Mike Allwood
Mike Allwood
Mike Allwood is owner-
occupier of a 82ha
(200-acre) farm near
Nantwich, Cheshire. The
175-cow dairy herd block
calves during May and June.
Mike is also director of Farm
Produce Marketing, based
on the farm, which
manufactures and sells
Orchard Maid frozen yogurt,
and puts packs of Cheshire
milk onto airline breakfast
trays
I HAVE given in to fashion. This year we are going to change to a rotational grazing system: Not the purists dream of twice-daily strip grazing with back fences nor lots of little paddocks, but a half-way house which will enable us to change from our set stocking without too much extra labour or capital input on tracks or water troughs.
The plan is to split the grazing fields into a number of paddocks of approximately six acres, then to strip graze across them, moving the fence once daily, or twice if necessary when moving into a new paddock.
The key measurement for decision making will be the target grass height of 10cm (as measured by a plate meter), and paddocks will be added or taken out according to this criterion. At 10cm I estimate that there will be 3400kg dry matter per hectare. After grazing there will be 4-5cm of grass left which corresponds to 1500kg DM per hectare. Therefore one hectare will provide 1900kg DM which, if cows eat 15kg DM a head a day will feed 126 cows. In practice this means that each paddock will take us two to three days to graze depending on the number of cows in milk.
The length of rotation will depend on the rate of grass growth, which I guess we will learn about over the season – but I expect the first round to take about three weeks. As we are starting our organic conversion this summer, there are a number of complicating factors which will make planning quite a challenge. One is that sometime during the summer the nitrogen will run out and grass growth rate will fall. Another is that we intend to establish clover on all the grassland.
Moving the electric fence every day will take extra labour, so we will try to make it as easy as possible, with a strategic stock of posts and reels in each paddock. In the end, we hope that the benefits will outweigh the costs – or will we just be hostages to fashion? *
Mike Allwoods cows will be making much more of grass this year as he plans to introduce a rotational grazing system.
Mike Allwoods cows will be making much more of grass this year as he plans to introduce a rotational grazing system.
Mike Allwoods cows will be making much more of grass this year as he plans to introduce a rotational grazing system.