I'll be happy when ....

I'll be happy when the pastures in all my paddocks are performing like Paddock 11.  Here is a photo of (admittedly) the best part of it - taken in mid August.

Riku is actually about 6 ft 3 in - so this amount of growth at the end of winter is ... amazing.

This is one of my Phalaris paddocks - which seem to do better than my ryegrass paddocks.  I also gave the whole paddock an application of compost and chicken manure in late December.

The next photo show a close up of the grazing boundary.  The right is where the cattle were yesterday.  To the left is the new area.  In the bottom right corner is .... my finger.

The cattle have now moved to 12 - and the part of 11 that was grazed about 3 weeks ago is already coming back strongly.

I have thought about putting all of my pasture across to a Phalaris mix, but my advice is that I'm better with some ryegrass dominant paddocks - as they will grow at different times.  It seems to me that the Phalaris grows all year - and the ryegrass mainly in Spring and Autumn.

We just had our first calf of the year this afternoon.  It's the first calf from a new Dun bull.  The Black mother has dropped a Dun calf.  I was given to believe that the Black is dominant and not to expect too many Dun calves - but from a sample of one - 100% Dun.

Creating pastures

S

Ever since I used conventional mechanised means to kick start the transition to  high productivity pastures at Moora, I have wondered whether I might have been able to do it without the contractor's 200 HP John Deere, disc plough, and other implements.

But, at the time, I hadn't read Peter Andrews or Joel Salatin - and I hate gorse - of which we had plenty.  So I got the most of the place mulched and then burnt before cultivation, lime, 2 years of fodder crops and re-cultivation (to break the weed cycle) ... before planting to a mix of just a couple of pasture species - plus clovers.

I think Moora pastures are now pretty good, but I'm actively looking to increase the range of species in the pasture sward with hand oversowing - and also just seeing what volunteers (and performs) under the cell grazing regime we now operate to.  After reading Peter Andrews, in particular, I can never look at a 'weed' the same way again.

Leasing another farm nearby has given me an opportunity to try a different approach to improving pasture.  We are fortunate enough to have the new farm - of about 60 acres - on a long term basis.  So I can afford to put some effort into building its productivity - knowing we will reap the benefit for as many years as I am likely to want to continue farming.

When we took over there was one reasonable quality 10 acre paddock - where we were already grazing stock.  The farm included 4 more small paddocks (another 8 acres) and a big area (40 acres) with little grass and a lot of hungry kangaroos in residence.  This area had been fenced, but at some stage this had fallen into disrepair.  My first thought was to just lease the fenced paddocks, but this was not attractive to the owner.  In the end I took on the big paddock as well.

When it started raining again in winter of 2010 the response in that big paddock was pretty impressive - and a bit unexpected.  By the end of that summer, I was in charge and it was necessary too slash the huge quantity of grass and weeds.  It took a contractor several days to grind his way through it all and the mulched grass lay thick on the ground.

During the winter I had an electric fence built to separate my area off from the part of the property I'm not leasing.  It's a 4 wire fence - 2 of them electrified.  Various pundits predicted the kangaroos would destroy the fence, but it hasn't happened in the 6 months it has been there.  Perhaps because of plenty of feed in the bush - or the long grass - we seem to have far fewer kangaroos.  Long may it continue.

We've had another good year and the grass (with fewer weeds this time) was well over a metre deep across most of the big paddock by late Spring.  My holiday job has been to create an electric fenced sub-divsion - and to start the process of cattle led pasture improvement.  I have a mob of 19 steers on it and they are working their way through it.

In the spring they were getting about a 1/6th of an acre a day.  With the deteriorating quality of the pasture now, I'm giving them about 1/4 of an acre.  There is a lot of Phalaris and it's long and has seeded.  They are trampling a fair bit of it now, but look well and seem to be gaining weight.

I've now finished feeding 2 of the 7 paddocks that the fencing has created.  I'll keep two of these as 'set stocking' rest areas.  The other 5 -  I'm going to really try to improve pasture productivity.  The first of these, I finished feeding at the end of November.  It is now greening up and coming back nicely.

The second paddock was very long and rank before the steers went in - and had more weeds.  When they finished, I decided to use my big zero turn mower to slash the residual.  The first photo shows slashed and unslashed areas side by side.

 The second photo shows the southern half of the paddock after I finished - and the last one the northern half.

The slashing creates more organic material to go with the mulched pasture from last year.  It also knocks down the weeds - a mix of dock, thistles, wire weed and another woody thing that the cattle seem to strip bare.  They don't touch the dock, thistles or wire weed.  We do a certain amount of grubbing, but mainly we're going to use the Peter Andrew's approach and see what happens with cell grazing and a bit of natural fertility enhancement.

Mowing it gives me a good look at the paddock - where grass is growing well - and where it's thinner.  This, and the fencing, tells me that I've got quite a bit of really productive land - at least when it rains.  Not all of it is good - but I think the poor spots are probably only about 15% of the 40 acres.  The rest looks as though it's as good as (or better than)  the best of Moora.

When I finished it this evening it looked pretty good.  I'm thinking of getting a really big lot of the chicken manure and rice hulls that I've been using at Moora and using my manure spreader to put that out.  It has made a big difference at Moora - where I've spread it.  I just got 22 m3 a few days ago - and most of that will go onto 43 this weekend.  The rest will be used to turbo charge the compost heaps.
F

Learning, learning

S
 The Moora Farm cattle are in paddock 43.  It's a paddock we didn't graze last year - because we just had so much feed.  In May I got the rank, long pasture mulch mown.  The mown grass was then just left on the ground to compost naturally.  Even though it was mown in May, there had been good regrowth - more than you would expect in June and July.

Last weekend I was looking for anywhere to put the cattle that was even slightly drier than the rest.  I lit on 43 because it hadn't been grazed and is the highest paddock on the farm.  It wasn't dry however.  As soon as the cattle went in there they were sinking 2 or 3 inches into the ground everywhere and deeper in the wet spots.  Without other options really, I decided to experiment.

Since then they have been shifted every day.  So each strip gets only 24 hours of 'deep tissue massage' from the cattle's feet.  The first photo shows 2 strips separated by where the electric fence ran.  The second photo shows a close up of the 'damage'.  It's not trivial, but I guess the mulched grass from last year is being well and truly incorporated into the top few inches.

 I have been far from convinced that I am doing the right thing, but also reluctant to shift the cattle onto even better paddocks - and have them chop them up.

Then .. this afternoon I noticed something.  Over quite a lot of the paddock there are holes about 1/4 inch across.  You can see them in the 3rd photo is you look closely.  It's not like they are across the whole paddock - but there are a lot.

What could be causing this?  I have released dung beetles, but this looks nothing like their work.  When I lifted a clump of dirt I was surprised, first, by how friable / non-sticky it seemed.  Then ... it was full of smallish earthworms.  They look too small to make such big holes - and so many of them.

Does anyone know what the source of the holes is likely to be?

I'm quite hopeful that the seeming mis-treatment of this paddock will have a good end.  I think I'll spread, by hand, some seed and then paddock harrow it (once it's dry enough).  I'll be very interested to see how it comes back.

The last photo shows the cattle on their new strip tonight.  The strip over past this one is very, very wet - still with lots of standing water.  I'm going to skirt the temporary fence around this and use it as a bit of a control to compare with the majority of the paddock which will have been all chopped up.

All very interesting.

We had a meeting at our place today and I got to take a neighbour (who is a real farmer - albeit an orchardist) around the pastures.  Before John got to see 43, he saw the progress we've made in some of the other paddocks.  Hopefully he didn't then judge my 43 experiment too harshly.  It is a bit confronting when you see it up close.

I'll report back.
F

This is a good year!

S
Back in early December things got really wet at Moora Farm - for the first time (for us).  Then it got dry - and just over a week ago I actually found young trees in the orchard and trufferie with some water stress.  That caused me to start watering via the drip irrigation systems we have installed.

The watering regime that was laid down for the truffles is pretty water efficient.  It involved 5 litres per tree 3 times a week.  As the sprayers deliver 35 litres an hour, each zone runs for just 12 minutes each watering.  It's pretty amazing to me that, with only minimal monitoring from me, the system will apply water successively to each of the zones - at a time I dictate - and never forget to do it!

Last week we had another rain event - another 152 mm of beautiful soft steady rain spread over 4 days.  That's a quarter of our normal annual rainfall.  This system is the tail end of what caused the problems in Queensland - and the same rain event that has caused flooding elsewhere in Victoria.  

We are very fortunate where we are in that our vulnerability to flooding is pretty limited.  We're close to the top of the hill (ie limited capacity for 'flash flooding'), we have good ground cover, we're not too steep, but also not flat.  We get to take up a goodly amount of the rain in the soil profile, fill our dams to overflowing and then pass the excess down the watershed without any erosion.

However, we do have one thing to deal with.  The cattle are on the paddock - and it got very, very wet.  Near the end it seemed like the ground was soaked and there was a inch of water lying on top of the ground anywhere it could. 

I had 50 cattle confined to a strip that was 30 metres wide and 110 metres long.  They could then get back to the water trough via another strip 9 metres wide and 60 metres long.  

The first photo shows what happened to the route to the water trough - very thoroughly churned up with no visible pasture in the worst parts of it.

The second photo shows the wet strip running through the middle.  In the foreground and to the left is the previous strip - which is not churned up at all.  In the backgound the cows are already in the subsequent strip - which is grazing fine with no pugging at all.

The next thing I will do is paddock harrow to spread the manure around and tickle things up.  Up to now (3 days later) - it is still too wet.

This paddock is a mixture of perennial ryegrass, cocksfoot, phalaris and clovers.  It got a bit of a beating last winter when we used it to feed hay through July and August.  Most of the paddock recovered really well, but there are bare patches along the highest part of the paddock where the bales were set out.

Those bare patches came back with weeds rather than pasture.  Obviously the water trough strip is also at risk of this ... so today I came up with a solution - which came from my attendance at a Joel Salatin Seminar.

I went to the seed company in Ballarat that supplied the original pasture seeds and got three separate seeds mixes:
-  one called Sheep n' Beef  600 mm mix - which is what I have minus the phalaris
-  one called Forage Blend Plus - which is 50% Winifred Brassica, 20% Tonic Plantain and 30% Chicory
-  an Italian ryegrass called Crusader.
Whenever there is an opportunity - and paddock harrowing after grazing will be the main one - I'm going to hand spread a mix of these mixes on any bare spots and pugged areas - and basically anywhere I think I can get it to strike.  

I'm hopeful that this will increase my pasture diversity - and, with the compost, chicken manure and better manure utilisation, it will boost pasture production.
F

Cell grazing made easy

S
For several months now I have been cell grazing my cattle.  It's a system, invented (apparently) in New Zealand, of forcing stock to graze more effectively by confining them each day to an area determined by the amount of feed they can eat in that day.

This photo shows 50 cattle immersed in their new patch of pasture.  Immersed is the right description at present as the grass is about 4 feet high.  It's all very well to say it shouldn't be this long, but after the best year for (almost) forever, I simply can't keep up with the feed.

Allowing the pasture to go to seed the way it has this year diminishes the feed value, but will help thicken up the sward as the seeds fall to the ground - or go through the stomachs of the cattle - and back to the same place.  Also, they say that a plant's roots are usually as deep in the ground as the foliage is above it.  If that is the case, I've got roots going down further than they have been for quite some time.  They will help open up channels for improvements in soil biology and soil carbon sequestration.

My guru Joel Salatin says that cell grazing has helped him produce 400 cow days of grazing per acre per annum from his pastures - when the county average is around 80 cow days using set stocking.  Set stocking is the more traditional system of putting cattle into a larger paddock for a longer period.

Salatin (and other proponents) say that stock graze more efficiently and less selectively under cell grazing.  They also deposit manure more evenly across a paddock.  Pasture then gets complete rest until it is ready to graze again.

Temporary electric fencing is what makes it possible.  Most stock respect an electric fence - and my quiet, well mannered cattle respect a single wire electric fence.  So, with a perimeter hot wire in every paddock, its is just a matter of temporary fencing off the right sized area - and making sure they still have access to the water through.

Last week I made one of those small breakthroughs that make farming fun for me.  Along with my mate James the Trailer Doctor, I came up with a design for a brace for the star posts I use in my temporary electric fencing.  Although single wire electric fencing is light, end assemblies on temporary fences still work better with some form of support.

Here is what we came up with.  It is made out of left over bits of box section - 40 mm I think.  That lets me drive the star post in through the top.  The foot (cross piece of the T) has 4 spikes on the bottom of it that anchor it nicely.

If I want to change the direction of tension, I just lift up the brace and swing it around ... then tread it in facing the new way.

I got James to make 4.  As soon as I used it, I put in an order for more. 

I'm feeling particularly pleased because I think my old Dad, were he still around, would approve. 
F