JUNE 2018 NEWSLETTER

Destocking Decisions by Blain Hjertaas

As I write this on May 30 we have received 8mm since April 1. I am amazed at the resilience of the plants. The first grazed paddocks look better than many of my neighbours continuous grazed paddocks. As always we don’t know if it will rain or not, all we can do is manage as best we can.

I thought it would be a great time to dust off some grazing principles and drought strategies.

Fast growth fast moves, slow growth slow moves. On a normal year May and June are our fast growth times. When we do our planning, we should be moving faster as to prevent the plants from going to seed and keeping them in a more vegetative state. As rainfall is less, plants grow slower, hence the need for slower moves. AS PLANTS GROW SLOWER WE NEED MORE RECOVERY TIME. The key to success in a grazing system is to protect our recovery times. This is why we call it planned grazing as it is flexible to account for the different conditions we face each year.

When we move slower in the spring we will be grazing more severely. This is a better option than moving faster and shortening our recovery time. Keeping our graze periods relatively short, a week or less will allow the plants to recover from this grazing event relatively quickly. It may not look pretty when we leave; it is a long way from take half and leave half that we try to practise in wetter times.  When it does rain, our land will recover from this event very quickly as we have prevented overgrazing.

Remember we are practicing planned grazing which allows for adequate feed for the livestock as well as allowing plants optimum growth. No two years are the same so it’s important to monitor that first paddock grazed and make decisions from those observations.

At some point if it doesn’t rain we all know that growth will get very slow or stop all together. We need to be thinking about this possibility and be prepared to destock. Pick a date and say to yourself if it hasn’t rained by then we have to do something. It is far better to destock early THAN LATER. When you destock earlier, you have less grazing demand so your recovery times become longer. You will also beat the rush and the depressed prices that occur when all the neighbours realize that they are in trouble.

In many cases a small destocking early is all you need to get the rest of the herd through the drought. If you wait later a bigger percentage of the herd will have to go.

When deciding how many to destock, using a square foot or square metre and weighing some samples to give you an idea of what quantity of forage is there. Once this is known you can do the math and see how many days of forage you have ahead of you, worst case scenario (no rain). Then you ask yourself will there be hay available anywhere and when do I want to start feeding. You can then determine how many animals to get rid of make it through.

These are not easy decisions. None of us like to destock. Good management tells us it is much better to destock a small percentage early than a large percentage later.

In a drier year we are in a survival mode. We won’t likely be adding to our biological bank account, but we won’t likely be damaging it either. It is the good years that we can add some litter to the ground. In a dry year we need to plan to get as many animals as possible through for another season. Improving our land is not our first priority in a dry year, survival is.

These decisions are always easier with help. Call up one of your neighbours or get you holistic group together and make it a learning decision for all. You can contact one of the certified educators for help too.

“Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.”   ~ Neal Donald Walsch

Good luck with your grazing planning and I hope that the storms make all this unnecessary on your farm.
 

Recently HM Canada set up a bank account and became a legal entity. In the past we had farmed out the money collection and bill paying to a third party organization. Our account is at Conexus Credit union and Ralph Corcoran and Blain Hjertaas are the signers on the account.

From past conferences                      $ 11,640
Moosomin conference revenue          $ 23,340
Moosomin expenses                          $ 16,409.22
Current balance                                 $ 18,570.78