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

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
If I was doing it again I would try to have sheep / cattle / lambs / calves in a rotation, so for example you're grazing cattle a month behind the sheep and the lambs a month behind the cows

that way your pasture is as 'clean' as possible for the younger stock to enjoy fresher grub but the land is only seeing ewes or adult cattle every few months - giving some of the benefits of long recoveries without youngstock working too hard or sucking the life out of things with frequent selective grazings
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I was just going to ask the same thing 😂
My only worry would be teaching the ewes to push under electric fence wire for when they are back behind electric themselves.
We had no trouble with that at all because the sheep were used to popping under fences all the time.
We likewise had a grand time with a bunch of sheep and cattle behind single wire fences but you do need to be shifting them before they shift themselves, and tended to test the backfence a little. I worked out that for me it was more time efficient to shift 3 one-wire fences than one multiwire fence, so just went with that wherever possible
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I took a few pictures over the weekend.

Screenshot_20220516-190724_Gallery.jpg
Here's the old track that I ploughed uphill and "shut the gate" so to speak, a year later and it's just like the rest
20220514_161131.jpg

And the old fencelines are slowly getting less visible, this has been gone for 4 years.

Interestingly perhaps that there are literally hundreds of psilocybes down the line (magic mushrooms) where I guess the tractors have not been for decades, so there's a clue as to how to get more fungi - have less tractor
20220515_104947.jpg

this cell was grazed on New Year's Eve, so 135 days ago. Can tell it hasn't seen much rain until the last 35 as it is really quite golden - not rusty though which surprised me
20220512_164223.jpg

these heavy-lifters are on about 102-105 days at the moment as we have certain areas we want to graze with them before they head home on the 25th.
Nice quality in front, it will have a bunch of wee calves on it in a month or so, we had 14 arrive and they are already working it out
20220516_124315.jpg

all in all I'm happy enough with our "drought recovery" this year, getting on that 'long round' earlier leaves me plenty of hope for what might happen when we don't ever do 'short rounds'!
20220516_122537.jpg
20220516_122542.jpg

Here is the last cell of the "new pasture", grazed 21 days ago.
I might put some stuff on it because we can't get any fertiliser at the moment -probably won't get any until June at least - and by then it will be too wet for groundspreading. It's probably as cheap as it will be for a while?
 
If I was doing it again I would try to have sheep / cattle / lambs / calves in a rotation, so for example you're grazing cattle a month behind the sheep and the lambs a month behind the cows

that way your pasture is as 'clean' as possible for the younger stock to enjoy fresher grub but the land is only seeing ewes or adult cattle every few months - giving some of the benefits of long recoveries without youngstock working too hard or sucking the life out of things with frequent selective grazings
Hmm, I think that might be more than my brain can cope with. Cattle following immediately behind the sheep was the plan, keep it simple and extend the recovery period.
 

Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
Seeing as we are on the subject, the plan I have this year is rotating the sheep lightly through the cattles summer stockpile starting June 1 (lambing is nearly finished now). So low density into high biomass. Picking out the 'cream cakes and sweeties' as @Woolless said. The cattle should be around 6 weeks behind them. I don't think the sheep will make a huge dent I only have 50 for 65 cows.

This should mean they get some clean pasture with the lambs this summer until returning to the lambing field after 100 days rest or so in september. A month in the lambing field before heading off to the hay fields in the autumn/early winter. with the tups going in in december.

Then I dont know. Until may.

Well it's a work in progress. Bloody sheep, I love them but cattle are so much simpler for me.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
@Kiwi Pete you'd love the chat going on in the All Things Dairy thread atm.
can wind some up nicely
the trouble with many of the spring grazers, they need to be 'purists', any deviation, is automatically 'wrong'. Whilst on this thread, we are not purists, and quite happily try other methods, which, some do, and some don't work.
A localish, 400 cow grazing herd, has/is coming on the mkt, and was chatting through some figures, oad milking, tight block, cows av 15litres, max cake 500kg/cow, if they upped that cake, to 1 ton/cow, we reckoned the milk would go from 6,000 l/day, to 8,000,- 2000 litres at 45ppl, pre a sale, would make a huge difference, even more if he milked them x2 a day, till the sale, but he is a purist, and wont change anything. We have had plenty of out of his sync cows, and all would do 8 +, or, more than double their yield, for an extra 1250 kg cake. It might be my maths, but, this year, for a change, might just be the one, to use a calculator, and not a 'rule book'.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
can wind some up nicely
the trouble with many of the spring grazers, they need to be 'purists', any deviation, is automatically 'wrong'. Whilst on this thread, we are not purists, and quite happily try other methods, which, some do, and some don't work.
A localish, 400 cow grazing herd, has/is coming on the mkt, and was chatting through some figures, oad milking, tight block, cows av 15litres, max cake 500kg/cow, if they upped that cake, to 1 ton/cow, we reckoned the milk would go from 6,000 l/day, to 8,000,- 2000 litres at 45ppl, pre a sale, would make a huge difference, even more if he milked them x2 a day, till the sale, but he is a purist, and wont change anything. We have had plenty of out of his sync cows, and all would do 8 +, or, more than double their yield, for an extra 1250 kg cake. It might be my maths, but, this year, for a change, might just be the one, to use a calculator, and not a 'rule book'.
I'm probably "a purist" in some respects.
In that, we do grazing, not farming.. we feed animals by giving them pasture, not pasture plus this and this and that

the problem with this this and that isn't the inputs, but it allows us to take our eye off the ball, and I'm enough of a purist to want my eye firmly on the ball at all times - this is how I'll improve/learn the fastest

not so much learning what works, because it works - I need to know what doesn't work so well
 

Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
I thought I might update you lot up north as to the situation over here.

Last night it rained here (6mm), after 7 weeks without a drop, and 7 weeks ago we only had 4mm.
We are offically under drought conditions for the last two weeks.

My little stream which runs through the front of the farm has stopped. This is only the second time anyone can remember this happening (going back to about WW2). The last time was in august only 3 years ago.

Today, the 17th of May we will hit 30°C.

I thought it might be a good warning shot for those just north of me of the times ahead.

As I have mentioned before I am geographically a lot closer to many of you than some of you are to each other.

In fact it is one of the reasons I still follow this group, as the weather here is far more similar to yours than it is to the rest of france.

I have farming freinds down south that have relocated north.

We have put so much in place over the last two years to create some resilience for unusual weather patterns. But I am unsure if we are going fast enough.

Its a pants time of year to not have water as it is now when we should be building up a feed wedge for this summer.

Anyway I am not in panic mode. I have my hollistic plan, and therefore a drought reserve, which gives me some time to react.

Thanks to that I have feed options (both stockpile and stored) and cattle prices are high should I want to unload a few; and thanks to my plan I don't have to wait until its too late to start destocking. It is nice to have options.

(prefer to have some decent rain though)
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I thought I might update you lot up north as to the situation over here.

Last night it rained here (6mm), after 7 weeks without a drop, and 7 weeks ago we only had 4mm.
We are offically under drought conditions for the last two weeks.

My little stream which runs through the front of the farm has stopped. This is only the second time anyone can remember this happening (going back to about WW2). The last time was in august only 3 years ago.

Today, the 17th of May we will hit 30°C.

I thought it might be a good warning shot for those just north of me of the times ahead.

As I have mentioned before I am geographically a lot closer to many of you than some of you are to each other.

In fact it is one of the reasons I still follow this group, as the weather here is far more similar to yours than it is to the rest of france.

I have farming freinds down south that have relocated north.

We have put so much in place over the last two years to create some resilience for unusual weather patterns. But I am unsure if we are going fast enough.

Its a pants time of year to not have water as it is now when we should be building up a feed wedge for this summer.

Anyway I am not in panic mode. I have my hollistic plan, and therefore a drought reserve, which gives me some time to react.

Thanks to that I have feed options (both stockpile and stored) and cattle prices are high should I want to unload a few; and thanks to my plan I don't have to wait until its too late to start destocking. It is nice to have options.

(prefer to have some decent rain though)
It is damnably difficult to grow grass without moisture. Looking at some of our 135+ day rested areas "in a normal autumn" they would have grown as much in 35 days.... however there is an extra 100 days to think and plan, in there.

Many would see destocking as a sign of "failure" or "defeat" but I don't, I see it as a time where we can refine our genetics, where we can maybe lose some average or below-average animals and therefore have a better average cow herd in future.

Making these calls isn't a failure so much as failing to make these calls is?

But it's that time, isn't it? In this context time really is money, realising that your carrying capacity is less than your stocking rate "now" and acting is preferable to realising it in a month
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Not sure any of it is really new maybe more frequent,
10 years ago we had a reasonably dry spring followed by a complete wash out summer without 2 dry days to make any silage, we re housed some cows late may and everything was housed for the winter by first week of oct, that winter was 7 months with the grass burnt to hell with frost the next spring.
seen wet springs back in the early 80's one year we didn't turn out till June, yet mum recalls a march turnout back in the 60's, hardly ever done that since.
seen dry summers where the ground cracks enough to shove yer boot down and the cows wonder around eating the hedge. seen wet summers were the cows make holes big enough to shove yer boot down.
I will let you know when I see something new
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Exactly.. I get the feeling that "this" wasn't really much different to around 1987-89.

The years after it were so bloody WET that the water squirting out from under the tractor tyres used to wash the wheel opposite, and in places the turf lifted right up on a blister of water, it was actually too wet to make mud - because you couldn't go anywhere to make mud

that was about the time winter cropping was making a comeback and the rivers ran brown for months... nart new
 

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