I've known several farmers over the years that have quit after going broke, both big and small. The one thing they all had in common was the attitude "this is how we've always done it."
@@Summitclym having smaller frame cattle is important. If you haven't already watch Greg Judy and Russ Wilson. Sell as much direct to the consumer. I'm in Massachusetts just starting very small maybe leasing some land down the road if I don't time out. I'm 58.
Thanks for sharing your journey and learnings. We are currently in the process of turning 800 acres over to mob grazing. It's been continuously strip farmed in wheat for 100 years and the soil is ruined. No cows on it yet, but the 2 years of rest while we seeded, built cross fences and put in water lines has made a huge difference. Can't wait to get cows in there and start really rebuilding the soil.
@@Jj-gi2uv No herd yet. Looking to mob graze other people cows for the first few years. What I'd like to do is weigh them coming in and weigh them leaving and charge per lb of gain. That should make it low risk for the herd owner and lower the risk for me as I'm figuring it all out.
Hi ... just found your channel .. have been enjoying .. very well-organized videos .. surely must be helpful to folks getting started.... instructive, wi/o being too didactic. Farmer Tyler in CA is also starting the Mob Grazing on small acreage ... will be interesting to see how you each incorporate it into a system that works for you. Of course, Judy & Salatin have been leaders in proving the economics of this method ... both are in love with the soil.. can tell you are, too :) Regards from the Ozarks.
Mob grazing is absolutely necessary especially if your pasture acres are limited. I use a form of rotational grazing and since putting this plan into action it has saved me probably an extra month pasturing my animals until winter. Now MOB grazing is definetly more labour intensive but for some necessary. Cheers 🍻 from Prairie Sunset Ranch ☀️
Nice to hear positive comments. Nice to see the height of your grass. Hopefully you can graze more days on your grass and reduce hay needs as things progress on regenerating your farm. Great that you see the negative on exposed soil, water loss and taking away. Hold tight and all the best in your investment in your future.
Awesome video! Its great to see small farmers still in business by innovating and making the soil and watersheds a better place! The USDA needs to come around and promote grazing patterns like this!
Great update. Look forward to your results. While your trample may look messy, you make a great point about the lid you put on your soil. Better soil, better forage, better animal performance!
Great video. It’s wonderful to see a farmer taking on regenerative practices and deciding to stick with it through some necessarily tough teething stages. I hope in the years to come your fields of forage will have a healthy enough soil and a strong and deep enough root system to flourish even through the dry months. All the best from Australia 👍
Amazing Mr Pete! Trying to find some like you on small acreage and are thrilled to have found you. We just started our two cows on this system and everyone thinks I'm crazy, so we'll be keeping an eye on you. Blessings
Growing up I was told sometimes you have to give up something now for something better later. Pete I'm sure a few years down the road you will know you did the right thing.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm from what i have seen and read, it appears that what you are calling strip grazing is closer to what most are calling mob grazing... perhaps they are moving / density still leaves just enough behind to protect soil and remaining life OR perhaps it is your climate zone / dryness versus a higher and more frequent rainfall regions? because most say to only allow on once in each year for full recovery..
Keep up the good work. I like your honesty and willingness to try new things and sticking with it. You will be an inspiration for others I'm sure. Be blessed as an awesome steward of the land. Moo 🐄
The first year on any decision is tough. I watch a few farm homestead channel (Greg Jude in particular) has a good U Tube channel and even offers on site classes. Continue your mob grazing and hope that some rain comes in and restart your grass. In the future you'll know it was the best decision.
Missed this video when you put it out. Seems TH-cam knows what your thinking about as I am considering this style of grazing mainly due to going full time with the cows. That is probably one of the biggest cons on this style of grazing, the time factor that is required. Thanks Pete as always a good video with plenty of grist for the mind mill👍🏼👍🏼🇦🇺
Look in a little bit in holistic management, its an grate tool, so you don't need to be worried to be out of grass even an dry summer. Try to get the grassing plan so you only take hey every other year on the some acreage then the old grass have time to become soil until hey-time. Some time an crimperroller can be as help fore trampling down older grass. God luck with the mobgrassing. We doing hey here in Finland to foe the moment. Always interesting what for system other have on there small farms. Keep up the grate work!
Love these vids - find I'm bing watching. Has there been an update on this one? Would be great to get your view now after a few years. Thanks anyway for taking the time to explain this sort of thing.
Man. Most people talk for hours and never say anything worth listening too. You talked so fast, that I had to listen twice to get it all. Great video. Just slow down a little bit. Us country folk are slow. Lol
Great insights, Pete. As a result of the increased production and improved soil health you will see as a result of this management, you will end up being able to graze longer through the year into the winter or even all through it. We run a few hundred cattle here in North Dakota and keep enough hay on hand to feed in bad weather or when snow piles really deep, but other than that we graze all through the winter. Much cheaper, and much more fun moving cows daily in the summer than making mountains of hay. Look at Greg Judy's stuff for details probably more relevant to you. You probably will have to feed for deep snow more than we do, I understand that upper northeast piles up a bit more than these plains.
Hi Joseph, I sure hope you're right about a reduced reliance on hay, but frankly I'm pretty skeptical. There are long stretches in the winter where I can't even get though the fields on my tractor. The drifts are about as tall as the cattle. But I am always open to trying new things so we'll see how it goes.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm For sure, you have more snow to deal with. One of the foremost experts on extending the grazing season and eliminating winter feeding, Jim Gerrish, has a great book on the subject, "Kick the Hay Habit". In that book he specifically says there are very few places in North America where grazing through the winter is impossible, but the upper Northeast and Northwest on the coasts and the Great Lakes regions are where you will find this to be the case, or at least most difficult because you do have such prodigious snowfall. But at least you will do far better than the "same as we always have done it" crowd because you are consciously working in this direction. With small cattle that are trained to dig through snow, as long as the whole pasture isn't one big 4ft drift, I think you'll find at least significant extensions in your grazing season. Bale graze out on the hayland when it gets deep, that will also help return nutrients and carbon cover to "mined" hayland. Some guys I know don't even twine their bales, just roll it up so the cows can access that grass when it's deep, don't haul the hay, bring the cows to it in the winter. Far cheaper to use legs than wheels.
Your doing perfect this drought is a 20 year fluke I'm in Massachusetts its never like this in June. Buy the hay you need for winter now. We could get a very wet August I've seen a few in the last 30 year. Cool season grasses will grow like crazy thorough Oct. If everything gets grazed and stomped down feed hay for 2 weeks in July guys are feeding hay in New Mexico right now. Plenty of hay in Ohio
My god, we are south of you in the VA mountains and have had 10 inches of rain in the past 2 weeks here at Riven Rock Farm. Cant get hay made unless I put my disc mower on a boat lol. Id love to trade you a few days of rain for some sun! We mob graze some of our pastures, have some paddocks that are permanent and rotate through them- all across 300 acres of grass. We call it hybrid mountain MIG grazing lol. Hope you get some rain soon!
That short field you just cut you may want to consider spraying fertilizer, though it sounds like rain is your main issue. We started spraying liquid nitrogen and have been amazed with the results. I rotate 30 cow calf pairs around on about 35 acres and bale another 50 acres in hay.
We green-chop for our cattle, once in the morning & then later in the afternoon depends on how they clean off the wagon. There is a John Deere video about bringing the pasture to the cows. It keeps our feed program going all summer for us.
What does it mean to green-chop? John Deere is trying to sell farm equipment. The point of regenerative agriculture is you don't need much of that. The cows do the work, and they make the money for the rancher.
@@wendyscott8425 I know what he means, and it's horrific and unnatural -- cattle covered in dung and cooped up in barns, while the farmer uses heavy machinery every day to cut the grass and bring it to them. It's CAFO-type industrial ag run completely amok: th-cam.com/video/-aK1QMlBHmM/w-d-xo.html
Drought because it hasn’t rained for a month is wild. We are lucky to get 2” of rain in the 6 growing months we have. Get around 10” of total precipitation a year and most of it is snow. Don’t take what you have for granted! Hahaha
G'day Pete, i mob graze, each field is approx 500A, herd is also separated, cows/heifers and steers apart plus bulls hand fed daily. I also supplementary feed each day (sounds silly i know) hay and corn silage. That's to make each field last longer. Once a herd is moved off a field it is aerated and irrigated, each (stock less) field is irrigated when needed and only at dusk. This has worked out to be expensive to set up but it's now paying dividends. I grow my own hay/corn also on separate farms 300 miles apart.
You move hay 300 miles sorry but that sounds impossible and how can you afford to move all that hay we cut and bale 1300 acres we sell hay and cattle we run 120 cows and even our fields 20 miles away I try my best to sell that hay because if I bring it home cost goes way up verses loading somebody's truck with one machine
@@jwhitley101whitleyfarms9 The land the cattle are on won't sustain haymaking 9000 Ha. So had to look elsewhere for suitable ground, purchased two dairy farms for this reason, combined them so this supports both hay and corn. Horse studs pay top dollar for small square rest are large square for cattle. Corn is bale wrapped and some is sold Have a fleet of four trucks that move equipment farms, if they return to the home farm they don't return empty they bring a load of hay or corn home with them.
With mob grazing, will you see a point on diminishing returns, where the added productivity tapers off, and it becomes a better idea to strip graze again? Maybe have a rotation of mob/strip/hay production for the fields on a 2/2/3 rotation?
This is just an idea but if you had a flail mower you could go over it and it would mulch some that up and you'd still have that good mulch over and it would break down quicker and help you with your goal faster and you may be able to still use it for hay production as well
Healthy soil is what it's all about. Not using synthetic fertilizer was the best decision I ever made. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between patience and procrastination when determining a course of action.
Same weather here in S.W. Indiana . We went from really cold and wet to hot and dry fast this year . Most years were not watering the garden until July . Have you ever thought about spraying the fields with a compost tea to add a lot more micropes ?
Hi Aaric, I think microbes do wonders for the soil system. I haven't tried tea, but I spread composted manure in the spring to kick start those systems. If you haven't seen it, I made a video about it early this spring.
I've just started this on my farm with my sheep. The first few paddocks I hit with the brush hog right after moving because they were full of bull thistles. The next few are are fairly clear of weeds so I don't plan on mowing it after moving the sheep. I want to see if there is a faster recovery in mowing vs. not mowing. As far as mowing for hay. Having a diskbine and a rotary hay rake is about the best options. The diskbine won't plug like a sickle knife, and the rotary rake is PTO driven and I can set the height high enough to leave rotten fodder on the ground much like when a hay cutting is ruined by rain when that not so clear clear forecast happens.
I think your saying change is hard, but being flexible is probably what is needed, to meet changing conditions. I wonder if running over those mob grazed fields with a brush hog to condition all the long grass heads would let the legumes do better when the rains start. I'm saying to mow it at about 5 to 6 inches height.
crazy wild bunch of cattle. haha. How do you keep them so tame? a lot of time in the field or just as calves... or the breed? I have 100 acres but only keep 5 cows. as I age and my real job ends I am considering expanding and using the rest of the farm. But, with a full time job, currently, my calves never get enough attention to be as tame as what yours seem to be.
Does your bull get ornery when separated from the cow herd if you do that to control calving season? If so, how do you move your fence and remain safe doing so? A local farmer was recently killed by his “safe” bull when rotating his cattle. I’m looking for suggestions as to how we can rotationally graze our two bulls (move the temporary polybraid daily) from March 1 to July 1 (when separated from the cow herd) and not get in harms way? Thank you.
The plants, the worms, the dung beetles, and the cows all make the soil work just fine from what I can tell. No reason to till at all, especially on a pasture like this. It's growing just great, and the cows will spread seeds all over and contribute to a variety of nutritious plants to eat.
I am so glad that I just found your channel. I am in NB and I battle to find people nearby doing this, and with Dexter cattle we are planning to do too. Do you have thoughts on what Greg Judy and others say about not haying your own land, but rather to import nutrients in the form of hay from neighbours to improve your own soil? Also they say that not having to have the hay equipment etc made it cheaper to buy in hay. What do you do with your animals in winter? Do you also get the several feet of snow that we get here in Atlantic Canada?
Hey! Just got a quick question, what state are you guys in. It looks like perfect weather for farming and I just recently subscribed, I watch a lot of farm videos but your videos are very descriptive and helpful! Also the weather may be dry but at least you still do farming! 😃 also is it Pete or Peter?
How many acres are you grazing total. I have a small place and would like to put some cows on pasture just trying to put it to scale on what I would have to devote to it
@@joesears584 Start with 1 cow per 2 acres. Feed some hay. Move them often. The trampled hay adds seeds for next year. The dung pats add nitrogen and dung beetles take the dung underground which adds carbon. 1 gram of carbon in the soil stores 8 grams of water, making deeper roots, more resistance to drought, and on and on , higher stock density as soil/grasses/forbs improve.
The mass of roots is greater in volume than the manure, the insect and bacterial life it drives is a bigger creator of fertility than the manure alone.
You will end up using less land with mob grazing and will be able to graze deeper into the fall if you keep at it since effectively you were just overgrazing with strip grazing. Many people are prideful about making all their own hay but the economics of buying in a little hay and grazing more animals works out better. You wont have the issues you bring up making hay when you rotate them through a few more times and then letting it rest. The grass will handle drought much better. Personally I think making money and building soil are more important than making the entire planet look like a lawn, but I know it is hard to do when all your neighbors fields look perfect.
Would it be dumb to mow behind the cattle? I'd think that might stimulate growth and mulch down. PS. Ok I saw your June 2. Video now and it is not done. Still not sure why. Of course if it's a drought, living grass cools the soil but at some point I think a mulch is more beneficial because living grass has to perspirate.
Thanks, Pete. From your perspective, is there any significance to hay going to seed? Positive, negative? Also, would you get any net benefit from simply mowing/brush hogging the fields that have been mob grazed? A uniform height? Some finer mulch?
Hi Vince, once the plant sends up a seed head its nutritional value and foliage growth rate start to decrease. We like to either graze it or make hay before that happens, but at certain times of the year (like now) it doesn't work out. You want to keep the grass in its fast growing stage, between 6" tall (roughly) and before the seed head goes up. If you overgraze it, cut it for hay, or brush hog it will take the plant longer to recover, and you'll end up with less forage.
Its all about adjustments by just mob grazing or strip grazing you end up following a practice and not bu nature all animals in different areas and climates graze differently We get 150” of rain a year and i have my sheep graze it down (4-5 days and then move the grass will heal in two weeks but will grow slower than if i was to mow it
Enjoyed the video. I'm sure you have heard of Greg Jude , Green Acres Pasture, on TH-cam, but if not he has a good channel and years of experience to pull from.
Most people find it easier to say "mob stocking" or "mob grazing" than _"management intensive grazing"_ or some of the other terms used to describe it. The idea behind it is to mimic nature by keeping the animals bunched up in a herd (high stock density), and constantly moving. This is the pattern to which grazing ruminants and the grasslands they lived on both co-evolved, and it's a system that maximizes soil and animal health and productivity. In the wild, ruminants like bison rely on herd behaviour to protect themselves from predators, but they constantly have to move because they quickly deplete and foul the food resource they're on. They can't selectively graze only the tastiest plants (making them ever less common in the sward, which is what happens under continuous grazing), because competition from their neighbours for the same grass makes them take whatever they can get quickly. They also leave their parasites behind as they go to new ground, so parasites and diseases don't have a chance to build up. The heavy trampling of much of the grass armours the soil from sun and wind -- preserving moisture and providing essential food for earthworms and soil microbes to build _more_ and _better_ soil for the future, as Pete explained in this video. The technology required to make mob grazing possible was only developed in the past couple of decades with the development of inexpensive and portable electric fencing systems that could be used to create very flexible arrangements of temporary paddocks. It's "management intensive" because it requires very careful daily assessment of the available and foreseen food resources for the herd and using that knowledge to make regular adjustments to stocking density (speeding up or slowing down the rate at which the herd moves onto new ground). The electric fence is the "predator" used to enforce herd behaviour on the animals so that they act naturally (as herd animals) without any actual predators.
@@andreafalconiero9089 Thanks for your informative response, however it didn't address my questions. The first point I made was about the word "mob". The meaning of the word is "a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence." It's an odd choice to describe a bunch of cows grazing. Why not "herd", which is the standard description of a group of animals, particularly hoofed animals. You writing that it's much easier to say "mob grazing" rather than "management intensive grazing" comes across as facetious. "Herd grazing" precisely describes this strategy without having to resort to industry-specific terms, and is easily comprehended by just about everyone. My first question was, "Is this new?" You didn't answer that question, nor did the owner of this channel. My second question was "Is this US-centric?" That question wasn't answered either. And for anyone thinking words are a trivial thing, I suggest reading ""Politics and the English Language", by George Orwell. And for a humorous take on the same subject, but not less important, watch George Carlin talking about the degradation of words and their meaning. th-cam.com/video/o25I2fzFGoY/w-d-xo.html
Consider baling hay on shares for your neighbors. I have started mob grazing my sheep and cattle. Fortunately for me I still have a lot of hay ground but I am still baling hay on shares.
I think that's a very good suggestion. Pete mentioned in some other videos how much he enjoys making hay, so since he'll have less opportunity to do that on his own land, why not do it for his neighbours and take a share of it? It seems like a good solution all-around.
There was a 7 hour video before one of your videos, Pete. It was ocean life filmed with clear ocean water and all kinds of ocean life. Sorry my friend, I skipped it. The music was dreary too. I am sorry if you did not get paid what you richly deserve.
Haven’t had a decent rain fall in three weeks and you call it a drought? Try no rain decent rain in 6 years and no decent rain in the foreseeable future.. then you can call it a drought
And everyone thinks- raising cattle and livestock grazing is just opening the gates in the morning, and calling them back in the evening, and in between, seating on the porch with a shotgun and drinking beer... Let’s keep praying for rain!!
It's often worse than that -- Greg Judy and some others have described what they call the "Columbus method", where you turn out the animals in the spring, and then rediscover them (maybe) in the fall! It's no way to build healthy pasture or livestock, though admittedly it's less work ;-)
Pete why don't you stop making hay and leave the cattle out 365. Cant be a weather problem as its successfully done in Canada which is much worse weather than New York State. Just doesn't make sense if you are mob grazing.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm Have you had rain yet? We have had a lot here in CT. I wouldn't necessarily go hole hog into mob grazing. Whenever you see the videos of Judge Judy notice his cattle have lots of land. In NY you have heat spells but nothing like Missouri or Texas. I think you could tighten your paddocks up a bit and get a little extra hay. You'll still get plenty of trampling.
If you're not failing, you're not trying (new things). If youre not trying, youre not learning. Keep up the great work
I've known several farmers over the years that have quit after going broke, both big and small. The one thing they all had in common was the attitude "this is how we've always done it."
No shit right I'll write the rule book thank you very much.
We are moving to mob grazing. My father told me it’s the dumbest idea he’s ever heard. Of course he went broke farming.
@@Summitclym having smaller frame cattle is important. If you haven't already watch Greg Judy and Russ Wilson. Sell as much direct to the consumer. I'm in Massachusetts just starting very small maybe leasing some land down the road if I don't time out. I'm 58.
@@davidhickenbottom6574 which ones are smaller frame?
@@incorectulpolitic south poll they are 100% grass genetic cattle. Dexters are a small breed. 1000 lb cows or less. Not.1600 lb cattle.
Thanks for sharing your journey and learnings. We are currently in the process of turning 800 acres over to mob grazing. It's been continuously strip farmed in wheat for 100 years and the soil is ruined. No cows on it yet, but the 2 years of rest while we seeded, built cross fences and put in water lines has made a huge difference. Can't wait to get cows in there and start really rebuilding the soil.
@@Jj-gi2uv No herd yet. Looking to mob graze other people cows for the first few years. What I'd like to do is weigh them coming in and weigh them leaving and charge per lb of gain. That should make it low risk for the herd owner and lower the risk for me as I'm figuring it all out.
Hi ... just found your channel .. have been enjoying .. very well-organized videos .. surely must be helpful to folks getting started.... instructive, wi/o being too didactic. Farmer Tyler in CA is also starting the Mob Grazing on small acreage ... will be interesting to see how you each incorporate it into a system that works for you. Of course, Judy & Salatin have been leaders in proving the economics of this method ... both are in love with the soil.. can tell you are, too :) Regards from the Ozarks.
Mob grazing is absolutely necessary especially if your pasture acres are limited. I use a form of rotational grazing and since putting this plan into action it has saved me probably an extra month pasturing my animals until winter. Now MOB grazing is definetly more labour intensive but for some necessary. Cheers 🍻 from Prairie Sunset Ranch ☀️
Nice to hear positive comments. Nice to see the height of your grass. Hopefully you can graze more days on your grass and reduce hay needs as things progress on regenerating your farm. Great that you see the negative on exposed soil, water loss and taking away. Hold tight and all the best in your investment in your future.
you are the farmer equivalent of Sir David Frederick Attenborough...a broadcast journalist and Naturalist...great stuff....
Very sound philosophy and science!! Great video!
This was such an informative and enjoyable video. Thanks Pete your cows are very adorable
Pete ...many thanks for your honesty
Pete,Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Thank you Thomas! Merry Christmas!!
Awesome video! Its great to see small farmers still in business by innovating and making the soil and watersheds a better place! The USDA needs to come around and promote grazing patterns like this!
Yet another great video, you're a natural Pete! Informative, expressive and enjoyable, it's great to learn from the experiences of a local farmer!
Thank you David!!
I agree. We're experimenting here on our farm as well.
Great update. Look forward to your results. While your trample may look messy, you make a great point about the lid you put on your soil. Better soil, better forage, better animal performance!
That's the plan Craig!
Great video. It’s wonderful to see a farmer taking on regenerative practices and deciding to stick with it through some necessarily tough teething stages.
I hope in the years to come your fields of forage will have a healthy enough soil and a strong and deep enough root system to flourish even through the dry months.
All the best from Australia 👍
Thank you Jack!
@@JustaFewAcresFarm no, thank you! Subbed.
Hell yes. Amazing.
Thank you for explaing everything in detail, it really helped me for my project
I believe you are on the right track and that your farm will reward you for these practices. ✌
I am looking forward to seeing the results of your experiment as I am in a similar situation farm wise.
Love those cows. Also a small farmer...looking at the same challenges. Thank you so much for sharing.
Amazing Mr Pete! Trying to find some like you on small acreage and are thrilled to have found you. We just started our two cows on this system and everyone thinks I'm crazy, so we'll be keeping an eye on you. Blessings
I'm glad you found us! Best of luck.
I like the balance analogy
Growing up I was told sometimes you have to give up something now for something better later. Pete I'm sure a few years down the road you will know you did the right thing.
Love seeing this. This is such a better way to graze.
Thanks David!
@@JustaFewAcresFarm from what i have seen and read, it appears that what you are calling strip grazing is closer to what most are calling mob grazing... perhaps they are moving / density still leaves just enough behind to protect soil and remaining life OR perhaps it is your climate zone / dryness versus a higher and more frequent rainfall regions? because most say to only allow on once in each year for full recovery..
Joel Salatin has really refined this method to a fine art if anyone's been living in a cave for the last while.
Agreed. Joel is a great inspiration for how we do things.
Keep up the good work. I like your honesty and willingness to try new things and sticking with it. You will be an inspiration for others I'm sure. Be blessed as an awesome steward of the land. Moo 🐄
Thank you John!
The first year on any decision is tough. I watch a few farm homestead channel (Greg Jude in particular) has a good U Tube channel and even offers on site classes. Continue your mob grazing and hope that some rain comes in and restart your grass. In the future you'll know it was the best decision.
Missed this video when you put it out. Seems TH-cam knows what your thinking about as I am considering this style of grazing mainly due to going full time with the cows. That is probably one of the biggest cons on this style of grazing, the time factor that is required. Thanks Pete as always a good video with plenty of grist for the mind mill👍🏼👍🏼🇦🇺
Look in a little bit in holistic management, its an grate tool, so you don't need to be worried to be out of grass even an dry summer. Try to get the grassing plan so you only take hey every other year on the some acreage then the old grass have time to become soil until hey-time. Some time an crimperroller can be as help fore trampling down older grass. God luck with the mobgrassing. We doing hey here in Finland to foe the moment. Always interesting what for system other have on there small farms. Keep up the grate work!
Love these vids - find I'm bing watching. Has there been an update on this one? Would be great to get your view now after a few years. Thanks anyway for taking the time to explain this sort of thing.
Amazingly informative well delivered video. Could you do a video on fly control on how to keep them from driving your Dexter's crazy?
HELLO FARMER. GOOD BULLS YOU HAVE. THEY STILL WALK WITHOUT FENCES.. I ALSO ENGAGED IN GROWING BULLS. IT'S NICE TO SEE OTHER COUNTRIES..
Man. Most people talk for hours and never say anything worth listening too. You talked so fast, that I had to listen twice to get it all. Great video. Just slow down a little bit. Us country folk are slow. Lol
Great insights, Pete. As a result of the increased production and improved soil health you will see as a result of this management, you will end up being able to graze longer through the year into the winter or even all through it. We run a few hundred cattle here in North Dakota and keep enough hay on hand to feed in bad weather or when snow piles really deep, but other than that we graze all through the winter. Much cheaper, and much more fun moving cows daily in the summer than making mountains of hay. Look at Greg Judy's stuff for details probably more relevant to you. You probably will have to feed for deep snow more than we do, I understand that upper northeast piles up a bit more than these plains.
Hi Joseph, I sure hope you're right about a reduced reliance on hay, but frankly I'm pretty skeptical. There are long stretches in the winter where I can't even get though the fields on my tractor. The drifts are about as tall as the cattle. But I am always open to trying new things so we'll see how it goes.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm For sure, you have more snow to deal with. One of the foremost experts on extending the grazing season and eliminating winter feeding, Jim Gerrish, has a great book on the subject, "Kick the Hay Habit".
In that book he specifically says there are very few places in North America where grazing through the winter is impossible, but the upper Northeast and Northwest on the coasts and the Great Lakes regions are where you will find this to be the case, or at least most difficult because you do have such prodigious snowfall.
But at least you will do far better than the "same as we always have done it" crowd because you are consciously working in this direction. With small cattle that are trained to dig through snow, as long as the whole pasture isn't one big 4ft drift, I think you'll find at least significant extensions in your grazing season. Bale graze out on the hayland when it gets deep, that will also help return nutrients and carbon cover to "mined" hayland. Some guys I know don't even twine their bales, just roll it up so the cows can access that grass when it's deep, don't haul the hay, bring the cows to it in the winter. Far cheaper to use legs than wheels.
Your doing perfect this drought is a 20 year fluke I'm in Massachusetts its never like this in June. Buy the hay you need for winter now. We could get a very wet August I've seen a few in the last 30 year. Cool season grasses will grow like crazy thorough Oct. If everything gets grazed and stomped down feed hay for 2 weeks in July guys are feeding hay in New Mexico right now. Plenty of hay in Ohio
Oh that grass❤️❤️ i wish we could grow grass like that in Arizona!
My god, we are south of you in the VA mountains and have had 10 inches of rain in the past 2 weeks here at Riven Rock Farm. Cant get hay made unless I put my disc mower on a boat lol. Id love to trade you a few days of rain for some sun! We mob graze some of our pastures, have some paddocks that are permanent and rotate through them- all across 300 acres of grass. We call it hybrid mountain MIG grazing lol. Hope you get some rain soon!
Have you considered adding sheep/goats and chickens to the rotation?
That short field you just cut you may want to consider spraying fertilizer, though it sounds like rain is your main issue. We started spraying liquid nitrogen and have been amazed with the results. I rotate 30 cow calf pairs around on about 35 acres and bale another 50 acres in hay.
We green-chop for our cattle, once in the morning & then later in the afternoon depends on how they clean off the wagon. There is a John Deere video about bringing the pasture to the cows. It keeps our feed program going all summer for us.
What does it mean to green-chop? John Deere is trying to sell farm equipment. The point of regenerative agriculture is you don't need much of that. The cows do the work, and they make the money for the rancher.
@@wendyscott8425 I know what he means, and it's horrific and unnatural -- cattle covered in dung and cooped up in barns, while the farmer uses heavy machinery every day to cut the grass and bring it to them. It's CAFO-type industrial ag run completely amok: th-cam.com/video/-aK1QMlBHmM/w-d-xo.html
Same in northern MI a lot of rain, torrential at times, then dry dry
Drought because it hasn’t rained for a month is wild. We are lucky to get 2” of rain in the 6 growing months we have. Get around 10” of total precipitation a year and most of it is snow. Don’t take what you have for granted! Hahaha
G'day Pete, i mob graze, each field is approx 500A, herd is also separated, cows/heifers and steers apart plus bulls hand fed daily. I also supplementary feed each day (sounds silly i know) hay and corn silage. That's to make each field last longer. Once a herd is moved off a field it is aerated and irrigated, each (stock less) field is irrigated when needed and only at dusk. This has worked out to be expensive to set up but it's now paying dividends. I grow my own hay/corn also on separate farms 300 miles apart.
You move hay 300 miles sorry but that sounds impossible and how can you afford to move all that hay we cut and bale 1300 acres we sell hay and cattle we run 120 cows and even our fields 20 miles away I try my best to sell that hay because if I bring it home cost goes way up verses loading somebody's truck with one machine
@@jwhitley101whitleyfarms9 The land the cattle are on won't sustain haymaking 9000 Ha. So had to look elsewhere for suitable ground, purchased two dairy farms for this reason, combined them so this supports both hay and corn. Horse studs pay top dollar for small square rest are large square for cattle.
Corn is bale wrapped and some is sold
Have a fleet of four trucks that move equipment farms, if they return to the home farm they don't return empty they bring a load of hay or corn home with them.
With mob grazing, will you see a point on diminishing returns, where the added productivity tapers off, and it becomes a better idea to strip graze again? Maybe have a rotation of mob/strip/hay production for the fields on a 2/2/3 rotation?
This is just an idea but if you had a flail mower you could go over it and it would mulch some that up and you'd still have that good mulch over and it would break down quicker and help you with your goal faster and you may be able to still use it for hay production as well
You’ll have a better winter stockpile going forward, so that you’ll need much less hay going forward. Hang in there!
he does get a lot of snow though in upstate new york
Hey Pete! Just subbed! Love your content!
Healthy soil is what it's all about. Not using synthetic fertilizer was the best decision I ever made. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between patience and procrastination when determining a course of action.
Thank you sir, very educational.
Same weather here in S.W. Indiana . We went from really cold and wet to hot and dry fast this year . Most years were not watering the garden until July . Have you ever thought about spraying the fields with a compost tea to add a lot more micropes ?
Hi Aaric, I think microbes do wonders for the soil system. I haven't tried tea, but I spread composted manure in the spring to kick start those systems. If you haven't seen it, I made a video about it early this spring.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm Yeah I watched it . With teas you can have more concentrated micropes .
I would like to know more about the decision making. Cheers and good lock
I've just started this on my farm with my sheep. The first few paddocks I hit with the brush hog right after moving because they were full of bull thistles. The next few are are fairly clear of weeds so I don't plan on mowing it after moving the sheep. I want to see if there is a faster recovery in mowing vs. not mowing. As far as mowing for hay. Having a diskbine and a rotary hay rake is about the best options. The diskbine won't plug like a sickle knife, and the rotary rake is PTO driven and I can set the height high enough to leave rotten fodder on the ground much like when a hay cutting is ruined by rain when that not so clear clear forecast happens.
Great advice Dan, thanks! It would be great to be able to make hay when the mob grazing pastures get ahead of us.
well i admits its a little tight on my one acre i have to make them stand 6 feet apart.
😷 😁
I think your saying change is hard, but being flexible is probably what is needed, to meet changing conditions. I wonder if running over those mob grazed fields with a brush hog to condition all the long grass heads would let the legumes do better when the rains start. I'm saying to mow it at about 5 to 6 inches height.
You may be able to winter graze also?
crazy wild bunch of cattle. haha. How do you keep them so tame? a lot of time in the field or just as calves... or the breed? I have 100 acres but only keep 5 cows. as I age and my real job ends I am considering expanding and using the rest of the farm. But, with a full time job, currently, my calves never get enough attention to be as tame as what yours seem to be.
Love what yer doing buy hay if you don’t have hay field that u can cut
How do you keep them on water?
Does your bull get ornery when separated from the cow herd if you do that to control calving season? If so, how do you move your fence and remain safe doing so?
A local farmer was recently killed by his “safe” bull when rotating his cattle. I’m looking for suggestions as to how we can rotationally graze our two bulls (move the temporary polybraid daily) from March 1 to July 1 (when separated from the cow herd) and not get in harms way? Thank you.
Have you looked into a light vertical tillage with a basket on the back to level? Something that doesn't turn the soil but puts some areation in
The plants, the worms, the dung beetles, and the cows all make the soil work just fine from what I can tell. No reason to till at all, especially on a pasture like this. It's growing just great, and the cows will spread seeds all over and contribute to a variety of nutritious plants to eat.
Where did you place their water with each move?
The water stays back in the grove, which is central to all the pastures. We run a temporary laneway back to it.
I am so glad that I just found your channel.
I am in NB and I battle to find people nearby doing this, and with Dexter cattle we are planning to do too.
Do you have thoughts on what Greg Judy and others say about not haying your own land, but rather to import nutrients in the form of hay from neighbours to improve your own soil? Also they say that not having to have the hay equipment etc made it cheaper to buy in hay.
What do you do with your animals in winter? Do you also get the several feet of snow that we get here in Atlantic Canada?
Jayd Lawrence pp
We are in NB too!! Looking into this method for our little acreage
Do you run poultry behind your cattle to increase soil productivity
Hey! Just got a quick question, what state are you guys in. It looks like perfect weather for farming and I just recently subscribed, I watch a lot of farm videos but your videos are very descriptive and helpful! Also the weather may be dry but at least you still do farming! 😃 also is it Pete or Peter?
Hi Zach, it's Pete. We're in central NY. It really is a lush climate in the summer, but the winters are cold & snowy.
Just a Few Acres Farm That’s Cool! Do you do any farm work in the winter?
Wouldn’t this also depend on the volume of animals using the land?
Great! Thanks
have you tried mobile electric fences the way joel salatin does? new patch every day
Your a natural 😀 at making videos.
What is strip grazing?
Do you need a more diverse grass types?
How many acres are you grazing total. I have a small place and would like to put some cows on pasture just trying to put it to scale on what I would have to devote to it
About 15 acres, 35 head.
Wow. Thanks. That’s very helpful to know. I would have to work on my pasture to support that many. Your grass looks amazing compared to mine
@@joesears584 Start with 1 cow per 2 acres. Feed some hay. Move them often. The trampled hay adds seeds for next year. The dung pats add nitrogen and dung beetles take the dung underground which adds carbon. 1 gram of carbon in the soil stores 8 grams of water, making deeper roots, more resistance to drought, and on and on , higher stock density as soil/grasses/forbs improve.
Can you no till in some summer annual grasses
Where are you Pete?
What is the difference for feeding the soil with rotting grass or eating it and the manure it makes?
The mass of roots is greater in volume than the manure, the insect and bacterial life it drives is a bigger creator of fertility than the manure alone.
Rotting grass means carbon is stored in the soil. Each 1 gram of carbon stores 8 grams of water.
Do you move water every day you move them?
You will end up using less land with mob grazing and will be able to graze deeper into the fall if you keep at it since effectively you were just overgrazing with strip grazing. Many people are prideful about making all their own hay but the economics of buying in a little hay and grazing more animals works out better. You wont have the issues you bring up making hay when you rotate them through a few more times and then letting it rest. The grass will handle drought much better. Personally I think making money and building soil are more important than making the entire planet look like a lawn, but I know it is hard to do when all your neighbors fields look perfect.
When the restaurants come back. Try chicken and ducks/geese in those they fields at the very least
Would it be dumb to mow behind the cattle?
I'd think that might stimulate growth and mulch down.
PS. Ok I saw your June 2. Video now and it is not done. Still not sure why.
Of course if it's a drought, living grass cools the soil but at some point I think a mulch is more beneficial because living grass has to perspirate.
Thanks, Pete. From your perspective, is there any significance to hay going to seed? Positive, negative? Also, would you get any net benefit from simply mowing/brush hogging the fields that have been mob grazed? A uniform height? Some finer mulch?
Hi Vince, once the plant sends up a seed head its nutritional value and foliage growth rate start to decrease. We like to either graze it or make hay before that happens, but at certain times of the year (like now) it doesn't work out. You want to keep the grass in its fast growing stage, between 6" tall (roughly) and before the seed head goes up. If you overgraze it, cut it for hay, or brush hog it will take the plant longer to recover, and you'll end up with less forage.
@@JustaFewAcresFarm Thanks.
How many horsepower does the 656 have?
Its all about adjustments by just mob grazing or strip grazing you end up following a practice and not bu nature all animals in different areas and climates graze differently We get 150” of rain a year and i have my sheep graze it down (4-5 days and then move the grass will heal in two weeks but will grow slower than if i was to mow it
Hi jjime, I agree it's about knowing your animals and land. Every time we change our grazing method it takes time to get a feel for it.
Not sure if i agree with trampling the grass
Stay with rotational grazing man, its much better in the medium/ long term.
Maybe you should give them a smaller patch so you dont have such a big problem with trampled uneaten grass
Enjoyed the video. I'm sure you have heard of Greg Jude , Green Acres Pasture, on TH-cam, but if not he has a good channel and years of experience to pull from.
He knows about Greg's channel he's mentioned him here before.
Pete's doing great
Awesome...just trying to be helpful. I just started watching. Have not seen that clip just yet.
What a strange term, "mob grazing". Is that new? I've never heard it before. Is this US-centric?
Most people find it easier to say "mob stocking" or "mob grazing" than _"management intensive grazing"_ or some of the other terms used to describe it. The idea behind it is to mimic nature by keeping the animals bunched up in a herd (high stock density), and constantly moving. This is the pattern to which grazing ruminants and the grasslands they lived on both co-evolved, and it's a system that maximizes soil and animal health and productivity. In the wild, ruminants like bison rely on herd behaviour to protect themselves from predators, but they constantly have to move because they quickly deplete and foul the food resource they're on. They can't selectively graze only the tastiest plants (making them ever less common in the sward, which is what happens under continuous grazing), because competition from their neighbours for the same grass makes them take whatever they can get quickly. They also leave their parasites behind as they go to new ground, so parasites and diseases don't have a chance to build up. The heavy trampling of much of the grass armours the soil from sun and wind -- preserving moisture and providing essential food for earthworms and soil microbes to build _more_ and _better_ soil for the future, as Pete explained in this video.
The technology required to make mob grazing possible was only developed in the past couple of decades with the development of inexpensive and portable electric fencing systems that could be used to create very flexible arrangements of temporary paddocks. It's "management intensive" because it requires very careful daily assessment of the available and foreseen food resources for the herd and using that knowledge to make regular adjustments to stocking density (speeding up or slowing down the rate at which the herd moves onto new ground). The electric fence is the "predator" used to enforce herd behaviour on the animals so that they act naturally (as herd animals) without any actual predators.
@@andreafalconiero9089 Thanks for your informative response, however it didn't address my questions. The first point I made was about the word "mob". The meaning of the word is "a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence." It's an odd choice to describe a bunch of cows grazing. Why not "herd", which is the standard description of a group of animals, particularly hoofed animals. You writing that it's much easier to say "mob grazing" rather than "management intensive grazing" comes across as facetious. "Herd grazing" precisely describes this strategy without having to resort to industry-specific terms, and is easily comprehended by just about everyone. My first question was, "Is this new?" You didn't answer that question, nor did the owner of this channel. My second question was "Is this US-centric?" That question wasn't answered either. And for anyone thinking words are a trivial thing, I suggest reading ""Politics and the English Language", by George Orwell. And for a humorous take on the same subject, but not less important, watch George Carlin talking about the degradation of words and their meaning. th-cam.com/video/o25I2fzFGoY/w-d-xo.html
Consider baling hay on shares for your neighbors. I have started mob grazing my sheep and cattle. Fortunately for me I still have a lot of hay ground but I am still baling hay on shares.
I think that's a very good suggestion. Pete mentioned in some other videos how much he enjoys making hay, so since he'll have less opportunity to do that on his own land, why not do it for his neighbours and take a share of it? It seems like a good solution all-around.
Im a polywire mob grazer!
There was a 7 hour video before one of your videos, Pete. It was ocean life filmed with clear ocean water and all kinds of ocean life. Sorry my friend, I skipped it. The music was dreary too. I am sorry if you did not get paid what you richly deserve.
big grass
This man purposely stepped in cow poop with both feet
Do you ever take bushog in there after the cows which helps spread the manure
Haven’t had a decent rain fall in three weeks and you call it a drought?
Try no rain decent rain in 6 years and no decent rain in the foreseeable future.. then you can call it a drought
So is sheep’s and goats good on this? I’m learning here. Will have some cattle too
And everyone thinks- raising cattle and livestock grazing is just opening the gates in the morning, and calling them back in the evening, and in between, seating on the porch with a shotgun and drinking beer...
Let’s keep praying for rain!!
LOL Crazy Coyote!
It's often worse than that -- Greg Judy and some others have described what they call the "Columbus method", where you turn out the animals in the spring, and then rediscover them (maybe) in the fall! It's no way to build healthy pasture or livestock, though admittedly it's less work ;-)
@@andreafalconiero9089 Less work until you have to sell the farm and go get a job in town.
Manage your pastures for clover ...not for grass......
That's how I judge paddock size.
Pete why don't you stop making hay and leave the cattle out 365. Cant be a weather problem as its successfully done in Canada which is much worse weather than New York State. Just doesn't make sense if you are mob grazing.
Many reasons, not the least of which is I prefer not to feed substandard stockpiled forage. See my “no nonsense” grazing video.
Monster....
This is getting suspenseful. It looks like you have tons of feed.
Thanks GWC 3! They chew through it pretty fast though...
@@JustaFewAcresFarm Have you had rain yet? We have had a lot here in CT. I wouldn't necessarily go hole hog into mob grazing. Whenever you see the videos of Judge Judy notice his cattle have lots of land. In NY you have heat spells but nothing like Missouri or Texas. I think you could tighten your paddocks up a bit and get a little extra hay. You'll still get plenty of trampling.
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