise nature is very forgiving, and it doesn't take much effort/imput or whatever, to start to heal itself, even more so, is when you start to see results, they actually reduce cost of production.
When, or if, things start to change, regenerative farming, will be part of the solution. And with that, wildlife will increase naturally.

 

[Crofter64]

as with the majority of farmers, we seem to give the 'slow doers' every chance we can. Been following the y/s from birth to calving, and lactation performance. Very few totally recover from calf 'illnesses', most of the damage is done, in the first 6 months of life, and pneumonia is the worst offender. It is interesting to see the kill sheets, of culls. The 'not so good performance' cows, very often have lung damage - pneumonia, or historic fluke, amongst other 'rejected bits'.
We are getting a bit harder, but l know in this years bulling hfrs, 1 was the 'last' age wise, of the previous group, and had quite a bit of 'treatment', but she looks OK, and matches the group size wise, in reality, she should be the biggest. The other, we never expected it to survive, a hfrs calf, deposited in an extremely wet, and shitty puddle, took a lot of nursing, and is the smallest of the bunch. We will of course, keep and bull them, but, l expect, further down the line, we will wish we hadn't.
As with KP's bloat, the old saying, first loss, best loss, is really quite true, just not hard enough to comply, even worse, theirs a chap locally, who would buy them, knowing the reasons, his mind, is totally focussed on 'cheap, = bargain'. useful chap to know.

I have a lot less farming experience than you and on the whole I agree with you that a poor doer stays that way UNLESS the calf is on a cow.Sometimes the calves I purchase to graft onto a newly freshened cow, gets ill with scours or pneumonia. I don’t notice much difference in their growth or performance later on, unlike the bottle fed ones who mostly stay runty forever.

 

[som farmer]

I have a lot less farming experience than you and on the whole I agree with you that a poor doer stays that way UNLESS the calf is on a cow.Sometimes the calves I purchase to graft onto a newly freshened cow, gets ill with scours or pneumonia. I don’t notice much difference in their growth or performance later on, unlike the bottle fed ones who mostly stay runty forever.

bottle calves should never look runty, unless they are 'wrong' when started.
ln the world of nature, calves would get to stay on mum's milk, for 10 months, or so. And milk is the natural food for them, with grass.
Then we give them milk, if bucket feeding, for the recommended 42 days, then substitute corn for milk, unnaturally, we actually keep them on milk for 10 to 12 weeks, using stored colostrum.
Got to admit, the milk powder bucket system works very well, but has to be done properly to work. I think if we actually knew, the real survival rate of calves, on farms, that survive, either the whole rearing period, or get to mkt. I think we would be horrified at the death rate.
A % of those that do survive, will have been compromised, and that stays right through their lives. But even left on a cow, there are disease challenges, scours, pneumonia etc. We vaccinate against rota corona virus, quite expensive at £6.80/cow, exceedingly cheap, in our eyes. We do not vaccinate calves, for anything, until the BVD and IBR vaccines time.
Quite apt, covid is a corona virus ! Vaccination works.
Bit of a rant, used to rear several hundred calves a year, both from market, and off farm, the shite holes, some expect calves to live in .....and some specially built modern sheds, were not any better.
But yes, calves do better on mums milk.

 

[Samcowman]

bottle calves should never look runty, unless they are 'wrong' when started.
ln the world of nature, calves would get to stay on mum's milk, for 10 months, or so. And milk is the natural food for them, with grass.
Then we give them milk, if bucket feeding, for the recommended 42 days, then substitute corn for milk, unnaturally, we actually keep them on milk for 10 to 12 weeks, using stored colostrum.
Got to admit, the milk powder bucket system works very well, but has to be done properly to work. I think if we actually knew, the real survival rate of calves, on farms, that survive, either the whole rearing period, or get to mkt. I think we would be horrified at the death rate.
A % of those that do survive, will have been compromised, and that stays right through their lives. But even left on a cow, there are disease challenges, scours, pneumonia etc. We vaccinate against rota corona virus, quite expensive at £6.80/cow, exceedingly cheap, in our eyes. We do not vaccinate calves, for anything, until the BVD and IBR vaccines time.
Quite apt, covid is a corona virus ! Vaccination works.
Bit of a rant, used to rear several hundred calves a year, both from market, and off farm, the shite holes, some expect calves to live in .....and some specially built modern sheds, were not any better.
But yes, calves do better on mums milk.

Rear calves here as well. Have in the past reared bunches that are delivered in from lots of farms, changed to private sourcing from as few farms as possible. On the old system Calves from some farms just never do. Not 1 out of the bunch but the whole lot. Most recent that comes to mind bunch of 4 blue bulls from 1 place 1 died 2 never did 1 was only just heavy enough to be sold. Does make you wonder what happens to these calves when born.

 

[som farmer]

Rear calves here as well. Have in the past reared bunches that are delivered in from lots of farms, changed to private sourcing from as few farms as possible. On the old system Calves from some farms just never do. Not 1 out of the bunch but the whole lot. Most recent that comes to mind bunch of 4 blue bulls from 1 place 1 died 2 never did 1 was only just heavy enough to be sold. Does make you wonder what happens to these calves when born.

used to be 1 units calves, off a estate with 4 units, 3 sold very well, the calves from the other, bought to kill, or cheap to other buyers. Estate manager used to get quite upset, the problem, the calves either died or failed to do, and regulars wouldn't buy them.
Some of the best off farm calves, could come from some very 'dingy' sheds, where you would think the opposite.
The best farm we bought from, an exposed dutch barn, and big bale pens, freezing cold on bad day, but calves well bedded down, were fine.
Calf rearing is quite easy, if, you have the right shed, right food, and right person rearing them !
We returned to dairy, and only rear our own now, but we have plenty of people willing to buy our calves privately. If we do take young calves to market, usually disappointed with the price, well below what our private sales are, they are perfectly willing to pay a premium.

 

[Johnny Whiteheads]

Used first bale of hay today to slow down rotation. 240 days rest, as someone else said stockpile melted back in so they are flying through it. Using backfence unlike last year so hope to get back here in March

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That's a beautiful sight

 

[Kiwi Pete]

bottle calves should never look runty, unless they are 'wrong' when started.
ln the world of nature, calves would get to stay on mum's milk, for 10 months, or so. And milk is the natural food for them, with grass.
Then we give them milk, if bucket feeding, for the recommended 42 days, then substitute corn for milk, unnaturally, we actually keep them on milk for 10 to 12 weeks, using stored colostrum.
Got to admit, the milk powder bucket system works very well, but has to be done properly to work. I think if we actually knew, the real survival rate of calves, on farms, that survive, either the whole rearing period, or get to mkt. I think we would be horrified at the death rate.
A % of those that do survive, will have been compromised, and that stays right through their lives. But even left on a cow, there are disease challenges, scours, pneumonia etc. We vaccinate against rota corona virus, quite expensive at £6.80/cow, exceedingly cheap, in our eyes. We do not vaccinate calves, for anything, until the BVD and IBR vaccines time.
Quite apt, covid is a corona virus ! Vaccination works.
Bit of a rant, used to rear several hundred calves a year, both from market, and off farm, the shite holes, some expect calves to live in .....and some specially built modern sheds, were not any better.
But yes, calves do better on mums milk.

Yes

it's like no-till systems, don't take any shortcuts because you're already taking one!
Operate the shortcut as best as possible

I love it when people maul seed in with a tine drill set about 3 inches deep then declare it sucks, it's the same as anything .

"if it's not right, it's wrong"

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I have a lot less farming experience than you and on the whole I agree with you that a poor doer stays that way UNLESS the calf is on a cow.Sometimes the calves I purchase to graft onto a newly freshened cow, gets ill with scours or pneumonia. I don’t notice much difference in their growth or performance later on, unlike the bottle fed ones who mostly stay runty forever.

Lungworm -> pneumonia is the main issue here with our feeder calves.
We used powder though and that's not really ideal compared to a bit of nature's finest from 'next door dairies', hence we sometimes use wormers on those ones but the cow-reared ones are sweet without it

We really have it good here

 

[Kiwi Pete]

well said
50% of population are overfed, 20% just about ok, and the rest starve, it's them that starve, are the cause, of desertification, erosion etc. A simple food balancing, would seriously help them, and the climate, but, it will never happen, just as the 50% wont want to lose 'free choice', of what food they eat. To make that happen, a major major world disaster would have to occur.
As individuals, there is very little we can do, big business has that under it's thumbs, probably a fair few politicians, as well.
What we can do, more so as farmers, we can alter what happens, on our little patches, and hope neighbours look over the hedge, and think.
We started out, looking for solutions, to overcome our 'mini' drought problems, and sort of drifted into a regenerative type of farming, the biggest surprise, it's not expensive, simple changes, rapidly produce results.
The other point, is to realise nature is very forgiving, and it doesn't take much effort/imput or whatever, to start to heal itself, even more so, is when you start to see results, they actually reduce cost of production.
When, or if, things start to change, regenerative farming, will be part of the solution. And with that, wildlife will increase naturally.

It's amazing who is watching, and how the yarn actually turns into conversation if you put it all out there.

I've had a couple of neighbours say "wow, I didn't think you'd have used Roundup" and then we have a good old natter about although it's probably the right way to do the wrong thing; but sometimes you need to step backwards to get a decent run-up.

And then they work out that they have that same thing in them!

 

[Henarar]

Still got 20 out, been lovely weather the last few days, be OK for another week

 

[som farmer]

milkers still out by day, luxury

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Brought 1st bunch in yesterday. Last years calves. Latest I've been able to say that by about a month.
1 lot of cows will come in at some point this week and the last lot probably next week.

Made a bit of a mess on some wet days, but only small areas. Will be interesting to see how well they recover.

 

[Johnny Whiteheads]

I am glad this week is my last week working for these liars

 

[Woolless]

I am glad this week is my last week working for these liars

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Are you managing to escape corporate wage slavery? Well done!