Livestock | The Conscious Farmer

RUMINANTS – A methane pest or climate change solution?

25 November 2015 / 1 comments

Production systems involving ruminant animals have come under pressure from some sectors of the community concerned about climate change due to the production of methane (CH4, a greenhouse gas) by these animals. While methane has a much shorter life (12 years) in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the reason it attracts so much negative publicity is that methane is calculated to have a 25 greater fold impact on climate change than carbon dioxide. Much of the atmospheric methane is oxidised to carbon dioxide and water, but with general emission levels increasing since the industrial era, (as with carbon dioxide), there is only so much certain systems can deal with. So should we therefore be worried about the impacts of the methane from our livestock on climate change? Continue reading “RUMINANTS – A methane pest or climate change solution?” »

CONSIDERATIONS FOR EARLY SEASON GRAZING – with Brian Wehlburg

6 August 2015 / 1 comments

How best to manage early season pasture growth is something I was keen to get a thorough handle on, so I spoke with Brian Wehlburg this week. Brian is a Holistic Management educator based on his farm near Port Macquarie NSW, but training in Holistic Management all over Australia. Early season growth was something he talked about when he visited our farm with his training group earlier this year, so I thought I’d follow it up with him.

First, I will explain that when I am referring to early season pasture growth – we are talking about the window when growth really starts to take off. A time when we might double the quantity of plant dry matter in a relatively short period of time. For us here on the Liverpool Plains in NSW, this is well into Spring, when the weather warms up and the days get longer and our summer growing grasses (C4 or subtropical, or warm season grasses) begin to grow.

Should we change the way we manage grazing at this time of year? Well Brian rightly points out that we should always be considering changes to our grazing in response to pasture growth, seasonal conditions, time of year, and monitoring – something very strongly advocated in Holistic Management. There are however, some extra things that can be considered at the seasons’ beginning. Continue reading “CONSIDERATIONS FOR EARLY SEASON GRAZING – with Brian Wehlburg” »

HOW MUCH GRASS TO REMOVE IN A GRAZE?

11 July 2015 / 0 comments

Planned grazing and allowing grasses to recover from grazing certainly works to restore pastures, improve ground cover, engage natural nutrient cycles and increase pasture growth. Lots of farmers around the world will attest to this. This doesn’t mean that it is easy to get it right though!

The following information draws on research from many years ago that a subscriber sent me a while ago, and the information is still so relevant. I believe it may be one factor in why not everyone gets the same outcomes from planned, rotational grazing. The information relates to what happens to the root system of a perennial grass plant when the top growth is grazed to different levels. This will obviously influence when we choose to move animals out of a paddock.

The trial included cool and warm season grasses of different growth patterns – rhizomes, stolons and bunch type growth. Grazing of these grasses was simulated by the manual cutting of their foliage. When half or more of the foliage of the grasses was removed, root growth was halted for a time after the removal (with the exception of one grass type). The time period for which the root growth was halted varied with the degree of the foliage removal. Foliage removal occurred in intervals of 10% – ranging from 10% to 90%. Continue reading “HOW MUCH GRASS TO REMOVE IN A GRAZE?” »

CARBON TRADING – now more relevant to you all!

16 June 2015 / 0 comments

Carbon! I usually talk about how it helps our production and how to get more of it in the soil. There is however another aspect to carbon that I haven’t touched on yet. This is the opportunity for farmers to earn money from trading carbon – either storing carbon or reducing the emissions of carbon (and other greenhouse gases). For some, this may be adding extra income to their farm business, while for others the income might be an added bonus to putting carbon in the soil, which they know will benefit their production in many ways.

I don’t know about you, but in the evolution of the Carbon Farming Initiative in Australia (what the last Government called the agriculture component of carbon trading), I felt a bit like switching off from the politics involved with it. As a farmer, I felt – “Just give me something that’s easy to work with on-ground!” This is why I am grateful for people like Louisa Kiely of Carbon Farmers of Australia. Louisa has contributed to the hard work for us, to help get our industry to a point where there are now some usable aspects of the Australian Governments’ carbon reduction scheme. This is why I’ve chosen to speak with Louisa about where things are up to with carbon trading and the now called Emissions Reduction Fund. Continue reading “CARBON TRADING – now more relevant to you all!” »

ANIMAL HEALTH THROUGH NUTRITION

23 March 2015 / 0 comments

I like to think about how nature intended things to be, while still asking how we can use this knowledge to be profitable and clever in our farm businesses. What I have learnt from my discussion with Fred Provenza this week, about animal behaviour and grazing, is the perfect example of this. Our agricultural sciences are sometimes much focussed around reductionist techniques and the physiology of plants and animals. While we can learn a lot from this, there is also merit in standing back to observe a living thing interacting in its natural system (its ecology) and then discovering how we can use this to our advantage.

This is just what Fred Provenza, Professor Emeritus of Animal Behaviour and Management at Utah State University has done. Fred’s real-world observations of wild and domestic animals along with his research of the past 40 years are all about how animals make a living through where they live and how they forage. If I were to pick out a few words from his writings and my discussion with him that reflect the work it would be: Animal Health through Nutrition. Continue reading “ANIMAL HEALTH THROUGH NUTRITION” »

CONVERTING CROPPING COUNTRY TO PASTURE

19 February 2015 / 0 comments

As I mentioned last week, I have been asked by a subscriber that has visited our farm about how we transitioned country from full zero till cropping to perennial pasture. We have two alluvial self-mulching black soil paddocks that have had two quite different approaches, with different outcomes in the short and long term. Sharing these examples with you may offer some helpful learnings. The outcomes – after a few dry years are worlds apart right at the moment.

In 2008, Derek and I decided that we wanted our business to be solely grazing based. This decision was made after Holistic Management training and discussion about what we really wanted out of life (but that’s an aside in this article). I would like to share with you how we took two different paddocks from cropping to pasture, and the current outcomes of each.

When we chose to take land from cropping to pasture Derek and I considered the best way to go about it. We were aware of situations where farmers had left country and allowed natural succession of plants to occur in order to establish a pasture, while more often others choose introduced pasture mixes, planted at considerable expense. We did a bit of both. Continue reading “CONVERTING CROPPING COUNTRY TO PASTURE” »

TREES AS PRODUCTIVE BIODIVERSITY

22 December 2014 / 2 comments

If there is a consistent message coming out of regenerative agriculture practices of all kinds it is the need for soil biology, and for a diversity of this. We gain this from a diversity of species of plants, as well as animals.

I used to think about biodiversity as diversity in the soil, or in our pastures or of native fauna – all of which might have benefited and supported the production of one product from an area of land – be it beef, lamb, goats, wheat or corn. But of late, (as well as the wonderful benefits that biodiversity can offer to a current traditional production system), I have started to consider biodiversity from the point of view of the number of layers of productive biodiversity that we can have. Continue reading “TREES AS PRODUCTIVE BIODIVERSITY” »

SOLVING (& PREVENTING) CALVING PROBLEMS – the natural way

24 October 2014 / 0 comments

Unnecessary costs associated with vet bills and lost production from lost calves are certainly not things we want as graziers. We want to reap the monetary reward for carrying a cow in our business for a 12 month period and keep every dollar in our pocket. I want to share with you a simple way that we have done this and give you an understanding behind what went on.

Quite some years ago now we had pretty dramatic calving issues (dystocia) with our heifers. When I say pretty dramatic, I mean pulling around 50% of calves. I can’t recall if it was a dry season, or what specific conditions may have contributed to this anomaly (as this certainly was not the norm for us), but it was clearly not a great occurrence.

Frustrated by what was happening, we pulled out ‘Healthy Cattle, Naturally’, a cattle health book by Pat Coleby. Continue reading “SOLVING (& PREVENTING) CALVING PROBLEMS – the natural way” »

OUR EXPERIENCES WITH LOW STRESS STOCK HANDLING

10 October 2014 / 0 comments

We don’t ‘run’ the cattle into the yards anymore! You may recall from a few weeks ago that with low stress stockhandling, attitude is everything. This includes our language. If we don’t want to move our cattle at a constant trot all the way to the yards, then let’s not phrase it this way. I would like to share with you some examples of how Low Stress Stockhandling has helped us in our operations. I think the examples help to give a better understanding of the principles I talked of a fortnight ago.

Whilst we haven’t actively tried to do any comparative measurements with cattle here at home, we have much anecdotal evidence of the benefits. I will share with you some of the differences we have noticed and some specific examples of what we have done. Continue reading “OUR EXPERIENCES WITH LOW STRESS STOCK HANDLING” »

LOW STRESS STOCKHANDLING for boosting productivity

27 September 2014 / 1 comments

I’ve talked quite a bit about land management in previous blogs, but being a ‘conscious’ farmer to me is about also treating our livestock well. This is important for the welfare of the animals, but also because whatever is good for the animals is also good for productivity, meat quality and carcase yield. Not to mention that it also makes a day mustering, or in the yards a much more pleasant experience! It would seem like madness to spend our efforts on the right pastures and genetics for optimising weight gains, to then send stock off to market and lose an unnecessary amount of this to shrink as a result of poor handling.

I think I’d be fair in saying that with Low Stress Stockhandling it’s one in, all in. So, after my husband Derek attended a school about 5 years ago, it was not long after that his father and I then went on to upskill too! We’ve been practicing it ever since. I’d like to share with you the great impact that this can have on your herd, as well as the principles behind practicing it. For any of you who have previously trained in this area, I hope you enjoy a re-cap (as I have also done in writing this blog). For those of you that haven’t, I hope it gives you a taste for what is possible. I strongly encourage attending a course, as no amount of writing can truly convey what the hands on learning can.

I also had a chat with Low Stress Stockhandling founder Jim Lindsay, to get an update on whether anything had been updated or changed since I had attended training.

One of the important things to remember about low stress stockhandling, is that it is NOT about NO stress, it is about LOW stress, and low stress is even perhaps better expressed as appropriate pressure. Continue reading “LOW STRESS STOCKHANDLING for boosting productivity” »

WATER SYSTEMS FOR LIVESTOCK

5 September 2014 / 3 comments

I know as farmers (and possibly more you men folk) we love to learn from each other the nitty gritty practical ways that we address certain things on the farm. So this week I thought I might start a conversation about stock water delivery and share what we’ve been up to here at ‘The Conscious Farm’. We have a fair variety of troughs and water delivery systems, which you will see. I want to share with you the relative success and downfalls of each and their influences on the land regeneration that we want to achieve.

Our farm consists of black soil plains, sloping red soil country with scattered timber and timbered, less productive hill country. On the plains and some of the sloping country we have portable water troughs and smaller paddock sizes – this is our most favoured system. Some of the sloping country also has smaller blocks, but with a central point that stock water from. The hill country has around 200ha hectares of land that all still comes back to the one watering point – and this is something we would like to change. I will share with you the merits of each system what we have done to optimise each one – given that some systems are less than ideal.

This blog will address water delivery systems, so I won’t go into the details of water quality here today – but be aware that this is a very important factor in stock performance. I might look at that on another occasion.

We have loved the many benefits that rotational grazing has brought to our pastures and farm. As part of this system change, it has meant that we had to alter some of our water delivery systems.

Continue reading “WATER SYSTEMS FOR LIVESTOCK” »

‘CHANGE’ AS A LAND HEALER

22 August 2014 / 0 comments

For those of you practicing planned, rotational grazing, can you remember the AMAZING change in your pasture when you first moved from set stocking to a planned/rotational grazing?

Phenomenal wasn’t it? I bet nearly any of the advances since then have not been as dramatic as what that initial change was?

For those of you not practicing planned grazing, it is these fantastic outcomes that keep the rest of us in this regenerative and low or no input system.

Hold these thoughts….

Dick Richardson is an educator and grazier at Boorowa in southern NSW, Australia. He is originally South African, where he practiced HM principles and he now does similar in Australia. It was Dick that suggested to me that “too much grass is a bigger problem than not enough grass”, that I mentioned in a previous blog. It is fantastic to speak to Dick about how to optimise planned grazing, as he puts a very practical slant on planned grazing that is both production and regeneration focused. Now before I go on to talk more about Dick’s thoughts on grazing, I will link you back to the question from the start.

Can you remember the AMAZING change in your pastures that you got when you first moved from set stocking to planned/rotational grazing?

Has there been any pasture advances since, that have surpassed that initial pasture boost from the change in management? This is what Dick advocates – it is the CHANGE in the system that is kick starting something great in the soil and in the pastures. This change may be from set stocking to rotational, or from low density to high density or from a completely ‘spelled paddock’ (ie. 12 months) to an intensively grazed paddock. It may be grazing one paddock as the first with new spring growth, but leaving this as the last grazed spring growth the following year.

So the message is to mix it up as much as possible.

What are the variables in a paddock that can be altered to achieve this desired change?

Continue reading “‘CHANGE’ AS A LAND HEALER” »

THE MIGHTY DUNG BEETLE

2 August 2014 / 2 comments

Dung Beetles! – These little guys were something that I knew were a great advantage to have on your farm but had really underestimated just how fantastic they can be! I have rarely seen the production advantages of dung beetles measured, and it may really surprise you – it certainly did me.

If you could get a 50% increase in your pasture production, sustained over at least a 9 year period you’d be pretty happy right? Well this is the change capacity that dung beetles possess. And at no cost! So, wouldn’t the smart thing be to make choices that encourage them onto your farm, or to introduce them to your farm if they are not already present?

Dung beetles are a ‘no off farm input’, true regenerator of the soil – and that’s what we’re interested in! Their tunneling aids in rainfall infiltration, breaking up compaction, moving nutrients into the soil and leaving pathways in the soil through which root systems can easily penetrate – and importantly, they help contribute to our bottom line.

Not to mention that they can be pretty fun and interesting to watch! Derek and I were most excited the first time we came across the ball rolling beetles here at home.

So, the question is, how do they achieve regenerative outcomes and how can we encourage them onto our farms?

Continue reading “THE MIGHTY DUNG BEETLE” »

ANIMAL PERFORMANCE & TALL GRASS GRAZING

25 July 2014 / 0 comments

I mentioned a few weeks back the feedback I had from Cam at Uralla (NSW, Australia) about how he is optimising animal performance in his planned grazing operation on the New England Tablelands of NSW. This is something that Cam, like us, has had trouble optimising in the past. But Cam is turning this around with some tweaking of his management; he doesn’t profess to fully understand why he is getting the outcomes he is, but with his income reliant on consistent weight gain and meeting growth targets of dairy heifers, he has got a pretty good handle on what is working and what is not. He takes on heifers from around 120 – 180kg and carries them through until the point of calving, during which time he is regularly weighing, observing and monitoring and changing tact to optimise performance. He is paid for weight and size gains.

It is the density of stocking and the time between moves that Cam has been playing with. He has practiced time controlled grazing for some 25 years now, but it is only within the last few years that Cam has really felt he’s getting a handle on how to optimise animal performance – which is also coinciding with better pasture performance. Let’s look at what Cam has been doing.

Continue reading “ANIMAL PERFORMANCE & TALL GRASS GRAZING” »

THE ‘NEW’ COVER CROPPING

11 July 2014 / 4 comments

There is SO much to offer from the huge and exciting variety of applications of this technique – it’s hard to know where to start! What I will be doing is start by focusing on the concepts of cover cropping and addressing the nitty gritty and real life experiences (which is what I love most) in coming blogs, rather than doing one big gloss over. This will keep the blogs to a readable length and will also allow your feedback and input, which we can build on as the later blogs come.

[Talking of feedback, I had some really great and helpful feedback from Cam at Uralla after last week’s blog on animal performance under planned grazing systems. More on Cam’s feedback and comments in the side bar(to the right) of the main page of this blog. Thanks HEAPS Cam. I'm sure that Cam's sharing with us will help give more of you in our Conscious Farmer community the confidence to share your experiences. You will realise that this is a ‘safe’ place in which you can share; either for the benefit of informing others or for seeking input from me and/or others].

Back to cover cropping! There are ALL SORTS of reasons to cover crop, which include incorporating grazing into the system. Certain farmers have worked with this technique and had some amazing success with it and I hope to take this and share it around other parts of the world.

Just imagine increasing your soil infiltration from ½” (25mm) per hour to 8”/hr (200mm)? This is an astonishing improvement achieved by North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown, whose experiences I will share with you next week! On our farm in recent years, we have experienced longer dry periods between which we have more intense and heavier rainfall events compared with the more even nature of our annual rainfall of last decade. I hear these observations echoed by North Americans with regard to their areas. (I am interested to know if the South Americans and Africans are experiencing similar). What this means however, is that CAPTURE and STORAGE of rainfall are now more critical than ever.

The amount of rainfall that we are able to INFILTRATE during these less frequent falls becomes paramount; more important than our actual yearly rainfall. Not only this, but how much we can then hold in the soil to stretch us through to the next rainfall event is equally as critical.

What is cover cropping?

Traditionally I would have thought of cover cropping as the planting of a legume or oats crop (often referred to as a green manure crop) in between cash crops, which is either worked in or sprayed out. Well, this is old school and playing small compared with the amazing things being done now.

Continue reading “THE ‘NEW’ COVER CROPPING” »