Starting down the road to rotational grazing

In August 2021, at an on farm event, Kenton, alongside his BGS grazing mentor, Keith Davis, shared the highs and lows he experienced throughout the year and the steps he will be taking to ensure maximum benefit in the future.

Keith began by highlighting that, “if you want to bring your cost of production down, feed high quality, cheap feed – grass.” Maximising efficient use of grass is key to Kenton’s plans moving forward. As an autumn block calver, it is important Kenton can make the most of grass in the spring and early summer.

During the growing season ryegrass only ever has three leaves at any one time. The first of these will develop after seven days, the second seven days later, and the third, seven days after that. After 14 days a paddock will only have 50% of it’s potential grass. Therefore, by grazing a paddock in a rotational system every 21 days you can maximise your intake from grass.

On his own farm, Keith walks his fields once a week. He grows 2400kg of dry matter per hectare and will graze this down to a minimum of 1500kg – this would be about 5cm or 2 inches in height. He has also ensured there are at least two gates per field, to give him flexibility in wet weather and reduce damage to the sward, and has established an extensive track system.

Autumn is the ideal time to set up your grazing platform for the year ahead, so Kenton has been working hard to make any changes for the 2022 grazing season. The existing paddocks at Perry Farm are large so Kenton is looking at setting up temporary fencing, adding in more tracks and more water troughs. Grazing sheep on the platform can be beneficial for setting up a wedge, however, it is important that they are taken off the land by 24 December at the latest, ideally by the 1 December.

Kenton has also tried standing hay this year for his dry cows and found that the cows are happy and healthy on it, he will definitely use it again next year.

Top tips

For success in rotational growing you need:

• Working out paddock sizes
• Tracks (this can be temporary initially)
• Good water supply (you can run pipes overground to ensure enough troughs)
• Plate meter
• Persistence!