recent pictures from Maine

[PATB]

winter feeding area (10 year old land conversion area)

goverments idea of wintering area

land conversion area winter 2011/2012 harvested

hay placed before frost and ice snow disappeared. Will be fed in the next week

pics of some animals

recent feeding area

 

[101]

PATB your cattle look very good, but that looks like a challenge??? What kind of tires do you use, or do you use tracks on your feeding equipment?? Your country looks good,very interesting tho! Good luck 101

 

[Soapweed]

Nice looking cattle, PATB. You sure have a lot more trees in Maine than we do in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Thanks for the pictures.

 

[PATB]

PATB your cattle look very good, but that looks like a challenge??? What kind of tires do you use, or do you use tracks on your feeding equipment?? Your country looks good,very interesting tho! Good luck 101

Thanx

I feed with a 2 wheel drove jd 2940 with standard ag tires. The poor skidder operator made a mess an left more ruts then a good operator would have. It is amazing what cows can level off when eating round bales. I figure I have a 10 year project a head of me leveling ruts and getting the ground into production. Most of the stumps will rot out in time and the smaller ones are usually gone in 5 years.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

Looks to me that you could use a "Sky Hook" for placing bales. :wink:

It is nice to see cattle being used as an environmentally friendly way to reclaim the land.

Will that land go back to trees eventually or will the cows be able to suppress the growth and keep it grassy?

 

[Faster horses]

Nice looking cattle!
I haven't seen very many places where you couldn't ride a horse, but I
think that ground you are reclaming is certainly one of those places. YIKES!!

Good luck with your project.

 

[PATB]

Looks to me that you could use a "Sky Hook" for placing bales. :wink:

It is nice to see cattle being used as an environmentally friendly way to reclaim the land.

Will that land go back to trees eventually or will the cows be able to suppress the growth and keep it grassy?

With a little help on selected tree species the cows will eat the trees out of existence. If animals are removed from the picture the whole area will revert back to woods in a short time.

Cows, hay and time are the cheapest form of land conversion I have found. It amazes me how much the soil improves in areas that hay is fed.

 

[PATB]

Nice looking cattle!
I haven't seen very many places where you couldn't ride a horse, but I
think that ground you are reclaming is certainly one of those places. YIKES!!

Good luck with your project.

You could ride a horse of large sections of this area with no problems. The skidder operator did far more ground disruption then normal. 10 to 15 acres will be producing good forage by fall. In about 10 years or less this area will support a cow/calf pair to 1 to 1 1/2 acres from may thu november.

 

[MO_cows]

Thanks for sharing! You could use a stump grinder.

 

[PATB]

Thanks for sharing! You could use a stump grinder.

I will pass on the stump grinder. 3 tons of deep pit chicken manure per acre will help rot out the stumps plus grow some excellent forage. Large areas have old logging trails thru them so it is easy to get a small slide slinger manure spreader thru it. Some areas will require several winters of feeding to make it friendly to equipment.

 

[Silver]

Thanks for sharing! You could use a stump grinder.

I will pass on the stump grinder. 3 tons of deep pit chicken manure per acre will help rot out the stumps plus grow some excellent forage. Large areas have old logging trails thru them so it is easy to get a small slide slinger manure spreader thru it. Some areas will require several winters of feeding to make it friendly to equipment.

I just couldn't help myself, I'd have to get a hoe in there and pop those stumps and set 'em on fire.
I cleared some land a few years ago with my cat (no salvage wood), just cut and piled, picked very few roots. I pulled a breaking plow through it (2-24" bottoms"), disced it lightly and broadcast seed on it thinking it would just be pasture for the next ten years until the last of the roots were gone. Turned out to be the driest year in my time, but nothing beats new land for production and it came in so good I couldn't help myself. I used the discbine to cut it (the haybine wouldn't have handled the roots and limbs), raked and baled up nearly 6 bales an acre from our 567 JD baler. Thankfully we fed those bales in our calving area and not on a hay field, Iwas amazed at the wood that was in those bales. That new land is now practically root free
It is great to be able to let the cows do their thing though, it's amazing what happens if you give it time. Thanks for posting.

 

[George]

With the gravel pit I put this years over burden ( after I have striped the top soil ) on last years mined area then feed cattle round bales on it - - - heavy offset disc , fescue, orchard grass and lime and great pasture just 30' lower than it was 2 years ago!

Cattle used properly will reclaim ground that you would feel was lost!

I have taken hills and clifts with scrub trees and brush and now it looks like a park and produces great tonnage.

I am always on the look out for hay that was put up to late and has already gone to seed - - - it is amasing the tonnage it will produce the first year.

 

[C Thompson]

Awsome pictures Pat. You are doing a perfect job and it is costing you very little. Me and Gcreeckrch have trotted horses across country like that in his back yard. Keep taking those pictures. We have been doing this for 5 years now with no machinery inputs other than the cost of placing the bales with amazing results. Low input pasture improvement using animals and very little iron and oil is not the only way but is the only sustainable way to do it.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

Awsome pictures Pat. You are doing a perfect job and it is costing you very little. Me and Gcreeckrch have trotted horses across country like that in his back yard. Keep taking those pictures. We have been doing this for 5 years now with no machinery inputs other than the cost of placing the bales with amazing results. Low input pasture improvement using animals and very little iron and oil is not the only way but is the only sustainable way to do it.

Your post reminds of a range tour i was on probably 25 years ago. We were visiting a place that had installed water lines and lots of electric fence following the Savory System. The rancher was explaining the practice of "Hoof action" to the soil and how it should improve. Most on the tour were "farmers" and they were wondering if you could do the same to a pasture with spikes on the cultivator. :roll:

 

[PATB]

Awsome pictures Pat. You are doing a perfect job and it is costing you very little. Me and Gcreeckrch have trotted horses across country like that in his back yard. Keep taking those pictures. We have been doing this for 5 years now with no machinery inputs other than the cost of placing the bales with amazing results. Low input pasture improvement using animals and very little iron and oil is not the only way but is the only sustainable way to do it.

Your post reminds of a range tour i was on probably 25 years ago. We were visiting a place that had installed water lines and lots of electric fence following the Savory System. The rancher was explaining the practice of "Hoof action" to the soil and how it should improve. Most on the tour were "farmers" and they were wondering if you could do the same to a pasture with spikes on the cultivator. :roll:

I have never seen an airator spread manure and urine as it harvested its own fuel.

Cows, hay, forage seed and a little manure is a great combination to jump starting pasture in land conversion areas. The cost of convential land clearing is cost prohibitive in my area unless you own the heavy machinery. Then there is the problem what to due with all the stumps untill the decompose. Why isn't cattle and hay used to reclaim mine sites and other disturbance that are hard to vegetate over?

 

[Silver]

Then there is the problem what to due with all the stumps untill the decompose.

I would burn them. :wink:

 

[C Thompson]

I remember being shown slides at the Ranching For Profit school we went to a few years ago where someone did use hay and cattle to green up a slope of mine tailings that was causing severe dust problems in the nearby town. This solved the problem when it couldn't be done with any or all of the machinery that the mine had at it's disposal. It was an extremely low cost win win for all concerned and done on a very steep slope with nothing but mineral soil. The guy contained the cattle in very high density paddocks with portable electric fence and gravity water. The tailings pile had horizontal roads along it every so often that the cattle could rest on and he could travel along as he fed and hauled what water they needed. He threw mediocre hay down slope and whatever didn't get eaten got lots of urine and manure blended with it to become soil and grass. Seeing the photos of the green grass coming behind the cattle as they were moved along the slope makes doing it on flat ground a no brainer. We have done a bit of this very much like Pat is doing so I know he will have success. This makes very good pasture and we don't need to worry about rocks or stumps because the stumps will eventually disappear on their own and who cares about a few rocks in a pasture that produces grass now where there was none before.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

I remember being shown slides at the Ranching For Profit school we went to a few years ago where someone did use hay and cattle to green up a slope of mine tailings that was causing severe dust problems in the nearby town. This solved the problem when it couldn't be done with any or all of the machinery that the mine had at it's disposal. It was an extremely low cost win win for all concerned and done on a very steep slope with nothing but mineral soil. The guy contained the cattle in very high density paddocks with portable electric fence and gravity water. The tailings pile had horizontal roads along it every so often that the cattle could rest on and he could travel along as he fed and hauled what water they needed. He threw mediocre hay down slope and whatever didn't get eaten got lots of urine and manure blended with it to become soil and grass. Seeing the photos of the green grass coming behind the cattle as they were moved along the slope makes doing it on flat ground a no brainer. We have done a bit of this very much like Pat is doing so I know he will have success. This makes very good pasture and we don't need to worry about rocks or stumps because the stumps will eventually disappear on their own and who cares about a few rocks in a pasture that produces grass now where there was none before.

That make too much sense. The coal mine to the east has alot of land that wasn't reclaimed and it has come back with trees and water in the bottom of most cuts but it's pretty much to rough to use. The coal mine to the east is a newer mine and they reclaim with heavy machinery and hay the land but grazing would have done a better job.

 

[jodywy]

dynamite!!!!!!

 

[Faster horses]

In 1981 in SW Montana we experienced what was called 'a 100-year flood".
It sure did a wash job on the creek bottom that ran through our place.
We fed hay to the cows in those places and in ONE YEAR you could
see the difference. It looked like a green carpet. Pretty amazing!