Grass Finished in the Deep Snow

With all that has been going lately I have hardly had a chance to browse through my August issue of "The Stockman Grassfarmer". But, after working on the house this evening I picked it up and found an interesting article titled, "Finishing Grassfed Cattle Year Around in Deep Snow Country". This is the type of article that interests a grassfarmer from Iowa, although I hope and pray that this winter isn't a "deep snow" winter in Sounthern Iowa!

The article is written by William G. Winter (DVM) who is a consultant for Thousand Hills Cattle Company, a grass finished cattle buyer, and contains ten great points for the grass finisher in snow country. I won't take time to expound on all ten of them, but I will mention a few that I really appreciated.

#2 - Prevent Heat Loss Stress With Wind Breaks: It seems that they advise against barns (I'm down with that), but do stress the importance of wind breaks if you want to maintain good winter gains. He says they mostly used stored forages (net wrapped or tubed), but of course any good wind break would work.

#5 - Prevent Parasites: I loved this quote, "Well-mineralized cattle, whether through the forages, supplementation, or both, do not get parasites. To my mind, there is never a case where poisons need to be used to control parasites." Mr. Winter (fitting name, huh) goes on to write about Basic-H and diatomaceous earth.

#9 - Use Correct Breed Selection: This article suggests English breeds (how about Irish?), smaller with lots of muscling, the ability to develop a think coat, and cattle that are from smart stock. By smart stock (my words) they are talking about cows that root around in the snow, find shelter in storms, and stick with their young through rough weather.

Every single point was great, but I don't want to copy the article word for word! I am encouraged with our Dexters after reading through this and experincing one winter with them.

Sheep on the Mind...

Lately I have had sheep on my mind and I've been trying to read and research a little bit about them. I don't know if my sudden interest has to do with my lack of knowledge on the subject or if it is because I have been reading "The Contrary Farmer" by Gene Logsdon who happens to raise sheep. But, whatever the reason is they have been on my mind as I think about ways to expand the farm, clean up some areas around fences, and control parasites in the cattle. My basic knowledge of sheep tells me that they can lend a hand in all of those areas.

The other day I went over to the ATTRA website to see if I could find some basic introductory information on sheep. What I found was an article titled, "Sustainable Sheep Production" (you can access and html version of the article by clicking on the title). As I said I was looking for a very basic overview and this short article is just that, but it did give me a few things to think about and process.

The first paragraph holds a couple of sentences that really support my current interest in sheep. The authors write, "Integrating sheep into a farming operation can contribute to the economic and environmental sustainability of the whole farm." And they continue a couple of sentences later, "The relatively small investment required, and the gradually increasing size of the flock, make sheep production a good choice for the beginning small-scale or part-time farmer." This really got my attention because I keep reading about the environmental impact that sheep can have on the farm, whether it is by helping to break parasite cycles or by managing pastures. But, the second sentence was pretty interesting also ... after buying our Dexters (and soon a bull, but more on that later) I'm ready for something that is less expensive and perfect for the "beginning small-scale" farmer. One think that I would really like to learn more about is the market for sheep, whether it be the conventional or niche market. I have been told my family and neighbors that the sheep market is pretty good now, but what exactly does pretty good mean?

On the subject of grazing sheep and cattle together the article through out this tasty nugget of information, "...multi-species grazing with sheep, cattle, and goats is useful in increasing pasture efficiency. It has been demonstrated that grazing sheep with cattle can increase meat production by 24% compared to cattle alone, and by 9% compared to sheep alone." Those are pretty drastic increases when you also factor in the possibility of more income with the added livestock. Also, I remember reading recently in Mr. Logsdon's book that you can keep one you and her lamb(s) for each cow/steer/bull you currently have without increasing your acreage. If you can sell for a profit I don't see why you wouldn't add sheep? Or, if you can sell and break even it may even be worth it when you combine the pasture management and parasite control benefits...

The rest of the article is pretty informational also from the basic, "I don't know anything about sheep," point of view. It briefly mentions the use of three strands of electric wire for fencing and the benefits and possibilities of pasture lambing and culling for good lambing ewes. One thing that I would like to research more deeply is breed/cross selection (besides how to raise them of course). The article has a short section on breeds and the authors state that in the U.S. four breeds make up two-thirds of the sheep. But, are those sheep well suited to pasture lambing and pasture living? I don't really know ... I do know that a large amount of the sheep raised in the U.S. come from rangelands in the West, so maybe those would have traits that are more adapted to living in the regions with less precipitation. That being said, as I have mentioned before I'm not ready to add any other purebred livestock as much as I would love to have heritage breeds. One breed association is enough to deal with!

I would love to hear from anyone with experience raising sheep ... especially if you are in the Midwest. Also, below are a couple of links to threads on Homesteading Today dealing with books about sheep and shepherding.

Good Sheep Books For a Beginner

Sheep Book Recommendations and Reviews

Worms...

Okay, not just any worms but rather internal parasite worms. Pretty fun subject huh? Well, yesterday I received my December issue of "The Stockman Grassfarmer" in the mail and somehow after flipping through the pages the first article I read was about worms a.k.a. internal parasites. The article is by Allan Nation and talks about pasture-rotation system that was started on research farms in New Zealand back in the early 1940's. It is part informational article about the benefits of pasture rotation for controlling parasites in young calves and part, "this is how management intensive grazing really got started," article.

Research at the Ruarkura Animal Research Station in Hamilton, New Zealand led to a rotational leader/follower system in order to help control the parasites that were killing many of the countries dairy calves. Despite the use of wormers the calves were having problems both in the short term, and in the long term because they were not building resistance to the worms. One of the researchers, Dr. C.P. McMeekan, says that internal parasites are a normal part of a pastured animal's life and that they can develop resistance to them if they are constantly challenged by them. The problem was that either the calves were dying because of overload or the were having problems in the future as the parasites became resistant to the wormers and the cattle hadn't built up the strength to combat them.

Their dairy calves were allowed access to pasture early and could even be weaned on to grass as early as eight weeks according to Mr. Nation's article. Once on the grass the rotational system began. The researchers found that parasites live on the bottom two inches of the plants in the pasture so the obvious solution to them was to not let the calves graze at that level. In order to accomplish this they divided the pasture in to paddocks (here is the history part) so that the baby calves could graze ahead of the cows. Once they had that separation accomplished the next step was the rotation. To keep the calves from hitting that bottom two inches they would rotate them daily ... and daily or at most every other day ... is the key.

They found out that their research and system worked. The calves still had a parasite load, but they could deal with it partly because they system fought them and partly because they were eating such high quality forages. Thus, rotational grazing was born ... or something like that.

The pasture rotations will also combat parasites if you are running different types of livestock through the pastures because that helps break the cycle also. It is a pretty fascinating topic because really what it all goes back to is how the animals were created to function. Now we are just trying to capture what they did on their own and do it in a controlled environment.

Pigs or Sheep?

The question running through my mind lately is this ... Pigs or Sheep? What should the next addition be to Stoneyfield Farm. Even though we are not on the farm yet and have no definitive plans of when that will happen (if ever), I would like to see us, and the us in this case means myself and my dad, take steps in the direction that I would eventually like to end up. Maybe it just means I help with the research, marketing, and ideas or maybe it means I'm there working on the farm everyday. Either way, I'm beginning to think about what to add to the farm, if anything, in the spring.

On one hand, we have talked quite a few times about bringing some sheep to the place. Either ewes or wool wethers or market lambs. We don't really have a clue as to what we would do when it comes to the sheep. In fact, between the two of us our knowledge of sheep is practically nil. The one thing we have going for us is that my uncle (dad's brother) has quite a bit of experience with sheep so there would be some help close by. One of the positives of sheep is their browsing ability and the help they would give in cleaning up old fence rows that criss-cross the property. We would like to clean out a lot of these areas that are over grown in order to replace fence or put up more effective fencing. In this case, we would be using the sheep as a labor force. The other reason we are considering sheep is because they are a great animal to follow cattle on pastures because they are a dead end host for the parasites (and cattle the same for sheep). It would be nice to have this tool in our arsenal. We just need to continue to research this idea. We are planning on going to a few sales in the area to see what the market is like right now, and I would like to find some cattle people who are also raising sheep, or vice versa.

Pigs ... can't live with them, can't live without them! Pigs are kind of a sore subject in my family. In the late 80's, when the hog market was high, we had a lot of pigs on the Book family farms, and they all smelled really bad. Once the market dropped we got out, but it was never a really enjoyable thing having that hog lot on the place. Obviously we would be doing things quite a bit differently this time, but the stigma still exists. On the plus side, we have personal experience with raising hogs from farrow to finish. Of course, this knowledge is in the more conventional setting, but it still would apply. I like the idea of adding pigs because there are some areas that I would like to reclaim to pasture or savannah as I have previously mentioned, and because I really like to eat pork. I figure if I'm going to raise food I better be passionate about eating that food also! Again, there is still much research to be done, but maybe we would feel a bit more comfortable going into this animal than any other ... if we can get past the stigma!

If you are interested in reading some more about pigs, pasture, and the combination of those two things, I encourage you to check out this THREAD over on the Homesteading Today forums. I had initially asked about different heritage breeds that people were using in their pasture situations, but it also brought up a lot of good thoughts on pastured pigs and breed selection.

So, Pigs or Sheep ... Do you have an input?