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

Crofter64

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Quebec, Canada
was talking to a fella yesterday who has destocked 1100 hd of cattle due to the continuing conditions ( so im assuming he knows what he is talking about ). He was talking about selecting bulls / cows, how many modern breeders are chasing the wrong things & he said he only selects on fertility / calves on the ground. Kept quoting this bloke, his website looks pretty interesting

https://www.pharocattle.com/about
https://www.pharocattle.com/blog
Kit Pharo is great. I’ve been receiving his weekly newsletter for a long time. His philosophy is counter cultural but might catch on when times get tough. There is a company in Alberta that carries his genetics but either way it is a pain for atiny producer like me to buy straws from across the border or even across the country. His theme is that you should become a ‘herd quitter’ , i.e. do the opposite of what the majority is doing and focus on a few important things- small frame size (3-4 ideally) fertility, temperament, thriving on grass, resistance to flies( heritable apparently) and never keeping a cow as a breeder who does not wean her calf , even if you drove over it yourself. This last I find a bit harsh. I’ve met some people who collaborate with him. I liked what they had to say.
 

Crofter64

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Quebec, Canada
I like his reasoning.
That is about where I am at myself, but then my genetics aren't too shabby in terms of heritable problems so I find myself in the position of identifying "potential culls but keeping them for now" - simply because there isn't enough to upset me
It's also why I keep my capital stock numbers rather small (relative to what I trade) until I get my systems sorted better - basically all my females are rather safe, all my males are rather expendable.

The eventual goal is to have a small team of dairy x cows to multi-suckle calves onto - the benefits of hand rearing them, without the time input?
(Hence those halfbred friesian x limmy/beef shorthorn heifers running around the place, which should outmilk most beef breeds and last OK)
That’s what I do. All my cows nurse 2-3 calves. Her own is kept for beef at 26-29 months , the extra goes for veal. My trouble lately has been that they aren’t rebreeding very well. We have had two lousy breeding summers. Last summer was wet and cold and we had a lot of footrot , this summer was too hot to show heats and The days are so short in the autumn that heats are hard to catch. The other issue is that the adopted calves eventually start to suck from all mothers, some more than others which takes its’ toll. The adopted calves , if kept for beef, sometimes start to nurse again at a year old when the cows calve again. Their own offspring tend not to , just the orphans. I guess no system is perfect. I like to do this as the veal calves foot a lot of the hay bill.
 

Crofter64

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Quebec, Canada
138 pages...I could read them but with your forbearance -

What is holistic grazing?
Grazing with attention which includes : observation, planning, metering out the grass and backfencing to keep them from regrazing before the grass is ready, readjusting your plans based on observation and then going forward again. I am sure others will improve on this, but its a start.
 

Ysgythan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ammanford
Grazing with attention which includes : observation, planning, metering out the grass and backfencing to keep them from regrazing before the grass is ready, readjusting your plans based on observation and then going forward again. I am sure others will improve on this, but its a start.

OK. We’ve been grazing on what I’d call a slow rotation for years. At lambing the sheep go out in little groups on each field for a couple of weeks then we merge them into two or three groups. They graze a paddock at a time before moving on. We try to move them when the next field is ready rather than taking grass down to any particular level where they are. When the lambs are old enough we merge the groups again and give the lambs first dibs on the grass with creep gates. They’d be on weekly moves. After weaning the ewes tend to get mopping up jobs on the poorer land. We reseed a field a year with a mix of grass clover tyfon chicory and this year plantain. The chicory is sparse but lasts a good few years and the grass grows better where it remains.

So, is that holistic or not?
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
138 pages...I could read them but with your forbearance -

What is holistic grazing?
Not sure I'm in any position to define it but if you've ever read anything about mob grazing there are similarities. I guess mob grazing is holistic, but it seems to me "holistic" allows for a little more flexibility and looks at the whole picture.
That's if I've learnt anything from the last 130 odd pages:D
If nothing else I've learnt I need to leave more residuals, which I've already seen some benefit from despite coming out of a challenging summer. Roll on next growing season.
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
With most sucklers they will drop yield over losing BCS. I'd rather have a milky cow and limit intake to lower yeild than be pushing some fat bitch 110% to try and make her milk.

Big suckler cows eat more than they need for about 330 days a year. Whats DMI and maintenance requirements on a big suckler?
One of my milkers can maintain condition when dry with 8.5kgDM of grass and at (measured, but I doubt accurate)16kg DMI of grass produces 20l+ So a small suckler should be able to milk of 12kg? for most of the year and 9? over winter?

I've been limiting cows for the last week to 14-15kg and will be feeding 1kg of molasses a head by the end of the week. Should be interesting to see what effect it has on yield, but they bloody love it (and its quite nice in coffee)
got to say most of that went right over my head, I do know what you mean but have know idea of the figures, I have never measured anything like that, perhaps someone else can help
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Multiples I took them out of the equation but one old girl was ove 80% but she had been dragged back by the twins which would have helped.
With regards to the trend it’s probably a combination of things. It is known that a cows rearing ability does decrease after about 10. I believe it also due to the fact as the cows get older they also get heavier and could also be due to the improving trend in the herd.
You have given me some more ideas for another graph now (y)
We've had several cows over the years who've had several sets of twins over their lives. That always skews analysis :whistle::D

There was some debate (I forget if it was this thread or not) about the merits of twins. Accepting that heifers from mixed twins are meat only and that one is usually bigger than the other they are welcome here as they always raise annual cow output for no extra feed.
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
That’s what I do. All my cows nurse 2-3 calves
all this talk of multi suckling I can't work out why cows haven't been bred to produce more twins like sheep were
our ave selling price per calf was way down this autumn owing to the prices being down but as there were two sets of twins the ave per cow was not that far off last year when we had non
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
We've had several cows over the years who've had several sets of twins over their lives. That always skews analysis :whistle::D

There was some debate (I forget if it was this thread or not) about the merits of twins. Accepting that heifers from mixed twins are meat only and that one is usually bigger than the other they are welcome here as they always raise annual cow output for no extra feed.
well there is some extra feed to get two calves to weaning rather than one
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,293
  • 1
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/
Top