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

Rob Garrett

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Derbyshire UK
A few days ago, I found a week old lamb in the field with injuries around its face and neck. I thought a fox had tried to take it away but it was too heavy. Yesterday I found a dead new born lamb with a hole its neck and blood on the skin. It can't be a fox as it would have taken it away. I am trying to work out which animal would do this. Does anyone know?
Labrador! Or any other dog, if you can see both puncture wounds where the canine teeth have penetrated, put your thumb on one hole, first finger on second hole. Will give an indication of top jaw width and size of critter you are dealing with. Leave a dead one where you find it & sit down wind with gun, just before first light. Some folk use Stockholm tar on lambs necks, but if they are taken at birth then lead injection is best!
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Best cure for any dog

4659CDF2-5384-4DEA-8D22-79AFC59A4337.jpeg
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Labrador! Or any other dog, if you can see both puncture wounds where the canine teeth have penetrated, put your thumb on one hole, first finger on second hole. Will give an indication of top jaw width and size of critter you are dealing with. Leave a dead one where you find it & sit down wind with gun, just before first light. Some folk use Stockholm tar on lambs necks, but if they are taken at birth then lead injection is best!
we had trouble with black and white fox taking lambs heads off a couple years ago, someone on here said Stockholm tar so we now put some on the back of the neck and some on the tail head when we turn them out and not had any more hassle
as you said no good if they are born over night but may well stop it after
 

Whitewalker

Member
Jim Gerish is very good
I was fortunate enough to see him speak a couple of times at “Wilmot” early this year

Even a simple thing like pasture is being degraded while the animals are on it and it’s rejuvenating when they aren’t, it pure logic you let them stay on it less and recover more. Sometimes we need to hear things out loud to take them in . Their fencing options choices and calculations are also mind opening
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
Organic Mob Grazing Herbal Grass Seed Mix (Acre Pack)

12.50% PERUN Festulolium
20.00% ROMARK Perennial Ryegrass Late Dip
7.50% ORG RAGNER Timothy
10.00% ORG SWANTE Cocksfoot
12.50% ORG ROZETA Red Clover
5.00% ALICE White Clover
2.50% LIFLEX White Clover
4.00% ORG MAGA Lucerne
16.00% ORG Common Vetch
2.50% TONIC Plantain
2.50% Burnet
2.50% Sheep’s Parsley
0.50% Yarrow
2.00% CHOICE Chicory
100% (12.50 kg per acre)

It's some poor hill ground next door to me I took on 3 years ago, grew bugger all, plough it limed it loads a dung then in to kale then in to this mix, very pleased with it. Especially as everything's drying up so fast.
What was the seed rate and when did you sow? Is it arable land or Pp? Looks really good. Too embarrassed to post a picture of mine this year
 

tinsheet

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Somerset
What was the seed rate and when did you sow? Is it arable land or Pp? Looks really good. Too embarrassed to post a picture of mine this year


12.5 kg acre, end of May last year following kale that had cattle out wintered on it. Before that it was pp for at least 40 years, steep ground 1100 ft up facing North on the edge of Exmoor.
As I said drilled end of May, lightly grazed with cattle for 2 weeks in september, then a few store lambs later on, nothing on it after Christmas, first pass mid April 30 day rest!
last summer it looked very different, was all there but covered with fat hen and redshank.
was very tempted to top it but that goes against my supposed new way of thinking, lambs did chew it down fair, only disappointing thing is the vetch has not taken to well, hey-ho can't have it all :unsure:
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thought of the dairy-farmers on here when I saw this pop up on FB.
Screenshot_20200603-093023_Facebook.jpg

Might be something for @Whitewalker to try because a 15 minute shift isn't even going to need a water supply - they aren't gonna be drinking...

Rough guesstimate 360x550kg cows =200 tonnes
÷.39ha = 520,000kg/ha density, or about the same as what we're doing here with 13 tonnes on .025ha

But because we're using youngstock, we're getting them on it for quarter of a day not quarter of an hour. Don't need to worry about production on 4 meals a day.
 

Whitewalker

Member
Thought of the dairy-farmers on here when I saw this pop up on FB. View attachment 883833
Might be something for @Whitewalker to try because a 15 minute shift isn't even going to need a water supply - they aren't gonna be drinking...

Rough guesstimate 360x550kg cows =200 tonnes
÷.39ha = 520,000kg/ha density, or about the same as what we're doing here with 13 tonnes on .025ha

But because we're using youngstock, we're getting them on it for quarter of a day not quarter of an hour. Don't need to worry about production on 4 meals a day.

Holy moly .

Good news here , put our dry cow silage in today. Held out for longer to keep cover on soil as it’s been so dry mowed and lifted in 6 hours. Since finishing it’s been raining well .

we have nice cover on grazing so hopefully it kicksoff growth and we can sink our teeth into a bit of this new technique. ? how exciting
We’re back to 12 hour breaks
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
So, went through lambs again yesterday evening, only a couple new cases of orf that are very mild and only one previous bad case that's maybe getting a little worse, but lamb still doing fine. Majority seem to be clearing up fast. Now i'm thinking of going back to plan A and joining up the 2 mobs this weekend, as lambs in other mob are stronger anyway. Grass growth isn't all that fast, so thinking maybe better to focus on grass and just risk a few more orf cases...cant make my mind up.

I appreciate how important it is to stay as flexible as possible with grazing plans, so nothing is fixed in stone, but sometimes find myself spending far too much time over-thinking every scenario.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Interesting revelation about this no-till covercrop we tried this year. Had a couple of mates call out the other day to have a look and we established that where the crop is thinner, there's actually no less food in it than the "good bits" because of the grass that's come away.
Because it's so rested the quality has dropped off, but the DM has risen.
This is what I meant by "poorer stuff" BTW, other than a few oats and the odd radish or brassica, it's mainly just grass and vetch.
20200603_121554.jpg
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Interesting revelation about this no-till covercrop we tried this year. Had a couple of mates call out the other day to have a look and we established that where the crop is thinner, there's actually no less food in it than the "good bits" because of the grass that's come away.
Because it's so rested the quality has dropped off, but the DM has risen.
This is what I meant by "poorer stuff" BTW, other than a few oats and the odd radish or brassica, it's mainly just grass and vetch.View attachment 883886
to a point then you may as well not have bothered ?
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
As long as orf isn't so bad it's causing a lot of lambs to suffer really badly with it I wouldn't vaccinate for it either. The lambs will get over it quite quickly when it has run it's course it probably just looks worse because all the lambs are getting it at once as they are mobbed up. Maybe a lot of lambs wouldn't get challenged under set stocking as they wouldn't be close enough to catch it so are all getting it now. If the mothers had never caught it it's unlikely they would pass on any immunity to their lambs either which means it could be worse because of that too. I think it will get less and less of a problem as you go on with this job as the flock gains immunity from it and pass it on to their lambs. I'd mob them up and carry on as normal as long as it isn't really bad.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
to a point then you may as well not have bothered ?
Depends what I think it's doing, purely from a "gotta feed the cows" perspective then it would be marginal.
From a diversity and "outcomes" point of view then I see it as a good investment, whereas another farmer would see a 10T crop of beet with no weeds as "a big success" or a good investment, even if it buggered his field for 8 years afterwards.
The interesting thing will be in what happens next year, once the oats have finished and the radish have rotted away...

one thing for sure, if I hadn't tried it then I wouldn't have winter feed that I do, because I would have grazed it already.
I know myself well enough that I would have overridden my grazing chart and not kept the gate shut for 4 whole months.
And I wouldn't have learnt how powerful rest + stock density + recovery could be without trying it.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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