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

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Intesting calcs on the paddock sizes pete - im on quite similar atm with our 60 preg ewes - as mentioned were feeding twice a day ( 2x 31lbs of nutty stuff) and im copying your multi moves
historically we always fed in troughs in a fenced off zone- which allowed you to put the feed in without being knocked over or short changing one trough...Now im doing it behind the eleccy and its great because theyre getting a fresh 1/3 extra before bed - and i think they enjoy that... i certainly enjoy it.
I just love watching them filling their furnace - that is IT as far as I'm concerned.

The excitement as they flood in, and eat :love:

Best part of the day, the more times it happens the better!
$6-9 for most on our list from memory. Medics can be a bit more. $8 for floor sweepings is taking the p!ss I reckon. $15 is Lucerne territory!
Yeah, it might be that, I don't take too much notice TBF. It's the gift that keeps on giving, if it was ten grand for some crack I'd look closely! :)
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
Pete, to pick up on a point you've made many times - animal impact.
I presume you mean in terms of trample effect?
This will be very dependant on rainfall/ ground conditions I'm thinking? Sheep give plenty of impact in wetter conditions!
I guess your system allows plenty of chance for variation by moving more times per day in adverse conditions. But that ties you (or someone) to being there most of the time surely? What happens if you and the family go out for the day and there's torrential rain? Do you come home to a mess? This is what I've found with wintering the sheep on a grass system. If we have heavy rain and I'm not around or held up from moving them it quickly turns brown.
To be fair it also recovers pretty quickly but not ideal.
 
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Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
20190315_183237.jpg

@CornishTone - my salad bar mix
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Pete, to pick up on a point you've made many times - animal impact.
I presume you mean in terms of trample effect?
This will be very dependant on rainfall/ ground conditions I'm thinking? Sheep give plenty of impact in wetter conditions!
I guess your system allows plenty of chance for variation by moving more times per day in adverse conditions. But that ties you (or someone) to being there most of the time surely? What happens if you and the family go out for the day and there's torrential rain? Do you come to a mess? This is what I've found with wintering the sheep on a grass system. If we have heavy rain and I'm not around or held up from moving them it quickly turns brown.
To be fair it also recovers pretty quickly but not ideal.
It depends what they're on, to a fair degree.
I would need a major f**kup to be making mud - and not just because it's dry here, but because of the sheer amount of litter on the surface they'd have to get thru to actually get to the soil surface.
Plus the water cycle here is very effective, infiltration (always room for improvement but) is pretty excellent.
I had no trouble with 430 hoggs on an acre last year with a few inches of rain overnight, and that was one shift per day.
It got slightly muddy, and the next rain washed it off. But decent cover and litter levels change the picture, I'd topped and then overgrazed to feckery after the dry spell we had :facepalm::unsure: never again


But I guess it's always tempered by time, isn't it?
If we had all last years rain in one weekend it would all go in, and that never happens.

I watch the forecast during the wet and if it means halving breaks and time then I'd do that, or if we aren't about then I'd arrange someone to come shift them. It's when you have no thatch and park them for 3 days they bugger it up.

I have plenty of local volunteers that'd come, now it's so easy most of our mates have come out for a wander, so I'd have no qualms asking a mate to shift the stock.
Just tell them to grab a bucket and take some mushrooms and eggs home! :hungry:

I wonder how the mushroom pickers will deal with techno?
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
And this one (supports an earlier post in this thread)

Forest soils take a long time to recover from disturbances such as bushfires or logging. Soils lose nutrients when heated—fires can result in soil temperatures of more than 500°C—while logging alters the soil structure, exposing and compacting various layers. When researchers from the Australian National University collected 729 soil cores from 81 sites in the mountain ash forests of Victoria, they found it took soils up to 80 years to recover to their former nutrient density and quality following a bushfire, and 30 years following logging.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Genetics may be part of the equation for beef producers finishing on grass, but forage management may be what really adds up.

Jason Rowntree, former chair of the Grassfed Exchange and faculty co-ordinator at Michigan State University’s Lake City Research Centre, says new grass-fed ranchers should only tie up 20 per cent of investment into genetics.

The remaining 80 per cent should go into improving forage growth, pasture productivity, legume integration and infrastructure for adaptive multi-paddock grazing (also called mob grazing or AMP), one of the founding tenants behind Rowntree’s system and a commonly cited practice for producers tied into regenerative agriculture and soil health.

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Why it matters: Producers looking to finish beef on grass are looking for a different set of genetic traits, although experts say most of the investment should go into the feed at first.

“Once I’ve got that moving in the proper direction, then later, maybe five years or further down the road, then I can perhaps start to think more about investing in genetics,” he said. “The point being that I would much rather have average genetics on good grass versus good genetics on poor grass.”

Likewise, a producer may not need to immediately look outside their usual breed. Rowntree does not swear by one single breed, he said, and he has seen anything from Simmental and Charolais to Angus thrive in a grass-fed system.

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“It’s not a breed-versus-breed debate,” he said. “It’s identifying those genetics that can work and typically, generally speaking, cattle that shut off faster — meaning that they don’t continue to grow bone and grow muscle, but they grow quickly and then they flatten off and they begin to put on more body condition — those are the types of genetics that we want to see in grazing systems.”

Many breeds can tick those boxes, he said, although British breeds may boast more cows within the breed with those more moderate frames and lower energy maintenance requirements.

Rowntree, himself, looked to replace the Lake City Research Centre’s large-framed herd after joining up with Michigan State University. Today, animals average closer to 1,200 pounds, he said.

Ian Grossart, who finishes his own herd on grass south of Brandon, has noted many of the same things.

“We started trying to bring Devon and some of those genetics in and I found some of the cows that we used to have, that had the Charolais influence or Red Angus, they’ll fit just as well in the program,” he said.

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He has, likewise, attempted to draw down animal size through selection.

Small frames, however, may not translate to low feed intake. In one of his trials, Rowntree compared animal performance and forage consumed between five larger-sized and five smaller-framed cattle, with both groups on an irrigated, four-acre paddock. The smaller cattle ate far more than Rowntree expected, based on existing literature. Conventional knowledge would put cattle intake at 1.1 per cent of body weight, he said, while the Michigan State University trial suggested that those smaller-framed cattle were eating closer to two per cent of body weight.

The study found no difference in forage consumed according to size, but smaller cattle averaged 20 kilograms more weight gain. Body condition was likewise higher on the smaller cows by the end of the summer, something Rowntree argued would lower feed requirements for those cattle through winter.

Matching management
Farm management should also play a part once producers start thinking seriously about genetics, Rowntree said.

“If I’m then thinking about genetics, I’m really looking at how the seedstock herd are being managed and are the cattle being managed in a way that replicates what I want to do? Or are they potentially in a very cushioned environment where there’s a lot of supplementation?” he said.

That selection may take place within the herd over time as producers select bulls and tailor their females, culling any that do not take as well to the system and prizing those that trend towards higher intake of lower-quality ruffage.

Brian Harper, whose own adaptively managed pastures near Brandon have earned him accolades, including last year’s national TESA award for environmental stewardship, says he singles out animals with a large, hard girth, “with room for lots of forage.”

His herd is selected for adaptability, high forage intake and hardiness in the face of disease and environment pressures, he said.

“For us it’s just the hard girth and matching the hard girth with the body length,” he said.

Grazing to finish
Cows may have never seen grain if slated for the grass-fed market, but grass fed does not always mean grass finished.

Many of the downfalls of grass-fed beef may be due to improper finishing, Rowntree argued, and things like off-flavour meat may be due to insufficient fat insulation when the carcass is cooled. His own finishing system hopes to see three-tenths of an inch of back fat at the last rib on a finished carcass.

Rowntree also urged producers to be more deliberate with rotational grazing. His own system started by moving cattle arbitrarily three times a day, but quickly found that schedule overgrazed legumes while overresting grasses. True AMP grazing should be deliberate, he argued, with a certain stock density chosen for a certain paddock at a certain time and for a certain length of time to achieve a certain goal on the landscape.

Farmers may need to push the recommended rest period when finishing, he said. While he normally gives paddocks 45-60 days between grazing — a number that researchers in Manitoba have put closer to 75 for finishing, he returns when plants are more vegetative and higher in feed value. Those same paddocks, however, are then first in line for a long rest to avoid mining fertility and overgrazing.

Rowntree’s system takes 18- to 20- months to finish a calf, although he says farmers in Manitoba may find a longer window more forgiving.

Grossart has courted that 18-20 month period, with similar 600-pound carcasses, although he has also pushed the window back to two years.
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
It depends what they're on, to a fair degree.
I would need a major fudgeup to be making mud - and not just because it's dry here, but because of the sheer amount of litter on the surface they'd have to get thru to actually get to the soil surface.
Plus the water cycle here is very effective, infiltration (always room for improvement but) is pretty excellent.
I had no trouble with 430 hoggs on an acre last year with a few inches of rain overnight, and that was one shift per day.
It got slightly muddy, and the next rain washed it off. But decent cover and litter levels change the picture, I'd topped and then overgrazed to feckery after the dry spell we had :facepalm::unsure: never again


But I guess it's always tempered by time, isn't it?
If we had all last years rain in one weekend it would all go in, and that never happens.

I watch the forecast during the wet and if it means halving breaks and time then I'd do that, or if we aren't about then I'd arrange someone to come shift them. It's when you have no thatch and park them for 3 days they bugger it up.

I have plenty of local volunteers that'd come, now it's so easy most of our mates have come out for a wander, so I'd have no qualms asking a mate to shift the stock.
Just tell them to grab a bucket and take some mushrooms and eggs home! :hungry:

I wonder how the mushroom pickers will deal with techno?
Yea I thought as I posted it that I'm dealing with very different soils to you. Not because of your unfair advantage, but because mine have had years of abuse - mostly, but not exclusively, not mine :rolleyes:. The clay and stone needs organic matter building in it, not sucking from it. It's why I want to try Gabe's fertility building cover crop approach in some of the worst areas - try and speed the process up.

Probably been asked before, but what's your annual rainfall Pete?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Yea I thought as I posted it that I'm dealing with very different soils to you. Not because of your unfair advantage, but because mine have had years of abuse - mostly, but not exclusively, not mine :rolleyes:. The clay and stone needs organic matter building in it, not sucking from it. It's why I want to try Gabe's fertility building cover crop approach in some of the worst areas - try and speed the process up.

Probably been asked before, but what's your annual rainfall Pete?
940mm average, 740 last year.
We're on a silty clay here so it is really susceptible to really being wrecked by inattention - to borrow from HCF "baseline reset syndrome" - many just accept that winter means mud and crack on with the abuse!
I guess it's just one of those things, people accept that sheep need drenched or grass needs fert, cereals need fungicides, etc without examining the "why is that???" too closely.
And usually the "why" with mud or poaching is twofold - no litter, too much time.

But the rate varies everywhere, for eg Roy can have carbon sitting around til the sun melts it because of the lack of moisture there.
My soils eat the stuff, literally, for breakfast because the moisture is compatible with the decomposers. So it's quite a task to maintain enough litter through the wet bit. Cold soil slows the rate.
Where Blaithin is, the snow will have an effect.

I think my task is to graze twice over winter: start with as much cover as we can muster, take the top half on the first graze and much of the remainder on the second graze.
There's the visible trampled summer stems, but under that again there's more cushion
20190303_132949.jpg

This is about 3cm thick, before you start actually finding worm casts, and the proper soil is under that. The other 3-4cm has been pulled away in this pic.
 
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Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Looks yummy!
Now, do I embarrass my self and try to ID what’s in it?
You'll see shepherd's purse straight off :rolleyes:
Docks and thistles :rolleyes:
Dandelions :rolleyes:
Volunteer plantain
But I sowed oats, chicory, clover, radish (that's the flowers), a couple of bromes, timothy and cocksfoot.
There'll also be volunteer PRG, crested dogstail, browntop, bluegrass, and various meadowgrass and poa species, a little chickweed, and a few other bits and pieces.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
You'll see shepherd's purse straight off :rolleyes:
Docks and thistles :rolleyes:
Dandelions :rolleyes:
Volunteer plantain
But I sowed oats, chicory, clover, radish (that's the flowers), a couple of bromes, timothy and cocksfoot.
There'll also be volunteer PRG, crested dogstail, browntop, bluegrass, and various meadowgrass and poa species, a little chickweed, and a few other bits and pieces.
Almost diverse then Pete :p;):D
 

CornishTone

Member
BASIS
Location
Cornwall
You'll see shepherd's purse straight off :rolleyes:
Docks and thistles :rolleyes:
Dandelions :rolleyes:
Volunteer plantain
But I sowed oats, chicory, clover, radish (that's the flowers), a couple of bromes, timothy and cocksfoot.
There'll also be volunteer PRG, crested dogstail, browntop, bluegrass, and various meadowgrass and poa species, a little chickweed, and a few other bits and pieces.

I did spot the Shepherds Purse[emoji6] and a good few of the others I’m pleased to say! But by no means all of them.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I did spot the Shepherds Purse[emoji6] and a good few of the others I’m pleased to say! But by no means all of them.
The grasses will be quite slow to establish, slow and steady as they say. But hopefully that translates to persistence, in no hurry to graze it, and hopefully the oats and radish will take the brunt of it. Would love a decent dousing of the wet stuff.

It looks fantastic when you come over tunnel hill and see this parched looking vista with a clearly defined green bit, I'm hoping a grazing will wake up my silaged area - hopefully that'll be the last ever silage harvest on this property.

I'll bung a hundred ton of compost on it when I can borrow a sh!t-thrower.
 
Lovely lass from hull uni doing a doctorate came for the interview - 6 odd students are investigating systems based thinking/holistic in relation to water management and shes specifically looking at grazing's role. shes looking for a few more examples so if anyones actually begun grazing and is interested shoot me a pm and ill foward your details to her.....
its working with welsh govt for future descision making and funding...
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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