Research for improvements

Holistic Grazing

Guide for rotational grazing

Estimating rest period

Maja 21Jun18

Find your optimal grazing recovery periods (for growing season)

"In a dry season plan (plants are dead, dormant or experiencing very slow growth) our primary objective is to ration feed, minimizing waste while meeting animal requirements, and provide adequate recovery time for our pastures."

So what I need to know is basically : the plants I have on the pastures and their recovery period (from the bite to flowering) and the beginning and end of growing season.

Stage of the plant optimal for grazing

Maja 21Jun18

From different sources I can read, that the optimal stage of the plant when I should graze is when they are about to go into flowering. At the beginning of the winter, it would mean after about 1 month of the first greens coming up.

That is what I did in 2016 and I most of the other fields where over-matured when I finished with the first paddock. But in the 2017 I let the sheep out just after the first green came up (so they were eating very young plants) and I didn't notice the plants growth to be worse in any way. All the paddocks reached maturation. Interesting observation was that they started flowering much faster after second grazing. In one paddock I noticed that there was a lot of calendula (I think more than in the previous years), but the sheep also don't eat it so much.

One solution I have found to over-maturation of the rest of the fields is to cut them for hay in the right time. For that to make sense for us, we would need a building for storing dry hay, for the summer (and I would love that), plus it is a big amount of extra work, which I don't think we have resources for.

Other solution - changing the paddocks size for the winter period will not work for our place because of big area of the land and small amount of animals.

Number of animals

Livestock Management in Brittle Environments

Maja 21Jun18

"In Brittle Environments all grass must be trampled or grazed every year or the land will start to deteriorate. This means that livestock numbers in Brittle Environments must exactly match the productivity of the grass in those environments. (Note: Stocking rates are typically increased by 50 to 100% the first year that proper management is implemented compared to conventional stocking rates in that area). When properly managed livestock are introduced to Brittle Environments grass productivity starts increasing dramatically, so livestock numbers must also increase dramatically until the ecosystem reaches its peak productivity."

We definitely have not enough livestock for that. In the summer, there is a lot of residue forage. Also, because of low number, we don't really produce a herd effect, therefore trampling is not done very well, not to mention the manure that our animals are leaving behind.

But then, without the residual forage, we would be doomed to pick food for the animals throughought the summer - 6 months! This is a lot of work. Even if we pick the excess food in the beginning of the winter (see point above about when to start grazing), that wouldn't be enough.

Electric fencing

Maja 16Dic16 - The sheep are out, but in our gardens. I am really motivated to move with electric fencing, so I have done some research and it's still ongoing.

Fence

There are two basic options :

Netting

Dialogue

And Reel system:

Netting is cheaper and easier to use, Reel system I would have to construct myself from the bits and pieces. Could do that, but it turns out more expensive than netting. The problem with netting is that the live lines go quite close to the ground, so with big vegetation, we might be loosing some power. To prevent that, I will have to cut the grass around the netting (more work, but I expect vegetation to be that big only few times a year).

The only way in which I would go for reel system if we can find cheap / afford Gallagher SmartFence 2

which super easy to use, fancy, all-in-one fence.

Grounding

We might have problem with grounding, as our soil is dry for most time in the year. To deal with that I will make a hot/ground return system, in which the current goes back on the wire, not through the soil :

It is usually done with reel system, but I asked around, and it is totally possible to do it with netting as well

Energizer

I'm still not sure if I want to solar energizer or the one for battery. So I decided to get the one that can use solar assistance, battery only AND go from mains : Gemini HLC40 (they send to Canaries as well!)

Battery

I wanted to buy a proper battery special for this purpose, as everyone of course recommends it, but they don't send it so far, because it's so delicate and expensive too. So I decided to buy just used car battery 12V, charger to it and at some point (if we want) we can add a solar assistance to charge it from the sun. Right now I'm not 100% sure about solar, but I know it will be useful to not be dependent on it. I've heard that you can plug in solar assistance to most of batteries 12v, that's what people do when they want to go off-grid, so there are plenty of tutorials on the internet.

Maja 19Aug16 - Since I came here I am thinking about getting an electric fencing in here. Jose is reluctant to it and I couldn't understand it. Now I can see disadvantages of it but also benefits. Let's see it:

Stef 20Aug16 - added some comments in blue. & remember that to get it 'past the group' here it would help to get everyone involved in the voting, by using the group PMI method, which will also highlight just how differently we value the individual items. You can get the template for that here.

Maja 20Aug16 - great idea! So here is the PMI sheet for that, I included all of the things below.

Benefits:

  • Holistic Grazing could be done more accurately and thoroughly
  • no problem with attaching the ropes where there are no trees
  • no problem with sheep ruining the walls - we could graze close to them as well
  • moving the fencing would take less time than moving the ropes (depends on the fencing)
  • sheep don't have collars, are not on leashes, don't get stressed while moving them around, can't get strangled
  • easier maintenance - ropes don't get lost, sheep don't need to be checked every 1,5 hours etc.
  • might be easier to persuade lots more farmers to take this on - which is the ultimate aim of this project - precisely because it is more high-tech (ironically..) and even county authorities might take it more seriously because it is a more expensive ('professional-looking') solution than ropes.
  • and there's a major eco-business right there is supplying them with the fencing materials (if well-set up..)

Disadvantages:

  • cost
  • it has a particular durability, so at some point we have to get a new one - when civilization collapses we would have to probably go back to ropes
  • contact between sheep and shepherd is less personal
  • sourcing the fencing (do you have a contact for buying yet?)
  • & shipping to the island (if doable) might well be a lot more expensive than the things themselves (problem=solution to this would be we have to learn how to do it here... which would take a lot longer to implement but then provide you with a good eco-business base)
  • could 'go wrong' & get us to loose all of our sheep at once?(although they are not likely to get very far, depends how long they are free), eg. if the fence is broken, electricity cuts off, a pack of dogs scare them out of it ...
  • danger for wandering children? or tourists (I know the voltage isn't deadly but it might upset people if their kids get a shock ... and cause trouble)

After last conversation about automatizing watering in the gardens I decided to keep researching electric fencing. In few years it could raise the effectiveness of our grazing enough for it to be worth it.

My friend recommended me this one - Gallagher Smart Fence :

And then I have found this one - Stafix

What I like about Gallagher is that it is super easy to move around, where Stafix you have to reassemble it every time you move it. But I like that you basically buy all the separate parts so it is custom-made.

Still, we would be moving the fence every week or so, so it is important that it is easy to move.

I have two concerns, both about the soil we have now. These fences are obviously designed for a pasture with quite deep soil. First of all I don't know if our soil is good enough for these poles to stay in and secondly - you have to have a grounding pole that sits at least on meter in the ground, preferably in moist soil. We do not have moist soil and I don't think there is any guarantee that in every paddock there will be a place to put the grounding pole in for one meter. We have loads of rocks in the ground and in some places the soil is not as deep as one meter.

I have written to Gallagher customer service and they reminded me that the electric fence is a psychological barrier, not physical, so the poles don't have to be very strong, and they don't go deep even in nice, seep soils, that's just how they are designed. So that could not be a problem.

But what about the grounding pole? I will be looking for people who were using electric fences in the soils like ours and I'll try to get their opinion on that matter.

Rope system we have is low-cost and low-tech, and it works well for a small number of sheep. I want to document it well to be able to convince other people for grazing even if they can't afford the electric fencing. So I want to have a whole year of excellently documented rope system and then I am willing to switch to the electric fencing.