Rotational grazing

[dun]

Dun, i'm not trying to disagree with you, but, there needs to be enough vegetation left on the plant, so that it is able to photosynthesize. By removing all the forage, you would litterally remove enough of the plant, that in short shoot grasses, would stop growth of an apical meristem, and intercallery meristem. Doing this causes termination of the meristem, and regrowth is stunted and slow. In Long shoot grasses, taking this away, causes regrowth from the auxillary bud, which again is really slow. I think you are on the right track, but it is vital to quick plant growth to leave some amount of forage so that plant can come back, without having to go through new growth from the ground up. This leaves decreasers, and increasers intact, and helps prevent invaders, which are inevitable with overgrazing.

J.P.

You leave half and take half that's the "feed desired to be consumed is completely removed", that's the reason for rapid turnover of paddocks and adequate stocking rates.

dun

 

[Frankie]

Sorry, I guess I am slow at catching on. Any info would be great.

Here's a link to an article from the Noble Foundation:

http://www.noble.org/Ag/Forage/Rotation ... index.html

If you need more info, please continue to ask.

And here's a link to the Noble Foundation Pasture & Range info:

http://www.noble.org/Ag/Research/Forages.htm

 

[oakcreekfarms]

Brandon, it was more of a question of "is this possible". I have no idea what is possible by doing rotational grazing.

Dun I do understand the main principles with rotational grazing, I just would like to figure out how many I can rotate. I have been researching it for sometime now, I am going to have to buy a piece of land and get full utilization out of it. I know that some research shows that you can put on 25% more head, others have showed more and others less. I just was wondering what the stocking rate is for those that are doing it

 

[Parkerson Cattle Co.]

You leave half and take half that's the "feed desired to be consumed is completely removed", that's the reason for rapid turnover of paddocks and adequate stocking rates.

dun

Ok got what you are saying yes that is right thanks for clearing that up. :cboy:

 

[KMacGinley]

I would definetly look into making about 10 paddocks instead of 3.
each should be able to rest for at least 21 days, 30 is better. You can graze the 16 acre areas for 2 days and then move them. Might require some water work.

 

[dun]

Brandon, it was more of a question of "is this possible". I have no idea what is possible by doing rotational grazing.

Dun I do understand the main principles with rotational grazing, I just would like to figure out how many I can rotate. I have been researching it for sometime now, I am going to have to buy a piece of land and get full utilization out of it. I know that some research shows that you can put on 25% more head, others have showed more and others less. I just was wondering what the stocking rate is for those that are doing it

The problem is that the grass/forage varies by time of year, type of forage, category of animal grazing it and weather patterns. There is no pat answer. We could run 75 head on 240 acres (probably more like 180 when the unused areas are taken out), but realistictly that won;t work. When I figure stocking rate I figure that's for the entire year, not just the prime grazing season. In the spring we could run 100 plus, but that decreases the available "quality" forage for the others and doesn;t allow for stockpiling winter grass.

dun

 

[Northern Rancher]

There is no magic answer for stocking rate when you are dealing with something as dynamic as grass growth and as cruel a taskmaster as mother nature. It's best to start out with baby steps and maybe leave some grass then swing for the fence and go bust. I've seen some colossal wrecks with rotational grazing-in fact I've authored a few myself over the years. Our area for example has explosive growth in late May and June-20 hours of daylight etc. Most people load up with a class of cattle that can be sold as the growth slows-ex ship dry cows in late june-ship grass yearlings in August. When things go bad and they will go bad eventually-drought,frost, gerasshoppers etc you must be able to adjust stocking rate,

 

[oakcreekfarms]

Thanks Dun, that makes sense. My deal is that right now I would only have the 27 pair on it, so I would slowly increase over the years because I would be keeping the heifers, plus we have some other grass to run pairs and bred heifers on. I am just trying to do some math to see how many I could run on it, and how fast I could pay it off within reason. I realize that there are a lot of factors involved, I was just looking for a place to start with my math.

 

[dun]

Thanks Dun, that makes sense. My deal is that right now I would only have the 27 pair on it, so I would slowly increase over the years because I would be keeping the heifers, plus we have some other grass to run pairs and bred heifers on. I am just trying to do some math to see how many I could run on it, and how fast I could pay it off within reason. I realize that there are a lot of factors involved, I was just looking for a place to start with my math.

Start with 27 and and smaller paddocks.
It's a learning curve to figure out the grass and the grazing rotation. But those can;t be graven in stone because each year will be different. I learned a long time ago to understock some. In normal years it's easy to expand too much too rapidly. A couple of years of drought, then the recovery time for the forage after you start getting adequate rainfall makes me glad wwe don;t stock at the full rate that we could. We lease out one hay field/pasture after first cutting to the vet for his bred cows. They're there for a couple of months then they come off, it rests for a while then we either stockpile it for winter or turn our cows into it.
We tried running stockers to take care of the spring flush, whihcc we haven;t had for a couple of years now, and the upfront dollars would have broken the bank.

dun

 

[oakcreekfarms]

I am waiting for the wife to get home and was doing some more research on the topic, I found the equations that were being talked about earlier in the thread.
Basically it said to take (regrowth time/ stay time)+1= Paddocks needed

acres needed= (DM eaten x number of head x stay time)/ DM available per acre

I said that my regrowth might be 40 days and my stay would be 3, I listed my cows eating 40lbs per day of DM, I want to be able to run 50 cows, and I said that my DM available per acre was 1000.

(40/3)+1= 14.3
(40x50x3)/1000= 6

I wouldn't start out at this, but does this math seem right. I am going to build into it, but would like to know what the possibilities are. My other question would be could your run 6 paddocks of 14.3 acres instead of 14.3 6 acres pastures. Wouldn't your stay time increase with paddock size?

 

[dun]

I am waiting for the wife to get home and was doing some more research on the topic, I found the equations that were being talked about earlier in the thread.
Basically it said to take (regrowth time/ stay time)+1= Paddocks needed

acres needed= (DM eaten x number of head x stay time)/ DM available per acre

I said that my regrowth might be 40 days and my stay would be 3, I listed my cows eating 40lbs per day of DM, I want to be able to run 50 cows, and I said that my DM available per acre was 1000.

(40/3)+1= 14.3
(40x50x3)/1000= 6

I wouldn't start out at this, but does this math seem right. I am going to build into it, but would like to know what the possibilities are. My other question would be could your run 6 paddocks of 14.3 acres instead of 14.3 6 acres pastures. Wouldn't your stay time increase with paddock size?

Paddock size isn;t governed by the time it takes t get a field regrown. After about 3 days, the forage that has been removed will start to grow again. Lft too long in a paddocl and they will start to get the regrowth instead of the more mature stuff.
Paddock size and shape is best manipulated with temp fencing. . It's better to have a few pastures that are bug ebough that you can subdivide them into the saize/shape required so that they can e rotated off in 3 dats.

dun

 

[oakcreekfarms]

That's what I thought about the regrowth days, that's why I used 3 days in the equation. What is the average regrowth time?

 

[dun]

That's what I thought about the regrowth days, that's why I used 3 days in the equation. What is the average regrowth time?

It generally starts regrowth around 3 days. But to get it to a grazable heifght may take 3 weeks or 3 months. Depends on the type of grass and the climate at any given time.

dun

 

[IluvABbeef]

That's what I thought about the regrowth days, that's why I used 3 days in the equation. What is the average regrowth time?

3 days??! That's cutting it abit short, aint it? If your running 160 acres with 3 pastures, or even six, the AVERAGE time is around 3 weeks of rest, or 42 days. Like dun said, it all depends on the growing season and environment.

 

[MikeC]

That's what I thought about the regrowth days, that's why I used 3 days in the equation. What is the average regrowth time?

Probably closer to 3 weeks if you've got adequate moisture and nutrients.

 

[mbdear]

The movement from a grazed paddock should occur before the grass has sufficient regrowth to be re-bitten by the grazing animal. It takes many more paddocks than three to achieve sufficient rest periods for the grass to recover and suitably short grazing periods to prevent the grass from being regrazed before it has achieved the regrowth target. It would probably be a good idea to find someone in your area who is actually practicing holistic resource management or management intensive grazing to see the effects of grass management. This year I am going from several years of grazing 8 pastures to a system utilizing 16 pastures. Good luck to you in your quest.

Mike
Slocum, Texas

 

[oakcreekfarms]

You guys need to re-read my post before jumping all over me. Look at the equation. I gave each paddock 42 days of rest, and I would only graze each pasture for 3 days. There isn't going to be 3-6 pasture, but around 14 paddocks.

So once again, there would be 14 paddocks, each one would be grazed for three days, and each would have 42 days regrowth period in between grazing. It sounds like from what you guys are saying my math was right. That's what I needed to know.

 

[mbdear]

If I was to buy 160 acres and split it up into three pastures how many pairs could I run.

If you had said you intended to split it up into 14 pastures instead of three pastures, perhaps the answers would have been more on target. Nonetheless, you will likely find that during times of fast growth, you will want to rotate faster than 3 days in each paddock in order to keep the grasses from getting too mature, i.e., during our spring growth, 42 days would be much too long a rotation.

The math is close...14 paddocks with a 3 day graze period would result in 39 days rest in each paddock, not 42. The length of each rotation would equal 42.

hope this helps.

 

[DOC HARRIS]

Log onto Google or Dogpile and "SEARCH" for "Rotational Grazing Plans."

DOC HARRIS

 

[oakcreekfarms]

Doc, I have been doing that every night for the last couple of weeks. I read at least two or three articles a night. From what I understand it varies a lot from state to state. It's a lot more labor intensive then I had previously thought, figuring out water seems to be the hardest part to plan out. However I think it would be a great way to run some bulls to two years of age with minimal pasture space. Or just a great way to get everything out of the pasture that we are planting right across from the house, however that will be three years down the road.

My brain is on overload with info. I was basically asking for averages. I found the equation while searching on yahoo.

Md: the actual number is around 14.3 at 3 days grazing, I thought I could leave out the decimals.