> base = grass below the typical bite height
> grazeable = grass the cows can bite off
How does that translate to sheep, which can bite off grass at nearly
ground level?
>So the answer to your question is to begin as soon as the
>grass is tall enough to bite off, and then to move the cows
>around the paddocks in such a way as to quickly establish a
>grazing wedge.
Once we get going with grazing, I do generally manage to have a range
of forage heights across the grazable area within the first few weeks.
>It's much better that you go into the winter with the
>grazing wedge somewhat intact. It's rather improvident to
>graze all the grass right into the ground every fall.
Not sure I understand. In our area nothing, other than fescue, will
stay edible through winter. We've been managing to heavily favor
clovers, as our only fescue is endophyte infected so I'm trying to
get rid of it. So far we are improving and at the end of the season
the paddocks look a bit ragged but we still have clovers and all of
our grasses in all of them. But over winter everything dies back and
now we are starting with fresh shoots and all of a given forage
species are at the same height across the entire area.
>If you don't have:
>
> (1)enough animals, or
Generally ok with this one. We time breeding to match the start of
the grass explosion so we go from a small flock to a bunch of
lactating ewes with lambs very quickly. Our breeding season is short,
to force a tight lambing and we have been slowly improving our lambs
born ratio so we have a bunch of animals ready to eat the first
couple of months of fast spring growth.
Last year our goose experiment was a success, so if I see that I am
going to have excess forage the best "animal" for me to add is geese.
I can't add more sheep or goats due to our Federal scrapie program
restrictions and we've discovered cattle are a disaster management
wise because they destroy the irrigation furrows and our fruit trees.
We are an irrigated pasture area, and we can time breeding after we
see what the start of our winter is like. This year we will be near
average in terms of water, so we will have irrigation the entire
summer. So this year I have 64 ewes bred to lamb starting April 24.
> (2)enough paddocks, or
We use electric netting to create all of our grazing paddocks. The
most paddocks I have ever used is 16 but we can vary the number and
size almost at a whim. We do have a permanent perimeter fence and a
semi-permanent divider that is about 1/2 of the total area. If I look
at the past 3 years data, we generally have 3-4 paddocks during
lambing in May. Then from the end of May until July we average about
10 paddocks and then it varies a lot depending on what our water
situation is.
> (3)a way to measure and record pasture mass, or
How do you do this?
I do walk the entire grazing area regularly but the only measurement
is me eyeballing the forage. From when the sheep are usually out
there until mid June I am in the pastures several times a day,
walking the entire paddock where the sheep are looking for new lambs
and then checking the other paddocks to see what needs adjustment
with irrigation water. After lambing it's down to no more than twice
a day to deal with irrigation water.
> (4)compelling financial motivation,
Curious as to why you see this as a requirement? This one doesn't
seem to make sense to me. <smile>
--
Oogie McGuire - oogiem@desertweyr.com
Weyr Associates - Multimedia and Web Authoring Services & Consulting
Desert Weyr - CMK Arabian horses and Black Welsh Mountain Sheep
http://www.desertweyr.com/
Paonia, CO USA
