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I did a lot of trials with grazing last year while I was doing the Jaime Elizondo total grazing course and I wanted to share an observation re grazing annual species in a Mediterranean environment.
What I noticed is that the animals happily grazed most of the vegetative forage early in the season, but were prone to scours etc. so did better on forage that had had longer establishment and recovery times. However, later in the season as things started going reproductive they actually lost condition when I forced them to eat too much. What is more, taking too much off left little in the way of fibrous soil cover for the dry summer ahead.
Nothing new here.
What I’m proposing is that in alignment with the animals needs, it might be worth trying longer recovery and harder grazes during the vegetative stage of the season so they get more fibre with the high protein/sugar feed and shorter graze cycles but less complete graze events during the bolting reproductive season for the opposite reason. I think this would be better for the soil too.
Any thoughts?
Carl Smith and Sam Maisey6 Comments-
So you mean that mid growing season mob should be eating down to past golfball height & not returning until well past beer can height .. assuming mob density is at the right level for an even graze.??
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Probably not lower than golfball but, depending on the plant species, heights above a beer can 🙂
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The grazing management
journey of learning has always promised to be a long and bumpy one Mark! My thoughts here are trying to cover your questions with the wider audience in mind.
With out doing the total grazing course myself, I have gleaned much of the content and am only one year into applying all the pillars/principles together.
It is important to remember and share with those unaware of the term ‘Total grazing’ that it is a total grazing programme that comprises of 4 pillars. 1. Total grazing, 2 Adapted genetics, 3 Nutrition (rumen function) 4 Optimal calving period.
I think all of the pillars are relevant to your observations. The scouring is a rumen function issue, where in our environment of introduced pasture species being relatively high quality, not enough fibre is available for rumination. To mitigate this hay is a good source of fibre which is best to feed in the morning followed by animal movement onto fresh pasture in the afternoon. Also your point about deferred grazing ( longer establishment) is a good one. Perennials are another good fit into this system because they provide more ‘mature’ feed in this autumn, early winter window.
The total grazing pillar is relevant in that we need frequent moves based on your context and goals. This could be either every 14 days, once per day or 4 times per day. Not enough time to dig into this deeper but it’s about rumen function as much as it is about pasture utilisation and recovery period. The bit that is relevant to your query is that as the season gets away from us in Spring, half the grazing area in a total grazing programme is let to run up to maturity while the other half continues with the high density, high utilisation total grazing technique. Practically this means that we create standing hay for half the farm, which I am using as an opportunity to set seed of newly established pastures and at the same time manipulate poorer pastures with high utilisation grazing. Grazing in the dry season may require additional protein sources to utilise dry feed. Currently I have kikuyu underneath the dry feed as the protein source with the aid of some free choice minerals.
Essentially we are building a whole year grazing platform that has a growing season and dry season. The adaptive genetics and optimum calving period comes into this equation, in that we need to match the animal demand with the pasture quality and quantity available. Adaptive genetics is a rabbit hole that I’m not going into, but suffice to say there is a difference between grass genetics and feedlot finish genetics.
Cheers
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Thanks for that Eric.
The total grazing pillars are very informative and I learnt a lot doing the course.
I did however feel it was somewhat targeted towards those running cattle that already have established perennial systems.
One issue I ran into last year is that when I total grazed annual species that we’re going reproductive, beyond a certain point, they just didn’t recover (things dried off early up our way) and I was left without as much soil cover as I would have liked.
For next time, I will consider moving off the priority grazed green season paddocks and onto the stockpiled paddocks earlier.
and/or
Graze the priority areas one last time but only very briefly. Having the animals leave behind lots of stem may not be good in the growing season but when everything is drying/dying off, I’d actually like some high lignin cover left behind.
I think supplementary feeding protein/improved genetics to enable greater utilisation of fibrous forage may be counterproductive in this situation. This doesn’t apply to perennials which would still bounce back at this time of year.
Another concern is that animals with the genetics to better utilise high fibre feed may not fare as well at the other side of the season with the high sugar/protein annual species.
Ideally, it’d be good to establish more diversify and perennials in our systems and adapt the genetics to suit as we progress.
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I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on how you manage the priority green graze areas in spring and when you think it’s best to move off them and onto stockpile.
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I recently rewatched Allan Savory’s talk, and he had several strong points, but the one that resonates the most, is make a plan and then keep planning, and monitoring of said plan.
Secondly, as Eric says, the type of cattle plays a huge role, some can handle the dryer type feeds while others need more delicate management and that may mean supplementation etc.
Good observations, will be interesting to see how the next season plays out for you.
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