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

[Fenwick]

Not sure yet, I haven't thought that far

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

We can get water to the heap alright. Thought about laying a few lines of drip tape over it and a battery operated solenoid.
Still think it needs to be covered though as the heap is on a south facing slope and risks drying out too much for the mycelium. I just wanted to avoid messing around with tarps and tyres etc, which I have always found a pain in the a*se.
We can collect plenty of woodshavings and sawdust from the local sawmill. Though i'd like an on farm solution in the future.
Planning on using a couple of buckets of humus from the adjacent woodland for inoculation

We are planning on drastically reducing the housing time for the cows this winter, but it means we will have less manure.
The idea is to try and to try and make up for the difference through a gain in quality over quantity.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

We can get water to the heap alright. Thought about laying a few lines of drip tape over it and a battery operated solenoid.
Still think it needs to be covered though as the heap is on a south facing slope and risks drying out too much for the mycelium. I just wanted to avoid messing around with tarps and tyres etc, which I have always found a pain in the a*se.
We can collect plenty of woodshavings and sawdust from the local sawmill. Though i'd like an on farm solution in the future.
Planning on using a couple of buckets of humus from the adjacent woodland for inoculation

We are planning on drastically reducing the housing time for the cows this winter, but it means we will have less manure.
The idea is to try and to try and make up for the difference through a gain in quality over quantity.

Can you make more compost "voluntarily"?

We're using heaps of cheap bedding this year, could get away with much less but I'm in the same boat as yourself - shorter housing period.
I want to generate heaps as it's about the only way we "import fertility", other than via the plants themselves.

The wood shavings do get a little wet but they're so easy to work with that I am going to keep putting more and more and more in - it's like a generator!

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

We can get water to the heap alright. Thought about laying a few lines of drip tape over it and a battery operated solenoid.
Still think it needs to be covered though as the heap is on a south facing slope and risks drying out too much for the mycelium. I just wanted to avoid messing around with tarps and tyres etc, which I have always found a pain in the a*se.
We can collect plenty of woodshavings and sawdust from the local sawmill. Though i'd like an on farm solution in the future.
Planning on using a couple of buckets of humus from the adjacent woodland for inoculation

We are planning on drastically reducing the housing time for the cows this winter, but it means we will have less manure.
The idea is to try and to try and make up for the difference through a gain in quality over quantity.

Can you make more compost "voluntarily"?

We're using heaps of cheap bedding this year, could get away with much less but I'm in the same boat as yourself - shorter housing period.
I want to generate heaps as it's about the only way we "import fertility", other than via the plants themselves.

The wood shavings do get a little wet but they're so easy to work with that I am going to keep putting more and more and more in - it's like a generator!

I'm wondering if one machine we perhaps SHOULD have is a small tractor driven chipper. All the wood we currently burn when maintaining trees or hedges could then be blown into the cowshed over winter.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I'm wondering if one machine we perhaps SHOULD have is a small tractor driven chipper. All the wood we currently burn when maintaining trees or hedges could then be blown into the cowshed over winter.

Might need to put goggles on the cows... ?



A good use for carbon otherwise "lost" into the atmosphere, being regenerative is all about closing down those nutrient leaks

or alternatively, you could make a retort out of a fuel drum and make those trimmings into charcoal, and mix it in their feed must crank mine up actually, anything too small for the fireplace makes great biochar. Good chilly morning job

 

[texas pete]

I'm wondering if one machine we perhaps SHOULD have is a small tractor driven chipper. All the wood we currently burn when maintaining trees or hedges could then be blown into the cowshed over winter.

Very good idea. Whether used as bedding or just added to the muck after, as compost.

Jay Fuhrer's talk on the second day about building carbon and C/N ratios etc was very relevant to this.

There is a lot of potential to do as you suggest, rather than wasting it. It's far to easy (and satisfying ) to have a good old burn up.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That's the thing, if we can bundle up enough carbon then our legumes will draw more nitrogen into the system = more ingredients.

But if we buy nitrogen we don't automatically have more carbon - usually we have to sell or burn some to buy the N.

 

[martian]

I'm wondering if one machine we perhaps SHOULD have is a small tractor driven chipper. All the wood we currently burn when maintaining trees or hedges could then be blown into the cowshed over winter.

We've found it easier to get the local tree-surgeons to dump their chips in an old silage clamp. Nearly filled it last year, we use a lot to provide a good base for the cattle when they come in...saves baling a lot of straw. We add straw on top, throughout the winter. We then add more chips when we're mucking out and that way end up with more for less FYM (as the cattle are already spending more of the winter outside). We also tried adding some of that volcanic rock dust to the windrows pre-mixing, which seemed to give the microbes a boost when we turned the heaps.

Or, you can get a chipper in quite cheaply. We chipped all the miles of hedge-coppicing we've been doing. It turned out to be good enough for biomass boilers, so the dung didn't get near it, but you can get a lot done in a day and it'll save having to have another machine about the place. You'll end up with a nice big heap, though you would still need to blow it into your cattle yards somehow...

 

[baaa]

View attachment 814820
@baaa

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

That is really useful to know. I've been slow about understanding the effect of higher density for a shorter time, but now I see its about grazing the grass at the right second in its growth pattern as quickly as possible so that it can start its next cycle. It's difficult to close sheep up in the densities you talk about they take up more space than the equivalent weight in cattle. With the horses, I have put them in an area for either 12 hours or 24 hours. Two of them graze 650m2 in 12 hours nicely, but they take too much in 24 hours. Actually they really to seem to eat grass faster than sheep. I hadn't really monitored it before.

I don't have any ryegrass. In my biggest area some of the grass goes to seed at 6 inches long. So now I will try to match the growth with grazing. How can you tell by looking at the grass that it's ready to be grazed again?
Still having trouble with containing sheep, realised the volt reading is only half way on tester. The only good thing is there's no voltage on the earth.
Today the sheep went through one field I'd been resting for them to get to the field I wintered the horses in. It has just shot up in the last two weeks from being bare in the winter, I guess the roots had to recover before the grass grew. They grazed it for two days a month ago exactly.
Were you grazing your visiting sheep with a move every three days? It was my plan to move them every three days into a one hectare paddock each time, but they prefer to move every two days! I was worried I won't be able to rest each paddock for 6 weeks if I don't stretch it out to three days. I think I'll start to go with their flow. Worms aren't such an issue with mixed grazing. The horses can hoover up the grass they don't like. I have a lot more grass right now than previous years so I'm pleased all the fencing during the last year has been worth doing. I'm up to 12km on 20acres now and increasing!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That is really useful to know. I've been slow about understanding the effect of higher density for a shorter time, but now I see its about grazing the grass at the right second in its growth pattern as quickly as possible so that it can start its next cycle. It's difficult to close sheep up in the densities you talk about they take up more space than the equivalent weight in cattle. With the horses, I have put them in an area for either 12 hours or 24 hours. Two of them graze 650m2 in 12 hours nicely, but they take too much in 24 hours. Actually they really to seem to eat grass faster than sheep. I hadn't really monitored it before.

I don't have any ryegrass. In my biggest area some of the grass goes to seed at 6 inches long. So now I will try to match the growth with grazing. How can you tell by looking at the grass that it's ready to be grazed again?
Still having trouble with containing sheep, realised the volt reading is only half way on tester. The only good thing is there's no voltage on the earth.
Today the sheep went through one field I'd been resting for them to get to the field I wintered the horses in. It has just shot up in the last two weeks from being bare in the winter, I guess the roots had to recover before the grass grew. They grazed it for two days a month ago exactly.
Were you grazing your visiting sheep with a move every three days? It was my plan to move them every three days into a one hectare paddock each time, but they prefer to move every two days! I was worried I won't be able to rest each paddock for 6 weeks if I don't stretch it out to three days. I think I'll start to go with their flow. Worms aren't such an issue with mixed grazing. The horses can hoover up the grass they don't like. I have a lot more grass right now than previous years so I'm pleased all the fencing during the last year has been worth doing. I'm up to 12km on 20acres now and increasing!

I've got everything on a daily move, because the sheep fencing is just such a faff over winter. I work an 8 hour day and so daylight is limited, it's the season for unwell or unhappy children and so we try to make things as easy as possible - and save the really micro-managerial grazing for the warmer parts of the year, when there's a bit of daylight about.

I was a dairy farmer for years and so do most of my best fencing in the dark, with a head torch but few things grind your gears more than finding out you crossed the wires over halfway down your fence, or have a big bird's nest to sort out!

IMO grass is ready to be grazed as soon as it's shiny and pointy again. Length isn't really indicative:

Mature enough, but short, and all the litter has been cycled into the soil (ie you can see worm castings on the surface)

Immature but longer, due to be grazed in early August. See most of the tips are still blunt from where they were grazed off?
Generally, immature plants don't have much of a "shine" although ryegrass is quite a shiny leafed grass.
The shine on the pasture suggests that the plants have their goodness back, whereas many of the rotational graziers around here don't have a long enough recovery time to see it.
Well, their recovery is long enough - but because they've shaved their paddocks, it then isn't recovered in the right timeframe, so the "real" quality and quantity suffers, as then does livestock performance.
This usually means by the end of summer they are still overstocked for their available feed, and have to rotate faster and faster :
"untoward acceleration".
This is the main flaw in rotational grazing systems.

However these beasts have 4 feet to "waste feed" and only one mouth to harvest with - if the same farmer took the animals and moved them much faster earlier (when they are usually set stocked for drift-lambing) then there would be much more cover - much more growth/energy flow - which means the lambs are sold sooner and then the ewes can eat the nitty-gritty back down again from weaning time right through to parturition.
(So lambing date, on a grass system, is the biggest determining factor of overall farm performance).
Early and late both create problems.

Re your very short grass seeding, there are a few reasons.
One can be that it's simply a short growing species dominant. Often poorer grazing means that the bigger plants are simply grazed out over time, or that they adapt themselves into growing smaller or lower.

Look at a cow pasture compared to a sheep pasture - often the cow pasture plants will be much more upright and "clumpy" because the cow has to pull the grass off to harvest it, the grass breaks higher in the plant and so it rapidly recovers with the same tiller.
Whereas the sheep pasture is nibbled, so the growing points in the tiller (esp before it goes reproductive) isn't "protected" from being grazed to the same degree, and so the plants will throw up a new tiller and grow much denser, but also much shorter.
I guess you could liken it to the victim of repeated bullying, not wanting to stand out but to blend in. Plants have great memories! And so they adapt away from their potential towards self-preservation, which means small plants seeding .
Their life depends on it!

 

[ShooTa]

great post kiwi - i did better this year on moving them faster but im now in tall grass grazing - BUT i improved on last year -and like you im adding more semi-permanant fence that should allow a better utilisation next year..
The thing im noticing is that although i have alot of seedheads the grass types im looking for are only now heading so hopefully im hitting them at the right time so that next year everything will be a bit sower to throw up its seed. Another bit is the grass is wetter and the sheep are using much less water which is awsome. as im still wrangling the layout and the pump situations.
@baaa it might be your ground - more earth stakes in the ground might be needed.

 

[Henarar]

the sheep have had a good trample here

 

[Bury the Trash]

View attachment 815516 the sheep have had a good trample here

That might be alright for store sheep but lambs wont finish very well on that.

 

[Henarar]

That might be alright for store sheep but lambs wont finish very well on that.

weighed them 3 weeks ago and some were 33kg and on worse grass than that since and it certainly looks like they have moved on, not wormed them at all yet
TBO as long as some of the early singles get going in a bit we want them coming fit a few at a time as most go for the freezer anyway the last of last years only went a few weeks ago, everyone is raving about the meat so I spose something must be right ? I don't know

 

[Bury the Trash]

weighed them 3 weeks ago and some were 33kg and on worse grass than that since and it certainly looks like they have moved on, not wormed them at all yet
TBO as long as some of the early singles get going in a bit we want them coming fit a few at a time as most go for the freezer anyway the last of last years only went a few weeks ago, everyone is raving about the meat so I spose something must be right ? I don't know

Yeah well, meat should deff. be about quality not just quantity thats fer sure.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

That might be alright for store sheep but lambs wont finish very well on that.

Lambs will do on it as long as you don't try and make them eat the stalk imo.
Keep them moving and they'll pick out the best bits.
My thinking is the ewes can do the tidying up post weaning.

 

[ShooTa]

groundswell mob vs my sheep.

as for finishing the lambs are on average as of last weight putting on 250-300g a day so im not complaining.

 

[Inky]

We've found it easier to get the local tree-surgeons to dump their chips in an old silage clamp. Nearly filled it last year, we use a lot to provide a good base for the cattle when they come in...saves baling a lot of straw. We add straw on top, throughout the winter. We then add more chips when we're mucking out and that way end up with more for less FYM (as the cattle are already spending more of the winter outside). We also tried adding some of that volcanic rock dust to the windrows pre-mixing, which seemed to give the microbes a boost when we turned the heaps.

We do the same with the chip and it saves a ton of straw when first bedded. Really like the look of your windrow turner at Groundswell, how many rows of that size would you be able to make with the muck produced from housing the cattle over winter?

 

[Blaithin]

Just want to confirm if this is what I think it is.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Vetch or Sainfoin

yours looks better than mine which unfortunately hasn't appeared...

 

[Blaithin]

Oh, do they both look similar?!

I was assuming it was the vetch that was in my frost seeded mix. But there was way more sainfoin in that then vetch....

Either way, the alfalfa and clover could have been there in previous years but I’m nearly 100% sure there was no vetch or sainfoin on my place, so something in the frost seeding has taken!