- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
50 cattle and 600 sheep will soon knock it down.... we're due a cold wet week and so the fences will be going up
"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
- Location
- Cornwall
Impressive!
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I'm amazed by just how much growth it has early in the season, I took it down to around 10cm last time but it really seems to be hitting its straps
Quite a slow spring down here, quite a few farmers offloading ewes& lambs 'all counted' to ease the burden. Was tempted to buy some but the hoggets are easier... and $1.50/week
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
very nice - so you're mid/late spring or have you started summer?
texas pete
Member
- Location
- East Mids
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Very early spring down here - still pretty cool and damp yet, soil is still sitting around that 7.5° mark so we're prepared for a rush of growth shortly.
Hard to beat "the many mouths effect" at this time of year, regrowth is pretty incredible even the next day after grazing, so I'm looking at alternative grazing for the heifers and our sheep. Heifers went out on the verge
behind a wire; the sheep/goat/feral chickens are in the calf paddock, going to give that a good grazing out as it's got away from our little calves now.
A couple of the heifers are starting to drip milk now, so can't be too far off hatching
I can hear the bloody goat clomping about on something..... and the rams were standing on each others backs to prune the cypress hedge.
Hard to beat "the many mouths effect" at this time of year, regrowth is pretty incredible even the next day after grazing, so I'm looking at alternative grazing for the heifers and our sheep. Heifers went out on the verge
A couple of the heifers are starting to drip milk now, so can't be too far off hatching
I can hear the bloody goat clomping about on something..... and the rams were standing on each others backs to prune the cypress hedge.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
Just arrived....
Review to follow when I get time to read it.
Review to follow when I get time to read it.
The Key to Saving Family Farms Is in the Soil - EcoWatch
Would it sound too good to be true if I was to say that there was a simple, profitable and underused agricultural method to help feed everybody, cool the planet, and revitalize rural America? I used to think so, until I started visiting farmers who are restoring fertility to their land, stashing...
www.ecowatch.com
- Location
- Cornwall
Ordered my copy earlier! Gonna need a bigger book shelf!
- Location
- West Yorkshire
Well it isn’t going to get any drier than it is for the next few days so opted to get them out onto this for the last time
Nothing been here since 8th September. Docks are dying back nicely, I’ve managed to eat them down this year before going to seed on every rotation so will see what happens next year with them hopefully it will have hurt them ?
Calves are looking well even if they have grown a good coat of hair way more than I’ve seen before. I wonder if it’s a sign for a bad winter to come . I’ll probably have to clip there backs once I get them in weaned and settled which will be a first for me
Nothing been here since 8th September. Docks are dying back nicely, I’ve managed to eat them down this year before going to seed on every rotation so will see what happens next year with them hopefully it will have hurt them ?
Calves are looking well even if they have grown a good coat of hair way more than I’ve seen before. I wonder if it’s a sign for a bad winter to come . I’ll probably have to clip there backs once I get them in weaned and settled which will be a first for me
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Bit of a before/after shot
I notice that many graziers at this stage are eating down into the "yellow", now to me this suggests they are limiting their intake or grazing too low for the grass.
This may be a result of not grazing quickly enough (rotation speed) or simply not moving them on quickly enough, so they're taking that 3rd and 4th bite off the plant.
That's going to stress the plant into booting, I will emphasise that "lax grazing" will result in some plants not being pruned as well as they could be.
Somewhere in the middle is that flat, mown appearance, and that's where we are aiming for (hence the sheeps) rather than allowing it to get too patchy, yet.
Plenty of time yet, but "next winter starts this spring", to this end we'll begin building our reserve on the next round of grazing, otherwise we'll probably shift the sward composition away from our focus species to the earlier heading species.
Eg, we'll prevent the browntop and fog from reproducing, but allow the timothy, meadowgrass, ryegrass, and clover species to express themselves fully - later on.
This is the gamble, decided by rainfall, rotation speed, and stocking rates
- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
no sign of my copy yet . . .
awkward
Member
- Location
- kerry ireland
So roughly what kind of stock rate and rotation length are we talking at this point. Will u hold recovery time in next round or will growth rates be high enough to move faster. Trying to put this into my dairy context
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
Oooh topical question time - re autumnal rotation time changes - as im fairly certain im mucking this bit up (mainly due to having too many mobs and trying to do tupping)
how do you speed up from when your in a 90/60/40 odd day rotation in august to a 21 day say - as if you just start launching ahead then youll be hitting your last heavily grazed paddock before its come back to 3 leaf.??
i think im scared to move to fast but i know i should be moving the mobs faster or on larger areas but yet not getting that only eating the sweeties effect.
how do you speed up from when your in a 90/60/40 odd day rotation in august to a 21 day say - as if you just start launching ahead then youll be hitting your last heavily grazed paddock before its come back to 3 leaf.??
i think im scared to move to fast but i know i should be moving the mobs faster or on larger areas but yet not getting that only eating the sweeties effect.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I don't think we'll go too much faster, no real need as we will need to shift some of these bulls before too long.
Haven't got a answer but know what you mean , I've been on 24 day breaks all summer, speeded up September & added more land into the grazing area but the cow's are eating at double the rate now & I'm still not keeping up with appetite so will start buffer feeding tomorrow.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
How heavily stocked are you, if you haven't got enough mouths on then it's difficult to get "that good graze" IYSWIM?
I'm not worried about 3 leaf stage at this point in the season; because of the variation in pasture levels, if I wait that long then I'm missing the sweet spot in a lot of the pasture, which will tend to make it more uneven and clumpy as we go along, I'm trying to keep it all evenly clipped without hurting the plants by harsh repetitive grazing - "training them to stay small" .... the reason being, then you end up with 3 leafed plants that reach 3 inches tall, when you could have 2 foot tall plants with 2 leaves?
"As soon as the roots are fully replenished" say most of the old books - and in spring, with abundant moisture and fertility, that isn't very long. They don't say much about leaves.
It's a juggle in the spring with diverse pastures, (hence the great monoculture ryegrass fad as it is easy to manage*) because you really have to be observant and look a lot at what you're doing - to manage them well.
When graziers got vehicles, much of that observation began to happen from a seat.
Much of the management, then, also happens from a seat....
Yellow residuals don't do much photosynthesising, neither do stems, neither do little plants shaded by big dead plants - often it's a case of managing for what you don't want, to get what you do want.
We want as many leafy tillers as we can get - for summer
If you want to change from 75 days to 35 days over a given timeframe, then draw up a graph. Draw a straight line, and that gives you a target allocation or speed, a path that will get you there.
Halfway through, it will say 55 days!
That's basically the guts of a "spring rotation planner", which is at once overly simplistic, and also very handy on most farms in a busy period where planning and recording grazing can sometimes slip.
Rotational grazing can be a great shortcut if you have rainfall and growth, just remember that it also has flaws - and know what they are.
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
cool - so for autumn its the revers- but you have the september grass bump and then slwoing down towards winter --- Which is happening just as your beginning to have to split the mob into the breeding groups and others.
currently im on just short of 1ac per 2 days for 70 ewes and 25 ewelambs. which im holding for the next 16 days when ill break out into 2 beeding groups. which im aiming (i think to creep up to 1 ac per day after the 17 days of the tup.
currently im on just short of 1ac per 2 days for 70 ewes and 25 ewelambs. which im holding for the next 16 days when ill break out into 2 beeding groups. which im aiming (i think to creep up to 1 ac per day after the 17 days of the tup.