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

[Kiwi Pete]

never worked that out for here and I couldn't get a spot on figure as we don't keep accurate records but will have a go at a fag packet job as its interesting and the difference to your mate is amazing

He is a good mate and has really taken me under his wing since we moved here. But he's about my closest benchmark given our rainfall and sunshine are as close as can be, as I said he is only ten minutes by tractor and most of that is giving way to tourists
What saves his ranch is they have "The Swamp" which is almost a peaty soil that just keeps hanging on and on and on, but by taking bales off it each year it means they are very stretched over the rest of the property, which is quite extensive.
They did have knee-deep clover on those flats back in the day, and the big clue for me is they ran less sheep and more cattle; but even more to the point it was divided into over 100 little paddocks at the time.

They got too busy with the golden eggs and forgot about the goose, in my opinion fencing and water would make all the difference to the outcomes.... but it is difficult enough being the first generation let alone the 5th with the 6th growing up watching..
I am fortunate in that I only answer to the markets and my own little tribe!

But his same 50 grand that goes to the fert company and the 20 that go to the vets could maintain an awful lot of wire fence, instead of turning low input livestock into higher input livestock

We are having an open day/discussion group this week so hopefully he can make it between jobs and we'll cover a few sheep-specific topics, we should all learn alot.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Question on grass fields, whenever I plough up a old grass ley the ground is hard like a road, it's a struggle to get plough in ground. Fields cap and water lyes on top.

Why is this? Going on my own thoughts and theories on here and direct drilling this shouldn't happen. These fields have been grass for up to ten years. Some only seen grazing and fert spreader, no heavy silage gear.

What sort of fert do you apply, and when?
And how do you graze, ie how tight do you bunch them up, and how fast do you move them on? Is your drainage good, and can you feel a pan when you poke a rod down/ see compaction when you dig (sorry for all the questions, mate!)
Obviously cultivation, or water (heavy stuff) or soluble N in a big whack can all have a part to play in shallow compaction, as can grazing and biodiversity (and more).
Do you get thistles/docks?

 

[Chae1]

What sort of fert do you apply, and when?
And how do you graze, ie how tight do you bunch them up, and how fast do you move them on? Is your drainage good, and can you feel a pan when you poke a rod down/ see compaction when you dig (sorry for all the questions, mate!)
Obviously cultivation, or water (heavy stuff) or soluble N in a big whack can all have a part to play in shallow compaction, as can grazing and biodiversity (and more).
Do you get thistles/docks?

We do get some thistles, docks. Not a huge amount though. Plenty clover.

These are just allowed to graze over whole field! We did start paddock grazing last year though.

Grazing ground just gets N, go on every 30 days if growing conditions right. Gets well rotted fym every couple years.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Good video worth watching. I hope it works

Very interesting. I'll have to show that to @Mrs Holwell

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

What sort of fert do you apply, and when?
And how do you graze, ie how tight do you bunch them up, and how fast do you move them on? Is your drainage good, and can you feel a pan when you poke a rod down/ see compaction when you dig (sorry for all the questions, mate!)
Obviously cultivation, or water (heavy stuff) or soluble N in a big whack can all have a part to play in shallow compaction, as can grazing and biodiversity (and more).
Do you get thistles/docks?

We do get some thistles, docks. Not a huge amount though. Plenty clover.

These are just allowed to graze over whole field! We did start paddock grazing last year though.

Grazing ground just gets N, go on every 30 days if growing conditions right. Gets well rotted fym every couple years.

We get a few thistle here but dad's place is full of them on permanent pasture. It is set stocked until grazed right down and has 2 light doses of ammonium nitrate each year. Many years ago we ploughed out half of one 17 acre field that hadn't been ploughed in living memory and it shot 2 sets of steel plough points. I finished in the dark and could see the points glowing faintly as I lifted the plough at the ends

Compaction is common in grassland under "conventional" methods.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

We do get some thistles, docks. Not a huge amount though. Plenty clover.

These are just allowed to graze over whole field! We did start paddock grazing last year though.

Grazing ground just gets N, go on every 30 days if growing conditions right. Gets well rotted fym every couple years.

It could be an interesting experiment on a field you're intending to plough up in the reasonably near future, to simply change something in what you do - mark the hedge and miss out an area each time you put fert on, or put them tight behind an electric wire when you put them in, then let them go when they've bowled it all over and wasted lots... then see if you can notice a difference when you tip it over?

The thing with fertiliser is that it speeds up your pasture growth to a point faster than the land itself is recovering - plus it can easily lead to a point where the extra microbes are eating up the fungii in your soil which can make it much more fragile and easier to smash when the stock graze it.

For example "naturally" your land might recover in 45 days but if you speed up the growth then the sward may look ready in 25, so you can be on top of the grass situation without the actual landscape recovering - ten grazings instead of 6, type of thing.
It can also then impact the other stuff we think about, like the drainage, the infection rate of parasites and stuff, because we are grazing unnecessarily fast for so much of the growing season?

Unsure if that makes any sense at all TBH but it sounds like something that is compounding over time, so that's why I'm looking there first. It's really difficult to maintain litter in a damper climate, and even moreso if we gloss over the fact that it's the wasted feed and the growing plant that are responsible for feeding our soils, especially the fungii and protazoa

 

[Farmer Roy]

Err, just saying . . .
I attende a talk by Nicole Masters ( google her ). At one point she was talking about fungi : bacteria ratios in soil & the differences depending which was dominant. Fungal dominant soils tend to have larger aggregates, better infiltration, less compaction. They are fungal dominant because they have a diverse range of plant types & have lots of dead organic matter high in carbon & lots of different root types. An example of a fungi dominant soil was forest / woods
Bacteria dominance in soils tend to have very fast / high biological activity, which consumes carbon very fast, leading to much smaller aggregates, poorer infiltration & more compaction. Her description of a typical bacteria dominant soil ( she is a kiwi ) was a NZ dairy farm with ryegrass pastures, slurry & urea . . .

I may have some of the minor details wrong, but the actual message is that the make up of the species present, the management of fertiliser & grazing methods & wether the soil is bacterially or fungal dominant, can & does affect physical characteristics such as compaction & infiltration

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Err, just saying . . .
I attende a talk by Nicole Masters ( google her ). At one point she was talking about fungi : bacteria ratios in soil & the differences depending which was dominant. Fungal dominant soils tend to have larger aggregates, better infiltration, less compaction. They are fungal dominant because they have a diverse range of plant types & have lots of dead organic matter high in carbon & lots of different root types
Bacteria dominance in soils tend to have very fast / high biological activity, which consumes carbon very fast, leading to much smaller aggregates, poorer infiltration & more compaction. Her description of a typical bacteria dominant landscape ( she is a kiwi ) was a NZ dairy farm with ryegrass pastures, slurry & urea . . .

I may have some of the minor details wrong, but the actual message is that the make up of the species present, the management of fertiliser & grazing methods & wether the soil is bacterially or fungal dominant, can & does affect physical characteristics such as compaction & infiltration

Yes! Thanks, Roy, that's bloody well put.

I've often referred to thistles for this reason, but beaten around the bush, woodier plants often appear to dominate overly bacterial soils in an attempt to balance out the f:b and C:N ratios, or simply because there is a lack of diversity in what we try to grow.
It's an incomplete diet for the life in there, like veganism or any restrictive diet does to our gut biome

So if it's already a little bit stressed ("missing the meat"), then you add some chemicals to that, then cultivate any more than needed, it can all compound over time.
Also then the poorer infiltration can lead to the pH deteriorating, as the air is lost, which gives the snowball another little push .

 

[Kiwi Pete]

But, that wasn't meant to be a lecture, more just "what could be" going on.

Personally in the theme of doing better, not more, I'd just try to split up their fields into smaller bits, so they are on less of your farm at any one time - which means more of it is then recovering.
Alot of that depends on your time and resources, sometimes your stock need shade and sometimes shelter, but other times you can try to do things a bit different and look to see what changes you can create... even if it is just giving them half a paddock and then the whole lot tomorrow, litter really does help .
If it is getting fed nitrogen, it needs fed carbon as well, and you have the tools for that.

If you work out what an extra pass with a tractor costs in terms of your time and wear etc, then a couple of kilos less beef sold seems like a fair trade for what you may save.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

This is roughly what we are doing at the moment, cut a 5 ish acre paddock into 4 bits and give them a feed morning and night. Where there's nice lush feed they are leaving not much litter other than what falls out their mouths and what they stand on; but where the more persistent types of grass and thistles dominate more they are smashing a lot more down, and because they are on a longer narrower strip (to use the rain to better effect) then the cattle go up and back through the sheep like a kid with a new hourglass - I moved them a few hours ago and I can still hear the mob, that's a good sign that they are still making money.

Like kids on a full bus, if you bunch them up then they make noise, as you altered their behaviour .
You haven't altered the stocking rate, but the pressure has doubled at least.
So the improvement is greater.

 

[Henarar]

never worked that out for here and I couldn't get a spot on figure as we don't keep accurate records but will have a go at a fag packet job as its interesting and the difference to your mate is amazing

very rough I got to 350kg not counting what the keep sheep gain which may be another 30 perhaps I don't know
with the way we are set up here with different bits of keep that we are allowed to use for different things at certain times of the year according to what the owner wants these sort of things are difficult to work out, its difficult to even work out stocking rate without a lot of guesswork

edit a ring fence farm would be nice

 

[Henarar]

it did look hopeless till I realised I had worked it out in acres

 

[Northern territory]

I don't have any idea of his figures, however I do know we make more profit from 40ha than they do off 600ha or so.

Seems an awful difference just for walking out and rolling up some polywires....

We'll put about 280kg on 100 cattle and sell 90 lambs @48kg, not counting grazing over winter where we put about 8-10kg on 400 hoggets.
So that's about 910kg/ha or so.

He'll sell 2400 lambs @44kg and 40 calves at c. 300kg so about 200kg/ha.

The main difference is that they use fertilisers, and animal health products, and grow winter crops etc - we do none of that.

Our main cost is our finance and insurance, (which I'm fortunate enough not to need but have anyway) it's more the principle; I need to show the kids that they can do this, too!
The only variable costs here are the silage, and costs of hauling stock here to fatten. The rest would be here even if the farm was empty.

Would you say it is an easier system to roll out the less land you have. We would have circa 120acres grazing and 40 silage or hay one cut at moment. Running around 400 sheep. 70 cattle housed. Grazing mainly medium heavy clay soils. Use clover and perennial Ryegrass at moment as well as 40 pp.

 

[awkward]

Are cattle winter housed or all year round

 

[Northern territory]

Are cattle winter housed or all year round

All year, grow cereals and root crops too. Plenty of fencing, water would be where I would need to start really.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Would you say it is an easier system to roll out the less land you have. We would have circa 120acres grazing and 40 silage or hay one cut at moment. Running around 400 sheep. 70 cattle housed. Grazing mainly medium heavy clay soils. Use clover and perennial Ryegrass at moment as well as 40 pp.

I think it would be much more practical to farm degeneratively at smaller scale, you can piddle about with the wrong tools easier, throw your money and time at masking problems for longer?

On a hundred thousand acres instead of 100, that's a lot of work!
You'd be busier than old mate Bossfarmer.

So you'd probably figure out that ploughing, liming and fertilising and playing with the stock weren't actually taking it anywhere other than downward.

You'd just bunch them up and move them on with your helicopter and then go to the pub.
And your hourly rate would be pretty good, I'd have to add!

 

[Northern territory]

It’s a good point but I like the way you do it on probably a similar size block to us.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

it did look hopeless till I realised I had worked it out in acres

That'd spoil things a bit!

Hell, I'd be pretty happy with 350kg per hectare on your rather damp bit of land, the problem we have here is that our beef is pretty cheap - and so you need to stack it on a little place like ours to pay the fixed costs.

Always seems to be another bill coming in, and just when you get caught up along comes a quarterly bill for the rates

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It’s a good point but I like the way you do it on probably a similar size block to us.

Thanks, it is really quite a simple way to do things - largely swapping the hours I'd spend doing some tasks, doing something else that I enjoy doing more.
And it is flexible.

I don't have many hard rules other than don't put chemicals on our land, and don't create bare soil without a very good reason. Oh, and "don't make work".

In some ways cutting little paddocks into littler paddocks seems like exactly that: making work. But it gives me such good control over where the animals are at any given time, that it saves a heap of work, and better yet it saves a heap of expensive inputs.

We just concentrate on using what we get for free.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Good video worth watching. I hope it works

well, that suggestion really got people excited in the Reclaiming Land thread