Trying to utilize land with cattle, sheep, and goats together

[francismilker]

I'm going to post this same thread on the goat, sheep, and cattle board to try and utilize more good responses and ideas.

Here's the deal: I have goats, sheep, and cattle. None of the species are purebred anything. I can't specifically say I'm a purebred Nubian, Jersey, or Katadhin breeder. I can say I have goats, sheep, and cattle.

What I'm interested in has been some inner desire for several years now to better utilize my land. This strong belief that I'm only getting a small percentage out of my grass/weed growing ability has lit a fire inside me to put forth some effort over the winter to hit the ground running come spring.

I don't have the ideal situation for rotational grazing. My property is an 80 acre rectangle but the topography prohibits me from cutting the ground up into equal sizes or shapes. In fact, it's rolling hills, rocks, and hardwoods for the most part. The only grass that grows there is what I have planted after clearing a 4-5 acre spot here or there on a somewhat flat area. I try to have a dozer come once every year or two and clear a little bit more land. Some of it will never be utilized for farming or grazing but will make a great supply of lumber and firewood.

I've tried to do what most farmers in my area have done and that's to establish bermuda grass as soon as I get the land cleared. However, even if you get it to grow the work has just begun. I think for every bermuda seed I plant there's about 10 million weed seeds brought in by wind, rain, and bird droppings. While I'm not opposed to weed sprays I think that if I was a better grazing manager I could utilize the critters I have on the place to graze these weeds instead of wasting tractor deisel and spraying or brush-hogging.

There has to be a way with all the critters I have to utilize the ground I have. With all the natural fertilizer they make me, I also don't want to buy anymore commercial fertilizer. In fact, I don't see how one can make money if they have to fertilizer their property in order to get grass to grow.

Back when God created all of this there weren't any anhydrous ammonia plants or chemical companies and it all worked out just fine.

What are some of your thought?

[Nerdmom]

I would be interested to know more about this also. From the small amount of research I have done there's a 2 crop, 3 crop, and even 4 crop system. You divide your land, and grow one crop , wheat for example, in the winter, and grow beans in the spring. If you're incorporating livestock, you divide it into thirds and leave the third fallow. You could also separate it into quarters and plant a root vegetable in the spring also. With beans, you can plant corn and squash, so you get 3 crops in one without killing your ground. Also, aren't the goats taking care of your weeds? I don't have any practical experience, I'm still at the learning stage of this homesteading business. Hopefully someone will know those answers.

[KSALguy]

Goats are Browsers, they prefer woodland scrub type they like to eat with their heads up, big weeds and such are on the menue as well, to a lesser extent they will eat grass and lower weeds if nessisary, but would rather clear the underbrush and trees, opening up new areas, there is a guy over on the Goat page i think that did this, turning woodland into more open grazeing land with goats,

Sheep graze but more selectively, they will go through the pasture and pic out the clover and dandilion and other low to the ground lush weeds along with the grass, they will clean up the grass so its more grazeable, just look at the pictures of the deep green grassland of England and Irland, that land scape was created with sheep grazeing,

Cattle graze, they are not as selective but will search out the best green lush grass first, they would rather have grass and clover over just about anything else, they will eat other things when they have too but grass is their thing,

theoretically you could run your goats in your brush and forest area and let them clean it back, cut trees as you can for them to clean up, burn the dead wood, let grass and weeds move in, run sheep thru it to clean up the weeds and then the cattle will have a nice green pasture,
but it will take alot of managment to accomplish this

[Curtis B]

I run all three together plus pigs, and still have a ton of weeds (the goats eating weeds is a myth from what i have seen). I am trying to RG, but I am still lacking as far as maximizing it so far. I do think that using all three does add more poop "fertilizer" due to the different species eating their own "prefered plant". I have convinced myself that I will get there in due time, and once I have it going all I have to do is maintain. I think the key in getting out weeds w/o chemicals is regular mowing after you have run the animals through to get rid of the seeds and therfore keeping the weeds from reproducing. In other words, I have no real advice, since I have yet to be successful, but at least you have another who is trying the same thing.

[KSALguy]

weeds as a blanket statement encompasses lots of differint plants, there are plants that are enedible to anything,

[Nerdmom]

Searching around today for info and I found some useful advice at this link:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/goatoverview.pdf
Starts on page three.
KSALguy is right. Weeds are basically anything people decide they don't want or can't eat. I'm sure people at one time thought of bamboo as a weed. That stuff grows like crazy! But for hundreds of years people in China have been consuming bamboo, so different strokes I guess.

[dragonjaze]

See if your library has a copy of "All Flesh is Grass" by Gene Logsdon.