A diversion ...

Going to do one thing late this afternoon - when suddenly a water trough was spraying water.

I'm not that good with pumps and pipes, but needs must when the devil drives.

It turns out I could repair this one.  The first photo shows the repaired fiitting - and a half star post driven down the side to protect it from 800 kg of bull deciding to scratch himself against it.

Second photo shows second star post in and some crushed rock around the sensitive bits.

Then some rocks / old concrete - and finally some more crushed rock all around the outside.

It's amazing how much of a pond you get around a trough.  I guess, in winter, if every cow drinking at the trough walks away with a few grams of mud on each of its feet - eventually there is less dirt around the trough ... and more elsewhere.  Puddles create more mud ... and more gets walked away.

With a big concrete trough like this the poor old sheep get to where they can't reach the water - the smaller ones anyway.

Hour, maybe hour and a half I guess for Alessio and I.  But hopefully the repair will hold, the bull won't break it, and the crushed rock will slow the wearing away of the surrounding area.

I felt quite good at the end - almost wanted to call the guy who usually repairs bull damaged troughs for me and tell him "I did it myself!".

But I remembered that I also needed to reset the irrigation system in the Trufferie.  Pretty soon we were fixing a few sprinklers and connections.  Another hour ...

Then we got the chooks' electric netting going properly again - and instructed Alessio in how to debug it and care for a very useful, but quite fragile tool.  I bought it in England last year and carried it back as hand luggage.


With the fence now energised at 8.5 instead of 2.5 kV, a couple of chickens and one Maremma dog will get a little surprise tomorrow morning.  We've been trying to persuade Josie that her job is to protect the chickens and not the house.  A little zap might help.

After checking the vege garden and saying goodbye to Soren (off home to Germany), it was 8pm before I went in.

The task I was about to start at 4 pm was not done, but we'll get to that tomorrow.

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.

Chelsea Flower Show and growing some Fodder Beet

I'm in London at present (for Board meetings) and took the opportunity to attend the final day of the Chelsea Flower Show.  The Concierge at my excellent hotel did what concierges are supposed to do and found me a ticket.

It was only a short taxi ride and I was there soon after gates opened at 8am.  What can I say ... in the main it is very English - so it was lovely.  But the things that really caught my eye were not, in the end, English at all.  The first was a garden called 'After the Fire'.  Until I looked just now I didn't realise that it was an award winner - but ... there you go.  The first thing I noticed was what looked to me like a plant that grows on my roadside at Moora Farm.  I know it as Black Wattle.  The lady I talked to said it was Acacia Dealbata - which Wikipedia describes at a Silver Wattle.

So it was after an Australian fire?  Well no actually - the people are from Mediterranean France - and the wattle is an import there.  The garden was still reminiscent of home - and beautiful.  There was some sort of a tie up with a Cancer charity involved and the parallel was drawn between after a wildfire - and after Chemotheraphy.   Which made me think of good friends dealing with that challenge at present.

The other highlight for me was meeting a man called Jaap Sneeboer - the owner of a Dutch company that makes traditional hand forged garden tools.  Two or three weeks ago I was in a little town called Trentham - not far from my home in Australia.  I found a little shop called Phillip&Lea that, it turned out, had only opened that very day.  It sells a slightly eccentric mix of cooking equipment and gardening tools - with the gardening part of the range being ... Sneeboer hand tools.  I bought a beautiful hand weeder for a not unreasonable price - given its quality and functionality.

I was able to tell Jaap the story and hear a little of his.

He has just put out a new form of a Dutch hoe - which he calls a Royal Dutch Hoe.  I seriously covet one!  It's not only the hand forged tool head - but the handle is great as well.  Being made by Dutchmen the handle on the standard how was almost long enough for me - but Jaap said they had a longer handle still.  I gotta get one!

I'm particularly interested in hoes at present - because I'm growing a crop for stock feed called Fodder Beet (or Mangel Wurzel)  My Dad grew it in the 1960s for a few years and they produce a large beet (several kilos) - which is a very nutritious cattle feed - though in what combination with hay or other dry food I am yet to find out.

I planted several small areas totalling perhaps a quarter of an acre in March and early April.  The first photo is of one of the WWOOFers (Alex) doing the fairly laborious job of the first thin.

The seeds come in small clumps naturally - and so after about 3 weeks it is necessary to thin them to about 3 inches apart.  When they are fully grown the spacing will need to be more like 6 to even 12 inches - but I'm intrigued by the capacity to 'take a yield' along the way to feed to chickens or sheep - which will be mainly tops as opposed to the root dominance there will be later on.

The second photo shows two more WWOOFers (Ashleigh and Lisa) weeding the same fodder beet after they have been growing for nearly 2 months.  They now are at the stage where a further thinning can be fed out.

The interest in hoes comes from the thinning and weeding tasks.  I remember when I weeded fodder beet for my Dad it was with a home made triangular headed hoe.  If I remember correctly, he was most pleased with himself and thought it better than the available alternatives.

I already have a variety of hoes - but none that seems to do the job better than bending one's back and hand weeding.  I'm hoping that a Royal Dutch Hoe will make a difference.

Depending on how this autumn planted crop produces, I may grow more over time.  I suspect it can help me fill both my summer and winter 'feed gaps'.  This crop will be ready (I hope) during winter or very early spring. If I plant another crop in (say) November - It would help deal with the late summer grass growth slowdown.

The stock definitely need to be trained to it.  They don't rush it at the moment - not like our pigs did in the 60s - and others have told me cattle will once they get the taste for it.

I also don't think I'd do it without the WWOOFer help - as thinning and weeding is hard work.  But I'm not asking you to do anything I haven't done guys!

Chicken update

S

We're back in the egg business.

We had given up last year after the foxes got the better of us - more particularly of our chooks.  In the end they got the lot.

That is the reason we got the Maremmas - see earlier posts.  We started them each with their own small flock of sheep.  As they got a little older we saw the opportunity (as we always intended) to get back into chooks.

Because we are a bit 'gun shy' at this stage we decided to limit our investment by getting some ex battery hens.  I think they're only about a year old.  The man who supplied them said he'd picked out 'the best of them' - and that the shock of being shifted would mean they probably wouldn't lay for a while.

We got 12 eggs from 22 chooks the first day!

They were pretty scruffy when they arrived - not a lot of feathers.  I hate to think what 'the worst of them' must have looked like.

There is a big difference already in this photo - which was taken a couple of weeks after they came.  Tell me these girls aren't happy!  Happy enough to producing an egg each pretty much every day.

As soon as they arrived we put Polo (one of the Maremmas) beside them in a pen made of 5 farm gates.  We then started carefully supervised contact with the chooks - with Polo always on a lead.  Left to himself he wanted to play - except he's 35 kg (and growing) and they are not.

However, I got back from an overseas trip yesterday and - hey - Polo has 'graduated' to being a fully fledged livestock guardian dog.

There he was lying in the shade with chooks all around him.  This photo has him with one of the two that still look a bit scruffy.  The rest a just about as good as new.

I noticed last night that he was barking a bit.  The chooks were locked up, but he's letting any foxes know that he's around.  I'll put up with a bit of barking if I know the chooks are safe.

Polo is still only about 8 months old.  The book says they are not completely reliable until at least 18 months - so we'll keep a close eye on him.

This is a fantastic development though - as we can now think about getting more hens and having more eggs for sale.  And the production we've been getting from the ex battery girls is good enough that they seem to be a better deal at $2-50 / bird than getting point of lay pullets at nearly $20.

We've put a sign at the gate offering free range eggs.  The boss priced them at $5 / dozen without consulting the accountant.  I think they're worth more than that.

My mind is now turning to a Chookmobile V2.0.  The next one will be bigger and enable us to have more chooks - and to follow the cattle.  This is a system developed by Joel Salatin - whereby the chooks act as what he calls his 'sanitation crew'. 

His mobile henhouse follows about 4 days behind his cell grazing cattle.  He says this is just time enough for flies to lay their eggs and for the larvae to hatch - but not enough time for them to pupate and produce the next generation of flies.  The chooks dig their way through the cow pats looking for larvae (maggots) - and, in the process, spread the cow pat about.

This provides quick return to the soil of the nitrogen and organic matter in the cow manure - and, of course, the hens add their own concentrated nitrogen boost.

I already spread a certain amount of chicken manure that I get from a farm over near Riddells Creek.  I was looking yesterday at two parts of my paddock 43 - one half has had chicken manure and other hasn't.  There is quite a difference.
F

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

Dung beetle update

S

As I've reported previously, over the last 2 years we've released two species of dung beetles at Moora and one type at our leased farm.

The first were released in March 2010 only at Moora - when things were still very dry.  They were Geotrupes spiniger.  Earlier this year we released some Bubus bison - at both properties.

As I was walking starting to do some paddock harrowing a few weeks ago I noticed that quite a few cow pats looked a bit 'disturbed'. 

I haven't had any feedback from the supplier yet, but I suspect the G. spiniger to have been at work.

As I understand it they burrow through the cow pat and into the ground - and then as much as a metre into the ground - where they lay their eggs in a ball of cow manure.

My paddock harrows spread things around a bit, but they don't dig metre long tunnels and bury the dung in deep in the root zone.

F

Good days ... and better

S
Yesterday we got our first calf of the year.  The mother is Hargit and it is her fourth calf with no dramas.  I got progress reports by email - including that it was 7 degrees and hailing in the hours after she was born.

It was still very cold when I got home and all I did was look out into the paddock.  I couldn't see it so wondered if it was ok.  There was a different explanation which became obvious this morning.  I went to shift the cattle at 7 am and the calf was there and looking good and strong.  I let the cattle through into the next area that has long thick pasture including phalaris over a metre high.  The calf promptly disappeared.  I could see where Hargit was, a little separate from the others, but from less that 10 metres there was no sign of the calf.  Good instincts if there were to be predators around - particularly as Hargit was keeping a careful eye on me and the dog.   

Thursday was not so good.  We currently have six Dorper ewes.  Five lambed a few weeks ago.  I had begun to wonder whether the other had lambed and lost it as her udder looked full.  Then Kristina came in saying "The last ewe is lambing".  By the time I got out to it an hour or two later, it had two lambs, but both dead.  With only six animals those two were the difference between a lambing percentage of 117% and one of 83%.  I could have gone straight out, but I don't want to have to lamb ewes or calve cows.  I'm prepared to cull for this.  I have to concede to wondering about the longer term wisdom of human obstetric practises.  

We now have a second Maremma pup and are putting quite a bit of time into their training.  Polo has got shifted onto the ewes and lambs - as he is the more confident animal.  Josie is a little bitch - and a bit of a sook.  She has got the chickens to look after.  She was a week or two younger than Polo when she came home - and the first to leave the litter.  Inevitably it must have been a bit stressful going from 6 litter mates to a paddock.  We are feeding them 3 times a day and walk them around the boundaries of their area before each feed - plus a bit of supervised contact with the animals they are being bonded to.  It's quite a time consuming task - and Kristina is doing most of the work.  It's a bit sobering to know that they won't be fully trained as guardian dogs for more than a year.
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What's going on ...

S
Haven't blogged for a while - so here are some photos of recent goings on as we head into Spring.

 Spring means new arrivals.  This little sweetheart looks as though her mother had a fling with a Friesian bull.

The cows are now in a separate paddock and clear of last years calves.  Sometime in the next month they'll be looking after new ones.

The second photo shows my daughter in law learning a useful skill.  Elastrator rubber rings are part of family history - with both my grandmother's brother and Kristina's grandfather part of patenting the idea.  They went on to sell a lot of them!

Doing the tail is easy enough, but the castration task needs care.

Not much fun for the lambs, but then ... I didn't enjoy being vaccinated when I was a little tacker.  They lie around for half an hour, but are then up and running again.

 
The first of our Maremma pups is now at Moora.  We've called him Polo - which is short for Napoleon - and the other one is likely to be called Josephine .... Josie perhaps.

He seems like a very bright little thing.  As gorgeous as any other pup, but showing signs of being suited for the work he has to do.

We are gradually getting him used to (and bonded to) the animals he has to protect.  Each day we take him on 2 or 3 walks around the area he has to watch most closely.  At least one of the walks is on a lead.  He didn't like it the first couple of times, but accepts it now.

He is already in the paddock - and isn't allowed near the house.  He has a kennel.  The first night I wasn't sure whether he had worked out where to sleep, but he has now.  The other problem is that it is not going to be big enough for him for very long.  The gates keep him from playing with the chooks - at the moment his only contact with them is supervised.

We've all reading a book produced by a scientist at the Cooperative Research Centre for Invasive Animals.  It's a very useful document.
F

Problems ...... and solutions

S
Last week we were late locking up the chooks ...... and lost 8 in one night.  With the 3 lost while we were away and a couple of other single losses, our small start to egg production has been brought to a shuddering and distressing halt.  Not that we've seen them, but it has to be foxes.

The loss of these birds hurts us financially - they cost money to buy - and we have also lost the income we were earning from the sale of eggs.  But the sense of having failed our livestock hurts worse.  It is said by farmers that where there are livestock there will be dead stock, but we still owe them the best care we can manage.  And that includes remembering to lock them up before nightfall.

On Saturday morning we took a step towards solving the problem.  We put a deposit on 2 Maremma pups.

Maremmas are a livestock guardian dog - originally from Italy.  One of our pups is 4 weeks old - and the other 6 weeks old.  This is the younger one.

We will bring them home at 8 to 10 weeks just as they are weaned.  They will then begin their training immediately.  I have found a book that describes itself as a Best Practise Manual for the Use of Guardian Dogs.  The author worked in an Australian research institute and our breeder said "She got a few things wrong, but not many."  Sounds like a recommendation.

One of our dogs will be put with the remaining 3 chooks - to bond with them.  The other will be put with a couple of the quieter ewes and their new lambs.  We have to make sure they spend time with the animals they are to bond with, but have somewhere to get away from them, and not be allowed to play with them.  Sounds like a lot for a pup, but 'the book' says 8 weeks is the best time to start.

Once we have the chook pup trained well enough - and only then - will we get another batch of hens.  This will take several months at least. 

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

A new arrival

S

 

This little guy arrived today.  Our first Dorper lamb.  We've had a couple of dry days, but he wasn't born onto warm Spring pasture ....... but he seemed happy enough and keen to feed whenever Mum would let him.  She's a first time Mum - but seemed on top of things.

F

Cold and wet

S
I suppose at the end of July things should be cold and wet.  While we were away the cattle stayed on pasture, but I have put them into the feed yard since and have been feeding them hay.

This keeps them off the paddocks when they are at their wettest.  It will also use up some 2009 hay that I have left.  It also produces a bit of waste hay mixed with manure to turbo charge our compost.  This year we got access to some rain damaged hay from a neighbour.  We've now picked up most of it and put it straight into the compost bins.  By the time we're finished we'll have at least 4 compost containers - each 6 metres in diameter and about a metre deep once the material composts.

That is about 120 cubic metres of compost.  I'll add that to a similar quantity of chicken manure and rice hulls and put it out on my paddocks.  Actually 250 cubic metres will cover nearly half this farm!  This last year I did about 15 to 20%, but only the first 5% with compost.  From what I read and understand the compost mix should definitely be better than just the 'chicken & rice'.

Nothing much is growing at the moment - other, hopefully, than calves in cows.  It won't take long though and Spring will be here.  Last year growth didn't seem to take off until late September.  I can't wait to see how this year goes.
F

Performance of the next generation

S
We got home this week after 4 weeks and 2 days away.  

Moora Farm had been in the care of our son and daughter - both of whom were working in the city, often later in the day.  As a result their time to look after things was concentrated in the morning - never a good time for most under 25s.

Well ........ two less chooks, but otherwise everything else pretty good.  Well done Anna and Neil!
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Four farms - No.1

S
Over the last 5 or 6 days we have visited 4 farms - one twice.  Each has been special in its own way.  I'll do a post on each over the next few days.

Number one was Eliot Coleman's Four Seasons Farm in  Harborside, Maine (Sic - it's Americans who can't spell harbour - not me).  This is a very special farm - growing vegetables mainly - in a quite inhospitable climate.  Coleman has made a specialty of growing vegetables using poly tunnels and a lot of smarts.   

The attention to detail was obvious.   Everything was very tidy - just sort of obsessively so perhaps.  There were so many things I was interested in - from the hand carts to his trellising system to the heating system in the poly tunnels - to the chicken tractors.  

James the Trailer Doctor is going to have some things to make for me.  The cart in particular is quite similar to one we used to have on the farm when I was growing up.  We called it the U-cart.  The American version is called a Vermont Cart.

Eliot's version was particularly stylish.  It is so much better than a wheelbarrow - for everything except concrete.  

I actually hate wheelbarrows - I've skinned my shins on on the cross bar too many times.  They all have handles too short for someone my height.

The second thing I really liked was the chicken trailer.  It's not quite so obvious that I'll get one built, but I like the lightness of it, the perches at floor height, the mesh floor and the integrated next boxes. 

Four Seasons Farm has a farm shop and also sells through farmers' markets.  People from the area say the prices are high, but the quality is brilliant.  I bought some fennel, baby leeks, white onions, carrots and zucchini and grilled them as an accompaniment to a nice piece of sirloin.  They were very good - in spite of a bit of a scorching.

Four Seasons Farm seems to employ 'interns' - who work for a period to learn - and then go off to start their own farms.  Cheap and motivated labour.  Other farms we visited seem to also use this system.  Not only is it difficult for a farmer to earn a living wage rate - it seems to be hard to pay for help.

Overall ..... very impressive!
F 

New arrivals at Moora Farm

S
This morning I drove north for a couple of hours to a little place called Milloo - and picked up six F4 Dorper ewes and a pure bred Dorper ram.  They are the (re)start of the Moora Farm sheep flock.

When we first got into (hobby) farming it was sheep we started with.  My Dad had sheep (and pigs) for most of the time I was growing up.  I was familiar with dairy cows through my Mum's family - but also familiar enough to know I didn't want to milk cows.

My sheep farming at Kilmore had it's ups and downs - as I adapted to the first cross Merino ewes that most Australian farmers had in those days.  They were very flighty girls compared to the cross bred ewes I was used to.  One might even describe them as poor mothers - all too willing to abandon a lamb.

Eventually we did adapt and learned to love them - and produced some very good second cross lambs.  They were never easy though.  

When we first came to Moora we had too many ewes and 80% of our paddocks cultivated trying to get rid of the gorse.  We had to hand feed - as the couple of paddocks we still had in pasture got bare ... and then very muddy.

Imagine, if you will, my dear wife with a 20 kg bag of sheep pellets under her arm and 80 ewes all around her as she trudges through mud to a trough you can't see for milling mutton.  Not just a pretty face! 

I'm not sure what her tennis friends would make of it - but I guess most women are tougher than they look.

I'm told these Dorpers are much better mothers than Merinos - though still on the flighty side.  We've locked them up in the sheep yards since they got home and we're going to try and get them well accustomed to us before they go into any paddocks.  There is plenty of feed in the sheep yards for several days.

We are starting with just 7, but we will breed up until we have a flock of a similar size to the cattle herd.  I understand they are complementary to cattle in a cell grazing system - but I still have to work that out.  The start of the flock will just be doing clean up duty here and there for a while.

They are a lovely looking animal.

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Is it Australia? Or New Zealand?

This is the view west across paddock 44 at the end of an Australian summer.  We cut hay just on 2 months ago.  Then I spread perhaps 30 tonne of chook manure and compost.  

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[Double click for full screen view]

At this time of year we would usually be brown and dry, dry, dry.  This year we're green, green, green - and not that wet really.  I guess we've had 300 mm over the 3 months of summer - some of it was pretty heavy, but spread out like New Zealand - a week or 2 or 3 apart.

I'm thinking of mulch mowing at least one of the paddocks and leaving it on the paddock - just to see the effect of an on site composting.  I'm also doing this at a leased property where there is long rank grass over quite a large area that, 12 months ago, was bare to the point of quite serious erosion risk.  This happens when there are too many kangaroos coming out of the bush.

Sixteen cows and their calves have now had their time at Moora Farm with the bull and returned to their homes for most of the year - on other farms nearby.  As a result I have only 14 animals at Moora Farm - and there is no way they can keep up with growth.  I have the 2009 calves at another agistment property.  I'll get them home soon - and that will help.

Anyone reading this in the Gisborne area (Macedon Ranges really) who is interested in agisting cattle for us - please get in touch.  We have a variety of ways it can work.  The main thing is that you can get to look after some beautiful cattle - but with a good support structure if you're a beginner - or just not having to worry about things if you're more experienced.

The cattle are Belted Galloways and have what my dear wife calls 'high paddock appeal'.  Just this morning I picked up the start of a new agistment option - another animal with high paddock appeal as it turns out - see the next blog post.

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Open fronted sheds facing south or west

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All Australian farmers know better than to have the open side of a hay shed facing either south or west.  That's where the weather comes from - and you always try to minimise weather damage to your hay.

The place where I park my Polaris Ranger faces south - and it's very irritating to come out when there has been a little rain - and find the Ranger very wet.  The rain seems to blow in - and then seep into everything in the back of the Ranger - even closed tool boxes.  The seat at the front - also wet.  There is a bucket I keep in the back of it - 2 mm of rain seems to produce 10 mm in the bucket. 

Yesterday I decided I had had enough of this.  There is not really room for a door, so I built the wooden frame that you can see in the photo above the back of the Ranger.  I'm just going out to work out what I can hang off it that will protect things, but not take too long to remove and replace as I go in and out. 

The Ranger is a useful piece of equipment.  I use it to get around the farm, to tow the paddock harrows,  and to tow the ground drive manure spreader.  You can see my braided poly wire for temporary electric fencing on a spool on the back corner.  I have enough of my other electric fencing gear in the back to let me do the cattle shift pretty quickly and efficiently. 
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This is a good year!

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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.
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Making hay

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We have 665 small square bales of hay made and carted.  That should be about 16 tonnes of feed - or a full semi trailer load of hay (as I usually buy it).

I would not normally make hay - because I have limited land and purchasing hay helps me increase the effective carrying capacity of my farm.    However, this year we have so much feed that, even were I to keep my entire herd at home, they could not eat there way through the accumulated feed before next spring.  So we decided to make from 2 paddocks totaling 7.7 acres into hay.

The plan was to make it in mid-December, but the very wet weather and the contractor's other obligations put paid to that.  In the end we cut the two paddocks with more Phalaris in the pasture mix - as they were a bit greener and less 'over the top' than the paddocks that were predominantly Perennial Ryegrass.

The first photo shows Simon cutting through some of the heaviest pasture on our farm - it's up to the top of his back tractor wheel for heaven's sake!  Actually, though it's tall, there is still lots to do to improve the thickness of sward - so I'm not getting carried away.

Simon cut the hay on Monday night.  After a bit of 'umming and ahhing', he raked it Wednesday early afternoon and went almost straight onto baling.

The second photo shows Simon raking paddock 44.

I organised my sons David and Neil and two of their friends to help me cart the hay and stack it in my hayshed.  We started at about 5 pm.  By soon after 9 pm we had the the 437 bales from paddock 42 stacked in the shed.  By 11 am yesterday morning we had the 228 bales from paddock 44 stacked neatly in a corner of the yard.

We have so much hay, there wasn't room in the shed for it all.  I'll have to organise a cover for the yard stack.

The final photo shows the last load from 42 coming in just after 9 pm.  Carting hay is hard work, but having 5 of us made it a lot easier.

I've saved half the 2010 compost and chicken manure to spread over one of the hay paddocks.  That needs to be done over the next few days.
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The effect of spreading compost

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To the left I have spread a 50:50 shandy of Moora Farm compost and chicken manure and rice hulls.  To the right I have just paddock harrowed what the cattle left.  

I have enough compost and chicken manure to do another couple of acres.  I'm saving it for one of the 2 paddocks I'm going to cut hay from.