Recently I have been reading the book "Comeback Farms" by Greg Judy. There is a lot of fascinating information in this book about rejuvenating pastures that have been neglected and abused for decades. The whole concept is to use high density grazing, increase the stocking rate (of cattle) per paddock and decreasing the size of the paddock itself. According to Greg, he is stocking about 300,000-500,000lbs/acre and only hitting the same paddock twice a year. By doing this you are looking for an end goal of growing more forages with healthier soil. You get this result by upping your stocking rate so that your cattle drop their excrement more evenly on the ground, because of the high stocking rate the manure is pressed into the ground more throughly, giving the ground the natural nutrients it need to be self sustaining. Healthy pastures soak up more water in the rainy season and it will be less effected by drought conditions in the dry season. There is just so much to take in from this book I think I will need to buy it for my farming library.
Needless to say, after reading this I am even more excited to get a piece of land to start growing our farm.
No comments:
Post a Comment