Field Rotations

One of the largest expenses for a livestock farm is feed. Our ruminants (sheep) will devour a field quickly. Field rotations is paramount to success.

Our farm currently has three fenced paddocks all possessing a mix of pasture and woodland sections. This provides a great deal of variety in their diets. We find there are many plants and trees that fulfill almost all the nutrient requirements for our ruminants. We find that most summer days, our sheep do not want grain as they are well fed with the forage available.

How do we know when to move animals around? What factors affect the decisions? What animals are in the field and where are they going next? These are just some of the questions we ask when making decisions on movement . Then there are a few other factors that must be taken into account. For example, we mix our animals together.

Example:

Field 1 currently has three ewes (breeding female sheep)

Field 2 has 4 Kune Piglets, one Ram, and one wether (castrated male goat)

Field 3 has 3 teen kune's, one Kune Sow, and three lambs

Earlier this week, we created a new pig pen. We are raising a kune boar for family member who has not yet erected his fences. We also took delivery of a Yorkshire Boar three months ago for a cross breed project I will explain in a separate post. Those two boars were in field 2 with the other piglets. As they approach maturity, we must limit their access to females. So a new boar specific pen was necessary. Not to mention how much easier it is to heard a 70Lbs pig than a 200Lbs pig.

Field one is currently short on snacks for the pigs and not enough grass for the lambs. We had the ewes and lambs in field one until weaning time. At that point, the lambs were moved to field 3 where we currently have an abundance of grass and plants that the lambs love. Field two has a grub problem and a tremendous amount of briars, prickers, and other scrub as it hadn't been used for anything but a horse over the last 25 years. Now we have the goat and ram eating the briars, prickers, and other brush, while the kune piglets devour the grubs and other creepy crawlies.

I must point out some time discrepancies. Our home page shows that we established our farm this year. That is partly true, as we incorporated as a farm this year. We have actually been raising livestock here for more than a decade. Though our paddock rotations were based solely on husbandry, as our flocks have grown, we have needed to become much more studious in our land usage. It is with great pride that we report having three healthy, useful fields.

Why have I shared all that with you? The main reason is to get your head around the importance of forage for your livestock. The more plant life available to your ruminants, the less you will need to feed them grain. The less grain you feed, the better the margins will be at the other end. That is the fiscal reason, which is of course very important. My personal motivation is flavor. The grass fed animal will taste different than grain fed. They tend to have less overall fat with better fat distribution. You know the contents of your field and can better control what man-made contaminants than with a bag of grain. Grass fed animals have better coloring as well...BPI pork is gray with just a hint of pink color and virtually no marbling. Our pork and lamb have deep color and good fat distribution. Unfortunately, however, we live in Connecticut. How much do you know about nutrient content in our soil? Let me teach you real fast...its not that good. New England soils tend to lack necessary trace minerals which cause our forage to be deficient. We must balance our animals diets with grain feeds to make up the difference. Another source of salts and trace minerals is salt blocks. We ensure there is always a mineral block available to our livestock. Monitoring the salt block is a great way to know if your animals are deficient...if they are, they will eat the mineral block.

Few people understand that animals will seek out the nutrients they are lacking. When humans are taken from our first world societies they will actually do the same things. People who find themselves stranded on an island with abundant fish will begin by eating the flesh as we would expect. As time goes on those humans become deficient in all the nutrients and minerals not in the fish meat. That human will begin to seek out sources of those nutrients. The stranded human will have a sudden desire to eat the entrails, eyeballs, and other bits that disgust you as you read this. Those bits contain the nutrients that the body needs. Your subconscious will convince you they are the most delicious things ever...our children wont eat anything because they are well fed since birth. Give them bread and water for a week and see how open their appetites become. Meanwhile, our animals do not need to get to that point. So we feed small amounts of grain throughout the year with increases during gestation and lactation and winter. One of the signs it is time to rotate animals is when they lap up every last morsel of grain...most days all our animals leave a portion of their grain for the mice and birds.