mob stocking

[Kiwi Pete]

40 year-old no-input pasture.
30 days recovery.

Quite happy with the graze for this time of year, considering we've got everything spread out, it's a battle trying to get everything grazed.
Took delivery of another 41 cattle today, and looking for another 80.

Had the lambers on daily paddocks but I just couldn't keep up with the fencing with work picking up, so they're on 2 or 3 day breaks.
Still beats set-stocking; as you can see by the neighbour's field to the right, he's mostly going to be growing creeping thistles this year.
We're mostly going to be growing grass and clover.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Would you say it's more beneficial running the 2 together? Making full use of different length grasses? Would you get more lu/ha?

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right

I meant to post this here but couldn't find the thread
I have now .

Yes you can definitely get a few extra grazing days out of a hectare if you mix them up, or in our case this hectare is earning $235 per day and our few stock are being subsidised. Have a small group of cows and calves that bounce around topping behind the big mob.

 

[ImLost]

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the rightView attachment 921083View attachment 921084
I meant to post this here but couldn't find the thread
I have now .

Yes you can definitely get a few extra grazing days out of a hectare if you mix them up, or in our case this hectare is earning $235 per day and our few stock are being subsidised. Have a small group of cows and calves that bounce around topping behind the big mob.

What stocking rates are you on at the moment?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

What stocking rates are you on at the moment?

Only running about 10 sheep equivalents per acre but getting some more cattle, we're starting to get grassed in.
All counted theres 300 hoggs and about 240 lambs so far, 120 heifers, cows + calves on 40ha

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Getting into it now @ImLost

 

[Baling Hay]

Getting into it now @ImLost View attachment 927488

Why graze sheep and cattle together? Would a leader follower system with cattle first not work better as cattle prefer longer grass?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Why graze sheep and cattle together? Would a leader follower system with cattle first not work better as cattle prefer longer grass?

I did do that for a while.
But it just equals more area being grazed at any one moment in time which effectively makes the farm smaller than it is.

This keeps it simpler and works better, of our 100ac 99ac don't have any stock on. One portable trough instead of 2...

But this is early summer here, the main reason is that we want to knock over as much grass as practically possible to cover the soil up and soak moisture in - knocking it over nicely with cattle is undone if the sheep then pick it off the deck and eat it.

By grazing it all at once, the sheep don't have time to undo the good work the cattle are doing but rather they fill in the gaps, and everything gets a chance at the good stuff.
Quite happy to leave this stemmy stuff to brown off and turn to compost, what stands back up and seeds out is a bonus.

 

[David_A]

I did do that for a while.
But it just equals more area being grazed at any one moment in time which effectively makes the farm smaller than it is.

This keeps it simpler and works better, of our 100ac 99ac don't have any stock on. One portable trough instead of 2...

But this is early summer here, the main reason is that we want to knock over as much grass as practically possible to cover the soil up and soak moisture in - knocking it over nicely with cattle is undone if the sheep then pick it off the deck and eat it. View attachment 927512
By grazing it all at once, the sheep don't have time to undo the good work the cattle are doing but rather they fill in the gaps, and everything gets a chance at the good stuff.
Quite happy to leave this stemmy stuff to brown off and turn to compost, what stands back up and seeds out is a bonus.

How many days rest will this get at the moment?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

How many days rest will this get at the moment?

Good question, the answer is "as much as I can give it"
We've only got the sheep until weaning which will be late next month, at a guess.
The heifers are going January and the 96 steers are only here until their owner gets his irrigation sorted and grows feed - so in short, they could be back in 45 days or maybe it won't be grazed for 100 days.

We'll just have to wait and see, and then see what quality we have and pick the right stock for the job

I know that's not what you meant! The planned rest for this time of year is 45-60 days - our system (no regrassing plan and no fert/lime) means that we do grow a bit slower but we're trying to cut down the number of grazings per year.
The goal eventually is to graze about 3x, 60 days apart through the growing season and then "a 120 day round" through winter on foggage/deferred grazing.
It's quite different when you change the stocking to suit the grass/environment as opposed to creating the environment to suit the stock you want to keep, different sort of mindset and rules. Different cashflow too!

 

[David_A]

Good question, the answer is "as much as I can give it"
We've only got the sheep until weaning which will be late next month, at a guess.
The heifers are going January and the 96 steers are only here until their owner gets his irrigation sorted and grows feed - so in short, they could be back in 45 days or maybe it won't be grazed for 100 days.

We'll just have to wait and see, and then see what quality we have and pick the right stock for the job

I know that's not what you meant! The planned rest for this time of year is 45-60 days - our system (no regrassing plan and no fert/lime) means that we do grow a bit slower but we're trying to cut down the number of grazings per year.
The goal eventually is to graze about 3x, 60 days apart through the growing season and then "a 120 day round" through winter on foggage/deferred grazing.
It's quite different when you change the stocking to suit the grass/environment as opposed to creating the environment to suit the stock you want to keep, different sort of mindset and rules. Different cashflow too!

That makes sense. I didn't realise that you weren't in control of stock numbers completely. If it's costing you no input except time, then less pressure to stick to a rigid plan.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

That makes sense. I didn't realise that you weren't in control of stock numbers completely. If it's costing you no input except time, then less pressure to stick to a rigid plan.

It's pretty new to us, too!

When you look at the great explosion of growth that this old "meadow" style grass gives over a short time, you really can't get the feed budget spot on without mechanical harvesting or using big burly old beef cows that get fat eating sticks. Calves and lambs starve on that stuff.

Always understocked or overstocked.

But, if we can include a proper "rest" period into the adaptive recovery/ grazing plan, then we can probably afford to be overstocked for two windows per year (more profitably) than being correctly stocked for the whole year as the overall headage is quite a bit higher - we're at about 30 stock units per hectare

It beats the pants off sitting around 12su and running up cost, growing crops, praying for rain, praying for dry days... if you see what I mean.

We are getting grazing requests for winter already which is a good sign our "name" is getting out there, that's what we want. Then we get more control over what we take on.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Also the residual cover varies a lot depending on what we want to do next with a paddock

- do you want it to come back fast or do you want loooong recovery time to help the land heal/give that liquid Carbon pathway more days of pumping before you stop it with another graze?

sometimes the pasture is quite full of Fog and other grass that's better not going down someone's neck, so we leave that for the fungi and as a protective layer

in a few days all that Carbon has had its supplies cut off and just turns to mulch

other areas (often the more ryegrassy ones) we'll remove more one grazing and give it a bit longer, then use that extra amount of stemmy stuff as mulch next time. We just try to break it up and shake it up, as much as we can.

 

[ImLost]

Getting into it now @ImLost View attachment 927488

Looks good!

How many livestock units/acre/day are you on now?

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Looks good!

How many livestock units/acre/day are you on now?

It varies a lot!

Not sure what your livestock units are... one country defines it as a 55kg ewe and another, a dairy cow
140 cattle, 100 of them are 440kg jobs, 36 will be 400ish, 4 will be 370ish
300 hoggets with lambs at foot, had a few losses to redgut and other "we just wanna die" sheep things, about 240 lambs?

I'll let you do the maths on that one.

Getting 2-3 acres per day

 

[Kiwi Pete]

How are you getting on with this, @martian ?

We've had quite a change around this year

 

[martian]

Plenty of grass this year...job to keep ahead. This mob are growing like stink on herbal leys, limbering up for their big moment at Groundswell. As they are growing beasts we are not forcing them to eat too much stem...trampling what we can and moving on

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Plenty of grass this year...job to keep ahead. This mob are growing like stink on herbal leys, limbering up for their big moment at Groundswell. As they are growing beasts we are not forcing them to eat too much stem...trampling what we can and moving on

Just a thought, but I guess there's a case for a slightly different grazing approach on a short term herbal ley that's intended as a break crop in an arable situation than in permanent pasture anyway?

 

[martian]

Just a thought, but I guess there's a case for a slightly different grazing approach on a short term herbal ley that's intended as a break crop in an arable situation than in permanent pasture anyway?

Quite so...cows are hitting the pp a bit harder with a longer recovery time...more non-selective grazing which is working well

 

[martian]

Also, we've got a five year set-stocking vs mob-grazing trial going on here (and 11 other farms) being run by ADAS. They are taking all sorts of measurements on both the set-stocked ground and the mobbed area. All ours is on new herbal leys, so it'll be interesting to see what difference there is in the soil after 5 years of the different regimes, as well as annual results of live-weight gain/acre etc.

I won't prejudice the research by leaking crucial information, but an early lesson for me has been being reminded what a menace set-stocked cattle are...every time I've had the 'cattle out' phone call this year, it's been them. Luckily there's only sixteen of them.

 

[Kiwi Pete]