The grass is greening and Spring is knocking at the door! Is it time to graze yet?? Join me today, as I talk about the three things I’m looking for BEFORE I start the Spring grazing rotation.
@@birchfieldfarming Glad to hear you’re all well. Hope the suffering isn’t too bad up North. We just received two cows and a 1,600lbs bull, terrifying at first but settling in well now.
This is really interesting. We are unfortunately STILL in drought so I'm really worried about my pastures. I'll be taking a page out of your book this year and I'll be planting some root veggies in our pasture this spring and see if that helps at all. I'm really excited to see how that works out for us.
Still in drought, wow! The cover cropping and rotationally grazing on the take half leave half really helped us thru last year. Wish we could send some water up ur way!
@birchfieldfarming haha if only it worked like that! Hope your pastures and livestock do really well this year! Looks like this year we will beat you to lambing. I'm betting on our first lambs hitting the ground next week.
@birchfieldfarming we have 15 pregnant ewes. 5 are first time moms and the rest are experienced who have (with the exception of our new blackbelly ewe) consistently thrown multiples so my guess is roughly 30 or so. There are a few who are just massive so I'm pretty sure they have at least triplets.
Brix levels affect DM (dry matter) required for feeding the herd. Higher Brix needs less dm. Lower Brix needs more dm. The chart i saw was impressive in the changes. If grasses are long and from stockpile, the fresh grass will grow up between it. They will get a good balance of dry and fresh to avoid loose manure. Many regen folks wish to minimize costs such as hay and growing stockpile is a way to manage costs and nutrition for the herd.
@@user-kv2pt4lu9yYeah sure, I understand. I just thought it was intriguing what you could tell from colostrum brix levels in dairy animals, even wondering how forage brix levels ingested by those animals could impact readings.
@@birchfieldfarming brix is a reading of sugar. Also used in applebutter. Bauman's gave a talk years ago about their apple to applebutter process in Sassamansville and mentioned brix.
@@birchfieldfarming don't know whether or not plant sugars would affect colostrum. I recall the colostrum brix parallels the level of IGG's in the milk. If you test second colostrum or fisrt milking takes place many hours after birth, the brix level drops due to the milk diluting the colostrum.
Hi Jason, they always say that Cows are very curious so it was so typical for them all to be watching you. It was nice to see the lush Cover Crop field with the Cows and Sheep grazing together with plenty to eat. Good to see you doing Rotational Grazing allowing the animals to follow each other and ending up with the Chickens to build Soil Health. Even though you Maple Syrup production was low with the warmer weather you at least have a jump on fields Greening up for an early Spring. Seems like you already have little lambs so they must be spaced out to still have lambs by mid April.
Thanks, Ben! 🤠No lambs currently, but St Croix sheep are a bit smaller on size. I’m very hopeful for our largest pastured lamb crop yet this year! Will be our 6th lambing and every year I hope to be a better shepherd.
I’m a bit captivated by the evapotranspiration conversation surrounding cover crops - limiting evaporation, yet encouraging transpiration from the plants - there’s so much going on beyond what we can see!
Great question - so we pulled our first harvest from the now 16 month old Johnson-Su heated worm bin to start our garden seeds, and the plants are LOVING it. It’s so fascinating - in the past we had lots of little weeds, gnats, aphids and other undesirables that would come along in the soil with our indoor seed set-up, but none of that this year. It’s got me intrigued. We’ll definitely be pulling from there more as we make extract to start cover crops this Spring in the paddocks. Thanks for asking!
@@birchfieldfarming ah very true. No I haven’t. Since only farm I can fiddle fart around on is my sisters and family drama stripped that sibling away, sadly won’t be able to for quite some time. I would try but u r right isn’t moisture of dry hay like under 30%
@@TobyElGatoI’m just picturing the way I usually take a brix forage reading, which is squeezing thru a garlic press for liquid. Wonder if I could do that after hay is cut but before it’s fully dry? Could be an interesting bit of info.
Matthew 22:37 comes to mind. When I’m having trouble, I try to get away and focus in on what the Lord is saying. Please email me if I can pray specifically for your situation. Peace to you.
I probably will within the next couple days send an email, hopefully I don’t do it too late. Just don’t want to carry the pain over to other people, maybe understand myself a little more. I do very much appreciate the offer, I’m talking to my brother right now seemingly my last resource and seems to be helping.
Yessir much more help from him than I thought I would get. By the way great videos a lot of modern strategies and implementations. Cool to see much of the modern stuff in action all on one farm. Great learning source