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

[onesiedale]

I readily admit I don't know what I'm talking about here it's just something I've been thinking about after reading things on here. Hence bringing the subject up while someone who would likely know is paying attention
I've read a few on here saying that their deficiency is getting worse and worse and that they started with one bolus pre tupping. Then go to 2 boluses a year after seeing a difference. Then they have to start drenching with minerals to boost levels at the same time as bolusing to lift levels and a bolus to maintain them, then after a while longer have to drench to boost levels before any stressful times like weaning or lambing or they start seeing symptoms again. There is at least one person on here has admitted to dosing every few weeks to keep deficiencies away even though everything was bolused and their deficiency seemed to be getting worse and worse all the time. But it's the same soil under the same management how would it still be getting worse with more minerals added unless the extra supplementing had affected the sheep somehow. There might be something else going on too that I don't know about though. But that's how I came to thinking it might be a treadmill once you get on.
I'll probably stick to the plan and do the ones that go to a terminal sire this year and see if it makes a difference. I did last year and didn't see any difference at all but it was a bad year for trials because it was so dry and ewes were in poorer condition that I'd have liked going to the rams.

It sounds very much like the dilemma we had this spring with magnesium deficiency with the cows.
It was so frustrating.

 

[Global ovine]

I have been mulling over a statement made i've Andre Vosin's "Grass productivity" ever since reading it: that modern grasses are scientifically bred in isolation and that their production is not tested against livestock performance. We (in this thread) have repeatedly noticed that cattle and sheep often prefer diverse permanent pasture to new "high productivity" grass reseeds. Could it be that many modern forage varieties actually contain less of key TEs ?

Speaking for NZ bred pasture plants and those internationally bred but trialled in NZ, Andre Vosin is quite wrong. Animal response and acceptability/palatability is a vital part of the assessment against standard benchmark varieties. Nowadays increased reliance is put on modelling, as much knowledge about rumenation and plant cell structure exists in the early stages of selection. However large scale field trials using real dairy herds and real flocks of sheep in commercial situations still take place in diverse locations.

Expect low plant TE concentrations if soil available TEs are in short supply in the root zone of any fast growing plant, newly bred or otherwise. Too few permanent pastures contain deeper rooting desired species to extend the root zone for accessing minerals, both macro and micro. Set stocking usually stuffs such plants quickly in their life, as they require stem height, just as they require root depth.

In regard to reseeds; the questioning of "why must that particular field be reseeded"? Is it because the soil chemistry is insufficient to maintain desired species, so only the more prolifically rooted weed varieties become dominant? Or, is it because the grazing system used suits weed species more than the desired species from the original seeding?
My observations throughout the UK would suggest the latter being the greatest reason why reseeding is seen as the main weapon to improve pastures. Set stocking that keeps pastures low for long periods of time does not suit desired pasture plants. Likewise pastures that get rank and therefore rejected by stock has a similar effect.
Grazing control to keep the plants in their vegetative state, letting the main desired species to fully develop (in the case of Ryegrass to the 3rd leaf stage of each tiller) subjected to a short grazing period and then a long recovery period will maintain the desired species composition for as long as that management is maintained. There are many forms of rotational grazing developed to suit the world's diverse pastoral environments. NZ and Europe fit largely into moist temperate zones where grazing control via electric fencing or more intensive permanent subdivision to maintain grazing pressure will result in a healthy mix of desired species ad infinitum as long as that grazing management is maintained.
Under such management, reseeding to introduce new cultivars of desired species becomes an option. The short life of resseds in the UK is a significant cost on many farms contributing to current profitability concerns.

 

[Global ovine]

It sounds very much like the dilemma we had this spring with magnesium deficiency with the cows.
It was so frustrating.

Magnesium deficiency in spring is very common as it is accentuated by periods of cold, cloudy weather when soil conditions are approaching maximum water holding capacity. Animals (especially heavily pregnant or in early lactation) grazing such pastures consume insufficient Mg as plants growing in such conditions take up very little Mg, but take up K which compounds the situation in those animals. Animals do not have a storage organ for Mg. Their blood levels are determined by their intake that day. Early spring N and salt blocks can compound the problem in ruminants. Lifting soil pH into the low 6s will enable plants to take up more Mg in dull and wet spring periods.
If largely fed on silage that was boosted by N and K before harvest, such feed will cause the same effect.
In both situations Mg must be added to their diets over this period.

Don't blame the animals' genetics if you have given an inbalanced feed to them. There are plenty of other things, such as the functional traits for ease of reproduction, foot health, resistance to parasites etc., that genetics can positively influence to increase profit and remove the hassles of intervention.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I have been mulling over a statement made i've Andre Vosin's "Grass productivity" ever since reading it: that modern grasses are scientifically bred in isolation and that their production is not tested against livestock performance. We (in this thread) have repeatedly noticed that cattle and sheep often prefer diverse permanent pasture to new "high productivity" grass reseeds. Could it be that many modern forage varieties actually contain less of key TEs ?

I don't believe that it's due to minerals, but "energy", as defined by the cow (it may not be energy, but I call it that).

If you watch your cattle as you let them into fresh pasture, their noses go side-to-side like a blind chap's cane - they are searching, making split-second decisions about which mouthful will have the greatest reward.

Sheep, not so noticeable an action, because they tend to target feed below the canopy (that's why I sold them) but cattle are very selective if fed to capacity.

As I've adapted away from rotational grazing, I don't notice that "searching" action nearly so much; unless I decide that they graze "here" instead of what's on the chart, for some reason.
Then they snuffle around like drug dogs at an airport, again.

I haven't fully satisfied myself what they are searching for, or how they are searching for it; it is feasible that they are sensing with their noses for "nutrient density" or "energy" or "high brix" but these are only people-words, WAISAD

My refractometer readings would indicate that their first reconnaissance removes the very highest brix leaves, difficult to confirm, but near enough.
My refractometer also shows that ryegrass-dominant pastures have lower brix readings than older pasture - even the older "weed species" have lower brix in pastures dominated by ryegrass, especially short rotation (hybrid) ryegrasses.
So it goes some way to confirm that ryegrass does actually suppress other species when reproductive, so which is the 'real weed species' when you look at the pasture as a community?
About the only species present here that have a distinct "immunity to reproductive ryegrass" are yarrow, daisy, and dandelion.
And, of course, browntop, which has generally run its race before the ryegrass turns reproductive.

The cattle know far more about pasture, "their pantry", than measurements will ever tell us.

After a year or so of grazing differently, we're seeing that "non-selective graze" happening without force, so there is a distinct but hard to define difference between rotational and rational - again, something you can't see from over the fence.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Magnesium deficiency in spring is very common as it is accentuated by periods of cold, cloudy weather when soil conditions are approaching maximum water holding capacity. Animals (especially heavily pregnant or in early lactation) grazing such pastures consume insufficient Mg as plants growing in such conditions take up very little Mg, but take up K which compounds the situation in those animals. Animals do not have a storage organ for Mg. Their blood levels are determined by their intake that day. Early spring N and salt blocks can compound the problem in ruminants. Lifting soil pH into the low 6s will enable plants to take up more Mg in dull and wet spring periods.
If largely fed on silage that was boosted by N and K before harvest, such feed will cause the same effect.
In both situations Mg must be added to their diets over this period.

Don't blame the animals' genetics if you have given an inbalanced feed to them. There are plenty of other things, such as the functional traits for ease of reproduction, foot health, resistance to parasites etc., that genetics can positively influence to increase profit and remove the hassles of intervention.

I can't agree enough, during my tour of Southland as a dairyman 99% of farms appeared to be supplementing Mg and Ca to dairy cows - the only exception to the rule was Organic Pastures Ltd at Wreys Bush, where the owners (Williams family) were wholly absorbed by soil balance and "holistic health".
That place was really the farm that reset my own baseline as to what is actually possible with pasture based dairy - as so many of our bandaids are of course prohibited on Biogro Organic certified farms.
I had previously believed that staggers, bloat, lameness, mastitis, and short-lived cows were just what you had if you had a dairy farm, and I was completely wrong in that assumption.

One notable thing - the cows ALWAYS had access to salt and minerals in a trailer, no exceptions. They also used kefir "yoghurt" in the water troughs in times of stress.
I still have the Fonterra certificate somewhere for an average season BMSCC of 42,000.

Because we have access to such effective bandaids today, it's very easy to come to rely on them saving the day?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

How Soil Health Is Reflected in the Gut | Goop

We’ve wiped out 40 percent of biology on earth in just fifty years,” says Zach Bush, MD. “And yet that Mother Earth keeps reaching out saying: Are you sure you don't want to keep playing? Because we could have some fun together.” For Bush, the health of our soil microbiome is the single most...

goop.com

 

[Kiwi Pete]

A bit of a prompt via FB and I got my tools out this morning - soil temp @10.30am 6.4°C

Will test the same area this afternoon, what I learnt today is that low boron would be indicated by little improvement in brix through the day - was quite surprised to see it so high, so early in the day.

 

[baaa]

HELP!!!! I put an advert in the Brittany english journal for my delicious grass reared lamb(!), only to find that the editor had printed this article a few pages earlier? I have asked him if i can send him an article, The Environmental Case for Eating Meat, and he said he will print it if it's under 300 words and received by 20 sep. Does anyone have any publicity that would help? I think it would need to inspire the reader to search for further information to back it up. I would be grateful for your help, I'm a farmer not a writer! ?

 

[onesiedale]

HELP!!!! I put an advert in the Brittany english journal for my delicious grass reared lamb(!), only to find that the editor had printed this article a few pages earlier? I have asked him if i can send him an article, The Environmental Case for Eating Meat, and he said he will print it if it's under 300 words and received by 20 sep. Does anyone have any publicity that would help? I think it would need to inspire the reader to search for further information to back it up. I would be grateful for your help, I'm a farmer not a writer! ?

Vegans, you’re not saving the planet.

At least, not the way you think.

medium.com

Here's a start. Maybe not the complete come back but some food for thought.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Some of the penultimate paragraph above may be of use in your conclusion, too.

 

[onesiedale]

@baaa you could always visit the Pasture Fed Livestock Association website. There's quite a bit on there that you could cut and paste to make a 300 word 'advertorial' suit your own lamb for the local press.

Better for our environment – Pasture for Life – Certified 100% grass-fed meat, milk and dairy

www.pastureforlife.org

 

[Kiwi Pete]

 

[Kiwi Pete]

@baaa - one glaring ommission from nearly all reports on food production (both plant and animal) is the reliance of monoculture systems using large amounts of synthetic N fertiliser, per kg of which carries a Carbon footprint of between 3.3 and 5.5kg of Carbon in the production, transport, distribution and application - not taking into account the C lost when the bacteria fed on it begin to eat the soil fungi and SOM. Note these figures are actual Carbon, not the CO2 equivalents - which are around 8x higher?

Animal farming DOES NOT necessarily require any synthetic N fertiliser at all - some farming businesses may, however, be addicted to it/ reliant on it

The real answer lies in diversity, rather than control and death which is the mainstay of monoculture farming.
Fundamentally neither is actually necessary, other than it's easy - humans "could" actually still move to where their food is, and harvest it from amongst "weeds", rather than wait for it to come to them if they were truly concerned (or not stinking fecking rich, which is the problem)

 

[exmoor dave]

Yesssssssssss! Finally caught up with this thread after starting reading during lambing back in feb, then life got in the way of speed reading it all!


Really great thread guys

@Kiwi Pete looking forward to seeing how your plans are coming along in November..... I wonder if we'll even need a satnav.....or just look out for the brightest green for miles around

We've been playing with electric fencing for a few years, mostly as fixed subdivisions in to 5ac paddocks.
This year we took abit of a leap and had about 150ac mapped out by Precision grazing/ kiwitech uk, with the intention of physically getting 70/80acs of that mapping up and running this year.....thats now going to be more like next year now.
Alot of the new pipework has gone down though at least.
I'll put maps up when i can find them.


In the meantime here's a couple things I think fit in to the Holistic thinking....

Dad and me have always carried a full sized viskey (2/3s sized mattock) on the landrover for digging thistles.
Now I mostly travel by quad, the viskey is abit big to lug around on the bike, so I bought a micro mattock off ebay, but the short handle meant getting off the bike to dig thistles, so abit of light steel tube slipped over the handle as a extension means i can drive-by dig thistles from the seat of the bike

We have quite a gorse problem, particularly on the areas of the farm that had a target carrying mini rail track for tank and mortar practice during ww2.
So those areas were first pushed up by bulldozers to make the banks and bunkers, then blown up, then "reinstated" by bulldozer, so the gorse got a good hold, dad kept it cut til he decided to have 5 kids, at that point the gorse exploded to a jungle, so once I came home to farm, we had it slashed down....twice by contractors, then I've either flailed or sprayed regrowth, but the bloody stuff just keeps growing, its not unusual to see 18"+ of growth in a year.
We outwinter most of our herd on moorland most of the winter, but they come in march and because of location high up, right next to the sea, the grass doesn't really get going til may, so those cattle are fed bales out side, traditionally on the site of the target railway because all the top soil has been pushed off, so this past winter I though "I wonder what would happen if i moved those ring feeders (4) around the gorse..... wow what a reasult!
The photo is abit far away, but if you look to the left you'll see the 4 ring feeders surrounded by green, this is grass, not gorse, where as directly above and also on the right of the photo the darker green is gorse regrowth....just from flailing in early may!

So next spring, much more of the same!

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Yesssssssssss! Finally caught up with this thread after starting reading during lambing back in feb, then life got in the way of speed reading it all!


Really great thread guys

@Kiwi Pete looking forward to seeing how your plans are coming along in November..... I wonder if we'll even need a satnav.....or just look out for the brightest green for miles around

We've been playing with electric fencing for a few years, mostly as fixed subdivisions in to 5ac paddocks.
This year we took abit of a leap and had about 150ac mapped out by Precision grazing/ kiwitech uk, with the intention of physically getting 70/80acs of that mapping up and running this year.....thats now going to be more like next year now.
Alot of the new pipework has gone down though at least.
I'll put maps up when i can find them.


In the meantime here's a couple things I think fit in to the Holistic thinking....

Dad and me have always carried a full sized viskey (2/3s sized mattock) on the landrover for digging thistles.
Now I mostly travel by quad, the viskey is abit big to lug around on the bike, so I bought a micro mattock off ebay, but the short handle meant getting off the bike to dig thistles, so abit of light steel tube slipped over the handle as a extension means i can drive-by dig thistles from the seat of the bike

View attachment 833425View attachment 833426


We have quite a gorse problem, particularly on the areas of the farm that had a target carrying mini rail track for tank and mortar practice during ww2.
So those areas were first pushed up by bulldozers to make the banks and bunkers, then blown up, then "reinstated" by bulldozer, so the gorse got a good hold, dad kept it cut til he decided to have 5 kids, at that point the gorse exploded to a jungle, so once I came home to farm, we had it slashed down....twice by contractors, then I've either flailed or sprayed regrowth, but the bloody stuff just keeps growing, its not unusual to see 18"+ of growth in a year.
We outwinter most of our herd on moorland most of the winter, but they come in march and because of location high up, right next to the sea, the grass doesn't really get going til may, so those cattle are fed bales out side, traditionally on the site of the target railway because all the top soil has been pushed off, so this past winter I though "I wonder what would happen if i moved those ring feeders (4) around the gorse..... wow what a reasult!
The photo is abit far away, but if you look to the left you'll see the 4 ring feeders surrounded by green, this is grass, not gorse, where as directly above and also on the right of the photo the darker green is gorse regrowth....just from flailing in early may!

View attachment 833427

So next spring, much more of the same!

But it never work here......

I take it from your post that you're both following the well worn trail to the guru at Owaka Dave? Enjoy every minute (and FFS drink some tea to help him get rid of the tea bags).

 

[exmoor dave]

But it never work here......

I take it from your post that you're both following the well worn trail to the guru at Owaka Dave? Enjoy every minute (and FFS drink some tea to help him get rid of the tea bags).

Yes, Honeymoon in NZ in November

My better half and me are pro tea drinkers, I realised yesterday when she arrived home with a bag of 1100 tea bags of our excellent local blend, that in the time it took to get through the last bag, only one tea spoon of coffee was removed from the jar.... and that was only when the tea ran out for a day

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Yesssssssssss! Finally caught up with this thread after starting reading during lambing back in feb, then life got in the way of speed reading it all!


Really great thread guys

@Kiwi Pete looking forward to seeing how your plans are coming along in November..... I wonder if we'll even need a satnav.....or just look out for the brightest green for miles around

We've been playing with electric fencing for a few years, mostly as fixed subdivisions in to 5ac paddocks.
This year we took abit of a leap and had about 150ac mapped out by Precision grazing/ kiwitech uk, with the intention of physically getting 70/80acs of that mapping up and running this year.....thats now going to be more like next year now.
Alot of the new pipework has gone down though at least.
I'll put maps up when i can find them.


In the meantime here's a couple things I think fit in to the Holistic thinking....

Dad and me have always carried a full sized viskey (2/3s sized mattock) on the landrover for digging thistles.
Now I mostly travel by quad, the viskey is abit big to lug around on the bike, so I bought a micro mattock off ebay, but the short handle meant getting off the bike to dig thistles, so abit of light steel tube slipped over the handle as a extension means i can drive-by dig thistles from the seat of the bike

View attachment 833425View attachment 833426


We have quite a gorse problem, particularly on the areas of the farm that had a target carrying mini rail track for tank and mortar practice during ww2.
So those areas were first pushed up by bulldozers to make the banks and bunkers, then blown up, then "reinstated" by bulldozer, so the gorse got a good hold, dad kept it cut til he decided to have 5 kids, at that point the gorse exploded to a jungle, so once I came home to farm, we had it slashed down....twice by contractors, then I've either flailed or sprayed regrowth, but the bloody stuff just keeps growing, its not unusual to see 18"+ of growth in a year.
We outwinter most of our herd on moorland most of the winter, but they come in march and because of location high up, right next to the sea, the grass doesn't really get going til may, so those cattle are fed bales out side, traditionally on the site of the target railway because all the top soil has been pushed off, so this past winter I though "I wonder what would happen if i moved those ring feeders (4) around the gorse..... wow what a reasult!
The photo is abit far away, but if you look to the left you'll see the 4 ring feeders surrounded by green, this is grass, not gorse, where as directly above and also on the right of the photo the darker green is gorse regrowth....just from flailing in early may!

View attachment 833427

So next spring, much more of the same!

Hopefully we'll at least have some of the project underway when you get here, Dave! Slow going as yet, but it needs to be right.

I did just order twelve grand's worth of stuff for us to look at ?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Yes, Honeymoon in NZ in November

My better half and me are pro tea drinkers, I realised yesterday when she arrived home with a bag of 1100 tea bags of our excellent local blend, that in the time it took to get through the last bag, only one tea spoon of coffee was removed from the jar.... and that was only when the tea ran out for a day

I can sort your habits out
get in quick, I think we're down to our last 90 teabags

 

[exmoor dave]

Hopefully we'll at least have some of the project underway when you get here, Dave! Slow going as yet, but it needs to be right.

I did just order twelve grand's worth of stuff for us to look at ?

I know the feeling, we got the mapping done, fibreglass lane markers in and boundary markers done. But the need of quite alot of stock fencing to create a solid side to two of the systems has slowed the job up


Got 4x 100l troughs and 8x micros due for delivery today..... so more toys to look at

 

[Bury the Trash]

Ah yes, miles tea, as sold by mv.