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

[bitwrx]

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This is the boys in and out today. The one they left was at about the same stage as the one they have gone into with a fair bit of seedhead head to see from the photo but they have trampled a fair bit of the strong stuff and should reset it a bit with the rain today. There are a couple which have been slow all season due to being grazed too tight on the first round so they will just be nipped off again. Need to time the rotation to be back in these paddocks in time for TB testing as they are next to the handling.
I think the easiest way to do it is set up semi permanent lanes and then all you need to do is put up cross fences. I fans this fairly quick and easy to do much easier than the pizza pie at the other side of the main field due to water. But I would say the less mobs the better from my point of view. I’m looking forward to July when the bulls come out and I can amalgamate groups of cows and calves.

Looking good Sam. Would be good to know how the semi permanent lanes go. When I finally get some ruminants here, it'll probably be the first thing I try.

(PS - from the background of your photos, your username, and the bit in FW the other week, I think I've figured out we went to school together. Looking forward to catching up at Groundswell.)

 

[Samcowman]

Looking good Sam. Would be good to know how the semi permanent lanes go. When I finally get some ruminants here, it'll probably be the first thing I try.

(PS - from the background of your photos, your username, and the bit in FW the other week, I think I've figured out we went to school together. Looking forward to catching up at Groundswell.)

I set the first lane up so that it was 3 days worth so 1.5hec original plan was to split it in 3 but instead I’ve got it in 2 with one 0.5hec and the other 1 giving a in theory 1day and 2 day shift. The semi permanent lanes are all just cheap plastic posts with wooden posts with an insulator on where there is a corner. Have to thank @Kiwi Pete for this idea. Took about 20 mins earlier to shift them with putting up a cross fence and measuring the 2 paddocks.
Now you’ve got me intrigued. Pm me if you like or leave the surprise for Groundswell!!!

 

[Samcowman]

Looking good Sam. Would be good to know how the semi permanent lanes go. When I finally get some ruminants here, it'll probably be the first thing I try.

(PS - from the background of your photos, your username, and the bit in FW the other week, I think I've figured out we went to school together. Looking forward to catching up at Groundswell.)

Don’t worry gone through some of your old posts I’ve figured it out once you mentioned pigs!!!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It's an amazing undertaking. I only find the idea of me doing all that fencing for sheep overwhelming! I do make small short term paddocks for the horses, which is relatively quick and easy, but once the ground really gets dry I can't easily move posts around anymore so they really need to be permanent. Although this year the forecast says we're in for a soaking till 16thJune.

Are you expecting to be able to run more livestock on your land as a result of the better grass production, or to maximise the rate of production you have now?

Certainly my lambs could do with going alot faster, without lots of input feeding, as carrying bags of food around isn't something I'm good at. I would like to carry more stock on my land to maximize its potential for when subsidies are phased out.

You've inspired me to investigate a project I have thought of before, but so far done nothing about. I own 7 acres of moorland nearby, which is considered to be impossible to cultivate. It is in a patch of about 100 acres of moorland, which is left permanently ungrazed. I considered renting the land and fencing it for my sheep although they wouldn't find it palatable at first. I would need to run the horses on it at first. It is stoney underneath so it could be a nightmare to fence. The fencing required would be a huge cost and a risk, so I would need to seek funding for it. Or perhaps I should invest in cattle for it!

A bit of both.
As I ventured, the techno system is a bit of a "mindset change" in that it is more about 'per hectare' performance than 'per animal per day' gains.
It also generally means a higher overall stocking rate, so the individual gains may be lower but the production per acre is much much higher than "normal".

It's more effective to have 4 cattle on a hectare putting on 0.8kg per day for 250 days, than 1.5 cattle/ha which may gain 2.5kg/d for 100 days then drop back to a kg/day for 100 days and be out of grass.
Driving so I'm working this out mentally but the high stocking rate gives 800kg/ha, the low rate 625?
Some farms in the UK, NZ are growing 1100kg/ha/year which is basically printing money!

Plus, the grazing season is made longer which reduces supplementary feeding- cost- time input.

Mainly the idea is to fully utilise that mad spring rush of growth, by spreading it across the landscape and season - farmers can do this with a baler or harvester, but that's expensive and wasteful, as it takes all those nutrients off the land.
This way puts it into the stock, which keeps those nutrients on the landscape all year round, a far more effective way to use our land resource (and several times cheaper, especially once your system takes little time to operate, it means you can pay yourself rather than those around you).

In effect we are looking to get the benefits of permanent and temporary infrastructure - it doesn't need put up and taken down all the time, as that makes work, but gives superb control of the landscape and uses the animals as tools.

It seems odd to have all "that money sitting there doing little", but compared to having a whole heap of land and machinery being underutilised, it's way more cost effective to liquidate our machines and buy pipe and wire

Plus, once stock are trained to go over a clicking wire, I can shift 4 mobs (100 cattle) by letting a wire go slack for 2 minutes and giving a shout - so it's something I can do with a broken arm or in my 80's
My kids can do it, my neighbour can do it, so suddenly so many of the perceived negatives of keeping livestock are gone

 

[bitwrx]

Don’t worry gone through some of your old posts I’ve figured it out once you mentioned pigs!!!

They always say farming is a small industry...

 

[ShooTa]

quick Q - for your gates are you using bought gatehandles and springs or....

 

[Kiwi Pete]

http://greenbio.co.za/2019/06/07/im...ximum-long-term-profitability-in-beef-farming

 

[Kiwi Pete]

quick Q - for your gates are you using bought gatehandles and springs or....

My neighbour has a neat little jig that is made of a short length of pipe, clamped in a vice/vise

Put about 30cm of no8 wire in, doubled over, and twist it in the jig (it has a double slot cut in one end) with a screwdriver, one end can be formed into a hook with a loop - it's got a couple of pins welded to it for the purpose, the hook bit is formed before the twisting (that is what sits in the slot, holding it static)

Then the lot is slipped inside a piece of water pipe/ old milking inflation as an insulated handle, works really well on the dairy as invariably the bought ones get driven over and squashed, or the springs give out, or wind vibration cuts through them fairly quickly.

Hopefully you can visualise it from my description .

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

My neighbour has a neat little jig that is made of a short length of pipe, clamped in a vice/vise

Put about 30cm of no8 wire in, doubled over, and twist it in the jig (it has a double slot cut in one end) with a screwdriver, one end can be formed into a hook with a loop - it's got a couple of pins welded to it for the purpose, the hook bit is formed before the twisting (that is what sits in the slot, holding it static)

Then the lot is slipped inside a piece of water pipe/ old milking inflation as an insulated handle, works really well on the dairy as invariably the bought ones get driven over and squashed, or the springs give out, or wind vibration cuts through them fairly quickly.

Hopefully you can visualise it from my description .

Sounds good. A bit like this tip for turning old plastic water pipe offcuts into hydraulic/electric line wrappers:

 

[Henarar]

same place Pete
There is more cover on it than it looks but not as much as I would like
The cows will be back on it in a few days

 

[Samcowman]

View attachment 808042 same place Pete
There is more cover on it than it looks but not as much as I would like
The cows will be back on it in a few days

Growth has really slowed the last week or so should pick up a bit. The hard to tell from the pic but is there much clover in there?

 

[Henarar]

Growth has really slowed the last week or so should pick up a bit. The hard to tell from the pic but is there much clover in there?

No not much clover in that field, something that needs sorting
would hope it would grow better after the rain but it wants to warm up a bit

 

[texas pete]

http://greenbio.co.za/2019/06/07/im...ximum-long-term-profitability-in-beef-farming

Damn that's a good little article...

Life lesson - The reality is we don’t have to change – But we will have to compete with those who do – Gerrit van Zyl

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Dreary day today.
Rain soaked in, as I may have predicted the springs have started running again!
Gave my silage pit a clean out and flicked out any second-rate stuff into the paddock.

Sheep are going at the end of the month, and so we shouldn't be back in here until August. Days are short.

 

[Bury the Trash]

'd love to only use two wires. My 4 wires are 5-6" apart with the 2nd and 3rd closer. They do jump them if they are lower than 2 feet high.. They just love the challenge and new grass probably because I haven't got my grass long enough yet and/or I need to spread something to raise the pH to make the grass more palatable. That's the next investment although I also need more fencing and maybe a more powerful unit!

a mains / 12v dual type energiser is more useful we find.
this big white wire (they can see it better ) although more expensive ..has got good conductivity/low resistance
if you already have a cordless drll a winder ( like the red thing in the pic for a bout a tenner..that fits into ordinary cheap repeater reels is better than geared reels I find … just use it on low speed until get used to it and best set the slip clutch just in case.

if you have hurdles to spare 2 make a good temporary gateway ( that they understand ) between paddocks

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

19mm of rain and the "animal impact" starts to need watching here

 

[Bury the Trash]

19mm of rain and the "animal impact" starts to need watching here

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its pretty wet the same here now , and cool as spring , well un summer like anyway....that congregating at gates is a cattle thing isn't it...... along with the 'poachy' mess sheep tend to keep spread out a bit better. and with their little feet and weight

 

[Kiwi Pete]

its pretty wet the same here now , and cool as spring , well un summer like anyway....that congregating at gates is a cattle thing isn't it...... along with the 'poachy' mess sheep tend to keep spread out a bit better. and with their little feet and weight

It'll take Ian a while to get the water cycle cranking.
I do get what you're saying, but it's a long road getting the water cycle humming with sheep for those exact reasons you mention - they tend to leave the soil surface very "flat".
Microtopography - now there's a good word with a mouthful of cornflakes - can be instrumental to getting rainfall down that first couple of inches, quickly .

Backwards as it sounds.

Scale it up and it's easy to visualise the overall effect of topography on water - eg a floodplain vs hill country, water moves much slower on the flats.

 

[Henarar]

inch and a half of rain here in the last 24 house and half inch the day before that, moved one small group of cattle across two fields to get to another and not a mark shows how dry it is really
hard to think in 2012 we had half the cattle back in in June cos it was so wet we didn't know what else to do with them
a bit more over the next few days then dryer apparently,

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

It'll take Ian a while to get the water cycle cranking.
I do get what you're saying, but it's a long road getting the water cycle humming with sheep for those exact reasons you mention - they tend to leave the soil surface very "flat".
Microtopography - now there's a good word with a mouthful of cornflakes - can be instrumental to getting rainfall down that first couple of inches, quickly .

Backwards as it sounds.

Scale it up and it's easy to visualise the overall effect of topography on water - eg a floodplain vs hill country, water moves much slower on the flats.

25mm here yesterday and the cattle are starting to poach the ground a bit. It shows how dysfunctional our water cycle really is. In our defence though they are on ground that was (badly) landfilled 30+ years ago.