zero grazing for sheep

[spin cycle]

bit odd i know.....but could this be done....say mow one day....pick up with round baler next and put out on grazing field....would they eat it?...would it bloat them?
tia

 

[IH 684]

Dodgy doing that. I would think you will end up with a few casualties. Make or buy in hay and feed it out. Plenty of cheap hay around.

 

[GTB]

What are you hoping to gain from doing this?

 

[Global ovine]

bit odd i know.....but could this be done....say mow one day....pick up with round baler next and put out on grazing field....would they eat it?...would it bloat them?
tia

Continue asking.....
is it easier than letting the animal harvest it and return excreta back where it works?
how much more diesel, labour and machinery wear and tear to get feed in and muck out?
will the spillage/wastage from harvesting and feeding be less than feed lost to trampling and being soiled?
can you control feed quality better as ruminant performance is directly tied to digestibility?
etc etc.

I am sure it is possible, however it would have its own challenges. But where does the extra money come from to make it a worth while proposition?

 

[Pasty]

Surely this means keeping the animals in the same place for longer which is going to increase worm burden massively. Then there is the fuel and machinery cost......

Why do this?

 

[Jackson4]

Best reason would be i suppose to pre wilt the grass so get higher intakes (less water therefore more concentrated feed.. sheep could spend more time chewing than walking?? and being able to get less quality grazing back to top quality by cutting and stopping the selective grazing and dead matter build up. If you could wilt poorer grazing to be as palatable as good grazing then it would be win win. It works with cows.

who knows if sheep could use it as efficiently? There would be wastage, bullying, feed space etc poaching, pasture damage? I'm tempted to try it were the grass has got away and/or lower quality but guess they'd just stand and look at it rather than eat it. Also, trying to get weather to wilt anything here this year has been ... difficult!

 

[Pasty]

Chop their legs off and put them on a conveyor. That's surely the best answer.

 

[Northeastfarmer]

Their feet will get shagged stopping inside

 

[Pasty]

Don't go down this route. It's madness. Sheep are surely excellent grazers of difficult land. Use them for that.

 

[Sandpit Farm]

I suspect the wastage that you would get from rotting grass would be far more than you'd get from trampling. Wilting it properly and storing a silage or drying it and storing as hay would create less wastage and this could be fed to ewes or lambs indoors.... but you'd need to make it pretty cheaply to justify it. The system you suggest seems to be the worst of both worlds - you end up with a high input, low output system.

I dare say a mob grazing system would make far better use of the grass and the saved expense of making and baling all that grass would allow you to justify solid 'cell' fencing which would negate any perceived higher labour cost with moving sheep every day or two. Also, your preferential species would outcompete your weeds and you would reduce dead matter below it.

 

[spin cycle]

QUOTE="GTB, post: 2843430, member: 4408"]What are you hoping to gain from doing this?[/QUOTE]


get myself out of a muddle....but the time effort involved is probably the same as doing the job right in the first place...some ideas i have are good...others barmy

 

[RedMerle]

If you have excess why can you not just cut that for silage/haylage and leave them to strip graze a bit remaining. Or have I totally missed the point?

 

[unlacedgecko]

get myself out of a muddle....but the time effort involved is probably the same as doing the job right in the first place...some ideas i have are good...others barmy

I'm like that. Apparently which is which depends on whether you ask me or the wife...

 

[Beef farmer]

If your short on grazing, there's a chap in machinery section topping 600 acres. Send your sheep to him.

 

[DanM]

Perhaps try pre-mowing grass that's got ahead, as is done for dairy cows? Would sheep clear it up? thereby not incuring hay/silage costs and cheaper than zero grazing!

 

[Jackson4]

Perhaps try pre-mowing grass that's got ahead, as is done for dairy cows? Would sheep clear it up? thereby not incuring hay/silage costs and cheaper than zero grazing!

I did actually try to get some sheep to eat some mown grass but only mowed a quarter the area they were in, even with alot of stock in they left alot of it. I think they would need cramming in by electric fence or strip graze them with a back fence cutting a day in advance etc.

They'd probably have to learn how it was going to work and what they were supposed to do! If you had enough cows to eat a round bale before it goes off you could cut and bale spoiled/rough grazing and put it in a shed with cows?? All seems alot of hard work maybe best to force them to eat it and loose a few days and a bit of growth then top.

 

[Guiggs]

Surely this completely defeats the object of keeping sheep?
Totally foreign concept to me, taking an animal that has evolved over thousands of years to do what it does and interfere to make a complicated and more expensive system that is working against what is natural
Then what do I know?

 

[Jackson4]

well you could say that about cows as well. I could see it working if you could get a sheep to eat spoiled or less digestible grass and improve the ley, much like topping does now if you didnt want to tighten sheep or lambs up and loose some growth.. who knows.

 

[Guiggs]

well you could say that about cows as well. I could see it working if you could get a sheep to eat spoiled or less digestible grass and improve the ley, much like topping does now if you didnt want to tighten sheep or lambs up and loose some growth.. who knows.

I kind of get it with dairy cows as they are more about maximising output, kind of like an F1 car...minimum tolerances,high performance, maximum output but that's not what sheep are about is it?!