7125 Old Stage Road Raleigh NC 919-322-0197
For 2015, we once again did not graze our back pasture at the bottom of our property. The grass is very sparse and thin, with not a lot of quality. It needs organic material added to improve the soil, something we’ll try to address in 2016.
The grass in some areas did get up to 20″ or so in height but it wasn’t worth grazing for 2015.
The pond near this pasture has a clogged stand pipe and the water going over the spillway is flowing into this pasture keeping it wet causing further issues.
This update is for the paddock near our ponds, by Old Stage Road.
The grass was fairly decent prior to grazing on June 7th. The fescue seed heads were over the grazing stake, probably about 30″. The grass itself was 13″ or so tall. The grass thickness was about 80% ground coverage with some patches of ground visible here and there. Where there was open ground, there was a relatively thin layer of thatch buildup which was an improvement over our last grazing report where there was effectively no thatch. Thatch is what builds our soil so getting it thicker is our number one concern. It’s been dry lately so the grass isn’t exactly jumping and it’s been warm enough to cause the fescue to begin going dormant.
We turned the cows into this paddock on June 8th and took them off June 10th. This is not our normal rotation but we had to leave them on two days because the cows had to move to the neighbors and we needed the timing to work out so we could take them on Monday rather than on Sunday.
Lots of trample, lots eaten. This area had some decent amount of thistle at this time last year and we have exactly zero thistle this year. It looks like the management is having a positive affect on at least this part of the farm. We certainly didn’t spray for thistle.
The grass is about 4-6″ tall at this point and relatively evenly grazed. Overall, considering the lack of rain, the grass looks pretty good.
On May 16th, we grazed our monitored paddock on the South side of the farm closest to the golf course. With our 32 acres of grazing pastures, and our neighbors addition of 13 acres we have a total of 45 acres of grazing. On that 45 acres, we have about 750 pounds per acre of cattle. That means total we have 33,750 pounds of cattle grazing currently. That’s based on a weight estimate I did back in late February. Since then we’ve lost a cow to death, had some births, and overall changed the ratio somewhat but for now that is our grazing pressure per acre. The grass is standing up very well to this setup, in fact I think we could use some management to increase the pressure but we’ve been so busy with other things we haven’t played with the management much this season. Once we catch up, we’ll try moving the cows every few hours vs. once per day and see what that does to our grazing.
Here is how the grass looked before grazing. The seed heads of the grass were off the top of the measuring stick which makes them about 35″ tall. That makes sense because they are coming over the hood of the Gator as we drive through the fields. Underneath the seed heads, the actual grass was about 15″ tall.
It looks like in this picture that the grass is significantly shorter. However it is a deception. In reality there is still a lot of grass in this picture.
Here is a pre and post grazing comparison. Grazed on the left, not grazed on the right.
With the rain and mild weather, the fescue is doing well. We don’t have any thatch to speak of as what was there decomposed over the winter. However post grazing we have clipped all the pastures putting all this material on the ground. We need to get that organic material on the ground and build the thatch in preparation for the summer to come so we can hold moisture in the ground and give the warm season grasses a chance to thrive. Plus we’re supposed to be building topsoil, something that needs to start again in earnest. I hate winter when the soil is muddy and unprotected.
The grass is coming along nicely. This is a shot from today of the grass on the hill closest to the golf course. The grass is about 8-9″ tall at this point. We had to flash graze this paddock about two weeks ago so this is grass that has recovered.
The cows have about another week over at the new place, David and Mr. McKoy’s farm, giving this grass more time to fill out and get the maturity we like to see in it before we graze. Hopefully we will get some warm weather and continued rain here or there to help the grass grow. A week of good growth and this grass will be looking for some cows to do their work.