Jonny B88
Member
- Location
- ballykelly. NI
Well worth a watch
"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
Well worth a watch
Johnny Whiteheads
Member
Speaking of outwintering, I have 11 May born calves and 3 Jersey cows with 20 acres ahead of them -aftergrass 90 days since being cut. I am currently moving once every 2 days but am going to switch to a continuous graze system as an experiment. I am thinking splitting into 9 paddocks and moving everyday. It's heavy land and rain has started in earnest this week. Could this work as good as allocating a quarter acre every 2 days?
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
How long are they going to be there?
Personally I would be limiting their time in any one area to "as short as possible" in the wet, because otherwise they'll have time to do damage - possibly reducing the number of plants per paddock and likely reducing the number of "good plants" per paddock via roaming
Will be interesting to see, do you have some safety measures in place (what will you do if it fails?)
- Location
- somerset
must admit, at the moment, not bothering with a back fence, for the 47 milkers, they are not eating much.
Dry cows, strip grazing dead ryegrass, and clover. Clover is growing back behind them, and is 'filling' in the bare patches, haven't really noticed it spreading like that before, it is literally covering the ground, not complaining though.
Younger hfrs, set stocked, are leaving the 'nice' grass, and spending their day, on bare ground, its brown. Don't quite understand it.
perhaps it's the law of unintended consequences.
and our new bit of land, is 38 acres, rather than the 28 we thought it was, magic.
Dry cows, strip grazing dead ryegrass, and clover. Clover is growing back behind them, and is 'filling' in the bare patches, haven't really noticed it spreading like that before, it is literally covering the ground, not complaining though.
Younger hfrs, set stocked, are leaving the 'nice' grass, and spending their day, on bare ground, its brown. Don't quite understand it.
perhaps it's the law of unintended consequences.
and our new bit of land, is 38 acres, rather than the 28 we thought it was, magic.
Johnny Whiteheads
Member
I was hoping to get to Christmas there and then take them to hill block. Diversity hasn't really taken off on this farm since moving to long rest periods and I live too far away to move more frequently.
Poaching levels will be interesting as I know how this farm performs rotationally during winter grazing, if it fails I have plan b.
Your statement a while back Pete that continuous grazing can be better than rotational grazing struck me as making sense.
Fenwick
Member
- Location
- Bretagne France
Agree with @som farmer on this, having difficulty believeing this one.
I picked up a leaflet on it at our organic conference. I will be atteding a training day or two. But I am ery sceptical.
Plenty of people in france still believe in the old ways. Pretty standard for people to go and see a magic man before going to the doc.
When my daughter was born she has pretty bad eczema.
So the misses promtly took her off to see an old lady in a nearby village, who rubbed some arse sausage on my daughters belly. Cost 20€ for the pleasure.
And the 'kind old lady' was easily seeing 20 or 30 people a day.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
The caveat on my statement was "done well"
eg if you were to be setstocking for 6 weeks over calving, on stockpile, then the large root biomass and above-ground biomass will support this short period of selective grazing, and overgrazing.
I said it was "better" than most rotational grazing practices because the focus on whatever some plants are doing, nearly always results in minimal recovery periods and virtually no rest at all - and leads us to the conclusion that faster has to be better.
And that's my definition of "poorly thought out" because we know it will rain eventually, it will warm up eventually - makes sense to plan to graze it well - eventually
This will be an interesting experiment for sure.
If your going-in covers are strong and the plants and soil well-recovered, it will work better.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Yes, I had difficulty seeing how anything transformative could happen from so little, but cancer could be described in similar fashion. Or the cold we just caught from a passer-by.
Or how our life may change when one question asked is answered with a yes, or a no.
I am not going to say "it worked", I am merely saying that our landscape transformed after we chucked the stuff around in a few places.
- Location
- somerset
sometimes l think the adage, 'the wheel always turns full circle', is very apt.
and another one, 'for every action, there's a reaction'.
what l am learning, is there is never a right way, at the present, l think it's more about learning the bad way's, first. And am beginning to realise, there's an awful lot of them, to learn.
As we change thing's, there are always unexpected results, the biggest one here, is how the clover is reacting, it surprised me in the spring, and again now, so, unintendedly, we must have created the 'right' conditions for clover, to grow.
Not so long ago, came across an article, that said, to produce its max N, soil biology has to be correct, and can take up to 4 yrs, to get the 'conditions' right, with a little bit of luck, perhaps we have reached that point, certainly hope so.
Fert wise, we only bought 27 ton, mainly for the sulphur, in with the N, normal use would be about 65 tons, and we have 6 ton left, and enough fodder, for the winter, in a crap year, our history would suggest that's amazing.
What it does show, is just how little we know about how nature works, and perhaps we are a little too quick to act. I really wish nature had provided the huge amounts of grass, we have now, 2 months ago.
and another one, 'for every action, there's a reaction'.
what l am learning, is there is never a right way, at the present, l think it's more about learning the bad way's, first. And am beginning to realise, there's an awful lot of them, to learn.
As we change thing's, there are always unexpected results, the biggest one here, is how the clover is reacting, it surprised me in the spring, and again now, so, unintendedly, we must have created the 'right' conditions for clover, to grow.
Not so long ago, came across an article, that said, to produce its max N, soil biology has to be correct, and can take up to 4 yrs, to get the 'conditions' right, with a little bit of luck, perhaps we have reached that point, certainly hope so.
Fert wise, we only bought 27 ton, mainly for the sulphur, in with the N, normal use would be about 65 tons, and we have 6 ton left, and enough fodder, for the winter, in a crap year, our history would suggest that's amazing.
What it does show, is just how little we know about how nature works, and perhaps we are a little too quick to act. I really wish nature had provided the huge amounts of grass, we have now, 2 months ago.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Yes, it's definitely come full circle here, in fact our ranch has never looked more "conventional" than it does at the moment.
We tested just about all the "right ways" and they almost all revolve around production and velocity, which despite all the promises and anecdotal stuff.... works a lot less well than profit and stability.
Just like you'd expect.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Free nitrogen
Could a batt latch help with moving the stock, to save you driving as much?
- Location
- somerset
how long did it take to come to that conclusion.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Before I finished school, but I had to test out all this other plausible-sounding stuff to actually know how useful or limiting it could be.
You hear all sort of likely sounding stuff these days with "regenerative" being the buzzword, however most of it is just anecdotal and "hopefully" helping.
It might help a bit, but that's not really much use, is it?
You hear all sort of likely sounding stuff these days with "regenerative" being the buzzword, however most of it is just anecdotal and "hopefully" helping.
It might help a bit, but that's not really much use, is it?
- Location
- somerset
anything you learn, is good, whether it's a positive, or a negative, you know.
as l have said, l dislike the name 'regen', it's simply a slogan, that people grab at, as THE answer, which it most certainly isn't, it's only part of the answer.
What the slogan can do, is draw you into a completely different mindset, with many choices, or twists and turns, and it is down to individuals to choose which one to take.
We decided to 'go' the soil route, rather than the leaf side, basically thinking the roots draw the water from the ground, so the plant can survive, sounded logical. And from there to a host of new ideas, perhaps too many.
All l can say, is for whichever reason, we are managing far better than before. And it's not incidental, it's worked, we have moved from a perilous position, to a strong one.
The utterly stupid bit, and probably the reason farmers are suspicious, it hasn't cost any money, and saved us a lot. Many bits l don't like, so don't do, some don't suit our system, but it has started us on a journey, where we have no idea, where it will end up.
as l have said, l dislike the name 'regen', it's simply a slogan, that people grab at, as THE answer, which it most certainly isn't, it's only part of the answer.
What the slogan can do, is draw you into a completely different mindset, with many choices, or twists and turns, and it is down to individuals to choose which one to take.
We decided to 'go' the soil route, rather than the leaf side, basically thinking the roots draw the water from the ground, so the plant can survive, sounded logical. And from there to a host of new ideas, perhaps too many.
All l can say, is for whichever reason, we are managing far better than before. And it's not incidental, it's worked, we have moved from a perilous position, to a strong one.
The utterly stupid bit, and probably the reason farmers are suspicious, it hasn't cost any money, and saved us a lot. Many bits l don't like, so don't do, some don't suit our system, but it has started us on a journey, where we have no idea, where it will end up.
Johnny Whiteheads
Member
Yes I could but I am curious now about this kind of managed continous grazing, I visited a dairy farmer doing if and he had amazing diversity & stock. I now need to know will my pasture last just as long on daily moves through 7 divisions
Question to all: 60 acres in SE England. Clay soil, arable for past 20 years, PP before that. If you were to put it back to pasture, how would you do it, and how long would you rest/ allow it to establish before grazing with cattle. Medium term plan would be to build soil carbon up to a point where small-moderate framed native breed sucklers could be grazed all year and outwintered on it.
Naive questions- I guess the answer is how long is a piece of string, and a lot would depend on soil sampling etc?
Naive questions- I guess the answer is how long is a piece of string, and a lot would depend on soil sampling etc?
Rod Dumbreck
Member
It would be a while before there was enough turf to stand on, but as long as its only grazed one day then rested for the winter, it will (probably) recover, get it drilled now and stock it from April
Getting late in the season now for a reseed, but as stated by Rob, drill in a nice diverse mix inc. legumes and plenty of grasses, and let it do it's thing until it looks right to graze in Spring.
A nice short duration graze then will help it tiller.
Other than that, the most important input will be free; time (to let it rest and put roots down between grazings).
You'll need good root depth and soil structure to help it carry stock without trashing it by outwintering, and that means letting it have longer rests, and managed grazing using electric fence (strip or mob graze).
Good luck.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Is it bare?
Sounds like a perfect position to use a few corners to experiment with UHD and recoveries, by this I mean using animals to show you what's in the seedbank just by using animal impact and rest (note the distinction here, I didn't say stock density and recovery
)How you establish pasture is entirely personal preference, but I would grab hold of the opportunity to do a couple of safe-to-fails and see what is possible!