Stay Off the Grass!

Here we are on May 14th, 2013 and, as you can see from the picture above, the only animals on my farm enjoying the bounty of the pasture are the chickens and the rabbits. In fact it is all that I can do to stop myself from turning the cows and sheep out on the pasture ... especially since I'm purchasing small square bales of hay about every 10 or 12 days! But, I know that it is for the best because my pastures are just not to the point they need to be for them to be grazed.

I believe there are a combination of factors that have my pastures lagging behind a little bit this spring. First of all it has been a cool spring (we had 9 inches of snow on May 4th). That has kept everybody's pastures growing slowly, but especially mine that still have a large amount of warm season grasses as the main forage (even after 4 years of intensive rotational grazing). On top of the cool spring combined with the warm season grasses there is the whole issue of the drought of 2012. I ran my pastures pretty hard last year, and if I am going to be truthful with myself I used them up a little more than I should have. So, even though as you can see from the picture below that we are statistically out of the drought I'm still paying the price.

All of this has led to me having to make the painfully tough choice of keeping my cattle and sheep off the pastures and up at the house still eating hay. Each day as I drive to town for work I see what seems like every other farmers cattle out grazing while mine are still eating expensive (still have drought prices here) hay. And, each time I see those cows grazing I try to tell myself that I could put them out on the pasture and just give them bigger paddocks while feeding a little hay still. In my "want to get grazing" mind that seems like the perfect solution, but in my "need to do what is best for the longevity of the pastures" mind I know that I need to just hold off and let them heal as we keep getting some decent moisture this spring.

How are your pastures? Has the cool spring kept them from taking off? Did you do a better job managing them last summer than I did (most likely you did)? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Hello My Friends ...

This morning some one said to me, "May 7th!" With a look of confusion on my face I admitted that meant nothing to me, but then they were quick to point out that was the last time I made a blog post. (Oddly enough it was about me wanting a truck and wanting to sell my Expedition ... I still want a truck, but haven't sold the Expedition yet.) I wish that there were just tons and tons of things that I needed to catch people up on, but really things have been rather mundane ... and very busy all at the same time. I will try to take some time this week to share some of the changes that have been happening. The most exciting one though is probably the fact that I'm now making three moves per day with the cattle.

I'm not sure what to call it because it really isn't Mob Grazing because of the limiting factors of the pastures, but it is at least spreading out some nutrients and getting the cows on fresh grass often. The limiting factors that I'm talking about are the very thin and not super lush stand of grass that I have right now. After 14 years of no management and plenty of weeds and brush taking over the stand of warm season grasses is not very thick and it doesn't take off very quickly in the spring. Because of that I end up putting the cows in smallish areas, but they eat off the grass very quickly and then need to be moved. Also, as you can see in the picture above I started off feeding a little hay to keep them in a small area longer, but I just found it was too much hassle and didn't help the way I wanted it to. There isn't a large concentration of manure being put down ... but, it is a start!

I'm also beginning to get an idea of just how much grazing is possible on the farm and I'm liking what I'm seeing especially as the pastures begin to improve ... which has to happen at some point. Tomorrow I'll try to post a picture of what the ground looks like after the cows have been moved and then what it looks like a couple weeks later. Like I said, the warm season grasses don't take off, but there is some regrowth happening and I think over time the clovers will come back and more.

So far the down side has (besides the thin pastures) has been the watering. I have a large tank on a hay rack that I move around with them and a waterer that I drag to each paddock, but I don't like how it's working out so far. I do have some plans though and I'll share them as I think through them.

Hope this counts as a post :) And, I'll share a little more as the week goes on.