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grazing experiment

jigs

Well-known member
I have an area that is hard to farm so I decided to try a little something different. it is about 5 acres all together. 1 acre of brome, 1 of millet, and 3 of alfalfa. after I took off the 3rd cutting of hay, I turned in the cows. I made sure to keep a bale of praire hay in there to be sure they had something other than the alfalfa.

I ran 21 cows on this patch. and they never got ran down, or hungry for more. took about 1 bale a week, basicaly for dry roughage.

all my neighbors said I would have dead cows, but I was sure it would work!!

I am planning on fencing off more alfalfa this next spring. I could easily run 120 cows on the home 1/4, and keep 40 acres in corn for fall grazing!
 

PPRM

Well-known member
In our part of the country, lots of people graze Alfalfa in the fall and early winter...Usually weren't able to get that last cutting up....Most problems I have seen were with attempts to graze iot early in the season when it was coming on hard....I suspect that if you continue to take a few cuttings off first, you will be fine,

PPRM
 

Mike

Well-known member
Only problem I see you may have is "soil compaction" from running too many cows per acre.

There have been times in the past where we had enough rainfall to run 4-5 pairs to the acre and after a few years the dirt was as hard as concrete.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Jigs, I would sure reinforce your knowledge of dry matter. I'm sure that helped you a lot. Dry matter is not discussed as much as it should be and it is very important in all stages of feeding cattle.

Glad your deal worked! I love good news. :D
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
We graze two old hay fields that are still majority Alfalfa.. Had one cow bloat up last year and none this year.. Mostly all we have to do is wait for a lot of flowering to be going on and it is fine.. That tends to be the pattern around here, run it as a hay field for 5 or 6 years and than either plow it under for corn or turn it into pasture for a few years.. People keep telling me I am going to kill all the Alfalfa by grazing it but heck, it seems to be getting thicker each year.
 

jigs

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
Jigs, I would sure reinforce your knowledge of dry matter. I'm sure that helped you a lot. Dry matter is not discussed as much as it should be and it is very important in all stages of feeding cattle.

Glad your deal worked! I love good news. :D
thanks for the encouragement, but
would you financially assist with my bad news?????
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Mike soil compaction won't come from running too many cows per acre it will come from running too many for too long. There are some guys who intensive graze will run ALOT of cattle in a small area for a short time you see some pretty dramatic improvements in soil tilth. I have some little holding fields we rotate through they might see 25-30 pairs per acre but only for a day-those fields are 15-20 years old and still giving good cow days/acre.
 

Ben H

Well-known member
Mob Grazing seems to be the new thing being discussed. VERY high stocking rates and frequent moves (1-2x/cay) as well as long rest periods (60-90 days or more).

More uniform utilization of the field, faster gains of soil organic matter. Add to that the European company Lely (makes a robotic milker) nows has a robotic fence mover. It's solar powered, two robots travel along a strip with a wheel on the wire as a guide and a wire between them with reels to keep it tight. The strip doesn't have to be perfectly straight. You can set it to move so far every x amount of minutes and if you want move the herd back to the barn for milker...if that is what you do.
Not sure how much it costs but I would think it should pencil out if your moving cattle that frequently.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Northern Rancher said:
Mike soil compaction won't come from running too many cows per acre it will come from running too many for too long. There are some guys who intensive graze will run ALOT of cattle in a small area for a short time you see some pretty dramatic improvements in soil tilth. I have some little holding fields we rotate through they might see 25-30 pairs per acre but only for a day-those fields are 15-20 years old and still giving good cow days/acre.
Depends on soil type too.
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
A clay soil that gets wet is going to pug under that heavy of pressure but if it is short term will recover okay.. We are lucky in that most of our soil is pretty spring a far as compaction but we do get some in our winter pastures... That is more from duration of time probably than density however..
 

Mike

Well-known member
Stocking rates and precipitation can affect soil compaction period.

With the four distinctly different types of soil around here I have to be careful when highly stocking some of the types when grazing summer annuals for short periods of time.......... especially when irrigating.

Lot's of factors involved.
 
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