MINERAL MYSTERY'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[freemotion]

I like the idea of taking photos, that would really help as I am quite visual and am always out there with the camera anyways. I have not had any trouble with liver fluke, but I made sure the fence was a good distance from the swampy area. It is not "cattail" swampy, but seasonal and has trees in most of it. Not great trees, but not full-time swamp, either.

My goats are mostly dairy, but I am working on a small herd of dual purpose goats with a bit of boer or maybe pygmy (depending on who got preggers this year) although neither my hubby nor I are ready to eat our goats. Pigs, yes, chickens, yes, turkeys, yes, goats.......we are just too sentimental about them still. But we were about the chickens at one point, too, that didn't last long once the flock reached a certain size and the roosters were too many.

As for compost, the goats don't produce nearly as much as the horse did, but I get my neighbors to give me all their grass clippings and leaves for my pile. They don't appreciate the gold they are dumping over my fence.

And the xmas tree farm....I'd love to walk my goats in it, but that would be pushing it with that neighbor, who has been very good to me. I bring lots of trimmings to my goats from that property. He does use herbicides once a year, but I can always tell where he puts it before the plants die, as I can smell it easily and can see the patterns that the machine he uses makes that is different from the mowers. I bring clippers with me and cut bundles of stuff to bring for the goats when I walk the dogs almost every day. In winter, I have free access to all the unsold cut xmas trees that I drag home for the goats to munch on.

My herd size is probably at its limit now with 7 goats, unless I get more housing and am able to improve my pasture with rotational grazing. I do not want to be buying hay during spring, summer and fall, only enough for anyone who is temporarily confined or for brief spells of bad weather. Or in an exceptional drought year, like we just had.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day Horsefly,Thank you for your post,in answer to your question about deep rooted perennials.Yes!Most have this ability,there root systems reach deep into the soil for both moisture and food and thats how they are able to re-shoot in the following spring from the crowns that they form.EG Alfalfa is a good example as is Cocksfoot( I think you call it Orchard Grass) and if you are on acid soils as we are, if you choose the right var. of Alfalfa along with some Clovers (whichever one's are suited to your local area)and the broadest range of "Native" species you can encourage will result in a good "all purpose " pasture.(the backbone of our pasture is "native species")....................I would make a special point of looking after your "woodland" if you are going to keep the goats.

If you decide to "sow" Alfalfa,I would try "direct drill on about 20in centers(much like Pasture Cropping)instead of ripping up a perfectly good grass paddock.

Thistles are an interesting group,they invade "bare soil"in the main(Nature appears to hate bare soil)and when they die and decompose this food source is left for the next generations of plants to use.This last year has seen the end of our 10 year drought and all the grasses were really "run down",so it was a race to see who was going to be "successful"in this good season.At first I was trying to slow down the weeds by using "herbicides",but was impacting on our good grasses as well,so I stopped and waited for the Thistles to reach "bud-burst" and with a pair of long -handled shears cut the plants off at ground level.The rationale behind this theory is that this late in the season the plants will not have enough time/energy to re-grow ,flower and seed before the weather changes.So the benifiets of the plants are maintained with out the "seed set"(NOW ,we are talking 300 ac. here no small mean feat)

If you think about it Annual Grasses are "shallow rooted" and so must gain all of their energy from the upper reaches of the soil profile so they can germinate ,grow ,flower and seed in the short window of time they have,on the other hand "Perennials" must store energy to be able to re-shoot the following spring .So to achieve this they must draw there energy from deeper in the soil profile.

We would be "really interested" in some detail on your farm ,EG How big? How many head?Is it your "full time " job?Your soil type?Is it sandy or heavy?What type of "grazing management" do you employ at present?How long are you snowed in for in winter?The size of your farm is unimportant ,its the methods you employ that is of most interest to us.

I will send you a PM on the mineral mix,by doing it this way I hope to "draw out" others on the forum,because by seeing how others run their farms,I am able to gain knowledge as well.

Once again "thank you" for your reply and we hope to hear from you again in the future...................T.O.R.

PS. I'm sorry it became another novel.To Free I will answer your post in another post.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day and thanks for stopping by,

Thank you Free,so do you milk your does for the house ?..Is there enough for some butter and cheese?

Define "cattail swamp" for me (never heard the term before)

Glad you get the "stuff"from the Xmas Tree Farm,the goats would love it as it would be a nice change from hay for them.

I would go for 5 x1/2 ac paddocks(just roughly a 1/2 ac in size)and each year I wold try to lock one up each spring and let it run to seed and in the late "fall" put the stock in to clean it up and "trample"the rest to add to your "organic layer".This will improve your "bio-diversity" of species and over summer birds will carry seeds of other desirable plants and leave them behind.

At some point in the future we must chat about what you feed in your hay /grain mix.

The photo thing is a real "eye opener" and over time you come to appreciate the improvement you have gained in the health of your country.

Did you get the PM's OK.

well enough for now ,before we end up with another novel............T.O.R.

 

[Bossroo]

Google " cattail swamp" , " tumbleweed", " alkali soil", "hardpan", " rolling hills" ( 1 ' to 5'high) , salt on the surface where water puddles finally dry out and " ground squirels" and you will find for some interesting reading. We have all of these and then some here in my area of central California. That and about 6.5-8 inches of annual rainfall from late Nov. to mid Feb. then maybe a shower or two into March/ April. the "hardpan" is a mostly calcium + other mineral layer ranging from on the soil surface to several feet below and ranging from 3" to 9" inches thick. It is virtually impervious to water perculation and about impossible for any roots to get through. Winter ( Dec- Feb)temperatures are in the mid/ upper 20*s and sometimes down to 17*but mostly in the 30*- 40* with fog where you do not see the sun for about a month. Spring/ Summer/ Fall is sunny and bright and not a cloud in sight, where the daytime temperatures are in the upper 90*s to 105* and sometimes to 117* dropping 10* to 20* at night. Virtually all grasses are brown and dormant from mid May to mid/late Nov.. Basically a high desert. They don't call California " The Golden State" for it's gold either. Our 20 acre property had only ONE centuries old Valley Oak tree on it on a bank of a dry creek bed. About 12 years ago I hired 3 D9s to deep rip the soil down to 2 feet then level to grade the pastures. I planted oats, wheat, alfalfa, trefoil clover, burr clover, fillarie, endofite free fescue, and a native grass mixture. I have to feed about 100 tons of alfalfa hay plus 15 tons of corn/ oats/ barley to my horses per year and all of their produced manure I spread out into the pastures. The pasture grass yield has about trippled now.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G,day BR,thanks for your reply ,"my god",you must qualify for the title of CHAMPION FARMER...................To run an operation on that sort of country makes our farm look like heaven(in spite of our drought)....

What type of "horses" do you breed?..I imagine they would be pretty tough types and would relish any softer environment in which to work

Look forward to hearing from you again................T.O.R..

 

[Bossroo]

Well, thanks T.O.R. ! I was born and raised on a farm. my dad was a Vet. and I have raised all types of animals by myself for the past 5 decades. I raise and breed Straight Russian Arabian horses for the past 38 years... I imported a Straight Russian Arabian daughter of the 1980 undefeated World Champion Stallion in the Salon du Cheval Paris, France show ( *Abdullah [ Patron x Psikhea by Arax]) and out of his own mother ( Psikhea by Arax). This led me to a barn/ pasture full of her sons, daughters and their decendants. The Russians imported their Arabian horses originally from the Arabian desert, England, France than during WW2 from Poland. Then they breed their horses at the Terk Stud of the steppes of the Caucases mountains. So they are very taugh. My horses are very tall for Arabians... from 15.2h to 16.1+ h. Last year I sold the horses all over the US and 2 provinces of Canada.

 

[Horsefly]

We would be "really interested" in some detail on your farm ,EG How big? How many head?Is it your "full time " job?Your soil type?Is it sandy or heavy?What type of "grazing management" do you employ at present?How long are you snowed in for in winter?The size of your farm is unimportant ,its the methods you employ that is of most interest to us.

Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, been busy. Thanks for all the info on different grasses and plants, we have large clover patches that come back every year and the goats love them. I might try seeding some alfalfa or like plants this spring, do you get seed for native grasses or do you just keep out the udisirables and the native plants spring up. I only have 6 goats at the moment (just downsized from 9 and am trying to sell another), so we are really small scale. They are mostly for pets/weed control and in the future for milk. They are on around 4 acres of land with a large pond in the middle. The pond will overflow the spillway a couple times a year flooding the front half of the land and washes up some silt and leaf litter. The dirt is mostly clay here but were we dump the shavings and stuff when we clean out the stalls is in a spot where when it floods it gets spread around a bit. The rest of it we compost and use in our gardens. We don't get snow here, unless you count the 1 inch acumulation we get every 10 years or so lol! We don't do much in the way of management other than keeping the front half mowed down in the summer and pruning the trees if needed. The last few years we have been concentrating on fixing up the barn. They say a picture is worth 1000 words and I though I had some pictures but can't find them right now. They must be on the other computer, I'll see if I can't find them and post them tomorrow or a few days.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G.day Horsefly,It was 'great' to hear back from you,your reply has raised a few questions for us ,so we will work our way through them and try to answer yours on the way through .

With your clover is it Sub -Clover or White/Red Clover?..Sub Clover can cause some reproductive issues in goats/sheep.If you have difficulty working out which you have ,maybe you can get a farmer from nearby to help ,or take a sample of it to your produce/rural store and ask them..

As for native grasses you may find them "lurking "in the "woods",in the back half where you graze the goats, is it split into a couple of paddocks?..Do you have a local office of your Dept of Agriculture?..If so see if you can get one of there "plant experts"(Botanist)to pop over in the spring and have a look and tell you what you have got and maybe leave you some stuff to help you identify the different species.(Down here the Dep of Ag run 1/2 day workshops on a local farm and farmers(lge and small)can come along "free"to learn about local species,both native and exotic.....Once you have done a few you get a pretty good idea of what you have got on your place and you get to met "like-minded" people in your area,as a bonus ..

The way we have built our native grass populations and species diversity is to allow some paddocks to run to seed each year and we have set aside with some out-side funding areas which contain "rem'anent populations ".In these areas which are only grazed to "knock -down "the seed and trample it into the soil,the birds and the wind are also spreading the seed to adjacent paddocks.I may have said before but our native grasses are one of our "biggest assets".

With your "clay soils"it may-be worthwhile at a latter date to get a "wheeled tractor" to deep rip with a single "tyne" along the contour and give it a good dose of Gypsum to help open up the soil and to gain better "water" penetration in the soil.

Your country must be a little like ours "temperature wise" as we get a couple of "light snow falls" each year.

We look forward to the pic's when you get a chance to post them.( I had better stop now as its becoming another "novel")

Thanks again for the post ,Best Wishes T.O.R.............................

 

[alliebaba]

Hello old ram...would that recipe for the mineral lick that you speak of be the one out of Pat Coleby's book healthy sheep? I have all her books and have read each one from cover to cover, those books are like my bibles. I would like to apply her principals to my paddocks but it isn't possible atm.

When I first moved here I wanted to buy decent pasture seed to sow and asked about native grasses at the ag store and they looked at me as if I had two heads...I was afraid to ask anywhere else after that, but I still like the idea of native pasture.

By the way I am Aussie too...

I only have 5 acres but I dream big.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day Mate ,how ya go'in?(alliebabba)..Yes ,the recipe has been developed for Pats 'original ' one but we have made 'subtle' changes over the years,but it is the same ingredient list.(we have a first edition ,printed in 1983 Australian Goat Husbandry)

Where abouts are you from and where have you settled ?You must post and tell us all about your farm and stock (with pic's).

It seems like up there is like down her used to be 20 odd years ago on the suject of encouraging 'native grasses".We are so lucky we had a good basis to begin with as much of our country was to 'steep' to plough (but they tried anyway in some places)...........We are on the Granite country east of Canberra at the base of the Monaro,as you can see from the Avittar we run English Suffolk's(much to the 'disgust' of the Fine-wool Merino Breeders who are our neighbors).

Now I will make you 'really homesick',we have Kangroo Grass, Wallerby Grass,Native Sorghum,Weeping Rice Grass,Red Leg Grass,Hairy Panic and all manner of native Orchids and I almost forgot Blue Devils.Do you still remember the smell of the Euc's after it rains?

Do you have LANDCARE or something similar up there?..You may have a group involved in 'restoring native vegetation'Try you local Dep of AG Office.

Great to hear from you ,do post again.T.O.R...............