Hi there I was searching for some more information on Holistic Management and any forums that were made to ask questions. I have many questions My question is, how do you first determine your stocking rate for animals? (feel free to move this post to its correct location if I have it wrong)
You will find that stock rates vary from country to country and probably from state to state. If you are new to farming, your best bet would probably be to talk about this with your neighbours to find out what it is locally and why they say what they say.( or your local dept of Agriculture). I say why as well because they may give you a figure based on them buying in hay/silage or grain, rather than growing their own. Its based on how much feed you can grow for your livestock. Usually, this includes the hay or silage you can grow for them, not just the standing grass.
In Australia the traditional grazing potential of land was expressed as a unit called a DSE or dry sheep equivalent, let's say it took 10 Hectares to sustainably keep a wether sheep year round, then the carrying capacity is .1 DSE/Ha., or 1 DSE/10 Ha, or a 10000 Ha block would have a carrying capacity of 1000DSE ( Pretty dodgy country where you need a lot of it to turn a dollar. The Carrying Capacity of my best country is 15 DSE/Ha, or 3 dry cows per Hectare, but the Stocking rate varies according to the type of stock and the season eg. I can only at a maximum year round run 5 wet sheep with their lambs/Ha because one of these units are equivalent to 3 DSE. In reality in a normal wet summer I could safely stock that same country over the warm, wet summer with 10 ewes and their lambs, but their lambs would be weaned off or sold in the late summer and the ewes would be pregnant, but dry through the winter, but because of no rain and shorter day length and cooler weather I might only stock the same country with 3 dry, pregnant ewes/Ha through the winter and have the other 7 dry pregnant ewes of the 10 on another paddock that was spelled all through the summer and had a good body of dry standing feed to last them through the winter. This paddock at a maximum produces on average 760 kg of liveweight gain/Hectare if it was stocked at it's carrying capacity, but in actually only produces 400kg/Ha/year as I stock it at a lesser rate. To be safe for variation in seasons and to have cover and shelter for stock - drought, floods etc my average stocking rate over the year is about half of the carrying capacity, grass needs to be allowed to seed and it's roots allowed to be fed by the leaves and grow to be healthy, pasture species diversity and species perenniality maintained by not overgrazing as some grasses are more palatable than others and so are selectively grazed, they need to drop leaves to boost soil organic matter and keep soil active microbially to be fertile as well as to slow surface run off and prevent soil loss through erosion. I also keep enough preserved feed ( hay, silage) through the winter to allow for a prolonged dry spring and pastures are destocked as well if the season deteriorates with animals to meatworks or saleyards or agistment if viable. I live in a sub-tropical-temperate area where winters and summers are mild and rainfall relatively reliable. In many parts of Canada I assume that animals are grazed out only in the summer, hay, grain and silage have to be grown as well in a limited timespan and fed back to the animals if they are shedded through a snowy winter and thaw. The stocking rate and carrying capacity calculations there would be vastly different to mine. Mine is a largely grass fed and fattened industry with low energy and nutritional inputs whereas your animals are most likely more intensive and grain and/or silage fattened or finished.
Thank you for your replies I understand traditional stocking rates and carrying capacity, the system to which I was referring is Holistic planned grazing developed by Allan Savory and the Savory Institute. Now I've visited a farm here in Saskatchewan that uses no silage and very little hay if any at all during winter, and the cattle are grass finished with no extra cereal crop in their diet. (Yes cows do dig through and break up the snow even in zone 2) Although he rotates his cattle to a new paddock every 12 hours, his forage has increased to the point where he is running at a 400% increase in his 3rd year. Last year more ranchers were destocking but for some reason he increased his cattle. Thats when I first heard about him was in 2013. So very interested in this holistic grazing. Especially when I saw the contrast between his field and a neighboring rancher. I should have elaborated earlier, I would like to know things like determining overgrazed areas and partially rested areas, what stocking rate to begin with in relation to forage. and when to double stocking rates. Getting to a rate of 1000 head/acre/day or more Also has anyone (using Holistic planned grazing) used cattle as the delivery method for amending the soil? copper, colbalt.... ect. I want to throw this out there as well, if anyone knows of any up-coming Holistic planned grazing courses in Saskatchewan Canada, or any online Holistic Management courses please let me know. by pm or here. Thanks
Holistic? 2200 head of bovines/Hectare/day equals roughly 4.5 sq metres per beast, less than my horse float. What a load of steershit! On my country this would equate to 11000 head on 1000 ha on a 20 day rotation. In the name of animal husbandry how can this be a "holistic approach" ? What on Earth would make anyone treat animals in this way? Pretty damn hard for them to pigroot and gambol and be a real living being for at least a bit if they are grazed like a caged chicken. Eating each others shit is not what animal husbandry is about. These people should be ashamed or at least embarrassed or mayhap tarred and feathered for their treatment of cattle. This has absolutely nothing in common with a permanent and sustainable culture. Increased productivity at the expense of longevity is totally in opposition to the principles of Permaculture. I await your informed and anticipated reply. I am only a small scale producer over here with 500 odd breeders and followers in a 110 year + old family sustained enterprise and eagerly look forward to a repartee from you big guns in Canada with all the modern sustainable answers. Please show me in a free market how I can increase my productivity on grass by 1100% by such holistic methodology and I will grant you 20% of the profits after a 100 year trial period. I may have read all or part of your post with a different set of background information or values than was intended, so please do not be intimidated or offended by this reply. This is about communication, enlightenment and an approach to permanent food and lifestyle culture, not about rivalry or national cultural or subsidy issues. Viva La Free trade but keep Canadian Pork in Canada and subsidies overseas and let our unsubsidised poor bastard free trade pork farmers at the very least survive our governments free trade pigshit for a bit longer. It is really embarrassing as an Australian producer to acknowledge that the average English schoolkid knows more about Australian food than the average Aussie School kid. Our nation doesn't give a fat rat's arse. 30 odd farmer suicides in recent time because of a sustained drought period and also because our meatworks are mostly foreign owned and Woollies and Coles are there to screw the producer and have their fresh produce as a cut cost leader, Centrelink staff in my experience are a bunch of disinterested public servants pricks only interested in the Moronfield regulars. Farmers in strife here must present tax returns, blah blah for umpteen years and the wait months and months with 1000's of km of trips to the nearest office, yet a Morayfield Drug addict with no record of taxable income over the past 10 years can get over $500 a week no questions asked. Equity my arse . The Great Australian embarrassment more like. Farmers here are treated as dumb Cleitus, yet are more educated and erudite than the average Australian. We are only 5% of the human population who farm 99% of the land area, so do not really count when it comes to elections. How does welfare for primary producers work in Canada?
Wow Curramore1, nice rant Its somewhat better for producers in Canada, although I don't know any farmers that had a zero return on investment unless it was a oilseed or cereal crop that had crop damage and usually every producer has insurance either crop insurance or market protection for beef and pork, not sure about poultry or lamb. I could ask. Even if you have a terrible year that you never got your crop in because it was an overly damp spring, you would be covered for that as well unless that same land was flooded the year before then no, you wouldn't get coverage. and yes I do mean 5 square meters a day or more than that depending on forage, cattle are herd animals and before man came along they did graze tightly to avoid predators. Talking to veterinarians that work along side ranchers doing holistic management find that because the cattle rotate and do not come back to the same paddock for 60+ days they had less parasites than the conventional ranchers here. Here in Canada our land is divided by quarter sections, a quarter is 160 acres, the local ranchers will graze 50 to 100 head on a quarter for about 1.5 months or less, again depending on the forage available. Now take those 100 head and put them all in 1 acre for a day, then the next day move them, that means 159 days of rest for the first paddock or at least that's what I understand. So again.... PLEASE if you have knowledge of holistic management, either a rancher that practices it or a teacher or instructor contact me. No disrespect for other ranchers or farmers or mob grazers. If I wanted to talk to a doctor about my arm falling off I wouldn't go to a coal mine and ask a miner to fix it up. Just common sense here, I did ask for a specific individual. Thanks
This link describes a Permaculture method. https://permaculturenews.org/2013/0...rmaculture-livestock-systems-at-zaytuna-farm/ Have you seen how the meat industry butchers cattle? That alone is a good reason to not intensively raise these animals.
Hi Rick.... really nice to meet you, I've read many of your posts. The cool thing about the grass finished animals where I live is that most are sold to Western Prime Meats in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. I love the way they butcher. Although they are smaller and don't process as many animals at a time like huge processors they do kill the animals in a really great way. I mean its hard to say killing is great, but its nice to see them do it with a respect for their animals. The owners even own their own cattle maybe that's why its more humane We don't send our cattle to feed lots like many other producers, in turn they may not have as high of dead weight but you sure get great quality beef. It is possible to raise intensively, but again the responsibility of how your beef is processed goes back on the producer. We do have a choice where we sell our beef, maybe we don't get the best bang for our buck (price) at least we know our locally grown food is processed locally with the highest nutritional value possible.
Well except for a wind break in the north west corner of our field, not really, we are planning to have almost a Savannah type of field were we grow fruit trees in the paddocks but still allow lots of light penetration for grass growth. Where I live its a steppe climate similar to that of Mongolia, before man came here it was all native prairie grasses not much for trees. We also have ideas of using trees as a living fence, that way we increase our edge effect to attract a larger diversity of species. (deer, prong-horn, birds ect)
@Jalex: Here a speech by Neil Dennis at the powerflex producer panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtwpDc3rv5w (You can scip the first of the 10 video.) The other videos on this channel might also be interesting for you.
