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Christ; it’s a bit early for shorts
I'm in shorts year round. I get too hot otherwise.
Christ; it’s a bit early for shorts
I'd work on DM intakes of about 2.5% of their bodyweight that's about adlib. Remember they will be growing though so as their weight increases so will their DM requirements. There is some good stuff on the ahdb website somewhere and on the NZ beef and lamb website as well but I can't remember what it's called. The NZ one was a calculator you put the liveweight I'm and it spat out how much DM they needed.Anyone got a formula for young stock dry matter intakes vs live weight?
Mostly British Friesian heifer's and crosses.
Been paddock grazing cows for a couple years, its got to pay to do the young stock too
I'd work on DM intakes of about 2.5% of their bodyweight that's about adlib. Remember they will be growing though so as their weight increases so will their DM requirements. There is some good stuff on the ahdb website somewhere and on the NZ beef and lamb website as well but I can't remember what it's called. The NZ one was a calculator you put the liveweight I'm and it spat out how much DM they needed.
I'll have another hunt around on the ahdb site, its always good to know what people are actually doing though!
For me at the minute it depends on the size of the field that I have. I split it if it's easy with terrain, footpaths and water but having mostly natural stream water makes it awkward to split some. It's only an infrastructure problem though as soon as I have water in every field sorted and some semi permanent fences put in I'll move more often.Thanks, that's what I'm after, I'd like to try and start roughly right then tweak it as I go.
How long are folks leaving young stock in paddocks? I do 36 hrs for cows, was thinking 48hrs then I've the option to go every other day? The lady we rent the ground from likes to go and see them anyway.
Sounds like a good plan. Not sure how the experts would do it though hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to advise.What covers would folks be putting yearlings in to? The cows go in around 3100 ish depending on demand.
I was thinking of starting young stock a bit shorter? Maybe try and work out the paddock size so they go in at 2600-2700, then as they grow, increase the cover instead of the paddock size? Right track or a bad plan?
I use field area measure app on my phone for planning out paddocks, its a bit fiddly if you have 'fingers like thumbs! ' but save a lot of FAFF when putting the fences down.
View attachment 868008
This is the dairy cow paddocks. The ads are a bit annoying but its free.
What's anyone else using?
Sounds like a good plan. Not sure how the experts would do it though hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to advise.
Yes I use it. Like you say it's a bit fiddling to use but better than nothing. I've been meaning to see if I could put it on wife's iPad thinking a bigger screen would help. I wouldn't be able to take it to the field but there are enough on hedge trees and odd corners or something I can aim for so I know roughly where to put the fences. It wouldn't be ideal but it's still better than what I was doing before which was nothing
I'm just using an excel spreadsheet I was sent through our farming connect prosper from pasture group. It works but I don't use it as often or as well as I should or could do. And usually forget to save it as wellOh and what software are folks using for the grass wedge, I use agrinet and have recommended it but when I asked how I set up a second wedge they said pay another €60 for each wedge I've already paid €100 for the first one!
What covers would folks be putting yearlings in to? The cows go in around 3100 ish depending on demand.
I was thinking of starting young stock a bit shorter? Maybe try and work out the paddock size so they go in at 2600-2700, then as they grow, increase the cover instead of the paddock size? Right track or a bad plan?
I use field area measure app on my phone for planning out paddocks, its a bit fiddly if you have 'fingers like thumbs! ' but save a lot of FAFF when putting the fences down.
View attachment 868008
This is the dairy cow paddocks. The ads are a bit annoying but its free.
What's anyone else using?
What covers would folks be putting yearlings in to? The cows go in around 3100 ish depending on demand.
I was thinking of starting young stock a bit shorter? Maybe try and work out the paddock size so they go in at 2600-2700, then as they grow, increase the cover instead of the paddock size? Right track or a bad plan?
I use field area measure app on my phone for planning out paddocks, its a bit fiddly if you have 'fingers like thumbs! ' but save a lot of FAFF when putting the fences down.
View attachment 868008
This is the dairy cow paddocks. The ads are a bit annoying but its free.
What's anyone else using?
Yea I use FieldAreaMeasure app. I think it’s very good for a free one. You can sit on your settee plotting out paddocks and then when you’re out putting them up the little GPS blue dot shows where to put them within a couple metres
Interesting... I've got all winter to work out how we're going to lamb these hoggs in the spring. I guess it will be roughly similar to what we do now, just with less backfencing - move them daily (at least) and let the stragglers with lambs catch up in their own time.Another thing I've done this year to make rotating easier is I've mobbed up the lambs by age instead of having older twins in one place and the singles the same age somewhere else then the younger twins and singles separate again. As I lambed the singles this year I drifted them through into the same mob as the twin born ones. So now I have mob of 350ish ewes with lambs all the same age instead of 2 separate ones. And I'll have a slightly smaller mob of the same but younger lambs. So that's 2 mobs instead of 4 that will make life much easier. Will probably put the store cattle with one of those mobs of sheep and the cows and calves with the other mob as well.
Couldn't really see a downside to putting the singles with the twins as it's still not a massive mob. Singles could maybe do with less feed but they will also be the first to go to slaughter so why would I not put them on adlib? Will see how it goes but I don't think it will be a problem. It's too late to do anything about it now anyway
Main reason I did that was most of my fields are too big to be able to rotate round with a lot of small mobs. If I had everything separate like we did before we would have to set stock because we wouldn't have enough fields to do it and the small mobs would never be able to eat the grass fast enough. Easiest way to do anything about it was to put 2 groups into one. Or 3 groups into one when I've got he cattle with the ewes and lambs as well. When the lambs are older I'll try and split some with electric then we should be able to do abetter job again.Interesting... I've got all winter to work out how we're going to lamb these hoggs in the spring. I guess it will be roughly similar to what we do now, just with less backfencing - move them daily (at least) and let the stragglers with lambs catch up in their own time.
They're reaching expert level at moving now, that will help come lambing time I'm sure.
We separated them from the bulls today (hung a reel over the gateway) and put the heifers in instead, which will help with our electric fencing resources going forward.
I really need to get away from 3 strands and back to two, ASAP.