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Good Afternoon Abe,
What time in the morning do your cows get their breakfast?
Chris. H.
From: famfarm
To: graze-l@witt.ac.nz
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 9:53 PM
Subject: [Graze-l] Automated strip grazing
Dear Graze-l folks,
Thanks to Ray McCallum for the reference to the company offering
the programmable gate releases. That's just what I was talking about.
Very useful information. ( Graze-l is an international magic box; put a
relatively obscure question in, get back a solid answer.)
Richard and Carol Conkin asked for more details about our
grazing...(you asked for it.)
Here's some filler. My name is Abe Collins. My wife and I are in
a pre-sharemilking arrangement with Teddy Yandow, in St. Albans,
Vermont. MIG saved the farm for Teddy about 23 years ago, when his
dairy was on the verge of bankruptcy. He paid of the 3/4 million he
owed, and today we're working on ramping up the farm.
Ted is a skillful grazier; when we showed up he was grazing just
over 200 animals on on 185 acres of luscious pasture.
We have been working on some exciting (for us) projects that are
keeping us busy.
We worked with Ken Yeomans of Keyline Design to design a Keyline
Flood Flow Irrigation system, and honed it with a planning dream-team of
about 25 farmers, environmentalists, NRCS, extension and state ag and
fish and wildlife people.
Construction is well underway. The main irrigation channel is
built, new roads are in, and this summer we plan to build the two big
dams.
We are seasonal and grass only, hay in the winter, free choice
minerals. (Seems to work for us.) Last year the herd average was
11,500. We aim to increase it this year with some management changes.
We had a great experience with nurse cows last year. 15 calves on
five, then six mothers. One or two moves per day for the whole nurse
herd on nice pasture. We weaned our very crossbred calves at 5 months
at about 500 lbs. They hit their first heat at eight months. No
sickness, save one case of scours for one day.
We're working at getting better at low stress stock handling. The
Bud Williams video is helping us.
Two summers back we started using strip grazing to play with
timing the meting out of feed in order to better take advantage of
higher sugar afternoon feed. We gave a skinny strip to the whole herd
for breakfast, and then they chewed their cud on pasture til lunch. Noon
on, we strip grazed at a stock density of 300+ animals/acre til second
milking at 3:30. Then they got a generous chunk for dinner. A few days
after we started this, we got a five pound increase per day on the
milking herd. We've kept it for two years. We wanted to be strip
grazing even tighter, but making the time for even more moves eluded us.
I'm a Holistic Management(R) educator in training. We practice
holistic decision-making and do the three planning procedures; land
planning, financial planning and grazing planning.
The Holistic Management grazing planning aide-memoire and grazing
plan and control chart give us a great tool to get rigorous with our
grazing planning. Ultra-high density grazing is a common occurrence on
holistically managed ranches, and Allan Savory has done his homework on
using high stock density within a grazing plan to get exceptional land
and animal performance.
Water and portable shade in every paddock are being installed this
spring, and this will help, we hope, with logistics of our higher
density experiment.
The rough plan is that after morning milking, the cows are going
to be placed in assigned breakfast paddocks ( high and dry and this land
needs some herd effect/high density treatment) at 800+ animals/acre
density (with longer recovery periods.) That will give them a quick
snack, and then they'll lounge til lunch. Beginning at noon, we want to
strip graze at about 500 animals/acre til second milking and the same
from 5 til 9, when they'll hit a small strip to carry them through the
night.
We're grazing 100 milkers and 27 heifers and dry stock in one
herd. This works out to approximately 1/4 acre breaks in the strip
grazed paddock. At current pasture density, grazed hopefully just before
boot stage, we usually get 50 + animal days/acre (ADA). So we're
talking about 8 and more strips per day, on top of the seperate
breakfast paddock strip.
We have the will and the labor to set up the breaks, but we'd like
to try and grease the process a little and not have to run to pasture
to open every break.
So the idea is pre-setting up a series of timed pin-pullers on
reinforced pig-tail posts. I'm going to experiment with oven timers to
pull the pin. The string comes loose, and is pulled on a self-recoiling
reel across the paddock. The string goes through 2 pig tail support
posts on it's way back home to the recoil unit.
That's the thought and our recent experience. Hoping to get it
rolling by early May.
By the way...we're looking for the best grass-only jersey bull in
the north east US...one that will hold up to linear measurement and give
us grass-only seasonal superstars for a line-breeding herd renovation.
We're open to another breed, if it had everything going for it. Any
leads?
Best,
Abe
Cimarron Farm
St. Albans, Vermont
famfarm@sover.net
802-527-2913
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