Dkb
Member
Did you stock at 75 to the acre when outdoor lambing?
Wet weather and fodder beet for ewes
- Thread starter cotswoldcs
- Start date
Did you stock at 75 to the acre when outdoor lambing?
- Location
- Ceredigion
Im sure ive heard @Kiwi Pete say this about beet as well. There was a lot of damage to soils after beet because the yields were so high
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
That is more to do with cows outwintered, but I do agree with the idea that wet land really wants lighter stocking rate than heavier.
A couple of years of nursing a paddock after and it's amazing how compaction can be reversed, main thing is to intend do it with animals and plants, not a 19 ton tractor with a panbuster....
But then, if you go into soil that has been PP for 45 years and plough it, grow a 40 ton crop of beet everywhere and put 200 cow mobs out....
12 inches of rain a month may as well be 12 inches a week, it won't have a shallow pan now!
But, in saying that a bloody big harvester would be no better, the thing would be to get the beet in much earlier and harvest them in good time, or even some, fence and rock an area to stand the cattle off and feed them there when too wet... which he did, and next year was an endless run of frosts
That would be a good insurance policy, a budget standoff area for wet times, for any farm in a wet area.
(Especially a tree plantation on a rocky hill, the pinnacle of low-input housing systems)
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I never have with beet or swedes, and only on turnips when I've clearly been short, in order to eek it out.
If they have enough DM from the crop, they won't touch the bales anyway IME, only lie round them getting dirty. What forage can you offer that doesn't dilute the feed value of the root crop?
It would have to be rocket fuel silage to be better feed, and diluting the value makes it more likely to have to feed concentrates to make it up again.
I also don't want to cause deep compaction by running a tractor into the field if I can help it. At least sheep will only compact the top few inches, which is easily remedied with shallow cultivation, tractor (or cattle) damage will be much deeper.
- Location
- Ceredigion
We grew spring barley after roots and never had compaction problems
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
So have I, for many years. Did you plough before the SB?
My point was that sheep grazing roots will only cause surface compaction (top few inches). Once you put a loader tractor in a wet field, you will be compacting 8-10" down, necessitating deeper remedial action, or waiting several years for it to 'sort itself out' (so some say
). I'd rather be able to min-till after roots, than have to plough and/or subsoil.The same would apply if I attempted to spread beet out on grass here just now. If you have lots of stone tracks to drive on, it becomes a different argument though.
- Location
- Ceredigion
Compaction don't seem to be a problem on our soils the drier land is quite rocky .Just keep off the wetter fields
Alright being a cow or sheep here today, felt sorry for animals most days recently but they come through weather and not looking bad on daily diet of feldherr for last 6 weeks.
Cows get a bale of silage between 50 head and ad-lib straw (which they don’t eat a bale a week of) But ewes have solid beet and 20 acres of gorse/rough grazing.
Cows get a bale of silage between 50 head and ad-lib straw (which they don’t eat a bale a week of) But ewes have solid beet and 20 acres of gorse/rough grazing.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I cringe when I write this, and please don’t take it the wrong way... ..
But, that wouldn’t be a heavy crop of beet. Most of the problem with grazing beet is from the huge amount of feed, necessitating large numbers of mouths to eat it, on a relatively small area.
IIRC the op was giving 600 ewes 2-3 rows a day, which is a very different stocking density.
That’s not to say that a thinner, lower yielding crop of big roots wouldn’t necessarily be more economical, with potentially a higher utilisation rate and lower growing costs.
16 rows, 80 yards long= 16x240 beet = 3840 beet...200 ewes eating 19 beet each over 5 days, not a scrap left....sheep don’t look very dirty, an acre every 14 days those 200 ewes are using.
So a thousand ewes would eat 10acres a month here...but I would graze them in 4 flocks of max.250 whether at grass or on roots.
So a thousand ewes would eat 10acres a month here...but I would graze them in 4 flocks of max.250 whether at grass or on roots.
Gonna give it a try just concerned there won’t be enough fibre in the diet,just want maintenance diet at this stage!
We certainly don’t possess any rocket fuel silage I’m afraid
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Isn’t there a fair bit of fibre in beet anyway, the value of SBP nuts being in the digestible fibre?
It’s higher in fibre than swedes or turnips IIRC, which have never been a problem for feeding sheep.
A couple of hundred of my ewes will be going onto just beet next week. I don’t anticipate any problems other than having to put some loose mins out at the start to prevent Ca deficiency.
Be careful with the tops to start with might pay to run a topper over them at the start so they are wilted a couple of days be ok later on though when they are used to them
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
Why do you think the tops are a problem?
I get a problem with calcium deficiency when I first put them on, but that happens even when they are let into a field a day or two after lifting, so obviously not the tops then. Easily enough prevented by giving a bag or two of loose GP mins when they are starting on them, but no idea what causes it.
I once didn't bother with the mins, as they'd grazed a strip before we lifted the rest. The next morning I found 20 semi-comatose ewes scattered round a 17ac field. I was frantically running round with the quad bike and bottles of Calciject that morning! All bar one were up and lost in the flock within a coupel of hours, after one jab. Chucked 2 bags of mins out after, and never had another down.
- Location
- Cornwall.
Fodder Beet leaves can contain oxalic acid but I think this causes more of a problem with cattle rather than sheep.
- Location
- Ceredigion
I used to fatten a lot of lambs on grazed fresh tops .Beet and Swedes . I never had a problem . But then were gone by 8 weeks
polk_farmer
Member
- Location
- South West (Gods Country)
Why do you think the tops are a problem?
I get a problem with calcium deficiency when I first put them on, but that happens even when they are let into a field a day or two after lifting, so obviously not the tops then. Easily enough prevented by giving a bag or two of loose GP mins when they are starting on them, but no idea what causes it.
How close were they to lambing when they were going down with Calcium deficiency?
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
That group were about 3 or 4 weeks out which would probably have made them more susceptible, but I've seen it previously (in odd ones) that were in mid-pregnancy.