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White wings new graze

Wow, thanks ALL for comments and suggestions! I'm really pleased that so many here are interested in this new project I'm about to undertake.

I plan to take lots of photos so I can do some before/after shots for you guys as well as keep you posted on a regular basis about how things are going on the new place.

First let me say that there are already cattle on the place. They're not mine, and they're not the landowner's either, they're from neighbors to the north and south. The current landowner knows about them, but since he's got no cattle on the place and little interest in it as well, he's not cared. Once we sign the paperwork, I'll get started removing those animals.

From what I've seen the cattle haven't spent a lot of time in these first areas I want to clean up....which means to me that there's not much of interest to them there.

Also, as JerseyLilly has stated, you northern ranchers probably can't appreciate how quickly things change down here. Leave a pasture unattended for 2 or 3 years and you'll have your hands full working it with a tractor, bushhog, and front-end loader. Leave it 4 or 5 years and you'll be looking for bulldozer! It's nothing short of amazing how fast this stuff grows.

For instance, I bushhogged areas in August and September of this year that I wanted to plow and plant in bermuda. I had last cleaned these areas in May of this year. The new growth (though not yet woody and difficult to cut) was taller than my tractor!!!!!

It's going to be much easier to clean these first areas up with my bushhog as opposed to any other method. And JL's right, diesel costs something on the order of $0.06/gallon here so the cost of fuel is not the issue. For me right now the issue is finding the time to devote to the work and finding the time to free up my tractor.

And a final and important point needs to be made here. While I will most definitely plant some beautiful pastures on this new ground and eventually hope to have an excellent cattle ranch in operation, first I've got to pay off a bank loan. That means for a number of years I'm looking at planting corn and soybeans in order to generate the revenue I need to meet the loan demands. Each year, as I clear more land, I'll devote some to planting bermuda as I'd like to establish it as soon as possible, but the main drive will be corn and soy so the banker's don't come knocking.

Let me know if you guys have any other questions or comments. And again, thanks for the thread.
 
I understand if your going to break the land to farm that you need to probably mow to get the trash down so the ground is workable.
What I was wondering about the Mob grazing and I mean enough livestock so that what they don't eat in a day or two they trample into the dirt with their manure and then move on to the next piece and let that grazed piece rest for 60 growing days and do it again.
Is their native grass in that area that is good for grazing?

Up here we have a short growing season so I have longer rest periods but you "should" be able to speed that cycle up dramatically in your area. In the wet season you would move them through quicker and in the dry season a longer rest would be needed.
Is it predators or why do you seem to have your cattle penned up so much? Do they trample your planted grass to much?
Just curious. :D
 
BMR, with just a couple of visits so far, I've calculated that I've got about 100 acres that will be "workable" with my existing equipment. That means I'll be able to bushhog it, cutting it right at the ground, and then plow it in anticipation of planting. There's some additional acreage that I've seen that will probably require a good bit work with my front end loader, knocking over sizeable Acacia trees and moving them out of the way or burning them before I can bushhog and plow.

Using Google Earth, I've looked at a satellite image (some number of years old) of the place and have identified another 100 acres or so that was obviously cleared in the not-too-distant-past. I've not yet been able to get back into this area to see what it looks like today, but I'm hoping it'll be tractor-workable as well. More likely though, it won't be tractor-workabe and will require something like a Cat D8 to clear it.

If the regrowth in the area is fairly recent, I may be able use a method described by a D8 owner that really intrigued me. This method can be applied to growth that's too big for standard farm tractors but is still much smaller than working with "virgin" wooded areas. The method involves first clearing a number of parallel alleyways. Two dozers are then lined up and a huge chain is connected between them. They then move forward slowly as the chain topples the growth. From what I understand, this method allows for much more acreage to be cleared in a shorter period of time and generally does much less damage (rutting etc) to the ground's surface than conventional clearing methods. I own one D8 and would lease another if the method seems applicable to my situation.

On the question of grazing my cattle, there's some obvious confusion as to exactly what I'm doing. My place is generally rather hilly though I've got some pastures that are relatively flat. These "flat" areas have mostly been planted with bermuda, some now producing it commercially for sale as bales, others I'm still working to make commercial.

I've found that grazing cattle in my best pastures seems to do a lot of damage in the short time they're there. Having said that, I've got a number of pastures that will never be commercial for bermuda, but still produce lots of good grazing for cattle. My cows and calves use those areas on a daily basis, and we rotate the grazing according to rainfall and re-growth.

Bermuda, as everyone knows, grows rapidly and seems to do best when cut often during rainy conditions, quickly smothering out unwanted competition. I like to clean the edges of my commercial bermuda fields with my pasture harvester and also use the same harvester to clean fields that I'm working towards making commercial. This material is then transported to my young bulls that I'm fattening for sale to the local meat markets.

Yeah, it's a bit of extra work, but the harvesting and fattening seem to go hand-in-hand. Put those same bulls in the same pastures and they'll eat around the weedy, leafy material I want to control AND trample a lot of bermuda growth that otherwise would end up in their stomachs when delivered to them via the harvester.

Hope this helps clear things up a bit. :D
 
Use those cats to build a good firebreak around the area you want cleared and then burn it during the dry season. If you do chain be sure to go over it twice, once in one direction and then exactly opposite to get the root systems totally exposed. Hoping it all works out for you and looking forward to tracking your progress here on ranchers. Thanks for letting "us experts" tell ya what to do! :wink: :D
 
leanin' H said:
Use those cats to build a good firebreak around the area you want cleared and then burn it during the dry season. If you do chain be sure to go over it twice, once in one direction and then exactly opposite to get the root systems totally exposed. Hoping it all works out for you and looking forward to tracking your progress here on ranchers. Thanks for letting "us experts" tell ya what to do! :wink: :D
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Fire´s an excellent idea for this place as the prevailing winds will take the flames westward and away from anything the neighbors might have planted. Also, it´s got a pretty significant river along the southern border which should give additional protection. I think things are already probably dry enough to start burning and by the time we get the paperwork done here in a few weeks, it should be prime.

I´ve had to be very careful at my place when burning because I´d be in a world of hurt if I cooked my neighbor´s bermuda. He´s directly to the west of me.
 
Here's the satellite photo of my place (to the east) and Los Chivos (to the west). My neighbor is sandwiched in the middle. I've outlined the boundaries of Los Chivos from memory so my map may not be totally accurate though the southern boundary, the river, is accurate as is most of the area to the east as well.

As you look at Los Chivos, you can see some areas that are much lighter green than others. These light green areas are the ones I believe I can clear and plow with my tractor. I've recently visited them and included some in the photos I posted in the other thread.

The bright red-brown areas I've not yet seen but were obviously areas that has been cleared and plowed at some time in the past. I'm hoping they'll be in such shape that they too I can clean with the tractor.

LosChivosSatelliteImage.jpg
 
Oh wow...not alot of open ground when you look at the satellite image. I think your in for lots of work.....LOL maybe goats wouldnt be a bad idea in the areas that are wooded. :wink: But that'd be a bunchhhhhhhhhhh of goats!!!!
 
Whitewing said:
leanin' H said:
Use those cats to build a good firebreak around the area you want cleared and then burn it during the dry season. If you do chain be sure to go over it twice, once in one direction and then exactly opposite to get the root systems totally exposed. Hoping it all works out for you and looking forward to tracking your progress here on ranchers. Thanks for letting "us experts" tell ya what to do! :wink: :D
Click to expand...

Fire´s an excellent idea for this place as the prevailing winds will take the flames westward and away from anything the neighbors might have planted. Also, it´s got a pretty significant river along the southern border which should give additional protection. I think things are already probably dry enough to start burning and by the time we get the paperwork done here in a few weeks, it should be prime.

I´ve had to be very careful at my place when burning because I´d be in a world of hurt if I cooked my neighbor´s bermuda. He´s directly to the west of me.
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One issue I have with fire besides the control aspect is the loss of organic matter from the soil. :?

Looking at your photo's I see the arable acres that you want to cash crop. I am wondering if that rest of the place could be made more productive with a good grazing plan? :?
 
BMR, to be quite honest with you, I don't want to be a farmer. I want to ranch and produce cattle. The growing of corn and soybeans for the time being will be to generate cash each year to service the bank loan.

I'll eventually cut way back on the corn and soybeans and concentrate on planting bermuda and other grasses. I'll also probably clear and clean a couple of hundred suitable acres every year until I'm out of clearable land. All of the ranch will eventually be for the production of cattle and any corn I plant will be to generate extra feed for them.
 
Whitewing said:
BMR, to be quite honest with you, I don't want to be a farmer. I want to ranch and produce cattle. The growing of corn and soybeans for the time being will be to generate cash each year to service the bank loan.

I'll eventually cut way back on the corn and soybeans and concentrate on planting bermuda and other grasses. I'll also probably clear and clean a couple of hundred suitable acres every year until I'm out of clearable land. All of the ranch will eventually be for the production of cattle and any corn I plant will be to generate extra feed for them.
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I get you on the farming end of things I have all the land that had been farmed on this place seeded back to grass.
What I was getting at was could the land that wasn't so suitable for improvement by clearing and reseeding to high producing grasses be made more profitable and "improved" by a grazing plan utilizing things like rest and rotation and mob grazing, multi species and other "Unorthodox " :D practices.
 
What kind of trees are those that you see mostly 'tree canopy' in the google pic? And how tall are they? Would it be feasable at all to log it, and generate some income from the wood? It looks very similar to our Pine forest from google view. So thick that you can't see the ground in many places. And when it's like that there's really not much growin on the ground underneath because it's so shaded. Is it that way there?
 
the_jersey_lilly_2000 said:
What kind of trees are those that you see mostly 'tree canopy' in the google pic? And how tall are they? Would it be feasable at all to log it, and generate some income from the wood? It looks very similar to our Pine forest from google view. So thick that you can't see the ground in many places. And when it's like that there's really not much growin on the ground underneath because it's so shaded. Is it that way there?
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There's lots of good wood on the place to be sure. I don't know that it's worth going to the trouble to get the required permits to actually log it, but I sure won't be buying any fence posts for a long while. :D

Roble, palo sano, and a number of other trees make for logs/fence posts that last for decades if they're harvested correctly according to the lunar cycles. Yeah, I had my doubts about the lunar cycle thingy at first, but the locals finally convinced me.

The tallest trees on the place will grow to 70 or 80 feet though in all likelihood most of what's shown on the satellite images is much shorter. As for your comments about not much growing beneath that canopy, you're correct. Very little sunshine hits the ground so there's not much there other than leaf cover.
 
LOL I have no idea what kind of trees those are. Are there any trees here that you could compare them to?

As for fence post ones that last for decades.....of course we use the Cedar posts....(which in reality are not cedar at all but Junipers) and then Bois' de Arc (I'm sure you know what that one is lol)
 
lots of early ranches ran sawmills in the off season to generate income and keep their labor force in place. perhaps one of those portable bandsaw mills could be of some use.
 
burnt said:
Oh boy, Whitewing, don't you just love the board of directors that we provide FREE OF CHARGE? :lol:
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Hey :!: I think that should come to a end.




Consultants are well paid :D And we are so good at giving advice about somewhere we know nothing about we should be working for the government. :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
hayguy said:
lots of early ranches ran sawmills in the off season to generate income and keep their labor force in place. perhaps one of those portable bandsaw mills could be of some use.
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Now that's an interesting idea.
 

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