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

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
I guess it all depends on your circumstances to an extent, and what is "regenerative" to you?

Everyone is on a different bit of the river, the problem with fast and light is it's limiting behaviour, you can only go so fast and so light before you aren't doing anything.

I mean, why not just set-stock and have them grazing the same bit every 6-10 days and not have any fences to maintain?

These guys are going to all that effort to basically achieve nothing by using ---- wait for it ----- someone else's "recipe"

what's the difference then, between the "SCIENCE BAD" boomer regen ag thing where we just do what Jaime or Greg tell us worked .... and doing our own science to see what works for us? One works.

The crux is, "conventional management" got to be conventional for good reason, it works. Grazing grass from this height to that height is basically not that hard to do. I think that mainly it's a "play it safe" system and as such, it neither increases nor decreases landscape function but rather maintains it in a state of mild resilience
there isn't any hard and fast 'rules', dairy requires a different method to sheep or beef, in many ways, so different management. It's all down to a bit of common sense, we all know if a patch needs topping, to tidy up, and a re-set. just as we know the grass needs a bit tighter, or easier grazing, length of rotation will depend on how fast grass grows.
Not sure l would take any notice of a written 'protocol' for it, anyway. Unfortunately, that will come, how else will reps or consultants, make their living, how long before a special 'regen cow cake'
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
there isn't any hard and fast 'rules', dairy requires a different method to sheep or beef, in many ways, so different management. It's all down to a bit of common sense, we all know if a patch needs topping, to tidy up, and a re-set. just as we know the grass needs a bit tighter, or easier grazing, length of rotation will depend on how fast grass grows.
Not sure l would take any notice of a written 'protocol' for it, anyway. Unfortunately, that will come, how else will reps or consultants, make their living, how long before a special 'regen cow cake'
All sectors have little immunity to a "this is how we do it" mechanistic approach. I think this is why the forum is full of people asking how to do it.... the impetus isn't there to perform any on-farm trials, or if so they are weak as pee "lets do a regen paddock to prove that it's nonsense and my way was better" type of thing.

Trials are easy, if you are so inclined, but getting useful meaningful data isn't, if part of something complex.

Eg one of the main differences isn't soil, it's cost.This fact alone means a "regen paddock" will likely mean "lets skip the fertiliser and leave the grass longer and see" but the costs are the same and the business is the same - so the land goes backwards

like the density aspect, we arrived at the startling discovery that our graze periods were too short most of the time to get the work done and it wasn't really as good as it could have been for that reason.
And that takes digging for answers, because the popular view is to use really short graze periods x really high SD to "lay lots of residue on the soil"
all this seemed to do was temporarily lower the pH and decrease the number of desirable plant species per ft².
 
perhaps that would be the ultimate "diet" give them a good dose of worms, they can still eat what they like just the worms take all the goodness out of it.
I wonder if I could market it

Some lad out in the Middle East has beaten you to it, though when asked if he'd tasted them he said no :LOL:

Nonetheless he'll make a fortune on peoples stupidity, never underestimate it !!
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
All sectors have little immunity to a "this is how we do it" mechanistic approach. I think this is why the forum is full of people asking how to do it.... the impetus isn't there to perform any on-farm trials, or if so they are weak as pee "lets do a regen paddock to prove that it's nonsense and my way was better" type of thing.

Trials are easy, if you are so inclined, but getting useful meaningful data isn't, if part of something complex.

Eg one of the main differences isn't soil, it's cost.This fact alone means a "regen paddock" will likely mean "lets skip the fertiliser and leave the grass longer and see" but the costs are the same and the business is the same - so the land goes backwards

like the density aspect, we arrived at the startling discovery that our graze periods were too short most of the time to get the work done and it wasn't really as good as it could have been for that reason.
And that takes digging for answers, because the popular view is to use really short graze periods x really high SD to "lay lots of residue on the soil"
all this seemed to do was temporarily lower the pH and decrease the number of desirable plant species per ft².

Spot on, we're finding a similar thing with too short a graze period, leaving residuals doesn't seem to work well for us, different to cattle with sheep I suppose, but we're finding it best to completely clean up on a graze and just give the extra recovery. more than 90 days, more like 150 days, Baring it down is not only helping us with weeds like rushes (there's some areas I'm not going to have to top this year as the sheep have done it already) but it gives chance for a far greater diversity of species to colonise, yes, it will include every variety of thistles and docks, but given that it will be hammered back into the ground on the next graze I don't really see them as an issue?

We're always in experimental mode, but had good results with this last year, so hoping to roll it out across most of the place this year. Trampling a % of the green grass was better than grazing it all off, but now I think that allowing some of it to completely mature and die, and allowing time for even more of the smaller legumes and wildflowers to complete their cycle is better still.

As you say trials are easy. In this game it takes long enough to see the short term effects, but at least a year, or even several years to understand the long term effects.
 
Spot on, we're finding a similar thing with too short a graze period, leaving residuals doesn't seem to work well for us, different to cattle with sheep I suppose, but we're finding it best to completely clean up on a graze and just give the extra recovery.

Wouldn't work for me as my sheep will go straight through an electric fence if there's not much to eat but plenty on the other side.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye

@Percy Veer
Well, our sheep here come in off of a hill area well in excess of 1000 acres, where they've spent the winter without being fed, and most of them not seeing anybody for long periods of time, they are pretty wild. We had about 220 ewes behind electric this May and only 1 ewe had to be removed for constantly breaking out.(the same ewe was also obtuse enough to need to have been retrieved from swimming out to sea, and then dragged to the pick-up at gathering)

I don't bother anymore in making special effort to train young sheep to the fence, I just set up a 6 strand fence with loads of posts for their first exposure and then on to 3 strand the next time and all is well, that is with full fleeces. They test it with their nose. I think perhaps initially keeping the bottom wire low, even if it's shorting out a bit on the grass is key, to prevent anything oblivious of the fence from grazing underneath and getting their neck wool under the wire.

Sheep not respecting electric fence is a common complaint, I don't know why it doesn't work out for so many people, we use a £50 energizer, run off a dud car battery, using the cheapest posts and wire we can get. Without electric I'd have to put up a silly amount of stock fence that some of our sheep would just jump or we'd have to set-stock our limited in-bye for a month at a time with near half the number of sheep we can manage to keep fed behind electric.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
Thats getting rid of them I was suggesting getting some

Next time I'm autopsying a sheep I'll try and find some liver fluke to send down to you, pretty sure they're flukicide resistant which could be a USP for you?

Fluke are where it's at IMHO, much more rapid weight loss with less dags. Go from obese to emaciated in mere weeks...
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
@Percy Veer
Well, our sheep here come in off of a hill area well in excess of 1000 acres, where they've spent the winter without being fed, and most of them not seeing anybody for long periods of time, they are pretty wild. We had about 220 ewes behind electric this May and only 1 ewe had to be removed for constantly breaking out.(the same ewe was also obtuse enough to need to have been retrieved from swimming out to sea, and then dragged to the pick-up at gathering)

I don't bother anymore in making special effort to train young sheep to the fence, I just set up a 6 strand fence with loads of posts for their first exposure and then on to 3 strand the next time and all is well, that is with full fleeces. They test it with their nose. I think perhaps initially keeping the bottom wire low, even if it's shorting out a bit on the grass is key, to prevent anything oblivious of the fence from grazing underneath and getting their neck wool under the wire.

Sheep not respecting electric fence is a common complaint, I don't know why it doesn't work out for so many people, we use a £50 energizer, run off a dud car battery, using the cheapest posts and wire we can get. Without electric I'd have to put up a silly amount of stock fence that some of our sheep would just jump or we'd have to set-stock our limited in-bye for a month at a time with near half the number of sheep we can manage to keep fed behind electric.
I don't know why so many have so much trouble either. None of our stock are used to no electric fence which must help matters a bit.

We had one chronic pokey lamb, he tasted really good, and one heifer last year would half-crawl under the fence in one particular corner (opposite Buddy's favourite corner) every shift, but never got out in spite of that (we named her Eileen coz she did).

We had one breakout in a real howling storm and they all came back to the yard for shelter, so I opened the gate and they hid inside for the night, and that's our last 3½ years worth of f**kups

I am prone to spoiling them though
 

Poorbuthappy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
The ground, cheap but non-inventive.

Handle side down, a pigtail for an anchor, preferably the grazed side of the lane for the reels and the ungrazed side for the hooks (again pinned with a pigtail
Yep, same here. Or a branch in the hedge, or the permanent fence at the edge of the field. Neither of which will be much use to John I suspect.
 

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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“

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