Grazing Season Winding Down

We’re still working our way through the stockpiled pasture.  My plan to graze the shady south side during the warmer month of November, has worked perfectly.  Despite frosty nights most of December, when dawn breaks the cows are in the sun for the duration of the day.

As you can see they are in no hurry for me to quit playing around with the camera and build some fence.  The cows demeanor is a good indicator of their hunger status and comfort level.  That tells me I’m about right with paddock size.

We’re in landscape and cow maintenance mode this time of year.  The cows are in early pregnancy, and giving less milk to their late spring calves.  They can do well with this type of forage.  Calving (or lambing and kidding) timing is everything in grass based operations.  It’s all well and good when people want exclusively grass fed animals, but the human needs to pay attention to the physiological needs of the animal.  Once you start tweaking and wanting to bend the rules of nature you can start to see problems.  Seasonal production is better for all involved.

This is what the stockpile looks like.  At first glance it looks totally brown.  Brown is good, that’s my carbon.  I need that carbon to improve my pastures.

But a closer inspection reveals quite a bit of green.  For sure this is not summer pasture, but it’s not stored hay either.

We used to start feeding hay in early fall.  Shaving three months of hay feeding off the menu is well worth it in my book.  Haymaking whether you do it yourself or bring it in, is one of the biggest expenses in cattle keeping.  Plus lots of materials handling.  I still find it easier to move electric fence each day than buck bales.  Of course I will run out of grass soon, and will have to buck some bales.  But in the meantime, rotational grazing is working quite well.

One of the benefits of the stockpiled forage, I’ve noticed, is the frost protection afforded by the taller, mature sward.  In fields where we harvested hay, the regrowth is shorter, more lush and frost prone.  Three weeks of frost haven’t touched the clover in this stockpile.

I did a better job this year too, in the actual stockpile. Litter cover is important for winter soil protection, with protection like this, the earthworms and other soil life will be more active giving me a jump on nutrient cycling.  Keeping the soil life warm and protected from the cold is as important as keeping the soil life cool in the summer.

What I’m seeing is growth even during our winter.  This pasture above was grazed in November.  In my continuous grazing days there was no growth after fall commenced.  I was always told it was due to the cold.  Never realizing it was caused by continual grazing and weakening of the plants.  Now the pasture plants have ample rest and rejuvenation and are resilient enough to regrow immediately after the cows are moved.

This gives a whole new meaning to the saying, Give It a Rest!

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