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

[Kiwi Pete]

Have you got enough water flow to set up a ram pump?
A man with your skills could make one out of offcuts, and save your £££

 

[hendrebc]

Started listening to podcasts instead of radio when I'm driving a few days ago.
These ones are excellent I've started working my way from the first ones which might be were this link would take you. Lots of stuff about grazing cattle and the benefits so far.
http://workingcows.net/2017/12/

 

[Henarar]

we have the same problem with different fields in different places with water that won't run up hill

 

[Farmer Roy]

Here's an interesting one for you. Back in Dec we picked up a bit of rain & a neighbour planted some forage Sorghum on some lighter red country that had no moisture under it. Anyway, with lack of any follow up rain & continued heat, it died in the arse. But - there were these odd lush green patches in it.
Anyone care to hazard a guess at what has caused this ?
PS - I already know because I asked Amy the other morning when our kids were having swimming lessons

 

[hendrebc]

Have you got enough water flow to set up a ram pump?
A man with your skills could make one out of offcuts, and save your £££

There was one that sent water up to the house years ago but it wouldn't have lifted it anymore than 100foot or so. The stream was dammed up to get enough flow to it. The dam has long gone through and some bright spark decided to take the pump apart for the brass for scrap metal quite some time ago
I'll look into it though

 

[Farmer Roy]

yeah, water - the logistics of supply & the infrastructure required to supply high volume cool water - is a big sticking point for me in any plans I have for grazing designs

I never said it was easy

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Blobs of organic matter?
Dead roo? Crop residue?

I have a couple of patches where the silage chopper missed his target and blasted a big jet of finechop grass onto the ground, and a year later it looks like someone left a dead sheep there, grass up to your knees

 

[Henarar]

There was one that sent water up to the house years ago but it wouldn't have lifted it anymore than 100foot or so. The stream was dammed up to get enough flow to it. The dam has long gone through and some bright spark decided to take the pump apart for the brass for scrap metal quite some time ago
I'll look into it though

papa pumps

 

[Kiwi Pete]

yeah, water - the logistics of supply & the infrastructure required to supply high volume cool water - is a big sticking point for me in any plans I have for grazing designs

I never said it was easy

On larger scale it would be hard to top a tanker trailer, especially if it had a ruddy big sunshade that covered it and the cattle.

Piping it is the obvious choice here but it would boil in black alkathene on your soil surface, here not so much as it would be covered in a year and buried in 3. And it's mild.

 

[Farmer Roy]

yeah, tanker trailer would be an obvious solution & one I would go for possibly - but it does involve "work" & diesel to move & refill it . . .

yeah, I knew an old lady at Mullaley who's hot water system for her house just consisted of a roll of poly pipe lying out in the sun

running poly on the surface under a fenceline, it may be covered / protected by vegetation at times, but at other times, with no growth & what little cover rapidly oxidising away . . .

interesting you talk about the soil covering the pipe after a few years. On our highly reactive black soils that have a lot of movement, shrinking & swelling with different levels of moisture, poly needs to go in deep otherwise it tends to "float" out of the soil & come back to the surface after a few years . . .

talking of poly, I heard a story about a northern cattle station that was really developing their water infrastructure, spending literally millions on poly pipe so they could set up HM grazing. They were using that much pipe, they bought / built their own factory to produce it

 

[Kiwi Pete]

yeah, tanker trailer would be an obvious solution & one I would go for possibly - but it does involve "work" & diesel to move & refill it . . .

yeah, I knew an old lady at Mullaley who's hot water system for her house just consisted of a roll of poly pipe lying out in the sun

running poly on the surface under a fenceline, it may be covered / protected by vegetation at times, but at other times, with no growth & what little cover rapidly oxidising away . . .

interesting you talk about the soil covering the pipe after a few years. On our highly reactive black soils that have a lot of movement, shrinking & swelling with different levels of moisture, poly needs to go in deep otherwise it tends to "float" out of the soil & come back to the surface after a few years . . .

talking of poly, I heard a story about a northern cattle station that was really developing their water infrastructure, spending literally millions on poly pipe so they could set up HM grazing. They were using that much pipe, they bought / built their own factory to produce it

I will need to get my water system professionally designed to ascertain a cost, but it won't be cheap.
It'll largely be a one-off cost all the same.

Regarding the covering, it's stepped into overdrive here even with gateway management - I tore up a pipe while contour ripping the paddock I recently cultivated & resowed , would have been about 2 years ago when I laid a new 20mm to replace the old old 15mm the dutchman had spliced into (saved $100 and halved the water flow) and now it would take 3 blokes to pull it up, it's roughly 6cm under thanks to naughty old nature doing what she does.
Luckily I put the join up in the fence as I can tee my trough into it easily, otherwise you'd not find it.

 

[hendrebc]

Here's an interesting one for you. Back in Dec we picked up a bit of rain & a neighbour planted some forage Sorghum on some lighter red country that had no moisture under it. Anyway, with lack of any follow up rain & continued heat, it died in the arse. But - there were these odd lush green patches in it.
Anyone care to hazard a guess at what has caused this ?
PS - I already know because I asked Amy the other morning when our kids were having swimming lessons

View attachment 768432 View attachment 768436

Leaking water tank?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Then again, the old man put a good 25-30cm on the family ranch in his 50 something years - I know the "new age regenerative" guys love to feck about with herbal leys and covercrops etc but there is little wrong with using 150 year old grass species, browntop in particular is described as "an aggressive, short, sod-forming grass" and yet is considered a weed to many. It's about perfect for my type of grazing, as it is mature at 20cm high and about as high in brix as any plant, including thistles and dandelions .

It just isn't fashionable since about 1970, but it built the NZ economy in spite of all that.

 

[Karliboy]

But if it's the pizza slice way is the only way it's better than nothing and not doing it at all.
I'll have to do something similar here just to get started and I'll improve things as I go. Not sure how though without spending £££ on pumps and a lot of pipes. There's 500+ foot of rise from the yard or any stream to the top fields. I have one 50 acre block that only has a ditch cutting the corner in one place and an unreliable drain in another corner. And another 60 acres with only unreliable drains in the corners. And several fields with no water at all dotted around the place. That's why we have never had much in the way of cattle here too much trouble and expense getting water to places. It will be a full techno system with portable water some day though

I really am stuck as to what I can do for water. The only other way I could do is to change to Squares and rectangles and tanker water to where I need it and move it with stock but then that’s creating compaction.
I could use a lane system maybe somehow but then I’d have to allow them back to yard for water but that would create a lot of poaching on lanes on my land with any amount of rain
It really is a rock and hard place as what to do about it.

 

[hendrebc]

I really am stuck as to what I can do for water. The only other way I could do is to change to Squares and rectangles and tanker water to where I need it and move it with stock but then that’s creating compaction.
I could use a lane system maybe somehow but then I’d have to allow them back to yard for water but that would create a lot of poaching on lanes on my land with any amount of rain
It really is a rock and hard place as what to do about it.

Stick with what you have done for now and see how it goes. Tankering sounds like work that might not get done if your busy. Walking them back to the yard might not be any better than what you have planned if they are shitting in the yard that's fertility you have to carry back out too.

 

[Henarar]

I really am stuck as to what I can do for water. The only other way I could do is to change to Squares and rectangles and tanker water to where I need it and move it with stock but then that’s creating compaction.
I could use a lane system maybe somehow but then I’d have to allow them back to yard for water but that would create a lot of poaching on lanes on my land with any amount of rain
It really is a rock and hard place as what to do about it.

Yep putting up the fencing is the easy bit
On a fing fence farm water would be more easy

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I really am stuck as to what I can do for water. The only other way I could do is to change to Squares and rectangles and tanker water to where I need it and move it with stock but then that’s creating compaction.
I could use a lane system maybe somehow but then I’d have to allow them back to yard for water but that would create a lot of poaching on lanes on my land with any amount of rain
It really is a rock and hard place as what to do about it.

Spiral? At least you can still see easily the recovery, I am learning more by having them in cells than I ever did with strip grazing. It's a plant recovery timeline

You can see the bit that I stuffed a few months back, by my neighbour's woolly maggot; must throw that thing back over the fence

 

[Henarar]

Some of our water supplies are spring fed so can't run up hill it also won't run through water pipe without blocking it, we also let them drink from the river in some fields but this is at the bottom. Yes we could go all mains but this would come with a lot more cost or we could pump from the river but that would also cost and part of the idea of all of this type of farming is to cut cost is it not?
We do use water carts in some fields the largest being 600 gallon at the moment I can see this being a good solution but it would need a free or cheap water supply to fill or it is once again just adding cost.
There is no point in adding cost just to make it back again

 

[Crofter64]

Some of our water supplies are spring fed so can't run up hill it also won't run through water pipe without blocking it, we also let them drink from the river in some fields but this is at the bottom. Yes we could go all mains but this would come with a lot more cost or we could pump from the river but that would also cost and part of the idea of all of this type of farming is to cut cost is it not?
We do use water carts in some fields the largest being 600 gallon at the moment I can see this being a good solution but it would need a free or cheap water supply to fill or it is once again just adding cost.
There is no point in adding cost just to make it back again

Solar, low volume pump that works all day and fills your water cart at the highest point of your property?. Its all downhill from there.

 

[Crofter64]

There is no point in adding cost just to make it back again

This is the trickiest thing of all. I have been working slowly on developping a water system for the wholefarm but was reluctant to spend the money till I was sure it was necessary.The compaction and mess on laneways, and the cost of repairing them, has persuaded me that one way or another you pay . So the question now is’ what is the smallest investment I can make for the greatest return’.?