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Recently I had
the great fortune to be able to attend the Pasture Management
Conference hosted by HMI (Holistic Management International).
They had guest speakers Mark Moseley from NRCS, Dr Patricia
Richardson speaking on dung beetles and life beneath the soil,
Dr Richard Teague from Agrilife Research, Mark Bader from Animal
Nutrition, speakers from the American Akaushi Cattle Association
and Greg Judy on pasture management.
Although the
speakers had different areas of interest they all agreed on some
key points. Here are the "jewels" of knowledge that I took away
from the conference:
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Covered
Soil is Happy Soil!
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You
have to keep the soil covered with litter and humus so
the micro-organisms can stay cool. If you have bare
dirt you will have weeds and your micro-organisms will
die from the heat. You will also be loosing moisture
from your soil
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Multi-species applies to grasses as well as animals
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You
need to diversify your grasses the same as you diversify
your livestock. In doing that you will have some
grasses that do well during drought and some grasses
that do well during cold. That way you won’t be putting
all your eggs in one basket
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Keep those
animals moving
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We use
to be rotating pastures every 3-6 days and we thought
that was good enough, but we found that is wasn’t. You
need to use mob grazing and rotate at least once every
24 hours. In doing this you will have some stompling of
grass (to provide ground cover and feed the
micro-organisms) plus the cow’s food intake will be at a
constant level rather than peaking the first day and
then falling off ever the next couple of days until you
move them and then it will peak again.
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Tall grass
is good grass
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You
need some tall grasses to provide cover and protection
to the soil, plus when the cows knock it down and
stomple it then it provides food for the earthworms and
organisms.
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Stompling
grass is good
-
You
need the grasses worked into the soil
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Let your
grasses rest
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We used
to let our pastures rest around 30 days but with mob
grazing you hit it hard and then let it rest for 2-6
months so that it has plenty of time to rest and mature
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Breed down!
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Breed
your animals down to a sustainable size
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Keep
your herd to a size that can thrive on a grass-fed diet
This is just
a few of the valuable things we learned. It was a great time
and SLABA and the Lowline cattle were well received.
Sandra Walker
Chair Person of the Grassfed Sub-committee |
