I also appreciate the link to Salatin's "new" thinking. I have been practicing his "old" thinking recently with some good results.
I have a little trouble with this "new" thinking from a practical sense. First of all he says it doesn't really work for less than 100 head herds. Well, there are a number of us who have under 100 head.
Second there are those of us who cannot for various reasons move the cattle to new pasture every day, or twice a day. I have to have a system where I move them only once or twice a week.
Also, I have seen where cattle (given at lower populations and densities than would be considered a "mob") put in tall grass will end up trampling and soiling much of it before it is eaten and have a significantly higher incidence of pinkeye.
What happened to harvesting grass to keep it in the "blaze of growth" stage? I find this working fairly well so far. Yes, grass in the "blaze of growth" is higher in protein than carbs. But I find that rotationally grazing them to the point where they have to eat more undesireable plants in a given pasture seems to be providing enough to keep them in good visual condition and health. Maybe not "fat" but not bad.
I look on this "mob grazing" approach as Salatin describes as maybe appropriate for some larger herds in some operations. However as he describes it in your link it is certainly NOT something which can be implemented by everyone with cattle. His "old" thinking and writing is certainly more applicable to smaller cattle operations. It seems to have worked for him for quite a few years. I plan to continue the old approach of more frequent rotations with the aim of putting cattle on grass that is 7-10" tall and grazing it down to 3-4" then moving them.
I think putting them into 18" or taller mature pasture will only work well IF you have enough cattle (at least 100 as he describes) and can move them frequently enough (daily or more often?) to get the feeding frenzy going and reduce the waste. I have done that recently due to non perfect rotation and was NOT happy with what I saw.
Again thanks for the link. I would not have probably been exposed to that without your help. However, I think I will stay closer to Salatin's "old" thinking/approach.
