The cattle are fed nothing but grass from September to March, when they are sold.
NO ANIMAL HEALTH COSTS Damien does not treat the cattle at all.“The cattle are three quarters organic basically.” They come off the truck, get fed a diet of swedes and grass, come back in and get weighed once. The heaviest go on the truck and the lightest go back on grass.
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Everything is on a seven-year rotation. A paddock is in grass for seven years, winters cattle, goes into peas and then back into grass. With peas the income can be really high, and really low. The key is it’s only in the ground for a short time and is easy on the ground. ”Peas are a legume fixing free N for you and we have the byproduct of pea hay that we feed out. It’s organic matter being poured back into the ground.” He says the stock enjoy the pea hay and do extremely well on it. With the peas gone by February there is a four-week window to get the paddock back into grass before rain hopefully comes at the end of March. The swedes are precision planted in rows. Damien likes swedes because everything is
below the wire and all it requires is someone to shift the break. “We trialled planting our own swedes at lower rates, but the yield from the precision planting blows everything else away.” They have tried kale previously and thought about the idea of fodder beet, but swedes are far cheaper and he doesn’t have any animal health issues. “The thing with the wintering, it’s getting harder and harder to have such a concentration of cattle in a small area. Environmentally we’ve got to figure out ways to be easier on the land. That’s why we’re trying the standing grass, and half the stocking rate. “We either have to experiment with buying dearer stock in the spring or cropping more
Country-Wide Beef
May 2021