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

[Samcowman]

Heifers have got a bit loose the last few days so going to shut them down a bit tighter to see if I can stiffen them up a bit and reset the grass after focusing on cattle growth for the last 2 cycles. Weighing tomorrow to see how weight gains have been

 

[Boso]

Really nice bit of kit, the bike. UBCO has a distributor over here in NL. Checked the pricing. €6500 incl vat. All kinds of tax reduction possible however you have to be making a profit to reduce taxes on profit.

If I'd only have cattle (single wire fencing) and or an arable operation it would be something I'd consider. Or if a rappa winder would fit/work. But from a ROI point of view the €500 puch maxi (moped) can't be beaten.

 

[Guleesh]

Whilst mowing an old permanant pasture last week i came across this, wild vetch if im not mistaken?
Field not been ploughed for 30 years+
Quiet abit of it about.
View attachment 980500

Tufted Vetch I believe, we've had a record year for it here, last year there was one small patch, this year it's spread all over the place and is thriving everywhere.

 

[som farmer]

this is what l call vetch, yellow and purple, grows wild here, in the hedges. Cant really get an enlargement of the pic from @tinsheet, so might be the same, or not.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Really nice bit of kit, the bike. UBCO has a distributor over here in NL. Checked the pricing. €6500 incl vat. All kinds of tax reduction possible however you have to be making a profit to reduce taxes on profit.

If I'd only have cattle (single wire fencing) and or an arable operation it would be something I'd consider. Or if a rappa winder would fit/work. But from a ROI point of view the €500 puch maxi (moped) can't be beaten.

That's just steep enough. I know one of the models gets the EV grant/sub in the UK, but they seem really expensive overseas.

I know for sure they'll run the Kiwitech winders (electric) - the [stone age] Rappa ones would take some serious modification, and weigh it down a lot.

I don't really think you'd want to get a sub 70kg machine and then bolt heaps to it, TBH

 

[Kiwi Pete]

this is what l call vetch, yellow and purple, grows wild here, in the hedges. Cant really get an enlargement of the pic from @tinsheet, so might be the same, or not.View attachment 980808View attachment 980802View attachment 980805View attachment 980806

Quite different to the wild/common vetch here, it's got a much finer leaflet and violet flowers, with very little varigation. Winter shrinks it down, but it soon pops up again.

 

[som farmer]

looks like lots of different types of wild vetch.
grows well here in banks and hedgerows, thought it might do well in a pasture, wrong !
we also have a lot of feral trefoil, which is 'pushed' in diverse mixes, not sure l would want to include it here, it's a very 'fine' plant, no 'body' to it, and grows on banks, or verges, where there is little or no competition.
We baled 14 acres of 2nd cut, old pasture, wed, was originally for hay, but the #####weather forecasters, lied, again ! So wrapped it, job done. It was some funny stuff, as l mowed it, looked exactly the same, before and after the mower, could have sworn it hadn't been mowed ! All weed grasses, yorkshire fog cocksfoot amg etc, the 'aftermath', is just a dense mat, of dead looking stems, better off not in the bale, but even though l set the mower to scalp it, those stems, are 6-8 ins long, horizontal, not vertical, ground cover 100%, and that, is the difference between a sown ley, and pp, now if we can get 100% ground cover, with 'decent' grasses, we would be well away
We also baled/wrapped 30 acres of pure cutting ley, 4th cut, top quality stuff, but not 100% ground cover, nearer 80%, and the sward cut clean, keep thinking, we could have had 20% more ! Going to overseed 2.5kg red clover, in 17 acres, trying to reduce need for bought in protien.

 

[Woolless]

Heifers have got a bit loose the last few days so going to shut them down a bit tighter to see if I can stiffen them up a bit and reset the grass after focusing on cattle growth for the last 2 cycles. Weighing tomorrow to see how weight gains have been
View attachment 980683View attachment 980684View attachment 980685

That looks pretty tight as it is? Be interesting to see what weight gains they've made. My cows are leaving a lot more behind than that, although what they're on is nothing like that quality. The calf dung looks a bit stiff but the calves seem to be doing alright. I'm just hoping that they are getting enough quality.

 

[Samcowman]

It’s patchy because I have gone for less density for the last 2 rounds to see if I can up the growth rates.
They have done 0.8 so each acre over the last 53 days has grown 2 kg of beef per day.
Next round they will be stocked at a higher density.

 

[Fenwick]

Certainly there is some great food in there. And lots of it. My estimate would be between 3 1/2 - 4 1/2 tons DM/Acre. What is your formula for utilization %? How many animals do you have on it and what is the average brake size of the sets.

Change that from Acre to Ha and I think the DM is about right!

I'm basing that upon what I have observed with the cattle based on 'Animal days' at 14kgs/dm/lwu and working backwards.

So I obviously have much less useful feed then it would appear. Which is frustrating.

For the utilisation it is purely visual and not very precise. I dont leave much behind (usually 10-20%).

 

[bendigeidfran]

It’s patchy because I have gone for less density for the last 2 rounds to see if I can up the growth rates.
They have done 0.8 so each acre over the last 53 days has grown 2 kg of beef per day.
Next round they will be stocked at a higher density.

What was your target weight gain?
Interesting to put weight per acre up, i think that is probably a better way to measure performance than chase a high individual animal performance.
But i suppose it depends on your objective.

 

[Samcowman]

What was your target weight gain?
Interesting to put weight per acre up, i think that is probably a better way to measure performance than chase a high individual animal performance.
But i suppose it depends on your objective.

Target was hopefully a kilo per day but 0.8 isn’t too bad.
We sell beef by the kg and rent land by the acre so it’s kgs produced per acre that pays the bills. I was hoping for 400kg beef per acre for the season which would make £800 income per acre so roughly on par with a crop of feed wheat. Which would mean the heifers would need to average 0.8 over the season. May fall short of that due to a slow start, it is only year 1 on this block so will do better next year.

 

[som farmer]

What was your target weight gain?
Interesting to put weight per acre up, i think that is probably a better way to measure performance than chase a high individual animal performance.
But i suppose it depends on your objective.

if you work in kg/ac beef sold, and then compare breeds, some interesting facts appear, not what farmers expect.

 

[Samcowman]

if you work in kg/ac beef sold, and then compare breeds, some interesting facts appear, not what farmers expect.

And then inputs such as fertiliser, sprays and creep feed convert into acres would make it even more interesting. Shoving a heap of creep into calves may make the figure look better when in fact you are just renting acres to supply the grain.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

And then inputs such as fertiliser, sprays and creep feed convert into acres would make it even more interesting. Shoving a heap of creep into calves may make the figure look better when in fact you are just renting acres to supply the grain.

Yep, the old "buying in acres" fallacy.

It should really be called what it is: burning energy to burn energy to burn a little bit more energy, and considering it to be more efficient

the horror of someone else being more efficient by simply doing less of that is quite real

 

[Henarar]

if you work in kg/ac beef sold, and then compare breeds, some interesting facts appear, not what farmers expect.

Not paid in just kg/acre beef sold though, some kg's are worth more than others.

 

[Fenwick]

And then inputs such as fertiliser, sprays and creep feed convert into acres would make it even more interesting. Shoving a heap of creep into calves may make the figure look better when in fact you are just renting acres to supply the grain.

Would be very interesting to be able to convert this. I think some of the results would be very suprising.

There is a call to pesticide and art. fert. use in the name of productivity, but I really don't think we are seeing the whole picture, and I am convinced that we can do so much better using on site biology.

Problem is 'biology' is so unbelievably complex. That doesn't make a great sales pitch and demands farmers to make that paradigm shift. Which understandably we are uneasy about.

Yep, the old "buying in acres" fallacy.

It should really be called what it is: burning energy to burn energy to burn a little bit more energy, and considering it to be more efficient

the horror of someone else being more efficient by simply doing less of that is quite real

Hay being the elephant in the room on this one.

How many of the 'mob grazing' gurus seen on youtube and the like are buying in 4-6 months of feed per year while simultainously talking up the incredible productivity of their pastures? Importing fertility while exporting our problems. Might make financial sense, but sounds pretty degenerative to me.

 

[Henarar]

but sounds pretty degenerative to me.

degenerative somewhere else so that don't matter.
if it wasn't for making winter feed the job would be easy

 

[Kiwi Pete]

sounds pretty degenerative to me.

Feeding people I don't know.. sounds similarly degenerative

I'm on the fence with this one, as always context matters. Most all of us are pawning the landscape somehow

there isn't much need for us to do balegrazing here as it doesn't work as well in our system as other systems, I'm more thinking along the lines of having my haystacks blowing in the breeze and soaking up sunshine than when to cut it and how many times to turn it.

But then again I'm more than happy to pay for someone else to make hay and put super and MOP on their land, if it means their paddock 51 is paying its way (why did we ever put a monetary value on land, remind me??)

 

[sheepdogtrail]

Feeding people I don't know.. sounds similarly degenerative

I'm on the fence with this one, as always context matters. Most all of us are pawning the landscape somehow

there isn't much need for us to do balegrazing here as it doesn't work as well in our system as other systems, I'm more thinking along the lines of having my haystacks blowing in the breeze and soaking up sunshine than when to cut it and how many times to turn it.

But then again I'm more than happy to pay for someone else to make hay and put super and MOP on their land, if it means their paddock 51 is paying its way (why did we ever put a monetary value on land, remind me??)

Capitalism took over from Feudalism.