mob stocking

[ShooTa]

surely the standing stuff - the oxidising - is just standing hay.......what is often touted as great stuff for the winter...It may not be used right this second but will be used later in the year.

 

[martian]

Who ate all the flies?

Not really clear in the photo, but sky humming with house martins and the odd swallow. There's been a digestion of swallows (not sure if that is the correct collective noun for them, but anyway) and martins with the mobs all summer. Heaps at the moment, I guess they're on their way back to Africa, pee'd off like the rest of us with this weather.

Anyway, not had any fly problems all year, so a big thank you to the clean up crew

 

[ChrisStep]

Has anyone tried to make a plate meter? I have an idea to start measuring grass with the aim shifting cattle out at 1500kg DM to allow optimum regrowth, and also get a handle on grass growth to budget feeding. I don't want to splash £500 on a bit of plastic which I probably won't use once I've got my eye in. I'm looking at the AHDB measuring guide with clip board on top of the sward, and thinking I could use that to calibrate a bucket lid on a plastic rod. Do the bucket lid need a weight on?

 

[unlacedgecko]

Has anyone tried to make a plate meter? I have an idea to start measuring grass with the aim shifting cattle out at 1500kg DM to allow optimum regrowth, and also get a handle on grass growth to budget feeding. I don't want to splash £500 on a bit of plastic which I probably won't use once I've got my eye in. I'm looking at the AHDB measuring guide with clip board on top of the sward, and thinking I could use that to calibrate a bucket lid on a plastic rod. Do the bucket lid need a weight on?

Measuring by eye results in consistent under measurements. This means stock don't graze hard enough and residuals are too long, resulting in declining grass quality.

£500 is very little in the scheme of things...

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Use your observations to judge when to move your stock.
Following a recipe such as a 1500kgDM/ha residual is about the most basic (and common) grazing mistake.

 

[ChrisStep]

What observations would you suggest, if not looking to see how much grass is left? I'm less about following a recipe than dispelling ignorance. I'm interested in getting the most out of my grass and if I'm leaving too much, as unlacedgecko says, quality will decline. I've grazed perienials down to about 40mm in the last couple of years, and it seems to take forever to come back. Cattle seem to want to move when there's twice that.

 

[jack6480]

I’m confused, so leaving to much is bad? I’m leaving loads at the moment, probably leave 2 thirds behind

 

[Poorbuthappy]

I think @ChrisStep has maybe picked up in the wrong thread, depending on what he is looking to achieve.
Mob stocking is very much about leaving a lot of residual, allowing them to eat only the best of it and trampling/ leaving as much as 2/3, moving them on before they have to eat the less palatable.
It sounds as though Chris is looking more at rotational grazing?
Not wanting to put anyone off trying a more mob stocking approach though?

 

[jack6480]

I think @ChrisStep has maybe picked up in the wrong thread, depending on what he is looking to achieve.
Mob stocking is very much about leaving a lot of residual, allowing them to eat only the best of it and trampling/ leaving as much as 2/3, moving them on before they have to eat the less palatable.
It sounds as though Chris is looking more at rotational grazing?
Not wanting to put anyone off trying a more mob stocking approach though?

ok sorry I must of missed that thankyou

 

[ChrisStep]

Mob stocking is very much about leaving a lot of residual

Not the wrong thread, just ignorant. Which approach gets me most for cattle to eat per ha?

Couldn't bear keeping them inside any longer, so turned out into what grass we have. We'll average about 10 inches at the moment, but starting to drought. 6mm rain since middle of March. Non of the thigh deep swards we had last summer.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Not the wrong thread, just ignorant. Which approach gets me most for cattle to eat per ha?

Couldn't bear keeping them inside any longer, so turned out into what grass we have. We'll average about 10 inches at the moment, but starting to drought. 6mm rain since middle of March. Non of the thigh deep swards we had last summer.

Well I'm very much still learning.
But we all know grass grows grass, so the more we leave (within reason), the faster it grows back. Leaving more residual also keeps more moisture in the ground. And if it really gets drought like (a relative term, as @Farmer Roy will tell you), you still have some reserves to graze off.
General rule of thumb I'm beginning to learn - faster the grass is growing, rotate quicker, when it slows down, slow up the rotation.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

What observations would you suggest, if not looking to see how much grass is left? I'm less about following a recipe than dispelling ignorance. I'm interested in getting the most out of my grass and if I'm leaving too much, as unlacedgecko says, quality will decline. I've grazed perienials down to about 40mm in the last couple of years, and it seems to take forever to come back. Cattle seem to want to move when there's twice that.

Look at it with these things in mind:

Any bare soil visible?
How much brown litter is there?
How much green litter is there?
How many plants have been grazed to 50%, 70%?
How many plants haven't been knocked over?

These things combined will determine the recovery period and outcomes more than the "amount", and you'll rapidly learn "what" changes "what" if you find a way of noting them down in a notebook.

Wandering around with a plunkmeter keeps you fit and is a great distraction from what really matters to your land - what happened to your groundcover from when the stock went in to when they went out.

At times, severe non-selective grazing is useful; eg when you want to create a drought/flood cycle, reduce livestock performance, or change the species that dominate your sward.

Hence TFF really needs a button because it's that paradigm behind 96% of the threads on Livestock & Forage.. it's extremely limiting.

With conservation in mind, rather than putting all the grass through the animal, you really want to put as much grass as possible under/behind the mob, which is much less stressful to everything on the land.
The spiders still have habitat afterwards, so they can keep on predating arthropods (80% of your mineral cycling) and chowing down on parasite larvae.

As Jim Gerrish says "I will have no fear of wasting grass"

The only wasted grass is the stuff in bales and clamps around the countryside, everything else is doing something. Your observations will teach you what those things are.

 

[ollie989898]

I’m confused, so leaving to much is bad? I’m leaving loads at the moment, probably leave 2 thirds behind

I may not be the best to explain this but I will try.

It would seem you are coming at it from the perfectly logical approach of maximise the amount of herbage eaten down so that the material can regrow again. This is perfectly sound practice and a good way of getting maximum livestock fed from a given area. This is the crux of rotational grazing. It's a two-way partnership between the animals and the plants. One grows best when the other grows best.

What is being discussed here is mob-grazing which is sort of similar but different. It is similar in that you put the maximum amount of animals on a paddock for a very short time, but the desired outcome or aim point is different.

With mob-stocking it is a three way partnership: livestock, plants and soil. The idea is that each does the other a good turn and the whole system improves gently over time. So the livestock are put into an area, and graze what they can in a short time. Then they are moved. What does not get eaten, is trampled down into the soil and forms the 'forage' for the soil, which begins a steady improvement in the soil, which is steadily better for the herbage growing on it, which in turn is better for the livestock as well. Also, the improvement in soil texture brings gains in soil resilience and so animals can be kept outdoors for longer with less adverse impact.

The more material that is shoved into the ground the more organic matter you build, the healthier the soil will be and the more animals will have to eat. The main considerations are for fencing and moving stock. The idea is to mimic natural herd animal grazing and to keep farming practice more in tune with nature. This is particularly important with regards to carbon emissions, lowering or even eliminating the impact of pesticides or fertiliser or machinery inputs. Labour and feed costs are minimised and the overall aim is an easier life and a distillation of livestock farming into what it was originally- grazing your stock and moving them around.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I’m confused, so leaving to much is bad? I’m leaving loads at the moment, probably leave 2 thirds behind

Speed is the key - everything relates to time and movement. What they don't nibble the top off now, will be your brown litter in future - food for your fungi.
The higher you graze the higher the animal performance will be.

However, if you race around your land too fast there is a risk that you'll be back where you began in less time than it takes the plants to fully recover - you know, pointy leaf tips, waxes and fats on the blades - so you're then feeding the mob less energy per bite.
Mob stocking is about density, and many farms simply don't have the ability to match their SR to what the farm can carry in the spring, this is what leads to "quality loss" because there just isn't the pressure to do it right while grazing fast.
You know, "I can feed x number of ewes over winter" is the limiting factor, so when the grass comes it's only x number of ewes, plus their lambs - but the carrying capacity is now 7 times higher

 

[jack6480]

I could do with 7 times the amount at the moment ?
I’m making paddocks smaller now where there’s plenty of growth to get more eaten but there’s plenty left over, and saving the ground that needs extra time to grow till last!

I think it’s going well, I love going down every morning and moving them on. I’m just worried at some point I’m going to have to start holding them back a little as some of them will “too fit” if that’s possible?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I could do with 7 times the amount at the moment ?
I’m making paddocks smaller now where there’s plenty of growth to get more eaten but there’s plenty left over, and saving the ground that needs extra time to grow till last!

I think it’s going well, I love going down every morning and moving them on. I’m just worried at some point I’m going to have to start holding them back a little as some of them will “too fit” if that’s possible?

Easily, we had issues when we began that they were just getting too much of a good thing - we only had 80 big cattle on 43ha plus a few sheep, lost a couple with waterbelly as (hindsight is wonderful) they just weren't working for it.
They were gaining over 35kg a fortnight though.

We since learnt that it's far more effective (and efficient) to run a lot more stock and have them around 1.2kg/day or so, get sheep in to counter feed flushes, rather than be rigid and animal-focussed.
We'll run about 5 cattle plus 5 sheep/ha this spring and then destock sharply in November, then regenerate and re-stock according to rainfall (that carrying capacity thing again).

 

[ollie989898]

The most interesting part of this will be how people adapt their herbage species over time. If you stick with natural or indigenous species that are what want to grow there, which will be the most desirable and suit the system best. Interesting stuff.

 

[Brisel]

The one consistent "rule" I've heard from many subtly different regimes is don't take it shorter than 4" (10cm). At this time of year I'm wishing they would grow quicker - by the time I put the cattle into the first plot they will all go wild and I'll be spending days strimming under the electric wires to stop them earthing out on the vegetation!

 

[ChrisStep]

That's a good guide - I think I'll print out the last few comments and stick to the office wall. Many thanks. This is today's move.

 

[RushesToo]

That's a good guide - I think I'll print out the last few comments and stick to the office wall. Many thanks. This is today's move. View attachment 876619

Neither the ground nor the cattle look particularly stressed - if the farmer and his bank balance are the same it will be as good as it looks, and it looks good.