MrBilly,
First off.... GREAT WEBSITE ONLY OUTDONE BY YOUR GREAT LOOKING OPERATION!!
With all the great looking pastures you look to have there... and your obvious success with the J&L feeders... What's your methodlolgy of balancing pastures vs. feeders... hay cost, rotation, time of year?
Thanks... Richard
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Richard, Thanks for your nice comments. WE work very hard at this enterprize and I guess it is begining to show?
We use rotational grazing in 7 acre plots (separated with electric polytape and crossfencing), when the grass is growing the cattle are moved when there is an average of 1/2 of the grass consumed - the number of days varies with the size of the herd on it at the time, the moisture, etc. It is not always possible to rotate at 1/2 of the grass being left, but it is the goal. This past year we have been blessed with rain.
We have one feeder for each plot and where possilbe we try to have one feeder at the border of two plots so it can be entered from either side - cuts down on expense of feeders. Each feeder is on a pad of geotextile fabric covered by crusher run gravel. This still gets very messey in the winter, but at least the cows are not up to their "knees" in mud. All of our hay is produced on the farm. It runs about $25 per roll - I think. I haven't figured for the last year. But, we have someone contract bale for us and then we add in the cost of fertilizer and lime.
As for the pastures, I think it helps that we have clover in all of them so that puts nitrogen into the soil, plus it is good nutrition. We still soil test every year and add K and P as needed, as well as lime. We still have weeds, mostly horse nettle. Since we do have clover there is no herbicide that can be used that will not also kill the clovers, SO the wife and I spend many hours spot spraying with Grazon. It is either that or kill and start over, and that won't work since there are always seeds left from the previous years.
Billy :roll:
