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Nat(wasIxy)
ParticipantWe don’t get too scientific with it I’m afraid – some people go into trample factor and plate counters and all that, but we just compare how much grass we have with how fat the cattle are and adjust accordingly.
As for sheep – sometimes they will stay behind a couple of strands of wire but mostly the only thing we’ve found that works is nets – our british breeds are bred to roam rather than stay in a real tight flock like others. BUT, the saving grace with sheep is that it’s much easier to fatten them on grass alone – they aren’t pregnant whilst lactating and tbh, you get very fatty lamb if you stuff them with food – grassfed lamb is nice and noticeably lean. This means they don’t need to be moved so intensively so can have a bigger area. We give them a new field each year and halve that, then halve one of the halves. they swap between the two quarters once they’ve eaten up and when the spare half gets overgrown, the cattle graze the main growth, then once it’s recovered to sheep-length, we halve it and swap them on those two quarters instead.
ParticipantJac I keep telling you – it’s not an open day, you’re visiting – come whenever you like! hehe
As for nibbled carpet – sure, some of our is, directly after grazing, but the it grows back – on the neighbours far the whole area is always nibbled carpet because it constantly has sheep and/or cattle on it. Then they all get fed from a ring feeder. Makes us frustrated because what’s the point of him having the land? He could rent it to us and keep his stock in the shed the other 6 months of the year and we’d make full use of it 😀 Or, we’d gladly help him do the same, he’s an older chap and we don’t like to see him struggle – we’d love him to pay less for feed, do less work and have more cattle making more of a margin.
Participant@OldKat 19497 wrote:
I suspect that Ixy has neighbors that are sitting around watching and waiting for her experiment to fail so they can say “Told you that wouldn’t work here!” My guess is they are in for a long wait. Sounds like she has it going for her. Go Ixy.
LOL oh yeah we’ve been told ‘nothing will grow’ if we don’t do X…not applying ANY compost/muck for the last 6yrs has been the real killer, even we didn’t realise that was possible!
We do see quite clearly that the neighbours have fields like nibbled carpet, all year round – whereas we have 60 cattle and 30 sheep on 40 acres, never feed anything that isn’t grass and never have to buy silage, and only house for 2 months, AND most of the field are lush at any one time 😀 That does make you feel smug…
Participant@OldKat 19489 wrote:
BTW: all of this may not seem like it has much to do with the point of this thread; the future of dairy cows. I don’t think so, because I think ultmately the confinement dairies will collapse under their high costs of doing business (overhead) and the fact that they are selling a commodity product at a very low margin. I honestly think in the long run seasonal, grass based dairies will become the norm. Of course, I will probably never live that long to see it.
Ditto to that…
Participant@jac 19555 wrote:
Hi Ed.. its funny you mentioned that page but i found it after talking with you all about mobstocking.. awwsome page with a ton of info and as you say ..inspiring… my only reservations were the fact the cattle couldnt roam as such. I wonder if it could be incorperated into a farm rotation though..12 hrs on the high stocking rate field then 12 hrs on another field ?…
JohnAs cattle are ruminants and get a bellyfull of grass and then go where there isn’t any grass to cud it, this would be fine from a feeding point of view. however, from a disease and parasite building-up point of view, it is not as good. If feeding them is your only concern and you are happy to still worm and jab and things then that’s OK for you. Although, worming could again affect your grazed fields as wormers kill beneficial soil life so the manure won’t be rotted correctly/at the right rate so they wouldn’t be performing at their best either. Personally, I’d rather that ‘sacrifice’ exercise field was productive and making me money, and I was saving the cost and consequences of reliance on wormers etc.
ParticipantYou need to read Julius reuchel’s ‘Grass Fed Cattle’ – herd animals such as cattle have evolved as..a herd 😉 This ‘design’ benefits grass because it forces them to graze everything, and because grass is able to cope with grazing but weeds aren’t, they are outcompeted, and the grass taken out is put back in almost exactly where it came from (the sun and natural cycles of the soil life once left when the herd move on top up what’s gone to the animal – the sun is free energy, you are basically harvesting that free energy via grass and cattle). The herd naturally stays tight, because any that stray are picked off by the predators that also feed off this system.
I do not see the extra fun in ‘roaming’ the same field for days, weeks on end – eating all the good bits first and nibbling them off constantly whenever they dare to regrow. That is when your soil compaction and parasites build up etc. On the mobstocking system, 99% of the land is fallow 99% of the time, this allows it to recover quickly, and produce more. With set stocking, however low density (unless you have an area the size of the serengeti, and then you would most likely find your cattle mobstock themselves anyway!), you will NEVER improve the carrying capacity, only with inputs – splash more nitrogen on, a bit more grass, put some more cows on. Does the cost of the beef cover the cost of the nitrogen…maybe, just about..for now…?
Our cattle are constantly on the move and get a lovely lush sward every single day, that they can wrap their tongues around – sounds a bit better than searching for what everyone’s missed and then waiting at the ring feeder once the grass runs out?
But, by cutting down you field size and moving more often or ‘grazing effectively’ as you put it – you are moving in the right direction, it is essentially mobstocking, but not as efficient as it could be so you’d have to accept slightly inferior results. If you’re happy with that, that’s fine. When I did it with my own cattle before moving in with rob, they were moved every other day, or perhaps every 4 days (before parasites start hatching and re-infecting). It was fine for steers that didn’t need fattening so quick and suited my slightly lazier nature 😉
Participant@jac 19479 wrote:
Ixy the mob stocking idea sounds exactly what the native Americans did with the buffalo to create new pasture.. they would select an area and wait till the grass was mature then chase a huge herd of buffalo/bison over the area..usually in a rainy season.. this would create the same effect. Nothings really new is it..
When you move the herd onto the next strip are they kept off the area they have just left ? Also does this system do away with having to plow out old, tired pasture ?
JohnUp until recently we have only managed to keep them off areas on a field-by-field basis, but now we have a backfence so we have the grass returning while they are grazing the field they are in, giving even more grass – we’re hoping tis extra will counteract the effect of the drought this year.
We never plough, fertilise, top or reseed the pastures – essentially, they lie fallow the whole year except for maybe two or three ‘grazing days’, so there’s plenty of time for them to recover, self-seed and cycle by themselves.
Participant@Stable-Man 19462 wrote:
This makes sense, but what do you do with the 2 months of bedding? Or are they fed out in the open?
At the moment – use it to grow our veg in.
Participant@OldKat 19463 wrote:
John,
I think you and Ixy are actually talking about two different things. I think she is talking about using material that has been already been FULLY composted. It is possible for some composts to be high in potash (K), or potassium carbonate, depending what plant material or other organic (carbon containing) parent material was composted. It is NOT a given that ALL composts are high in potassium, but it clearly DOES happen.
Yes we were talking about the two different things – re: the potassium, I was purely referring to rotted cattle manure&straw and pasture. usually it’s applied year in, year out without any knowledge of what’s in the pasture – perhaps needlessly pushing up potassium. You need to get the pasture tested to find out what it’s short of before applying anything is my point.
ParticipantSome people are stuck in the past, but amongst others the mood is changing – we’ve agreed to show a small group of interested farmers around our place in August. The guy who’s organised it has just started mobstocking (that’s what you call this) and says if it wasn’t for this, he’d be right out of grass this year.
Same for us I think – everyone else is very worried about the lack of rain and run out of grass already – we still have a surplus! the re-growth rate is slightly worrying, maybe we will have to house slightly longer this year? We’re still ahead though so it’s all good!
ParticipantNitrogen isn’t the issue with compost – it’s potassium; too much potassium affects nutrient availability, making your pasture seem deficient, so you have to put X, Y or Z and more compost on it…we’d test the soil and only put compost on if it needed more potassium.
ParticipantThanks jac!!
Our fields are roughly 5 or ten acres apiece (lots of native hedgerows in between as shelter and we also sell the sloes and things from them), but they are cut into strips that will last them a day by electric fencing. It takes less than an hour a day to move them to a new strip and set out the next fence for the next day as they soon get used to the move.
I personally would love 1acre fields, all surrounded by edible hedges! But that is a way off for us and I think OHs tractor-loving brother would kill us for chopping things up so small lol.
We cut ten acres for hay and various patches that get too long, my intention is to use oxen for that but I’m waiting on my team to mature and get the machinery together etc. We also have a further 40 acres for spare grazing and growing lucerne and pig feed but due to complicated movement restrictions I might have to leave that to the tractors??
Participant@dlskidmore 19448 wrote:
Rotational grazing makes a lot of sense, and has so many benefits in increased yield, decreased parasite issues, better fat profiles in the meat… But in my area, there’s enough snow on the ground in winter, I think I’ll still have to put up winter feed. The haying problem is the big stickler in my designs for a low-equipment usage farm. Buying hay from a larger producer that can do it more efficiently than I can looks tempting, but leaves me reliant on outside inputs, which I’d like to wean myself off of over time.
Even with your weather conditions it would still be an improvement – your grazing season would extend, meaning you need less hay and making it by draft becomes more viable. I would question wether your neigbour is making hay more ‘efficiently’…perhaps he makes it cheaper, but how will that change as oil goes up? part of rotational grazing is haying though – you’re always going to have grass that gets away from them at certain times, if you stocked up to the point where the cattle were dealing with all the grass at peak times, you’d be overgrazing the rest of the time. Not cutting it means it just ‘goes over’ and is equally useless. Although, I think you’d be surprised at what cattle can deal with – we’ve had the hardest winter for a long time here and had snow on the ground for weeks, which is very unusual but the cattle (and sheep) grazed through it. We offered silage to the sheep as we have a favourite old ewe with no teeth who we wanted to help out, but they didn’t want it anyway!
As for housing and spreading manure – this is not as beneficial as we all may have thought, as we have become conditioned to think of pasture improvement as a case of applying single elements when in fact, it’s all about ratios and balance – adding the manure and straw in this manner is too high in some things, which inhibits the action of others – making grass unpalatable, and holding back soil fertility. If you really want the best from your pasture and to cut down on your work and inputs, you ahve to basically just leave it alone and let the soil get back to it’s own natural cycling – winter conditions are part of that. The way I see it is that cattle and grassland have evolved together for thousands upon thousands of years perfectly well without human intervention and we can’t possibly know better than that! We may think that doing X, Y or Z would improve it, but we always overlook some tiny detail that makes it unsustainable in the long term, and we’re always going to have to revert to the default system that nature devised….
ParticipantThanks for that – it seems incredible when we think of the weights this guy with the camels (think it was 14 camels involved or something?) was pulling, that all the weight would be taken by that single camel at certain moments!!!
ParticipantIt works anywhere! People love to say ‘it won’t work on light/heavy soils, or big/small areas or wet/dry areas’ etc etc but the truth is – anywhere grass grows, this system simply makes better use of it. So some areas will always be better than others, but we’re getting proportionally more from all of them, right across the board.
We have 60ish cattle and 30ish sheep on 40 acres, and there’s certainly room for more as every year the land gets more productive – so we’re already beating the old 1-acre-per-cow rule, and putting sheep on top. We could certainly do with more sheep – their grass has totally got away from them this year, even though it’s been dry.
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