Intensive cell grazing cattle

[som farmer]

over in the US, rancher uses 'bale' grazing, in an 'intensive' form.
30/40 bales, thickly placed, 500+cows, turn in for a week, then move on.
one would think, bloody good mess

but not, bales are really well spread into an even 'covering' across the ground, cows sort through it as the week progresses, and the shite is very evenly placed. Very little waste, might need to run flail topper over it, pre cultivation, or not.

very different, but a hell of a way to build fertility up, in a short time, accepting he would only show the good bits, but the way the cows sorted through, and nosed into the bale 'spots', by the end of the week, brilliant. He also block grazes standing maize .

certainly different, here, if we tried it, we would expect big 'heaps' where the bales were, and a resulting mess. Normally his ground would be frozen, this year, sodden.

 

[Jonny B88]

Hi there, yes out of the box is by far the best way around the usual problems, having an actual grazing plan is the step most people overlook - because - "We've got this" ?

First port of call is illogical - increase grazing intensity. There's all this BS about wasting grass, and as we know lax rotational grazing may work at times to boost animal performance, but the cost is that either stocking rates suffer and/or grazing frequency must increase.

That's the real issue whether wet dry or in between, grazing every few weeks you may as well let them have at it every few days, for all the good short recoveries will do. Compounding damage is nearly always the result of grazing animals in unfit conditions, so in our case we plan where the animals will mainly be over winter and setaside/stockpiling is key to better outcomes.

Jaime Elizondo (the Total Grazing guy you see on FB) is one of the few out there promoting actual regen grazing (nonselective grazing with high utilisation and longish recovery periods) but really it's a multi pronged approach:

Planning, beginning with financial planning as per holistic management framework

The right animals, for us weaners over winter which would be 170kg now and 250kg by the shortest day... heavy animals are useless in more ways than one, very inefficient as so much food is maintenance, sheep are harder to contain and can be sooks in wet weather, they evolved to browse in semi arid areas, not graze in waterlogged conditions

The right pasture - what we would call "maori hay" protects the soil and even if not well utilised, stops mud from being made and at best, gets pushed in as an absorbent "weave" which rapidly builds topsoil

The right animal movement dynamics - content controlled and slightly modified animal behaviour caused by raising the stock density over summer and leaving it there.

Constant safe-to-fail trial work can not be over-emphasised enough, what works is not what you or I or the troll team "think", what we think makes so little difference.
"I think the sky would look great if it was green during the week and purple on the weekends", makes no difference to what's so about the sky. So break the thinking habit and get scientific about it.. what happens if we setaside for 9 months and graze at high density? Ok how about 16 months? 15 months? And so on. Trials need to be proper trials, not using the ram paddock or suchlike, not going off what we see when a parcel gets away and we shut it and cut it - that's going back to thinking and that's where we go wrong

Biggest one is still working on maintaining a low variable cost model, 'consolidating during good times makes getting out so much more affordable' (Warren Buffett) holds pretty true with grazing but is at odds with common farming practice where stocking rate is largely determined by what we can carry over winter.
In the conditions described on TFF, many farms should be destocked right now "but can't afford it" so you have to use your noodle - what do you want to be?

In our case with beef, it was always a topup over and above a contract dairy-grazing thing, but having no variable costs to cover it meant buying cheap cattle at the wrong time of year (when everyone's buying) and selling them at the wrong time also (when people just want them gone) and making a margin.

Last full financial year only about 10% of the profit was from beef, just solar-powered topping machines to boost utilisation over and above what wee dairy heifer calves can handle on their own - products of their environment really they are about as robust as store lambs off a lowland farm are.

Really it means having at least ⅓ of your area setaside/stockpiled at any given time and more is definitely an advantage if you have metres of rain while things aren't growing over winter, possibly ⅔ of the area you guys call home ?

That isn't just going to happen by itself on a conventional "spread em out, cut it down, tip that bit over" style farming operation so for us it was all-in or pack it in .

Taking it back to the original point of the thread about intensive beef grazing, best advice is to get what you get from TFF and then throw all that away, just pay the money and do a Total Grazing course with Jim.

I haven't done that, I haven't done a holistic managment course either, but I know the people who "invented the stuff" reasonably well and arrived there by logic, just as they did. Trial and observe

As much as I got some stuff from Jims course, I would say you only start learning once you try stuff yourself. He won’t tell you nearly enough for your own context. Make ‘mistakes’ thats how you learn.

 

[Jonny B88]

Don’t worry about things you can’t control, instead put effort into mitigating them.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

As much as I got some stuff from Jims course, I would say you only start learning once you try stuff yourself. He won’t tell you nearly enough for your own context. Make ‘mistakes’ thats how you learn.

Yeah they just need to be safe mistakes! Ones that don't cost the farm, or have you scurry back to safety, because then you really "can't do that here!"

That's really biggest the allure of cell grazing, you learn so much in such a short time... you wreck a little square, reason it's not healed next time you're around, and by the next rotation it's showed you what you're doing "wrong" with rotational grazing.
Or maybe that's just what I was looking for, and got.

Don't think I would have come up here without that backgrounding at the wee farm, and if I did, we'd be in real strife now. You otherwise labour away under the concept that grass needs kept between nothing and not much or it's not going to be any good, "that won't work here with my animals / climate / concerns"

 

[Jonny B88]

Yeah they just need to be safe mistakes! Ones that don't cost the farm, or have you scurry back to safety, because then you really "can't do that here!"

That's really biggest the allure of cell grazing, you learn so much in such a short time... you wreck a little square, reason it's not healed next time you're around, and by the next rotation it's showed you what you're doing "wrong" with rotational grazing.
Or maybe that's just what I was looking for, and got.

Don't think I would have come up here without that backgrounding at the wee farm, and if I did, we'd be in real strife now. You otherwise labour away under the concept that grass needs kept between nothing and not much or it's not going to be any good, "that won't work here with my animals / climate / concerns"

Yea I guess that comes down to an individual’s risk aversion too. A lot of brown might be grand to some, a little might send some into palpitations. Either way the ground nor the cattle care…actually can be the difference in giving the landscape function a kick up the arse and get working.

 

[Jonny B88]

Anyone having bother posting pictures from their phone library at the moment or is it just me?

I was hoping to show you all how my attitudes have changed having moved in this grazing mindset

 

[unlacedgecko]

Heaviest stores and lightest calves have been on grass since 01 Mar. Now moving them twice a day with a wire lifter.

Lowish covers so grazing at 40,000kg/ha. Have more wire lifters on order. Once they arrive we will be at 80,000kg/ha.

 

[Jonny B88]

View attachment 1168610

Heaviest stores and lightest calves have been on grass since 01 Mar. Now moving them twice a day with a wire lifter.

Lowish covers so grazing at 40,000kg/ha. Have more wire lifters on order. Once they arrive we will be at 80,000kg/ha.

Is that wire lifter fully automated!!??

 

[unlacedgecko]

Is that wire lifter fully automated!!??

That's an intern. But I also have Penns Agro wire lifters.

 

[som farmer]

the big problem with grazing, is inconsistent weather, think you have it 'right', nature alters it for you, but that's just what happens.

going forward, being enthusiastic followers of SFI ££££££'s, is a lot of our pasture swards, are going to change, over to herbal, high legume mixed swards.

so we will have to learn 'new' management lessons, to max both production and longevity, especially on those fields we cannot use elec fencing in, not sure herbal leys survive set stocking, but, we only need to show, we attempted to grow them, to obtain the £'s.

an utterly mad mad new system, one can only say thankyou, but l cannot see it lasting. But what it will do, is give many a massive kick towards more sensible farming systems, and we have to take advantage of that.

they reckon you never stop learning in farming, how true that statement is. It's great.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Yea I guess that comes down to an individual’s risk aversion too. A lot of brown might be grand to some, a little might send some into palpitations. Either way the ground nor the cattle care…actually can be the difference in giving the landscape function a kick up the arse and get working.

Yes I'm not sure if you follow Valleyfield farm on FB? But you can see the difference in our covers vs the golf-courses in terms of soil growth, one of the games I made up is an inch of soil in our first 12 months, and you need grass for that.

If one paddock is a 25th of your farm you'll only take a small risk, compared to a paddock being 1 thousandth of it, that's why most people only maintain soil or reduce erosion

 

[sheepdogtrail]

View attachment 1168610

Heaviest stores and lightest calves have been on grass since 01 Mar. Now moving them twice a day with a wire lifter.

Lowish covers so grazing at 40,000kg/ha. Have more wire lifters on order. Once they arrive we will be at 80,000kg/ha.

You know a drone can do that?

 

[unlacedgecko]

You know a drone can do that?

A drone can do what?

 

[Gulli]

A drone can do what?

Stand around in a field taking photos of everyone else working

 

[sheepdogtrail]

A drone can be piloted or sent to the wires location with a line and hook. As the drone hoovers above the line the line could be lowered over the hot wire and lift the wire so the stock can walk over to the fresh cell.

I imagine there would be some training of the stock involved to get them to move to the line when they hear the drone overhead.

 

[unlacedgecko]

A drone can be piloted or sent to the wires location with a line and hook. As the drone hoovers above the line the line could be lowered over the hot wire and lift the wire so the stock can walk over to the fresh cell.

I imagine there would be some training of the stock involved to get them to move to the line when they hear the drone overhead.

Wire lifter much cheaper and has less to go wrong. Cattle in particular don't like the noise of drones.

 

[sheepdogtrail]

Wire lifter much cheaper and has less to go wrong. Cattle in particular don't like the noise of drones.

Fair enough. I don't know of any mammals that like the sound of a drone from the get go. Like me for instance. With time I have learned to tolerate it in small doses. That took some training. But if cows can stand a 100 meters from the tarmac runway in Edinburgh and tolerate the sound by what is right over head of them, less than 150 feet above them, I would have hope that they could be taught to tolerate the sound of a drone.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

A drone can do what?

Mustering, checking water levels, finding lost animals, finding water leaks, finding drains and where cables have been trenched in, checking downrange before letting off shots

Wouldn't be without ours !

 

[TelesnaAg]

My immediate neighbour on nth boundary, has angus cows calving, no shade in 39 degree heat?? Are people honestly this retarded? They are sticking to there 1ha blocks daily moves and the grounds bare? Hasn't rained in 6 weeks, zero grass, bare as concrete, day old calves at foot.

I will pic later.

Im going around cattle every 2 hrs just making sure ok and have hay rings full basically under the tress.

3 days of this.

Ant...

 

[som farmer]

think l prefer our continuous wet, than that heat.

but its the 'stick' to the plan, at all costs mindset

one has to build some flexibility into any system

how are the calves doing, as a matter of interest, surviving or not ?