The Grazing
Why, what and how
In the wild, herbivores move across the landscape in large tightly packed herds. Always on the move and never to return until the grass has fully recovered. Herbivores co-evolved with these grasslands and both are dependent on each other for their continual existence.
By mimicking this process, using lightweight portable electric fencing we can now recreate the healthy symbiotic relationship between the grassland and the herbivore. The benefits are numerous and include; large amounts of carbon sequestered into the soil, drought-proofing the landscape, improved animal health, improved landscape function and next to no need for inputs.
Our planet needs grazing animals and we need to manage them well.
Perennial grasses need to have their growth points at the base of the plant cleared for them to flourish. When this happens to a fully recovered plant, some of it's root mass is self pruned. This, combined with the litter that is trampled to the ground by the cattle, is how carbon gets into the soil, composting both on top and in the soil.
Our grazing mentor, Graeme Hand has developed Landscape Function Grazing and it's success rests on three pillars; ultra-high stock density (1000 head per HA), frequent moves (4 or more times a day) and long recoveries (around 12 months).
This is achieved using 100m wide runs made up of a single hot wire on each side and using a temporary hot wire fencing system to give the cattle access to a small strip at the time. Solar powered batt-latches enables us to set up several strips at the same time and have the timers set so that more strips become available during the day. Connecting into the gravity feed water infrastructure, using quick coupling valves, a mobile trough is moved along behind the cattle every couple of days.
We will be using Landscape Function Analysis, developed by Tongway and Hindley for CSIRO, to monitor our progress.