for farmers

The Balsar Herd

Phil Close has been breeding Aberdeen Angus on Littleton since 2004. He started with embryos from Canada, the US and New Zealand and some Rawburn and Wedderlie in-calf heifers.

With some initial success showing, by 2010 Phil recognized that his interested lay in breeding quality cattle that could live outside all year round and finish on grass, rather than in the show ring.

Outwintering brings challenges, especially in the beautiful but soggy south-west of Scotland. Having read Jim Lents book on line breeding, Phil took the opportunity while visiting the US for a family wedding to pop into see Jim and his Anxiety 4th Herefords. These have been line breed for 120 years from animals originally imported from the UK.

The Anxiety Herefords are short (frame score 3ish), with a low centre of gravity, and so are more suited to our soft, generally wet, ground.

Phil bought some embryos, unfortunately the success rate has been low, but we do have some feet on the ground and hope to gradually expand the herd. We bought in two Kileekie Traditional Herefords in 2020 to increase cow families.

We are working to reduce the frame size of the Angus though this is a slow process.

We have some cows that are a cross between the Anxiety Herefords and our Aberdeen Angus. We are really pleased with their conformation.

aberdeen angus

Herefords

aberdeen angus and op hereford crosses

for farmers

Mob-Grazing

Our cows, hardy Aberdeen Angus and Herefords, live outside all year long in our well-established permanent pasture which is full of a diverse mix of grasses, weeds, herbs and wildflowers. We love weeds. Theys often have deep tap roots which break up soil compaction and draw minerals from deep in the earth. The fields may look a bit ‘untidy’, but these plants help provide a more balanced meal for our cows, they also provide habitats for wildlife.

The herd has been outwintered since 2011. After the first year, Dad had only the very occasional need to trim feet, and he hasn’t had to deworm since 2013.

There are various names for the style of grazing we practice: mob-grazing; tall-grass grazing; holistic planned grazing; adaptive multi paddock (AMP) grazing are all used. We basically focus on bunching the cows together (mobbing) and moving them on regularly as they would in the wild when avoiding predators. 

We move the cows at least once daily, which ensures they get lots of fresh grass. By grazing tall grass the rotation is slowed down and recovery periods are extended. Even though the cows are outside 365 days a year, most fields are only grazed 2 or 3 times in that time. Long rest periods mean tall grass (though we’re still working on achieving this in late winter/early spring) and deep roots. Overtime, we believe that the increased root matter will help support the weight of the cows and reduce poaching in wet weather. Our climate is pretty wet, especially over winter so this is a really important consideration for us.

Tall grass and long rest periods mean mature grass. Once grass reaches maturity and no longer needs to grow its solar panels produce surplus energy. This excess energy, in the form of sugars is pushed down into the soil where it provides valuable currency and facilitates nutrient exchange among our underground livestock: the bacteria, fungi, nematodes, viruses and protozoa. These organisms are the main components of humus. If you want to find out more about this, I highly recommend Nicole Masters book, ‘For the Love of Soil’. The long rest periods also create space for other wildlife on the farm. 

The number of times a day the cows are moved varies throughout the year. In the winter, during our wettest months, we move them twice a day. This means the cows have two untrampled patches of grass each day and tracking through gateways in kept to a minimum. We also might need to give them a larger area if we’ve had heavy rains. In spring, we generally use 3 breaks to give an even graze but also leave plenty of space for the calves and yearlings. The youngsters appreciate quiet time away from bossy mums and aunties. This year we will have 4 bulling groups - I know (!), and Zeitsman really wouldn’t approve– so for our sanity we won’t be moving each group daily in July and August. Late summer, autumn and early winter we will be back to moving 3, perhaps even 4, times a day. 

We’ve found that the main thing to avoid when outwintering is heavy and sustained poaching. If the cows are moved on at least daily, the ground recovers pretty quickly. Our attempts to avoid poaching focus on portable water troughs – so they aren’t tracking back to the same spot for 3-4 days at a time - and rolling out bales to avoid localised areas of very heavy trampling. I did a short video on our outwintering kit earlier in the year, you can watch it here.

This way of farming is management intensive; but it is also, I find at least, quite addictive. I am currently grappling with how to manage for tall grass in spring, I have the beginnings of a plan though! 

Hope the above has been useful. We don’t have the answers, this is just a snapshot of where we have got to so far, after many mistakes and diversions. You, your land and your cattle (ie your context) will be different from ours so your system, once developed, will probably also differ. 

At the risk of this becoming a bit of an epic, I thought I’d mention some resources we’ve found useful. We did the Holistic Management Course with 3LM in 2019. It’s a practical introduction to farming with nature and you are taught some great decision-making tools. Holistic Planned Grazing is integral to what we do, we have only so far managed to complete the planning stages of the Holistic Financial Management, but even that has given us some really useful insights. 

A recommended reading/watching list (in no particular order) would include: Gabe Brown; Nicole Masters; Johann Zietsman; Jamie Elizando; Graham Hand; Judith Shwartz; Walter Jehne; Didi Pershouse; Rebecca Hosking; Joel Salatin; and Richard Perkins. Warning: Regen Ag YouTube is a rabbit hole you may never be able to drag yourself out of!    

If you want to get more regular updates on our mob-grazing progress then follow us on Twitter, for sporadic, but farmer focused content, or on Instagram for more regular but more general posts. 

We’d love to hear from you too. Have you started mob-grazing? What have you found to be your biggest challenge? What have you found that really works well?

a series of videos on mob-grazing we made in early 2021