any ideas for converting to rotational grazing?

I have a question open for anyone to answer:

What is the significance of dandelions in relation to soil fertility? Do dandelions indicate lack of a particular nutrient or do they indicate good soil?

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double post

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Agman, how early do you start stockpiling forage for winter?

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Godsgapeach

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

–GK Chesterton

godsgapeach, glad to hear from you, hope all is going great!
Regarding stockpiling for Winter. I have determined from previous Winters and my herd size (100 mature animals including bred heifers) that I need 270 round bales of hay and that I need to feed for not less than 90 days. This amount of hay equates to 3000 plus lbs./day. To amass the equivalent amount of stockpiled feed, I have predetermined how much of a paddock size to allocate to the herd for a 24 hour period of grazing to meet their needs. Obviously the area allocated will depend on the amount of forage that it contains. Experience is a major factor at this point of time. If the season is good and I have plenty of growth I will need 75 days of stockpiled grazing starting 1 Jan. In most years I can get some growth out of the fescue until the end of the year. I will manage the other 15 days by maximizing/regrazing the areas that were not being stockpiled. Now to answer your question. I will take a soil sample in early August. Depending on the results of the soil sample I will start the stockpiling process in late August or early September. If fertilizer is needed I will have it applied in late August. If no fertilizer is to be applied, I do very little until we start getting some rain. Once we have moisture I start the stockpiling process by restricting the herd to the non stockpiled areas. The area to be stockpiled will not be grazed at all. I want this area to reach its absolute peak growth. If the weather doesn't cooperate I will overseed some acreage in the grazed paddocks and the area to be stockpiled with Marshall rye grass as it is more cold tolerant and will grow some while the fescue is dormant. The cattle should be in good body condition going into Winter. Provided they are, their feed requirements can be rationed somewhat. If the forage available is lacking it doesn't hurt to let the animals lose some minor body condition. Most cattle on hay are fed in the same manner.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Morning All,
A easy question for Agmantoo. How often can you graze the same area? You have 160 acres 100 Cow Calf combos a bull or two. and yet set 90 days worth or 25% of what you have aside for winter. So does the winter area basically get grazed twice a year the the rest two or three or?
Sorry maybe not so easy a question
Steve

Agman, do you stockpile different areas each year? What factors do you consider in deciding where to stockpile?

SteveO
The area stockpiled only gets grazed once during the Winter. That same area gets grazed at least a couple of times in the Spring and Summer. Coming out of Summer, I know that it will take 3000 lbs of forage per day starting about 1 Jan. I try to make do up until that date on the non stockpiled acreage. This non stockpiled acreage can and will get grazed more than once in late Fall if there is forage available and is needed. At this point in time I try not to over graze as these areas can still grow some on days when the weather cooperative. The area to be stockpiled is set aside around late August to enable the grasses to obtain maximum growth. Once I go onto the stockpiled Winter grazing, I have the cattle to graze that for maximum utilization and minimum waste. This time the grasses could be grazed short if the forage supply is low or marginal and will be slow to respond in the Spring. In a bad year I may only have 2000 plus lbs of forage per acre and in a good year I may have 4000 plus lbs of forage. I do not waste any forage in early Winter by carefully allocating the areas to be grazed. I am totally dependent on what stockpiled forage is on the farm for the total Winter feed or I have to buy hay. Since I must have forage for the entire Winter it is in the bad years that I plant Marshall ryegrass to supplement what grass I have in the stockpiled areas. In years of plenty, I do not use anything but the fescue that I stockpiled to get through the Winter. Realize that once I start feeding the stockpiled forage, I then have the acreage that was not stockpiled as available land to plant for supplemental grazing. The acreage that was not stockpiled will get grazed 2 to 3 times in the Spring and Summer and again in the Fall. I also could apply commercial fertilizer on the available acreage and get a small boost in growth if I do that in mid to late Fall when I should have a good idea as to how the amount of stockpiled feed has accumulated.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

ds40
I do have a tendency to use the same areas for stockpiling. What started this habit is the availability of water. I also set aside land that does not get as wet/muddy. Land that has been established in forage holds up better also. The cattle seem to enjoy the warmer east facing hillsides as the weather gets colder. In the most recent years I have increased the size of the paddocks with the long rectangles where I vary the size of the paddocks and I like this much better. I can and do control the amount of forage allocated for the day easily and the cattle do not move any distance to speak of. The cattle and the partition tools remain in the same general area day after day and that contributes more efficient paddock moves and on a cold windy day makes for better creature comfort on me. I can move the herd in less than 20 minutes if motivated.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Sometime back I commented that I was planting clovers in order to reduce my need for commercial fertilizer. Those clovers are now blooming and I thought I would share the view. Come late July I will submit a soil sample to determine the fertilizer needs for preparation for stockpiling forage for Winter. I am somewhat anxious to see what impact the clovers will have.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Wow, Agman! Your thread has topped 10k views! Congrats!

That clover looks wonderful! Is that the Alice we discussed? (not Alyce) It's so full and lush!

We're doing well here with the exception of me managing to crack the big knuckle of my index finger on my right hand--makes for a weaker grip and just plain aggravating. Still slowly plodding along though. At this point I'm more realistically shooting for being functional for next spring. (not what I want but ...)

Oh one more question concerning the mowing back (around post 573). You said about "knee-high". Can you give a measure in inches? You know my knees and yours are nowhere close.

Hope you and yours are all well!

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Godsgapeach

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

–GK Chesterton

Sorry to hear that you have a mangled knuckle! I can sympathize having experienced similar problems in the past.
I would like to make a suggestion regarding your postponing rotational grazing until the Spring. Rather than starting in the Spring do you think you could do a startup with rotational grazing come Fall? IMO, it is more forgiving as the grass is going to go dormant but you can get some practice and build confidence while extending the grazing season much later than with conventional methods. You would need to have the pigtail posts and a couple of rolls of polywire. By improvising some partition fencing and doing some stockpiling I think we could extend the grazing not less than 30 days past what has been typical. We should get into Jan. worst case. This would conserve hay and give you some experience for the upcoming Spring. Let me know your thoughts.
PS.......Knee high is 24 inches.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Evening all,
Another question for Agmantoo. When you say 3000# per day what does that equate to. In say Spring growth and then in the Clover field a few frames up. In acres or sf. i know it will be a rough guess.
Thanks
SteveO

SteveO
In Spring growth it equates to 7/10's of an acre in most years. In the clover above my best guess it would take a full acre. I try to limit the herd to clover plus grass as the clover alone, though tolerated and thus far no bloating, gives them loose, very loose waste discharge. I took some pics of the some of the different clovers. I will post a pic of them so you can see up close how big the foliage is on some of the varieties.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

To minimize the commercial fertilizer requirements, I have been sowing various clovers in order to get the benefits from their nitrogen. One of the clovers was a variety named Alice. Here is a pic that I took to visually share the size of the leaves. In this pic at the top right is a plant known as black medic and about 3 o'clock is a few ladino clover plants to get a comparison. Black medic is a plant known to grow on low quality ground so the size of the Alice clover is not from some super rich soil.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

I think I missed something. So is your plan to mow the clover and plant a Marshall for the fall. It looks to be 10-20 acres??. It looks like having some Alice in your basic grass would be a good thing or is a annual?

Steve

Finally getting back to your question about starting this fall, Agman. I'm definitely not throwing in the towel. I'm keeping at it and Lord willing, I'll have the rotations set up and in practice. The slowness of progress is just frustrating for me!

I'm keeping at it and I'll keep you in the loop as things move along! Right now I'm just buried in green beans--about 8 gallons worth in 3 pickings. Need some?

By the way, I like that Washington blossom on your clover. If only they all grew like that...

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Godsgapeach

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

–GK Chesterton

Between showers as I moved the herd I had a chance to take a pic of the Alyce clover. This is the clover that I had a failure with as it was supplied initially for the Alice I ordered and I planted it too early and cold weather killed most of it. As you can probably see this clover is very long stems and rather small leaves. From my observation the cattle seem to eat both equally showing no preference.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

SteveO,
I was unclear. I do not plan on cutting the clover. When I am clipping the pasture to hold the grass from going to seed, I try to cut the tops of the grass off leaving the clovers. As the cattle are rotated over the various paddocks they consume the clovers and will continue to do so until heat or cold kills or stunts the clovers. I do want the clovers to reseed. I also plan on planting crimson clover in late August to have another variety that provides early Spring growth. IMO I perceive that I am getting lots of mileage from the assorted clovers; nitrogen build up in the soil, cattle feed and an offsetting of the endophyte in the fescue. It is my intent to have clover growing on the entire 161 of pasture. I will only plant the Marshall ryegrass provided I am lacking adequate fescue to stockpile going into cold weather. The ryegrass, if planted, will be in the paddocks that are grazed down and not the area stockpiled unless the stockpiled area is too poor to provide grazing as is.SteveO,
I was unclear. I do not plan on cutting the clover. When I am clipping the pasture to hold the grass from going to seed, I try to cut the tops of the grass off leaving the clovers. As the cattle are rotated over the various paddocks they consume the clovers and will continue to do so until heat or cold kills or stunts the clovers. I do want the clovers to reseed. I also plan on planting crimson clover in late August to have another variety that provides early Spring growth. IMO I perceive that I am getting lots of mileage from the assorted clovers; nitrogen build up in the soil, cattle feed and an offsetting of the endophyte in the fescue. It is my intent to have clover growing on the entire 161 of pasture. I will only plant the Marshall ryegrass provided I am lacking adequate fescue to stockpile going into cold weather. The ryegrass, if planted, will be in the paddocks that are grazed down and not the area stockpiled unless the stockpiled area is too poor to provide grazing as is.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Agmantoo,

I've had my cattle for all of 21 days now. I'm learning new things every day and I really appreciate your suggestions and help.

Here's a couple of of specifics:

The knot you showed in the picture many posts ago for tying poly rope to perimeter fence has worked great for me. I do the wraps on each side of the post and finish with a bowline. Fast easy secure and something I haven't encountered in any book so far.

The cattle arrived about 3 weeks later than I expected so the forage was quite a bit ahead of them (up to their backs). Now that they've eaten it down and I've clipped it back it's apparent that letting it get that far ahead of them shaded out a lot of low growing white clover that was available in previous years when I mowed more frequently. I'll have to learn that lesson a little better for next time.

On day 13 I had the cattle in a small single strand enclosure while I was planning to move them to a neighboring paddock on the other side of my yard. Mama escaped. To try to coax her back in I shut the fence off and lowered one side...bad idea because the calf got out and they took off. I continued concentrating on the new paddock and when I finished an hour later the cows had vaporized. I'm in a narrow creek bottom with steep sides but they scaled the steep sides and escaped for 12 nerve wracking hours while I questioned my readiness for this project. If I had that one to do over I would have made a quick u shaped enclosure next to the calf and lured momma in, then closed the u and removed the center divider to put them back together again. The calf was calling to keep mama close before I let out the best bait I had (the calf) for keeping mom close. I'll have to learn that lesson a little better for next time.

Anyway, thanks for the help. This project stands a pretty good chance of making me lots smarter or continuing to show me how much I don't know.

Thanks

Ed

Ed K,
Everyday is a learning experience. With the cattle I get a lot of satisfaction knowing that they are taken care of and that they are performing as expected. I find it relaxing just watching them. I find myself redoing a number of projects in an attempt to improve my setup. Learning how to maximize the forage production remains an ongoing learning experience that tests all of us. I had some chicken litter applied this week and was really glad to get it. If I can assist you with your cattle feel free to ask.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!