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

[Bury the Trash]

Sheep work best in a bigger mob, have always meant to quiz you up on what you do?
I'm just trying to count how many paddocks Blair Bros. had on their 700 acres and I think it was about 17 main ones.
Water was whatever was "on the landscape" ie no reticulated water at all, but a good network of dams and creeks

so it wasn't all about daily shifts either, but it was still incredibly effective because it ran by itself. Much of the year they could both be away doing whatever and life on the ranch would carry on.

It really taught me a few things about "sustainability" because they were still doing the same and still making a good go of things in their 70's, although they did switch to round bales over the Big Howard jobs

So, what can you tell us about your "lot"?

Theres Very little of interest on a world scale about what i do could even be called unimpressive, but theres always tomorrow .

Big thing is an average field size of aprox. 6 acres almost all bounded with hedgerows (Devon banks ) that are quite high maintenance , especially if you don't fence then both sides .

Well, They look nice if you like that sort of thing
( ax long as they ard not gappy and have tinsheets tied in with baler cord in places ) needs to be tied in as when irs very windy it
can ' blow yer gaps all to hell '

 

[Crofter64]

From yesterday’s “On Pasture’ article on change.

 

[texas pete]

JU​

Theres Very little of interest on a world scale about what i do could even be called unimpressive, but theres always tomorrow .

Big thing is an average field size of aprox. 6 acres almost all bounded with hedgerows (Devon banks ) that are quite high maintenance , especially if you don't fence then both sides .

Well, They look nice if you like that sort of thing
( ax long as they ard not gappy and have tinsheets tied in with baler cord in places ) needs to be tied in as when irs very windy it
can ' blow yer gaps all to hell '

You'd want it well fenced...wouldn't you...

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Theres Very little of interest on a world scale about what i do could even be called unimpressive, but theres always tomorrow .

Big thing is an average field size of aprox. 6 acres almost all bounded with hedgerows (Devon banks ) that are quite high maintenance , especially if you don't fence then both sides .

Well, They look nice if you like that sort of thing
( ax long as they ard not gappy and have tinsheets tied in with baler cord in places ) needs to be tied in as when irs very windy it
can ' blow yer gaps all to hell '

JU​

You'd want it well fenced...wouldn't you...

I like my gaps the way they are

6 acres is a handy size though, similar here; at least if you decide to cut one in half with an electric fence it's not a 60 acre field
How many paddocks would you have in your "grazing" round, at any given time?

 

[GreenerGrass]

From yesterday’s “On Pasture’ article on change. View attachment 813848

I think I'm on the double dip at the moment.

 

[Crofter64]

Watched this the other day.
Quite a bit on protection dogs and wolves which though interesting is not particularly relevant to most of us, but some other interesting more relevant stuff.
Good to listen to someone doing the holistic thing with sheep.
Also interesting that it was the answer to some of her parasite issues.

Janet McNally writes for Graze. She has done a lot of good work.

 

[Fenwick]

I'm also aiming to reduce our winter housing period as far as I can over the next couple of years to reduce our winter feed cost. I am going to clear the manure from our sheds over the next couple of weeks and stack in a corner of that field, adding woodchip and composting it. I'll also add some soil from one of our woods to the compost heap to try to encourage beneficial biology in the compost. The compost will be spread after the last grazing of this season.

Brilliant! Let us all know how you get on. We're planning on nearly exactly the same thing next year!
Will you be irrigating or covering the heap?

I think this is because France won't allow GM crops to be grown and they have banned the use of round up, so a thistle epidemic in crop fields would be difficult to treat.

Sadly that ban on Glyphosate never happened

 

[baaa]

Brilliant! Let us all know how you get on. We're planning on nearly exactly the same thing next year!
Will you be irrigating or covering the heap?



Sadly that ban on Glyphosate never happened

Yes I noticed roundup in the agricultural shop the other day. They are still selling it to gardeners too. Had a flash inspection of my stock the other day, apparently they are going to do more of these. The three men were very nice, two were checking the horses' microchips, the other one was obsessed with my denial of wormer use in the sheep. Surely you get liver fluke they said!

 

[baaa]

It's always going to be slightly "wrong", too, so don't be too alarmed if you fall of the wagon a little, at times.

But I do believe that many also go too far with plant recoveries, grazing tends to evolve quite quickly as the change in management impacts the landscape and the amount of grass grown changes.

In our own example, this year we are leaving behind roughly the same cover we were going into this time last year, simply because of destocking earlier and stocking more heavily at the right time.

As my old man would say, "this grass belongs to the farm, not to "my stock"" and so grazing planning is best done after you've established a holistic context, written it down and internalised it; and also worked out a holistic financial plan.

A grazing chart by itself is hardly "holistic", it's just a grazing chart. Just as a calendar isn't much by itself.

Hi Kiwi Pete
What do you mean when you say that you " believe that many also go too far with plant recoveries'?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Hi Kiwi Pete
What do you mean when you say that you " believe that many also go too far with plant recoveries'?

I think it's a slight hangover of the old greediness towards grass, from whatever paradigm they've come from.

Not sure if you caught up with the part of the thread where we were discussing Andre Voisin's work, but the theory is that you aim to let the plants have their "blaze of growth" and then graze them - not let them have their "blaze of growth, wait another month to see if it gets bigger, then spread stock out in it" because so much energy is lost trying to get stock to eat the overmature pasture.

And that's not the aim, the express aim is "energy flow".
Maximise the flow from the sun into the plant..
..maximise the flow from the plant into the soil, and into the stock

All plants have a similar growth curve, shaped like a bell. You want to be grazing at the top of the bell, not going down the other side.

Thus in our type of climate (changeable) you can be holding stock back too much, it's not til it rains and everything leaps away from you that you realise?

Hence why we are letting an awful lot "slide" other than trying to match growth with grazing speed. I just read on another thread that someone is currently growing over 150kgDM/day in the UK, so it wouldn't take long to have it get away from you at that rate.
You thus have to be prepared to act, now - not wait a month and then get the calculator out.

That's why we made the call to change to a techno system, as it's far quicker to respond.
You don't make their breaks bigger as you'd then lose stock density and animal impact; just give them more cells in a day.

I know now this was the main "problem" with my old management style, as to graze quickly enough it "wasn't worth the effort" to put up dozens of fences just to mob them in each area for a few hours then shift. So I just spread them out inkeeping with the fences I had time to put up!

In stock density terms: it meant that the times of year when the grass is motoring, I didn't have nearly enough pressure per acre to effectively do much with it. We're aiming for 200,000kg/ha, or 20,000 per 0.1ha cell. Often that 20,000kgLWT would be spread over a hectare, even a whole 2.5ha paddock, which is why it wasn't really working as fast as it could be.

I think that was what had me at what @GreenerGrass called "the double dip stage" putting in the effort, but not really seeing much for the efforts.

Seeing is believing, for eg my mate at Waikaia is running his cow/calf pairs at 250,000kg/ha or more, things really happen at this type of density.
At 20,000kg/ha, they happen over years, not hours.

Currently we're running about 50,000kg/ha until Monday, when the sheep go home, and then we'll go back up to around 240,000 and shift more often.

Sorry that was a bit of a detour but it's reasonably relevant; in order to really effect changes we need bigger covers/plants -but we cannot let them get "overcooked" or animal performance (in some cases) will simply crash
It's hard to crash a big (adapted)beef cow but quite easy to crash a dairy calf or a lamb, or reduce milk output of a ewe.

And so, we are moving away from the less resilient animal as a business mainstay, towards the more resilient .

Your land will become more productive with time if you continually manage it better, but better management doesn't mean simply having longer grass (or giving pastures rest when they need recovery time)

 

[Poorbuthappy]

@Kiwi Pete - mentioned your name and this thread to a kiwi girl I met at Groundswell today. I may see her again as she is coming down to the sw at some point and gave her my contact details.
She was touring trying to learn more about holistic management, and said kiwis were slow to embrace it in general because of their drive on rotational grazing.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

@baaa

This hopefully illustrates what my big long piffle didn't, really....

 

[Kiwi Pete]

@Kiwi Pete - mentioned your name and this thread to a kiwi girl I met at Groundswell today. I may see her again as she is coming down to the sw at some point and gave her my contact details.
She was touring trying to learn more about holistic management, and said kiwis were slow to embrace it in general because of their drive on rotational grazing.

Sweet, always open for visitors here

I think she's correct, in many places here rotational grazing works well enough for many to assume it's the pinnacle of grassland management. Probably similar to the UK?

But, they also prefer to believe that "drought" is merely a function of insufficent rainfall, rather than a function of ineffective management.
Really it's both, I have a mate who considers more than 220mm of rain per year as "a wet year" and they still maintain a profitable business, and in that climate it's simply too high and dry for grass to grow.
Down here in the lowlands the opposite is almost true - unless in a dry time, rotational grazing works well, both for the farmer and their suppliers

It will be interesting to see how this changes over the next few years, as many seem quite happy in their own (moaning) way for now.
It's interesting to see the common TFF moans apply anywhere - input costs too high, regulations, taxes etc etc. Too wet, too dry...
But that's their business.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Brilliant! Let us all know how you get on. We're planning on nearly exactly the same thing next year!
Will you be irrigating or covering the heap?



Sadly that ban on Glyphosate never happened

Not sure yet, I haven't thought that far

The heap will not be near a water supply so probably cover it.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

@Kiwi Pete - mentioned your name and this thread to a kiwi girl I met at Groundswell today. I may see her again as she is coming down to the sw at some point and gave her my contact details.
She was touring trying to learn more about holistic management, and said kiwis were slow to embrace it in general because of their drive on rotational grazing.

I spent over an hour on Wednesday talking about a whole range of food issues with a massively engaged woman, Pleasant Craigie, who'd come up from London for the day to attend Groundswell to learn. She's American, born in New York, and now lives in Fulham so a proper city girl. I felt if she was willing to make that much effort the least I could do was give her the time to discuss these things. She works in event promotion and wants to help promote good food and healthy eating.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

@Kiwi Pete - mentioned your name and this thread to a kiwi girl I met at Groundswell today. I may see her again as she is coming down to the sw at some point and gave her my contact details.
She was touring trying to learn more about holistic management, and said kiwis were slow to embrace it in general because of their drive on rotational grazing.

If kiwi girl (I'm really sorry I didn't take note of your name tag) gets as far as reading this then please do get in contact if you're down this way. You have my number.
And sign up here and join in the discussion anyway

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

@Kiwi Pete - mentioned your name and this thread to a kiwi girl I met at Groundswell today. I may see her again as she is coming down to the sw at some point and gave her my contact details.
She was touring trying to learn more about holistic management, and said kiwis were slow to embrace it in general because of their drive on rotational grazing.

A friend on the 3LM stand mentioned talking to her (I doubt there were 2 kiwi girls there doing the Holistic Grazing uk tour ) and suggested she and I should chat about environmental bodies in NZ and here. I must chase him for her details. He said she had done public work in NZ so knows their system.

 

[ShooTa]

good to see you HCF - and others

as kiwis says yes the grass can easily get away from you - it certainly has here - but im ploughing on as if anything its laying down the carbon .. and still setting up some more semi permanant fence
breaking it up to acres then i can break it down further next year.. lands getting a well deserved rest which is why everything is heading and going to seed - but in my context i do not mind one jolt.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It takes a while to get it right (or at least closer) but when you look at the steepness of the graph it is apparent.

I assume that's a big part of the "why" when it comes to "NZ style grazing", and the typically short covers - it keeps the plant productivity down where it can be managed (without needing to pay very much attention, until it runs out) because of relatively stable stock numbers.

Managing a surplus is only as hard as we choose to make it

 

[Kiwi Pete]

One of the big reasons behind grassland management being "tricky" is purely related to diversity.

The more diverse your pastures, the more diverse the grazing mob, the easier it gets.

Which is really quite an opposite approach to having a PRG/ clover duoculture, which is more designed for outright yield and predictable growth than much else.
Not only does a solid RG diet not benefit the stock (rumen stress from endophyte etc) but it all wants to go to seed at a similar time, usually right about when you need leafy feed for newborns.

So managing for diversity and complexity can be quite "new" and strange to get your head around, especially if we struggle to love a bit of fog or cocksfoot sneaking in to our pride&joy paddocks.
We like stuff to conform, but Mama Nature doesn't.

She wants her landscape to be in a state of increasing complexity, and increasing diversity - it can be very expensive to go head-to-head with Ms. Nature.

Usually the first thing to suffer is animal performance - not necessarily weight gains, but performance.
Monitor reproductive performance and body condition closely, and have a plan B