- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Good stuff - that's why I said "but you need to decide"Thanks Pete, really interesting. I’m thinking along the lines of daily moves and alter the paddock sizing as a bit of an experiment. This should do similar to what you’re talking about and allow me to see how well each section recovers.
I’m in Derbyshire, England no particular drought problems but we have been getting the odd dry spell over spring/ early summer lately. This year it was nice that I’d save quite a few fields which gave me a very welcome buffer. All in all it’s been a great summer over here for growing grass though.
I ended up bailing large round bales, thinking ahead for winter and I was wondering whether I should be putting some bales in these paddocks which have just been grazed now? Are those bales best grazed without a ring feeder? And do they do better rolled out or just let the ewes pick at them/ drag the hayledge about? Only briefly looked into bale grazing over winter at the moment!
Had a helper today with the fencing!
we chased the leave more = faster regrowth trick but the quantity/quality balance rapidly goes the way you wouldn't want it to go, as a sheep farmer
combined with the extra selection you allow with lambs at foot, we found that we really needed cattle to cope with the stemmy stuff, however cutting and baling it would soon do that (which is why most people cut and bale, isn't it??)
What I found with the daily moves is it can almost be the worst of both worlds with a sheep mob. You have just enough pressure (on you, and the sheep) that they still have time to poke and selectively graze, and you do a lot of running about while not really making rapid progress
not meaning this to be discouraging, but the lack of "knock your socks off" results mean you need to have trust in the process
likewise when you use fertiliser (or have loads of fertility) it then makes it harder to get longer rests, like what @som farmer was showing in his photos above, that's probably the main way fertiliser stuffs us up really, because it shortcuts you through the recovery/rest phase which is actually the key to all the good stuff happening .
So the best I can do from here is advise to not get caught up in the "look how fast it's growing back" side of the deal too much unless you're absolutely confident that you need faster growing pasture - it will be less nutritious
You will have seen reference on here about "high leaf:stem ratio" because that's what really builds your bank account and soils.
With more leaf/less stem then you CAN lock it up for longer to grow more grub, you CAN have more rest time in a year and you CAN have lower parasite pressure and faster finishing lambs.
The biggest plus to not racing around is that either your temp fences are shorter or not as often, so you can add less total time input to the list of benefits.
I would say most people who can fence their sheep in for a whole day with 2 wires could hold them with a single strand if they shifted them twice and they would do 4 times as much good if they did so, it's just hard to get over that hump
As @Fenwick said it's still quite difficult to judge how full the animals are, wool doesn't help with that much, but you may find that "trample" isn't as important as "grazing" as a tool.