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

[Samcowman]

Looks pretty good to me, I probably wouldn't be eating it that low in spring - is it ryegrass mainly?
Only you know your farm and growth but I'd be aiming for quite high residuals early on in the season.. a hectare per hundred is almost too hard on the grass IMO and then you'll get a lot of grass booting late spring?

Just aim to take the top third, if you can, and your grass will be ever larger and more robust/resilient.. plenty of time yet to tighten them up?

Ryegrass mostly but also Timothy white clover and some chicory which didn’t take that well. This first paddock I took a third off first time around coming out at 2100 from
About 3000 whereas the next one which I have taken the slice from I came out at 1700 from the same start to see what the different regrowth levels would be. The lower exit paddock regrew at 67kgdm/day whereas the higher one grew at 90.
What would you do about the unevenness of the residual?
Tightening them up overnight for a bit of a trial just to see what the difference is.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Ryegrass mostly but also Timothy white clover and some chicory which didn’t take that well. This first paddock I took a third off first time around coming out at 2100 from
About 3000 whereas the next one which I have taken the slice from I came out at 1700 from the same start to see what the different regrowth levels would be. The lower exit paddock regrew at 67kgdm/day whereas the higher one grew at 90.
What would you do about the unevenness of the residual?
Tightening them up overnight for a bit of a trial just to see what the difference is.

Ignore unevenness it's only humans that like order - and it is hugely expensive to maintain order in something (nature) that is always attempting to be unruly.

Think of springtime as the season of nurturing everything on your land to be all it can be; we wouldn't "screw" our new calves or lambs or spring barley crops out of their potential, so that's the big clue on how we mismanage pastures - we try to get it to conform to some number scale, and that's what bites us .
(Avoid this trap)
If you can grow 90kg/day with longer grass then I don't see any reason to have it short at any point - keep it growing up and up, what they leave now will be new soil by Christmas

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I often remember remarks from dairy discussion groups - popping out of my memory palace.

"they'll eat it in May, if not before" was one good phrase to sum up the pasture quality debate, when most were wanting to put the mower on in September (the ones that did that, were feeding bales by November, and blaming the weather) their concern was only "higher residuals than target" for one month of the year.
So it's very easy to de-rail your whole growing season in the first round of grazing, is my point... this was in "summer-safe Southland" and these guys made their own luck.

It's similar in a way at the other end of the season, folk grazing their pastures down and down and down as they need to keep milking until the end of May because they only grew just enough forage crop to last - so they are feeding expensive grass and expensive silage etc to cows producing .6-.9kgMS per day, the same 18kgDM per cow in the spring would mean 2.2-2.6kgMS/day!
But they go too hard, for too long - too much grass is seldom a problem - and when it almost starts to live a little, they mow it

Every single year - this is why 40 year's experience means nart, if it is simply one year's experience repeated 39 more times

 

[Samcowman]

Ignore unevenness it's only humans that like order - and it is hugely expensive to maintain order in something (nature) that is always attempting to be unruly.

Think of springtime as the season of nurturing everything on your land to be all it can be; we wouldn't "screw" our new calves or lambs or spring barley crops out of their potential, so that's the big clue on how we mismanage pastures - we try to get it to conform to some number scale, and that's what bites us .
(Avoid this trap)
If you can grow 90kg/day with longer grass then I don't see any reason to have it short at any point - keep it growing up and up, what they leave now will be new soil by Christmas

Thank you Yoda!!!
So really we just need to be taking the top off of it for as long as we can which will continue to build cover untill we need it or we can mob them up to trample it in. It’s much easier to do with the cows and calves as I’m not aiming to keep the cows growing so they are going in higher and trampling well. I’ll grab some pics tomorrow of the one they moved out of today.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Thank you Yoda!!!
So really we just need to be taking the top off of it for as long as we can which will continue to build cover untill we need it or we can mob them up to trample it in. It’s much easier to do with the cows and calves as I’m not aiming to keep the cows growing so they are going in higher and trampling well. I’ll grab some pics tomorrow of the one they moved out of today.

I'm only learning, too, don't forget

You don't see this type of grazing, and if you do generally someone somewhere has a whole lot of negativity to rain down on you!!
But, yeah, that's been my experience: spoil your animals in the spring - don't aim for "controlled starvation" as that's rotational grazing defined - which is why the proponents of RG are all the experts on drugs, machines, and fertiliser

To step higher, we need bigger and bigger and bigger plants, so we can continue to feed our stock fully and let them just keep taking the tops off - cattle are basically storage capsules for sunshine.

It becomes a total head-f**k to many simply because grazing doesn't fit with "their system" - I think their system might need reviewed in that case.
Mine definitely did, hence the sheep went away to get my pastures up and away, we need all the cattle we can muster in the springtime and so to achieve this we need a whole brace of R1 heifers, and carryover bulls, everything we can possibly feed needs to be here.
Then we can feed the soil to potential, what we have done to date hasn't been as effective because of:
Animals too big
Too many sheep
Spring calves not weaned until too late

 

[Blaithin]

The grass in my sacrifice area is looking surprisingly good. Not sure why they aren’t eating it down more. Someone who shall not be named put a bale on part of the acreage I didn’t want them on yet so the moms are on that grass, about as tight as I can get them, and it looks way worse than the sacrifice area with the chunky monkey beefers on it.

I know they don’t really like eating around their cow pats but in spring when stuck in small areas they seem to forget that dislike. I’d like to think it’s because I’ve left so much residue on this area that it’s doing ok but that still doesn’t explain why they aren’t really eating it

Started my last two hay bales today so in about two weeks I’ll be completely into grass. Grow while you can grass, grow!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

The grass in my sacrifice area is looking surprisingly good. Not sure why they aren’t eating it down more. Someone who shall not be named put a bale on part of the acreage I didn’t want them on yet so the moms are on that grass, about as tight as I can get them, and it looks way worse than the sacrifice area with the chunky monkey beefers on it.

I know they don’t really like eating around their cow pats but in spring when stuck in small areas they seem to forget that dislike. I’d like to think it’s because I’ve left so much residue on this area that it’s doing ok but that still doesn’t explain why they aren’t really eating it

View attachment 798660

Started my last two hay bales today so in about two weeks I’ll be completely into grass. Grow while you can grass, grow!

They never seem to eat near their pats here, either, even after they have broken right down and any smell will have gone (urine patches, the opposite - they seem to home in on these and I assume it's their inbuilt programming to recycle nitrogen?)
but I have no idea why that may be.

Even after 80 odd days they still ate around the pats from the previous two grazings, which I don't mind as it is a lesson in conservation, for me

 

[Blaithin]

I’ve always heard it’s a built in parasite prevention to try and avoid eating the grass right at the manure. Not really a parasite issue with urine.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That's probably dead right

 

[Kiwi Pete]

A rare patch of blue sky, it literally hosed on us while we unloaded these girls.

81 in-calf dairy heifers indoors
47 bulls / steers outdoors
plus 25 calves, and 270 sheep = about 950 sheep equivalents

- I'd say we are fully stocked

 

[Henarar]

Ignore unevenness it's only humans that like order - and it is hugely expensive to maintain order in something (nature) that is always attempting to be unruly.

I like that I don't "get" some of the things put on here but I get that

If you can grow 90kg/day with longer grass then I don't see any reason to have it short at any point - keep it growing up and up, what they leave now will be new soil by Christmas

I have been trying to leave more cover behind this time, no idea how much as I don't know what the measurements look like, the field in my last pic on here I moved them on when there was a lot left it is a job to get past thinking what a mess it looks but that field has recovered really well despite it being one of the poorer fields and there is a good feed for them there again now

 

[Henarar]

I’ve always heard it’s a built in parasite prevention to try and avoid eating the grass right at the manure. Not really a parasite issue with urine.

That's probably dead right

yep seen something about it years ago but can't remember the details

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I like that I don't "get" some of the things put on here but I get that

I have been trying to leave more cover behind this time, no idea how much as I don't know what the measurements look like, the field in my last pic on here I moved them on when there was a lot left it is a job to get past thinking what a mess it looks but that field has recovered really well despite it being one of the poorer fields and there is a good feed for them there again now

It is a real job to get your head around it - but plants have great memories, especially when you go hard on them early.
Like children, they are very easy to "squash", and they don't really recover at all from being repeatedly brutalised, or not to the degree that they could

We can use this "check" to advantage, sometimes: eg I want to keep smaller sheep or cattle, you breed them soon after puberty and they stay smaller for longer and are more efficient and profitable

Fert and seed and machinery people use our vanity to their advantage: they popularise this short-grass grazing by using lots of numbers and figures about digestibility etc to their own financial advantage - because it wears out perennial plants in a few months of trying to express themself; and wears the whole sward out in a few years as well.

This keeps farmers less profitable than they could be, and also makes for healthy commissions and new company vehicles however the overall cost to the country is massive, via emissions and topsoil loss - these educated fools are living for tomorrow, but can't see far past that.

Every pasture management decision is the same as any other compromise, it stands to reason that if we can establish what our holistic financial plan and contexts are all about, and arm ourself with some basic knowledge of plant physiology and soils; then we are empowered to make the right choices everyday, or at least better ones.

Nobody has the same rules, so we all have to experiment to work out our various levels and parameters.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

However my accountant says we are doing a LOT better than most, in his words "I simply can't believe how much profit you make off a hundred acres when some clients are running a six-digit loss with the dry summers we've had"

We learnt many years ago that "All that glitters isn't (necessarily) golden". Many farms who operate heaps of shiny kit and regularly claim the highest output in the area are wallowing in finance payments and worried sick about how to meet them all.

You are providing a shining example Pete.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

It is a real job to get your head around it - but plants have great memories, especially when you go hard on them early.
Like children, they are very easy to "squash", and they don't really recover at all from being repeatedly brutalised, or not to the degree that they could

We can use this "check" to advantage, sometimes: eg I want to keep smaller sheep or cattle, you breed them soon after puberty and they stay smaller for longer and are more efficient and profitable

Fert and seed and machinery people use our vanity to their advantage: they popularise this short-grass grazing by using lots of numbers and figures about digestibility etc to their own financial advantage - because it wears out perennial plants in a few months of trying to express themself; and wears the whole sward out in a few years as well.

This keeps farmers less profitable than they could be, and also makes for healthy commissions and new company vehicles however the overall cost to the country is massive, via emissions and topsoil loss - these educated fools are living for tomorrow, but can't see far past that.

Every pasture management decision is the same as any other compromise, it stands to reason that if we can establish what our holistic financial plan and contexts are all about, and arm ourself with some basic knowledge of plant physiology and soils; then we are empowered to make the right choices everyday, or at least better ones.

Nobody has the same rules, so we all have to experiment to work out our various levels and parameters.

I'm reading "For the love of land" at the moment. In chapter 10 "cool season grass" he talks about the late autumn graze setting things up for the spring. If you eat the autumn tillers too hard then you hit the spring potential badly. I'd not heard that before and it makes sense.

Anyone who has read "Holistic management" and has the "Holistic management workbook" really needs this book to make up the set IMHO.

 

[Treg]

The grass in my sacrifice area is looking surprisingly good. Not sure why they aren’t eating it down more. Someone who shall not be named put a bale on part of the acreage I didn’t want them on yet so the moms are on that grass, about as tight as I can get them, and it looks way worse than the sacrifice area with the chunky monkey beefers on it.

I know they don’t really like eating around their cow pats but in spring when stuck in small areas they seem to forget that dislike. I’d like to think it’s because I’ve left so much residue on this area that it’s doing ok but that still doesn’t explain why they aren’t really eating it

View attachment 798660

Started my last two hay bales today so in about two weeks I’ll be completely into grass. Grow while you can grass, grow!

I always look at them leaving the grazing around the cow pats as a good thing for several reasons,
Parasite control being one of the main ones.
Kp talks about leaving a third of the grazing behind each move , which is quite hard to visualise but they probably mess on 10-15% each time, so if on the next grazing they leave them plus the new lots of pats then your nearly to your 30% .
Think of the pats as a soil biology haven , if left for 60 days & nothing grazing that area it gets a chance to fully recover, plus spreading out.
Also it's building up a bank of grass for later in the season ( when grass gets shorter in the autumn there is still patches of longer grass for the stock).

 

[martian]

Mob on Groundswell site...last paddock of first circuit round and there's a lot of seeding brome which they aren't too keen on. Not too bothered as I imagine it'll stop growing now it's seeded and let other grasses come through. About 170 animals in mob, none of your techno nonsense here...

 

[Samcowman]

Mob on Groundswell site...last paddock of first circuit round and there's a lot of seeding brome which they aren't too keen on. Not too bothered as I imagine it'll stop growing now it's seeded and let other grasses come through. About 170 animals in mob, none of your techno nonsense here...View attachment 798702

That’s more like what my cows and calves are running? How do you find your stores do on that? Have you got any after pictures?

 

[Henarar]

We learnt many years ago that "All that glitters isn't (necessarily) golden". Many farms who operate heaps of shiny kit and regularly claim the highest output in the area are wallowing in finance payments and worried sick about how to meet them all.

Highest output of produce per acre perhaps
Highest output of money per acre perhaps
Highest output of profit per acre well it don't look much like it

why are people obsessed with doing more and more ? I don't understand it

 

[ShooTa]

@Crofter64 thats mainly as i have so few atm - a combo of getting things wrong- a bad first year with last years lambs meant we didnt hold any over - AND then something odd during lambing which wip3ed out a number of our brand new ewes... so yeah flocks at a shitty low number which wierdly makes more work doing fencing and watering BUT does really let me go mad trying things as unlike last year when my fields were more like sams last pic this year im leaving behind lots as ive got lots of area infront of me... which bodes well if i can keep zipping round it... the question comes up is should i be multi moving per day and the answer is probably , yet i dont have enough evidence to show that itll make a difference at this stage of the year... im on a race track next week which i can try more than 2x moves a day and may even try a single poly wire...

@Kiwi Pete no i dont peg down - but im sure they would learn as ive dropped fence before and they have stepped over. - Key fault in my setup (other than pooor water infrastructure) is not getting round to having semi permanant hot wires and fixed grounds so im moving my unit daily too..if it was easier to make front/back/everything hot then i would certainly try it.//

UPDATE on mineral sled ... theyve almost ripped the roof off... time to switch to screws with washers./