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

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
I'll send you a copy of Tim Langs' book "Feeding Britain". It'll be fascinating to get your thoughts on his analysis and recommendations. It might also scare you a bit in places!
Nice article by him in the Spectator
 

Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
View attachment 944025
Does anyone know if the fungi that appears on fym is similar to that it the soil. (My first question so i may aswell make it a daft one!!)

They are one of thé Coprinus spp. Which are saprophytes.
View attachment 944025
Does anyone know if the fungi that appears on fym is similar to that it the soil. (My first question so i may aswell make it a daft one!!)

Théy are a Coprinus spp. Saprophytes, so they feed off and décompose organic matter. You find thèm often in dung, bé it manure or in patties. But I also sée thèm on Hay bales left outside.

I do not bélieve they are dépendant in a symbiotic relationship with plants.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
profit for whom, or unequally shared out. I just think they have to keep bringing out new varieties, to justify their wages, rather cynical, but the so called 'best' leys here are not. Never mind, regen farming is creeping into other ag mags, farmers guardian this week. So creating 'new' mixes/varieties, to sell to regen farmers, will fund their wages for a few more years, parasites.
How do we rid ourselves of these parasites, let them starve is my thinking but that 1 extra kg or litre is so valuable its easy convince the ego.
Just think like a parasite yourself, and you will soon see how they scuttle about.

Had a bloke trying to sell me ryegrass not so long ago, would be ideal for my climate and soil type apparently and I'd have more high quality feed than I could shake a stick at. 🙂
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
They are one of thé Coprinus spp. Which are saprophytes.


Théy are a Coprinus spp. Saprophytes, so they feed off and décompose organic matter. You find thèm often in dung, bé it manure or in patties. But I also sée thèm on Hay bales left outside.

I do not bélieve they are dépendant in a symbiotic relationship with plants.
Some trees, perhaps? Pinus spp.? I think I've seen fairly similar types in pine needle litter, without going into spore prints etc to confirm ID.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Nice article by him in the Spectator
It'd be a really interesting thing to ask the great buying public about.

Have you read Jared Diamond's "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race"? Or was it @Blaithin?
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Just think like a parasite yourself, and you will soon see how they scuttle about.

Had a bloke trying to sell me ryegrass not so long ago, would be ideal for my climate and soil type apparently and I'd have more high quality feed than I could shake a stick at. 🙂
hope you didn't disappoint him, he's got to earn a living.
not all ryegrasses are 'bad', it's the amount included in the mixes, perhaps we could get the 'original' r grass back, because it must have been impressive ! Variety is the spice of life, perhaps the same could be said of a ley mixture.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
hope you didn't disappoint him, he's got to earn a living.
not all ryegrasses are 'bad', it's the amount included in the mixes, perhaps we could get the 'original' r grass back, because it must have been impressive ! Variety is the spice of life, perhaps the same could be said of a ley mixture.
A little bit of everything is good.
I don't hate it, but I won't put it on a pedestal or reduce the recovery of the land "specifically for it" because I know where that leads us, away from our goals.

(I recently saw a '55 species mix' that contained 11 different ryegrass cultivars; wait - aren't ryegrass cultivars of the same species?
or do we just pretend that it's diversity of species "because that's what Gabe said to do")

be very aware that the sharks are circling, and that you will always see what you are looking to find.

If you have a "regenerative trial paddock" then it simply won't be as good as you think
 

sheepdogtrail

Member
Livestock Farmer
With respect to reseeding my view is to let some selfseeding occur each year, walking pasture here its easy see the new seed coming up each year, a hybrid of what came before and currently here which is well suited to our environment, proving to me anyway that we can live without some salesmen at times.
Agreed. Productive blocks should be allowed to go fallow for a single cycle every so often as you have the space to do so. Unproductive blocks going to fallow, will in time, create more unproductive blocks.

Or, save your bucks, by managing your blocks.
 

sheepdogtrail

Member
Livestock Farmer
(I recently saw a '55 species mix' that contained 11 different ryegrass cultivars; wait - aren't ryegrass cultivars of the same species?
or do we just pretend that it's diversity of species "because that's what Gabe said to do")

No. For example, Perennial ryegrass cultivars are in the Lolium perenne speices. Other ryegrasses could be and are, in several different species. That is diversity as we have it today. There are quite a few species of ryegrass.

Cultivars belongs to the same species. However, as the result of many different natural and unnatural forces applied to them they went their own way or where pampered and ultimately pushed into a new direction.

Cultivars have unique properties to each other. For example: Some members of the Lolium perenne species have longer legs (tillers) than others. As a organic farmer, who produces sheep, I appreciate that I have a tool that I can allow my sheep to free graze with their teeth with out much risk of picking up a large parasite burden while I know my sheep will leave enough residual to feed the tilth and the soil critters.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Tried a "partial fallow" on a few paddocks last season to bolster the later heading species, actually it worked really well.
Just took the early seeding ones right down and then "bred" from what went to seed late in the season, using high density (4-500,000kg/ha) to protect those tillers from being grazed, bouncing the cattle off while they were still lying down full.

Sabbatical fallow is good, but like you said it has a few drawbacks, namely you can miss a lot of days of full photosynthesis and don't have a lot of control over what is reproducing.

Conventional management around here is exactly the opposite, let the early heading (sh!t grass) species do what they want, and then top the later heading species "because the neighbours are topping, I'd better" which is probably why their pastures go the wrong way and need redone... just like the neighbour's pasture.

Quite a large time and energy input to end up with less quality and less quantity of forage available, especially if the rain stops and they keep topping or grazing low. Even better is parking stock all over the topped stuff to eat regrowth as it comes up 🤷‍♂️
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Nice article by him in the Spectator
Essentially a precis of the book with a slight update for Brexit.

He's right, though, that we need a comprehensive, clear, rational and broad food policy that cuts across departments and binds minsters. Without it things could rapidly turn much worse.

The dogmatic refusal of the Tories to allow our food safety standards to be written into the Agriculture bill, for fear of binding trade negitiotiators (which, ironically, works well for the US trade team), was a very strong indicator of an inherent lack of understanding of the risk they are taking.
 
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Fenwick

Member
Location
Bretagne France
Sabbatical fallow is good, but like you said it has a few drawbacks, namely you can miss a lot of days of full photosynthesis and don't have a lot of control over what is reproducing.

I was on a training day a couple of weeks back. Thé speaker was really good. Working on farms which were finishing limousines on 100% 'grass' and outwintering well.

Je showed a bit of research concerning short term fallow comparéd to cutting thé excess Spring growth.

Thé total biomass produced was less with thé fallow than when cut, thé fallowed area had FAR more biodiversity.

Thé more economical for this particular farm was to fallow thén graze despite thé lower yeild.

I would love to know what thé impacts of fallowing are n+1,n+2 etc
 

GC74

Member
profit for whom, or unequally shared out. I just think they have to keep bringing out new varieties, to justify their wages, rather cynical, but the so called 'best' leys here are not. Never mind, regen farming is creeping into other ag mags, farmers guardian this week. So creating 'new' mixes/varieties, to sell to regen farmers, will fund their wages for a few more years, parasites.
Don’t know if the term regen farming has a future tbh, one I have a dislike for the name and second it’s lack of definition so it can evolve as “it” “we” learns allows anyone and everyone to claim to be regen......starting to see a lot of it here. And all of it seems to come at a cost oddly.
 

GC74

Member
having learn't that young dock leaf's are 25% protien, in a multicut system, they could provide some useful fibre, and send long taproots down, helping to prevent panning, quite a change around ! I wonder how they would survive very regular defoliation, every 5/6 weeks, keep going, or die back.
Again it would be interesting to know what research has been down on a whole range of weeds, other than the most efficient way of killing them. Generally it is becoming accepted that stock respond well to a pasture with a variety of plant life, rather than a monoculture, of ryegrass, and weeds, together with clover. Our problem here, is we lose the rg in a very dry time, and that is why this thread interests me so much. It's the time of year that seed brochures fall through the letter box, and most have a herbal ley mix, all slightly different, so how do we select the 'right' one, perhaps it would be an idea, to post what mixes they have found the best. So far, we have in the ground, cocksfoot, timothy, festololiums, along with clover, plantains, vetches and loads of w clover.
The other brochures arriving are the semen ones, 1 yesterday, 28 hol bulls listed, all genomic, bar 1, and most contain a majority of genomic bulls, and a vast majority of those genomic bulls, one never hears of again, although they tell us genomics is the 'way to go', i do have doubts, similarly the move to friesian, has produced a load of genomic bulls, with very little/none, statistics on shape etc. Perhaps i am just too fussy !
Docks are generally a sign of high available mg and k than a hard pan although a couple varieties do interesting never heard of them been high protein tho
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I was on a training day a couple of weeks back. Thé speaker was really good. Working on farms which were finishing limousines on 100% 'grass' and outwintering well.

Je showed a bit of research concerning short term fallow comparéd to cutting thé excess Spring growth.

Thé total biomass produced was less with thé fallow than when cut, thé fallowed area had FAR more biodiversity.

Thé more economical for this particular farm was to fallow thén graze despite thé lower yeild.

I would love to know what thé impacts of fallowing are n+1,n+2 etc
I think it has to depend on the state and status of the bulk of the area of the individual paddock .

As you say there are pros and cons with any decision, hence the halfway approach (graze out the early stems and breed from some of the late ones) gave us more feed and more cocksfoot and timothy where there was very little under rotational grazing - remember rational grazing?

It's much easier to graze when you aren't in fear, also, for some with rigidity then they have a right to fear running out of grass.
I counter this by being as flexible as possible and then there is a general ranch attitude of "what's the worst that can happen?" and there is more fun and reward in pushing it
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Hares galore.... chased 42 off this part of the ranch. Should have grabbed the shooter and nabbed some catfood
20210228_213845.jpg

they sit so well in good cover
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Don’t know if the term regen farming has a future tbh, one I have a dislike for the name and second it’s lack of definition so it can evolve as “it” “we” learns allows anyone and everyone to claim to be regen......starting to see a lot of it here. And all of it seems to come at a cost oddly.
Restorative management is the term I like, I cannot be truly regenerative while I operate in a degenerative and corrupt culture, but I can restore the health of the land and mind to what it should be like
 

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