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

[Kiwi Pete]

Is topping high actually doing anything that the grazing is not doing by itself?

How is the decision made, regarding your goal to improve soil structure, ie what would happen if you did not?
And how do you 'test' the benefits vs drawbacks of it.

 

[Blaithin]

I think we should bé aiming to feed live plants year round. Got a way to go yet! But others are doing it, so it is possible.

No it’s not

Well maybe if I build a giant Quonset for fodder.

Coincidentally, pre globalization, a lot of food consumed here by people during the winter was also dried or pickled.

 

[som farmer]

Is topping high actually doing anything that the grazing is not doing by itself?

How is the decision made, regarding your goal to improve soil structure, ie what would happen if you did not?
And how do you 'test' the benefits vs drawbacks of it.

yes it does achieve things, firstly it looks tidier, secondly the cattle happily eat, what they wouldn't touch beforehand, also knocks of a few weeds, gives the ground a bit of a reset.
The other big point, if you rent ground, perhaps more so on short terms, is to take into consideration, the land owners view, he may well prefer it kept tidy, and if not obliged, may say, bye bye.
It is a funny operation, that visually sits in the public eye, they do not want to see untidy fields, it spoils their fairytail vision of the country side, and as we move forward, subs will be for the public good. It is not what we know to be 'right', it is what the public think is right, they have more influence than we do, with s/mkts and politicians, hence flower pots out side the dairy ! The new ELMS system coming out, is based on good practice, and public good, all very sensible, but it will be drawn up by civil servants, who basically haven't got a clue, this can be seen in previous exoplanetary books, with incredibly precise drawings, of hedges and broods of partridges, ponds with newts and toads, but showing the 'ideal' habitat, they want, or imagine country side to be. Now, they have neither any EU influence, to curb their views, and are told it's for the public good. Plenty of us, on this thread, are well on the way to achieving the very aims they think they want. But they haven't got a clue, of how to get there ! It will be a tricky path to follow, at times.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Do you test your decision against the goal of "improve the soil structure" though?

Because you had identified that as something that would improve your business resilience.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

No it’s not

Well maybe if I build a giant Quonset for fodder.

Coincidentally, pre globalization, a lot of food consumed here by people during the winter was also dried or pickled.

All about context, isn't it. Living roots all year is probably possible in the UK and mainland Europe (below a certain altitude) but not very likely in your winters. Well, technically they'd be alive but not actively growing.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

All about context, isn't it. Living roots all year is probably possible in the UK and mainland Europe (below a certain altitude) but not very likely in your winters. Well, technically they'd be alive but not actively growing.

Living is maybe more important than actively growing?
Noticing the great burst of "life" which appears in extreme climates like Northern America, Africa, or Aus. - it actually doesn't grow much less in a few months than a grassland that grows all year round in a temperate climate.
The biome is adapted to thrive to the conditions
(context )

 

[som farmer]

Do you test your decision against the goal of "improve the soil structure" though?

Because you had identified that as something that would improve your business resilience.

if you take a broad view of regenerative farming, it's basically looking after, the above, and below ground. In many ways it's relearning what has been lost over the last 80yrs. Pre modern farming, if you didn't look after your soil, by way of a rotation, it didn't look after you. The norfolk 4 course rotation was perfectly balanced, and worked. The last 80 or so years, have seen a seismic change in how we farm, it is only in recent years has the degradation been recognised. So how do you judge success, you obviously have to make a profit, simply to provide for your family, resilience would cover that basic point, can you keep doing it yr in/out. To judge how you are improving soil structure, dig a hole and look, seriously you could judge it against, yield and imput, if yields increase, and imputs decrease, you very obviously are getting something right ! But if you have been farming your patch for years, you will know when things change, either for the better or worse. We have tried things here, and have been really pleased with the results, if we are still pleased, in 10 yrs time, we will know we were right. It's quite a difficult question to easily answer, so much of farming is by instinct, clouded recently by the easily available chemical answer. Perhaps another answer could be judged by, 'are you happy with how you are farming'.
Renting ground, as we do, the shorter term agreements, have to take into account the owners wishes, however a lot can be achieved by stocking levels, cutting regime, what you apply, chemical or natural, certain you can improve pastures by those means, as long as you think over/under soil. Our base is long term, ish, and i have a very free hand, and can therefore experiment, as we are doing.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

if you take a broad view of regenerative farming, it's basically looking after, the above, and below ground. In many ways it's relearning what has been lost over the last 80yrs. Pre modern farming, if you didn't look after your soil, by way of a rotation, it didn't look after you. The norfolk 4 course rotation was perfectly balanced, and worked. The last 80 or so years, have seen a seismic change in how we farm, it is only in recent years has the degradation been recognised. So how do you judge success, you obviously have to make a profit, simply to provide for your family, resilience would cover that basic point, can you keep doing it yr in/out. To judge how you are improving soil structure, dig a hole and look, seriously you could judge it against, yield and imput, if yields increase, and imputs decrease, you very obviously are getting something right ! But if you have been farming your patch for years, you will know when things change, either for the better or worse. We have tried things here, and have been really pleased with the results, if we are still pleased, in 10 yrs time, we will know we were right. It's quite a difficult question to easily answer, so much of farming is by instinct, clouded recently by the easily available chemical answer. Perhaps another answer could be judged by, 'are you happy with how you are farming'.
Renting ground, as we do, the shorter term agreements, have to take into account the owners wishes, however a lot can be achieved by stocking levels, cutting regime, what you apply, chemical or natural, certain you can improve pastures by those means, as long as you think over/under soil. Our base is long term, ish, and i have a very free hand, and can therefore experiment, as we are doing.

Cheers - you bring up some excellent points to discuss

I've mentioned before why I'm generally opposed to the branding or definition of "regenerative ag/farming/grazing".
I think @Henarar has also made the point that "isn't that just good farming, old-fashioned farming".
Another one wants to see the peer reviewed science and another one wants to know is their grazing holistic and what's the difference between rotational grazing and HPG and MIG and so on.

Organics, this is about soil health and better food, so it's regenerative, yes?

It's a massive buzzword, this one is all for RA and this one says there's no conclusive data. Let's examine this as a whole and see if we can't pin it down a little?

If I had to define regenerative farming then it wouldn't even have the world soil in it - all farmers think they are doing the best thing for their soil within their constraints. But it usually ends up about the same way.

My regenerative is "peer inspired science at field level".
You basically form a group (like this thread, and local proponents, online groups, the more ideas the better) and then you run "probes" or safe-to-fail experiments on your farm/lawn/garden over a period of time.
Don't discard any tool unless it's illegal, unethical, or similar.
Someone who's PfL isn't going to chuck grain at their cows as someone who's organic isn't going to trial various rates of roundup.

But you must test, and often science (as in conventional, reductionist science) isn't the best way to success or failure of the methods. We must test 'outcomes' and 'function', because that's how nature does is.
Success leaves clues - but it's context-based.

This is why holism is a key principle of regenerative, Savory has his flaws but his testing is close to ideal.
As is mutualism, it's no good "doing better" if your landlord says byebye because of "how better looks".

Ok, Gabe went to Dave Brandt and saw covercrops. He realised his failed crops weren't failed because the actually improved what he wanted to improve and so he took it home and experimented.
Then he looked at his native grassland and saw diversity, and put the two together, and shifted towards more complex covercrops.

But the regenerative part is that it's a process of continuous learning, we may mimic natural grazing behaviours and herd impact - but regenerative is mimicry of evolution itself.
Nature is always throwing up probes - we may call them mutations, but it's how we improve rapidly

Adaptation is halfway there, that's where I see normal agriculture.. sort of static, almost experimenting.. but not really going anywhere... largely making decisions based on what works.

Like the TFF what pickup/shoes/socks/drill/plough threads, really. No testdrives. No suck-it-and-see.

That's why I have funny ideas about making RA about soil or climate change or anything other than 'continual learning via experiments and testing outcomes'.

So, what have we tried in 4 years?
We tried farming, ie producing lambs and fattening calves.
We tried putting them behind a wire at various times of the year.
We tried bunching them up more and less, changing rotation length by varying paddock size with static numbers (or near enough)
We tried varying numbers and combining various stock classes
We tried leaving more grass behind
We tried leaving less grass behind
We tried topping early in the season
We tried topping later in the season
We tried not topping at all
We tried leaving grass behind and topping
We tried topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not toppimg and drilling multispecies CC after applying a weak salt&vinegar spray
We tried grazing it at 200,000 to 1200,000kg/ha
Now we're testing high utilisation with long recoveries in summer, because it worked well in the winter

And, we filled in 11 exercise books with handwritten notes, and 3 SD cards with photographs, maybe performed 400 slake and infiltration tests, and taken over 200 soil samples for lab work

I'm in a hurry to learn

 

[Samcowman]

Hell of a piece of work you have done there Pete.
What have all the soil samples said about the changes in your soil over this time?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Hell of a piece of work you have done there Pete.
What have all the soil samples said about the changes in your soil over this time?

It's actually been a whole heap of fun.
The best bit is that the bank account reflects it.

Most surprising has been the pH stabilisation as the soil weans itself off the legacy of TSP+Lime, because it's a whole farm thing and hard to test (without taking a 27 year backward step to confirm). But it still flies in the face of best practice.

The main obvious change with the lab tests, that you don't necessarily "see" with your spade is just how much we've increased topsoil.

There was quite a definite A and B horizon when we first arrived, but now a lot of the subsoil has become topsoil and that's awesome, (I don't use awesome often!) really the most encouraging thing about the testing.
Sure the availability of nutrients has increased, which means we "could" be mining with much bigger shovels, but it's the topsoil growth that's really impressed us.
Especially when combined with the shift to a grazing business as opposed to the production business.. being less extractive and more adaptable is written on the wall. So we're meeting our goals.

In essence, we're slowly adding topsoil on top, rapidly building it deeper down, so there's massive sequestration potential to be had by addressing the main concerns - water and energy cycles - and a take no prisoners approach to it all.
In the vicinity of 10-12 tonnes per acre, per year, and it's still speeding up as it's compounded by all the little tweaks.

I'm excited to see what happens next, if we drop the sheep out of the system to simplify maintaining a constant SD and slow the grazing down by using non-selective grazing twice a year, with 2-3 'conservation' style grazings to keep the land hydrated going into summer, I reckon we can sink close to 30 tonnes of C per ha without snake-oils or amendments in a good year. You can't make it rain but you can change what rain does.

The silvopasture / agroforestry layer is where I think we'll make our biggest gains of all regarding improving our soil resource.
Grazing is just the beginning, if we can create extra complexity with everything from fodder species to currants and berries, then we can leverage the business off that and be less dependent on the grazing.
That'll make tactical destocking more affordable, and let us punch that plant recovery out "at will" and or for longer periods of time.
Much as I like my day job, I would like the ranch to have one too.

 

[som farmer]

Cheers - you bring up some excellent points to discuss

I've mentioned before why I'm generally opposed to the branding or definition of "regenerative ag/farming/grazing".
I think @Henarar has also made the point that "isn't that just good farming, old-fashioned farming".
Another one wants to see the peer reviewed science and another one wants to know is their grazing holistic and what's the difference between rotational grazing and HPG and MIG and so on.

Organics, this is about soil health and better food, so it's regenerative, yes?

It's a massive buzzword, this one is all for RA and this one says there's no conclusive data. Let's examine this as a whole and see if we can't pin it down a little?

If I had to define regenerative farming then it wouldn't even have the world soil in it - all farmers think they are doing the best thing for their soil within their constraints. But it usually ends up about the same way.

My regenerative is "peer inspired science at field level".
You basically form a group (like this thread, and local proponents, online groups, the more ideas the better) and then you run "probes" or safe-to-fail experiments on your farm/lawn/garden over a period of time.
Don't discard any tool unless it's illegal, unethical, or similar.
Someone who's PfL isn't going to chuck grain at their cows as someone who's organic isn't going to trial various rates of roundup.

But you must test, and often science (as in conventional, reductionist science) isn't the best way to success or failure of the methods. We must test 'outcomes' and 'function', because that's how nature does is.
Success leaves clues - but it's context-based.

This is why holism is a key principle of regenerative, Savory has his flaws but his testing is close to ideal.
As is mutualism, it's no good "doing better" if your landlord says byebye because of "how better looks".

Ok, Gabe went to Dave Brandt and saw covercrops. He realised his failed crops weren't failed because the actually improved what he wanted to improve and so he took it home and experimented.
Then he looked at his native grassland and saw diversity, and put the two together, and shifted towards more complex covercrops.

But the regenerative part is that it's a process of continuous learning, we may mimic natural grazing behaviours and herd impact - but regenerative is mimicry of evolution itself.
Nature is always throwing up probes - we may call them mutations, but it's how we improve rapidly

Adaptation is halfway there, that's where I see normal agriculture.. sort of static, almost experimenting.. but not really going anywhere... largely making decisions based on what works.

Like the TFF what pickup/shoes/socks/drill/plough threads, really. No testdrives. No suck-it-and-see.

That's why I have funny ideas about making RA about soil or climate change or anything other than 'continual learning via experiments and testing outcomes'.

So, what have we tried in 4 years?
We tried farming, ie producing lambs and fattening calves.
We tried putting them behind a wire at various times of the year.
We tried bunching them up more and less, changing rotation length by varying paddock size with static numbers (or near enough)
We tried varying numbers and combining various stock classes
We tried leaving more grass behind
We tried leaving less grass behind
We tried topping early in the season
We tried topping later in the season
We tried not topping at all
We tried leaving grass behind and topping
We tried topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not toppimg and drilling multispecies CC after applying a weak salt&vinegar spray
We tried grazing it at 200,000 to 1200,000kg/ha
Now we're testing high utilisation with long recoveries in summer, because it worked well in the winter

And, we filled in 11 exercise books with handwritten notes, and 3 SD cards with photographs, maybe performed 400 slake and infiltration tests, and taken over 200 soil samples for lab work

I'm in a hurry to learn

there's no real thing in farming, called hurry. Tongue in cheek, the first thing that caught my eye, was the amount of trials, in 4 yrs, did you leave it long enough ?
But i know where you are coming from, often say, farming is a long term industry, living in a short term world, and that is a problem, i have loads of ideas, but cannot try them all at once. As for l/lords, we have suffered x3 bad years, land on our doorstep, will both give us chance to 'recoup' supplies, and it is close, and long term, we simply need it, bills have to be paid, buying forage is a mugs game, which we have to get out of. Interestingly, 12 months ago, we didn't think we would get a chance of any more land, and in dec, picked up 2 lots, 16acres and 56 acres, and have been asked to ring someone, about another 38, and another 20 is possible, if we decide it is worth it ! All that land is long term grass, and plenty of scope to experiment, and am looking forward to farming it.
So, with all your trials, have you 'found' a winning formula ? I feel in a serious rush, knowing there isn't that many more years to see results, and full of ideas !
All farms are slightly different, and the 'trick' is to find a bespoke solution for your patch, that you find agreeable to you. My 'take' is we have to start somewhere, here it's soil, i have always been aware of soil status, but, in my youth, i thought chemicals would sort the 'weedy' bits out, sh1t kept it healthy, and a regular hole digger, to spot pans, which happen very easily here. Then, are those pans caused by loss of structure, by heavy tractors, or lots of hooves, i don't know the answer, yet. Now, i recognise that many problems are caused by us not understanding soil, so that will be the first step, the next step, finding what grows, and survives the best, thus we have sown different herbs and drought resistant grasses. It's all experimenting !

 

[Kiwi Pete]

4 years... it is a blink of an eye.
It's no more 'valid' than putting some N on and seeing the grass grow dark and tall and finding "the answer".
You see that magic recipe an awful lot.
Trees, grass, plantain, fertiliser, monoculture, polyculture.... all these things work in certain contexts.
It's only principles that "work"

What works here in a year with 680mm of rain may actually not be the best choice if we get 1600mm - we've had this variability in those 4½ years.

So it's important that we constantly monitor the early effects of changes to management and keep our decisions "fluid" or flexible based on what we see at our feet and in our bank accounts.

We aren't looking for the best answer that we alone can come up with, but the best outcomes.
[That's why ELMS is the next big fùckup, as it stands].

hence how do we know if pre mowing or topping or leaving it alone is the right thing to do "this time"? Or non-selective grazing, or other possible habits?

We have to do the probes, and they have to be small enough to manage the risks (which is why I like 'safe to fail' as a term).
And we must assume we are wrong, even if past experience shows that it was right.

 

[graham99]

Is topping high actually doing anything that the grazing is not doing by itself?

How is the decision made, regarding your goal to improve soil structure, ie what would happen if you did not?
And how do you 'test' the benefits vs drawbacks of it.

think of topping as a way to set to brake point on the grass to stop grazing to low . i like the idea of the grass having a multi stem crown , 3 inchs long , it also stops pulling as the grass has a weak spot to brake

 

[graham99]

4 years... it is a blink of an eye.
It's no more 'valid' than putting some N on and seeing the grass grow dark and tall and finding "the answer".
You see that magic recipe an awful lot.
Trees, grass, plantain, fertiliser, monoculture, polyculture.... all these things work in certain contexts.
It's only principles that "work"

What works here in a year with 680mm of rain may actually not be the best choice if we get 1600mm - we've had this variability in those 4½ years.

So it's important that we constantly monitor the early effects of changes to management and keep our decisions "fluid" or flexible based on what we see at our feet and in our bank accounts.

We aren't looking for the best answer that we alone can come up with, but the best outcomes.
[That's why ELMS is the next big fùckup, as it stands].

hence how do we know if pre mowing or topping or leaving it alone is the right thing to do "this time"? Or non-selective grazing, or other possible habits?

We have to do the probes, and they have to be small enough to manage the risks (which is why I like 'safe to fail' as a term).
And we must assume we are wrong, even if past experience shows that it was right.

remember a 135 can drive a big disc mower , keeping the cost low .
for me i like having a root system with a large ungrazable crown . as for premowing its cleaner and it gives the grass a chance to keep up with the weeds , but for this to work you need to NOT DAMAGE the soil in any way and on a fast rotation , you only need to premow 2 times a year , on a slow rotation you need to stop the crown getting to long and you have to have keep a closer eye on things

 

[graham99]

there's no real thing in farming, called hurry. Tongue in cheek, the first thing that caught my eye, was the amount of trials, in 4 yrs, did you leave it long enough ?
But i know where you are coming from, often say, farming is a long term industry, living in a short term world, and that is a problem, i have loads of ideas, but cannot try them all at once. As for l/lords, we have suffered x3 bad years, land on our doorstep, will both give us chance to 'recoup' supplies, and it is close, and long term, we simply need it, bills have to be paid, buying forage is a mugs game, which we have to get out of. Interestingly, 12 months ago, we didn't think we would get a chance of any more land, and in dec, picked up 2 lots, 16acres and 56 acres, and have been asked to ring someone, about another 38, and another 20 is possible, if we decide it is worth it ! All that land is long term grass, and plenty of scope to experiment, and am looking forward to farming it.
So, with all your trials, have you 'found' a winning formula ? I feel in a serious rush, knowing there isn't that many more years to see results, and full of ideas !
All farms are slightly different, and the 'trick' is to find a bespoke solution for your patch, that you find agreeable to you. My 'take' is we have to start somewhere, here it's soil, i have always been aware of soil status, but, in my youth, i thought chemicals would sort the 'weedy' bits out, sh1t kept it healthy, and a regular hole digger, to spot pans, which happen very easily here. Then, are those pans caused by loss of structure, by heavy tractors, or lots of hooves, i don't know the answer, yet. Now, i recognise that many problems are caused by us not understanding soil, so that will be the first step, the next step, finding what grows, and survives the best, thus we have sown different herbs and drought resistant grasses. It's all experimenting !

while i agree with a lot of what you say , remember land not connected to YOUR land incurs a transport cost . the ceapest way to transport grass is in a animal

 

[graham99]

Cheers - you bring up some excellent points to discuss

I've mentioned before why I'm generally opposed to the branding or definition of "regenerative ag/farming/grazing".
I think @Henarar has also made the point that "isn't that just good farming, old-fashioned farming".
Another one wants to see the peer reviewed science and another one wants to know is their grazing holistic and what's the difference between rotational grazing and HPG and MIG and so on.

Organics, this is about soil health and better food, so it's regenerative, yes?

It's a massive buzzword, this one is all for RA and this one says there's no conclusive data. Let's examine this as a whole and see if we can't pin it down a little?

If I had to define regenerative farming then it wouldn't even have the world soil in it - all farmers think they are doing the best thing for their soil within their constraints. But it usually ends up about the same way.

My regenerative is "peer inspired science at field level".
You basically form a group (like this thread, and local proponents, online groups, the more ideas the better) and then you run "probes" or safe-to-fail experiments on your farm/lawn/garden over a period of time.
Don't discard any tool unless it's illegal, unethical, or similar.
Someone who's PfL isn't going to chuck grain at their cows as someone who's organic isn't going to trial various rates of roundup.

But you must test, and often science (as in conventional, reductionist science) isn't the best way to success or failure of the methods. We must test 'outcomes' and 'function', because that's how nature does is.
Success leaves clues - but it's context-based.

This is why holism is a key principle of regenerative, Savory has his flaws but his testing is close to ideal.
As is mutualism, it's no good "doing better" if your landlord says byebye because of "how better looks".

Ok, Gabe went to Dave Brandt and saw covercrops. He realised his failed crops weren't failed because the actually improved what he wanted to improve and so he took it home and experimented.
Then he looked at his native grassland and saw diversity, and put the two together, and shifted towards more complex covercrops.

But the regenerative part is that it's a process of continuous learning, we may mimic natural grazing behaviours and herd impact - but regenerative is mimicry of evolution itself.
Nature is always throwing up probes - we may call them mutations, but it's how we improve rapidly

Adaptation is halfway there, that's where I see normal agriculture.. sort of static, almost experimenting.. but not really going anywhere... largely making decisions based on what works.

Like the TFF what pickup/shoes/socks/drill/plough threads, really. No testdrives. No suck-it-and-see.

That's why I have funny ideas about making RA about soil or climate change or anything other than 'continual learning via experiments and testing outcomes'.

So, what have we tried in 4 years?
We tried farming, ie producing lambs and fattening calves.
We tried putting them behind a wire at various times of the year.
We tried bunching them up more and less, changing rotation length by varying paddock size with static numbers (or near enough)
We tried varying numbers and combining various stock classes
We tried leaving more grass behind
We tried leaving less grass behind
We tried topping early in the season
We tried topping later in the season
We tried not topping at all
We tried leaving grass behind and topping
We tried topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not topping and drilling multispecies CC on the green
We tried not toppimg and drilling multispecies CC after applying a weak salt&vinegar spray
We tried grazing it at 200,000 to 1200,000kg/ha
Now we're testing high utilisation with long recoveries in summer, because it worked well in the winter

And, we filled in 11 exercise books with handwritten notes, and 3 SD cards with photographs, maybe performed 400 slake and infiltration tests, and taken over 200 soil samples for lab work

I'm in a hurry to learn

i am a suming all of the above was done after you had worked out the market was going to pay you , for your chosen product .
why farming used to a walk in the park .
was because the tec assisted you to farm , if the market didn't wont to pay the tractor stayed in the shed , until the market wanted to pay .
another way of looking at it is have a stack of pit silage ,
made cheaply ie instead of topping ,
that is surplus to that years needs ,
to give the you the abilty to buy stock while cheap ,
if the market wants to pay .
it is no different , to investing on the stock market .
the abilty to respond is all that matters

 

[Kiwi Pete]

think of topping as a way to set to brake point on the grass to stop grazing to low . i like the idea of the grass having a multi stem crown , 3 inchs long , it also stops pulling as the grass has a weak spot to brake

That's one way - with sheep in the mob it looks like it helps them 'reach the floor' if it gets really toppy. A more even graze rather than the mosaic, "horse paddock" graze where the miss bits and shave bits

Not that that makes a lot of difference if the next pass is 100 days out, quite a different mindset between the long and short recovery. You'll be no stranger to it up there? How long can you go?

 

[som farmer]

while i agree with a lot of what you say , remember land not connected to YOUR land incurs a transport cost . the ceapest way to transport grass is in a animal

agree, luckily all the land we are looking at, is nearly next door, 16acres is next door, with a gate between ! Dairy is different to beef/sheep, in so much as we need a 'stockpile' of winter fodder. In that case, i would rather 'import' forage from 'outside' and bring the p+k etc in, and allow the 'base' to benefit from that. We have done the hauling distance stuff, it gets expensive, or so we assume, we had a block of 50 acres, rented, 9 miles away, now sold, but because it was nearly main road, gate to gate, trailor rate was 5 mins longer, than my neighbour travelling 2 miles through the lanes !
I regard 'home' as the base, other is a relief valve.
@Kiwi Pete , and the new ELMS, what should be the 'ideal' theory, will be buggered up by civil servants, who have an idealistic view of what the country side should look like, and the rules and regulations, will completely miss the target, some of those people, and a fair chunk of population, think we still wear smocks, and go around with a bit of straw between our lips ! The reality, is that we are a very exciting vibrant industry, caring for our land and livestock, far more than the national health. An industry that is technically advanced, highly mechanised, (well some of them) which is reviewing how we produce, and why, our products, this thread proves that. The basic fact, is that how we farm, dictates whether we continue farming, or fall by the wayside, it has to be profitable.

 

[farmgineer]

At turnout I'm thinking of doing a quick pass over the silage fields, idea is to tip (just take the top off) the winter growth and leave 2/3 standing/trampled... Am I mad?

This would likely be just as the plants start to push beginning of May with a view to cut late June.

Benefits I think are; application of slurry as the squirt at turnout on fresh grass, trample in the residue and dead grass that grew during winter, bring forward turnout reducing housing costs and act as a stress to induce tillering...?

Drawbacks I can think of; taking energy from the system just as it's starting off so more removed from the root system, if it comes wet I'm gonna have some lumpy mowing ground!

Would then follow this with a ballast roller to take out some pather marks that need doing.

Or shall I just get some set stocked sheep in?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

At turnout I'm thinking of doing a quick pass over the silage fields, idea is to tip (just take the top off) the winter growth and leave 2/3 standing/trampled... Am I mad?

This would likely be just as the plants start to push beginning of May with a view to cut late June.

Benefits I think are; application of slurry as the squirt at turnout on fresh grass, trample in the residue and dead grass that grew during winter, bring forward turnout reducing housing costs and act as a stress to induce tillering...?

Drawbacks I can think of; taking energy from the system just as it's starting off so more removed from the root system, if it comes wet I'm gonna have some lumpy mowing ground!

Would then follow this with a ballast roller to take out some pather marks that need doing.

Or shall I just get some set stocked sheep in?

If it's well rested (which it will be) then I would.
I usually used to, just lets you have a bit more time to get the sun into the silage and the grazing stimulates the system. Can't beat saliva!

I'd hedge my bets though this far out, if you have both sheep and cows available.. play ground conditions by ear. Assess your covers.
If you can save yourself the flat rolling job until later then I'd say sheep.
But if it's good for cows it's good for cows!

The inner sadist in me is crying, "both" but I also know what spring is like on a farm.
Set stock sheep and rotate the cows through fast if it's fit, and you can get your slurry on a few days earlier?
More mouths = more stimulated leaf in less time