Stockpiling the Cow Pantry

alling the forage stockpile a pantry for cows is a little bit of a stretch for most people I think, but if you think about it, that’s really what stockpiled forage is.  A pantry.  Food put away or stored for later use.  Until I really understood that stockpiling meant stockpiling, I was at a loss as far as how the concept of stockpiled grass worked.  But growing up on a continuous grazed farm meant that is how I viewed the grass, continuously grazed all the time.  Such simple words with such simple meanings, stockpile and continuous.  Now I see that they do not belong together at all when it comes to grazing.

July 17, 2012

In order to stockpile forage you need to restrict your cattle and increase your rest period on your grass so it can regrow.  Cattle need some long-stemmed forage for their rumens to work properly.  If you don’t let it grow, they are not getting any long-stemmed forage.  Cattle also have to tear off the grass, they do not have top teeth in the front to bite down close to the ground, so taller grass really is in order for cattle.  Sheep and horses can nip your grass right down to the roots, and can starve cows right out of the pasture.  On a continuous grazing situation you see cows on short grass and that means lots of supplemental feed.  Fine if you can afford it.  For us it doesn’t make much sense to buy what we can grow easily with just a little tweaking in our attitude and management.  We view our personal garden the same way.  Why buy it if we can grow it?

When you stockpile your forage and let some plants express themselves with stalks and seed heads, a magical thing happens.  You have just grown your own fertilizer, feed and seed in one step.

Orchard grass or Cocksfoot

Timothy

Red Clover

Then you need to just add some animal impact in the form of timed grazing, hoof action and manuring and you have just fed your cows, reseeded your pasture and fertilized at the same time.  Step two.

One day – high density short duration grazing.

The secret is to have tall grass for your mob, so they can feed on the good stuff, trample the ripe grasses for carbon and seed dispersal and leave their nutrient rich manure and urine behind.  Rest and movement are the keys to success with mob stocking.  Step three.

Just to be clear though, I am using beef cows for the mob stocking, results could be disastrous or less than stellar with high producing dairy cows of any breed.  For a comparison just think of the Cornish Cross meat chicken debate versus a laying hen.  Some high producing animals are a little less resilient, shall we say, and leave it at that… .

A couple of tips:

♣  Many things contribute to short grass, no rest or the most common, overstocking.  To pull this off you may need to sell some of your cattle, or make a sacrifice area and feed them.  Hopefully in a loafing shed set-up where you can bed them and gather their manure for future fertilizing efforts.  We destock by selling meat before the grass growth slows down.

♣  Make sure you don’t have any other grazers free-ranging about eating the grass.  Horses and sheep come to mind, or pigs and poultry.  For this to work, you need to give your grassland total rest.  It’s not fair to complain about running out of grass for the cows when you have other livestock not following the rules.

♣  Be flexible, electric fencing is portable and makes the grazing world your oyster.  Use it, tweak it, and pay attention to the results.  You will make mistakes, too big of paddock or too small, the next day is when to fix that.

♣  Keep a journal if that is what is helpful for you.  I use a wall calendar to note what day the cows went to which field, that may not work for you.

♣  Learn your land, and listen to it.  Learn your animals and listen to them.  Starting is the hardest part, the rest will flow.