practical farming solutions… #7

…in Southern Norway…

seasonal variations…

Various pasture grasses don't grow continuously and at the same rates throughout the warm season, as each variety is adjusting to soil-type, soil-conditions, weather, fertilizing-strategy and grazing-strategy. We're in control of some of these factors, and can thereby to some degree adjust the amount of nutritious animal-food our pastures produce throughout the season.

The natural norm is that grasses grow fast in late spring / early summer, and then slows down and almost halts in mid summer. Then there's an after-growth period in late summer / early autumn that can last for quite a while if the weather is right.

The mid-summer slow down is counteracted by white clover and other “weeds” that prefer sunshine and drought, so from our cows point of view there's plenty of food on our pastures in the slow-growth period. That's the only period the cow-dung turns really greenish because the cow's stomack can't break down this energy-rich food well enough and fast enough.

no water shortage:

Having our pastures failing for lack of water is so rare that in practice we can ignore the issue. The grass may turn brown on a few small patches where the soil-layer is only a few centimeters thick on top of solid rock, but this has no impact on production.

Too much rain is the norm, and getting rid of excessive water is what matters around here.

entirely natural fertilization…

We don't buy fertilizers for our fields and pastures, only some grass-seed to complement what's already here to spread out where the cattle have churned up and prepared the ground. Our cattle takes care of the fertilization of pastures while grazing, mainly by peeing and pooing, and the rest is left to an increasing white clover coverage.

A good coverage of white clover will add as much nutrient to the soil and thereby the grass-roots, as tons of bought-in nitrogen-rich fertilizer a hectar would do. However, one can not easily combine this natural fertilizer with artificial ones, as nitrogen-rich fertilizer would kill off all clover in no time and make us have to rely entirely on artificial fertilizers. Makes no sense whatsoever on a dairy farm like ours.

A dairy farm like ours needs a constant supply of food for our animals on our pastures, and got no use for visually pleasing fields with tall grass. Clover needs sunlight, which its partner the nitrogen-fixating fungus can turn into natural fertilizer. White clover will normally show the best growth when other types of grass are not growing well or are kept down by heavy grazing, which means its there when it's needed the most.

Consequently the easiest way to promote general grass-growth and expansion of white clover is to let our cows graze down all competing grasses early in the season and keep them down until the clover starts growing. This has a positive effect on all pasture grasses further into the grazing season, so heavy grazing in the spring and early summer is a vital part of our strategy for prolonged pasture-growth.

we're protecting the clover:

White clover is a self-sustained fertilizer and the most excellent cow-food, all in one. Yes, we do need some additional ingredients from the outside: sunlight and rain, but these do appear naturally even though the balance between them may not always suit us perfectly.

Some airborne polution, mainly from the European Union, usually doesn't hurt either – as long as we're talking exclusively about grass-growth. No matter how we're looking at it: we're definitely talking low cost and improved yeld here, and we catch and treat some pollution in the process.

Minimal amounts of natural substances like lime are added from time to time, in order to improve and keep up soil conditions and counteract the effects of too much of the wrong types of airborne polution. Our cows need some of the (processed) substance too, which they extract from the grass.

we won't pay for production-losses:

Artificial fertilizers on the other hand has no positive side-effects, and has to be added, and added, and added … forever. One may also have to introduce a whole series of different artificial fertilizers and substances in order to make anything but mono-crop grow, as the soil will lose its natural nutrient-balance.

Clover is easily and quickly eradicated by even minimal use of artificial fertilizer, and reversing the process – making the clower grow back – may take many, many, years. We stopped using artificial fertilizer completely a decade ago, and now the clover is finally back in full force.

Paying for long-term loss of crop-diversity and soil-quality for short-term gains, sounds ridiculous – and it is. Regular use of artificial fertilizer won't be concidered even if given for free – which it definitely isn't while I'm writing this. By not buying any fertilizer we're completely insensitive to market-prices, and can ignore companies like Yara – thank God.

slow but lasting effect:

Those who think white clover and cow-dung can't compete with artificial fertilizer on pastures, are correct – in a sense. If one wants quick results of fertilization – especially on monocrop, then clover does of course have no chance. If on the other hand one wants a wide variety of pasture-grasses to last, and last, and last … then just adding cow-dung and promoting white clover growth will definitely do the trick.

energy vs. mass:

White clover is high-energy low-mass food. Given the extremely high protein-content in white clower, a good coverage assures there's always enough energy on pastures for our animals throughout the season. Any source of edible fiber-rich straw, dry grass, weed or whatever, will compensate for the white clover's low-fiber structure. Cows prefer a diverse diet, and white clover assures they get one.

We don't do much to balance our cows diet. Our cows are smart and knows perfectly well if they need more or less fiber or more or less energy. All we have to do is to make sure they got access to a variety of good food-sources, and the individual cow will pretty much regulate the intake herself. We can to some degree check through milk-quality measurements that we're not making any big mistakes.

other grazing conciderations…

We're observing and studying the cultivated and natural world around us, and what we and our cows can do to make things work even better for us. Lots of major and minor factors one can take into account if one is interested.

One can find write-ups on many issues that affect what the humble cow prefer to graze on and why. Checking the legitimacy of such write-ups is interesting, and also important to avoid being fooled by experts and fools alike. Our local experts, the cows, may disagree on some issues for personal-preference reasons, but observing them over time provides us with good indicators for what has merits, and what matters and what doesn't locally.

over-grazed grasses don't taste good:

Believe it or not: grass don't like to be eaten, and it reacts on over-grazing by modifying how it tastes to make the grazing animals go somewhere else. This works well with moderate grazing-pressure in the wild, where grazing animals move over large areas to find new, fresh and good-tasting grass.

If our cattle could apply such a grazing-strategy, they most certainly would, but our neighbors may not like it all that much. Besides, getting our cows home for milking from miles away at least twice a day, would be impractical, and we can't follow them around in their search for fresh and better-tasting pastures.

Moreover: different types of grass have their growth-curves at different times, even though most pasture-grasses grow in the same fields. Some grass types grow most early in the spring, some in the midst of summer and some early in the fall, and the entire growth-pattern can, and is, modified by the weather. Our cows however need their grass-ration every day no matter what, so we farmers have to take all the different factors into account and make sure there's enough good-tasting and nourishing grass available to meet the needs of these large animals.

By dividing some of our pastures into quite small areas that our small herd of cows can eat clean in a couple of days and return to a month or so later, we make sure they get fresh and good-tasting grass throughout the season. If there's a risk the turn-around cycle may become too short, we wait and compensate. It is better to let the grass grow while keeping our animals fed on silage on marginal areas, than to run out of fresh and tasty grass.

cows rip off grass:

As all should know: cows don't bite off the grass, they rip and tear it off. Cows don't have teeth in the front of their mouth to bite off much of anything. Not to say they can't bite your hand, but only if they get it between their side-teeth in the back of their mouth.

What this means is that cows prefer grasses that are easy to rip off, and may leave grasses that are harder to rip off alone regardless of their nutritional value. On pastures this matters a great deal, since it's of no use to have lots of grass if our cows avoid it.

Most low-growing leafy grasses are easy to rip off and therefore get eaten first, while tall grasses are often stemmy and hard to rip off and our cows may therefore just nip at it before moving on. Seeing cows graze on the undergrowth of tall grass instead of the tall grass itself, is quite normal and as expected.

Tall grasses undergo changes as it grows, from often being soft in the beginning, through becoming a bit stemmy and strong at peak-growth, before drying out and becoming easy to break and rip off. Thus, cows can make use of almost any grasses at some stage, but grasses may not be at the right stages when the cows need it the most.

Apart from promoting a dominance of pasture-grasses that are easy to rip off, one can of course “rip it off” for the cows. Grasses used in silage and hay are usually harvested at or near the end of peak-growth when they're least ideal for direct grazing, but, of course, cows love them once they're served ready-cut.

For getting the most out of pastures one doesn't have to run grasses through the entire process towards silage or hay, as it is enough to mow down tall grasses and let the cows back in so they can eat them fresh from the ground. Cows love a ready-made dinner plate of pre-cut grass, as long as one makes sure there's no cow-dung mixed into it.

composting grass on pastures is not a good idea:

It is important to let the animals remove mowed grass on pastures while it's fresh, as a mat of rotting grass inhibits new growth underneath and turns the covered area into a rotten mess. If one wants to compost grass, then one should at least move it off the pastures first.

Composting on lawns may work if the mowed grass is cut into very fine pieces and there's not enough of it to create covering mats, but generally composting on lawns is not a good idea either. Better to let the entire composting process take place elsewhere, and sprinkle the finished product back onto the lawn and water it down.

Farmers often mow their pastures at the end of the season, but not all remove the mowed grass. If they're not too concerned about growth the next season, that may work ok. Nature's composting process on pastures can be a bit too slow for comfort though.

We let our cows graze until they have eaten the pastures flat – to a level where no further mowing makes sense. This promotes early and uninhibited growth the next season, which is exactly what we want. The extra deposits of cow-dung in late season get watered down by late-autumn/early-winter rain, and give the grass a good start.

preventing run-off from pastures…

We here in Norway are (by law) not allowed to spread manure onto our fields and pastures in late season, for fear of run-off into lakes and streams during the winter. This makes sense, as excessive fertilization outside the farm pose a danger to the natural environment and us all, and is really a loss of valuable nutrients that can be put to much better use on the farm itself.

This manure-spreading restriction does of course make no impression on our cows – thanks God. Our animals' natural distribution does not pose a threat for run-off either, since they distribute small amounts of manure over a long time-range and area, and this gets absorbed by the soil almost immediately.

There's a distinct difference between having maximum 50 kilo of manure a cow a day spread over the entire farm throughout the year, and the up to around 20 tons a hectar spread in on one go a couple of times a year by machines. The former gets absorbed by the soil, where it's needed, while the latter can easily end up where it doesn't belong if we're not careful.

Our cows of course also do some peeing and pooing while in for milking, so we do have quite a few tons of manure to take care of each year. We spread this at times of year when the nutritional value of watered-down manure is appreciated by plants – during the warm season, and use it to control and/or promote growth where it's most needed that very season.

recycling the brown gold:

Cow-manure definitely isn't a waste-product, it's an asset with many potential uses. One is the obvious one as fertilizer, where nearly all of the nutrition taken out of the soil through grazing and harvesting is circulated back into the soil. Normally the sun and rain and industrial pollution add more than what's lost in production, so a positive balance can be expected.

One can of course also extract energy from cow-manure by harvesting the natural microbial processes before using the processed manure as fertilizer with its nutritional value intact or even improved. Normally more energy than a farm can make use of can be harvested with proper process-control, but this energy-source is still left pretty much unused in our part of the world. We're not using it either, but if time permits we may play with it in the years to come.

For the time being harvesting energy from manure isn't economically sound on small farms like ours, mainly because of high investment-costs. It is however extremely eco-friendly to harvest this energy, so if existing technology can be adapted at a reasonable cost, it may work even for us.

no end…

There's no end to what can be written about grazing and related issues on a local level, so there's no end on this article either. I'll probably add, change and subtract some from time to time, just as for most subjects I find interesting.

sincerely 

Hageland 26.jul.2008
last rev: 05.aug.2008