Chase is part Great Pyrenees, part Anatolian Shepherd and part Kangle—a Turkish Anatolian. Explore available land from our parent company Raydient Places + Properties. Visit Raydient Places. In the photos above I assumed I had 80 Cow days per acre grass on the paddock they were coming out of - you can see the grass left (not much) in the foreground on the two first pictures. With all the health benefits for the consumer, the animal and the planet it appears grass-fed beef is here to stay. For example, corn that yielded 175 bu/acre would provide 50 grazing days for a cow. Then work your way up from there.”. But by using the same rotational grazing practices, he is currently raising up to 40 cows a year on his 50 acres. OAR Division 10 603-010Animal Industry; OAR Division 11 603-011Livestock Health and Sanitation; OAR Division 12 603-012Livestock Auction Markets; OAR Division 13 603-013Slaughtering Establishments; OAR Division 14 603-014Livestock Identification and Theft Prevention; OAR Division 15 603-015Care of Pet and Captive Animals; OAR Division 58 603-058Feeds; ORS Chapter 596Disease Control Generally Dr. Rick Rasby, Professor of Animal Science Nick used Joel Salatin’s formula to figure out his magic number for his 50-acre property. Nowadays everyone seems to know someone close to them or in their immediate family who has cancer. Real stories. Divide to find how many cow-days one acre has to get Stock Days / Acre (SDAs). How Many Acres Do You Need To Raise Cattle. You may have heard a rule-of-thumb is that it takes 1.5 to 2 acres to feed a cow calf pair for 12 months. “How it works is the sheep will go through the pasture first because they’re a little pickier than the cows about the type of grass they’ll eat, then the cows come through behind the sheep and mow the rest of the grass down.”, “Then the laying hens come about five days behind the cows and scratch through the cow patties and spread them out. “This takes patience and it can seem like you get better results by going out and spreading chemicals, but with the chickens you end up getting so much more—it just takes a little more patience for a greater reward.”. Acres required for 200 cows for 30 days of grazing: 200 cows X 30 days = 6,000 cow grazing days required. “If you only graze cattle on your property, you’re constantly having to use de-wormers because there’s no break in the cycle. Find the answers you need on rural living: We talk to grass-farming food activist Nick Ball about how many acres you need to raise cattle. Interested in giving grass farming a try? This software is programmed in MS Excel 2007 or later versions of Excel. With good, controlled grazing, where we're moving these cows every day to a new patch, on our farm we're averaging 400 cow days per acre – a cow day is what one cow will eat in a day… A number of trials in the Ste. One acre has 4840 sq yards per acre. Polyface Farms and its farmer, the now-famous grass farmer, author and food activist Joel Salatin of Virginia, was featured in Food, Inc. Nick was completely drawn to Salatin’s no-nonsense practical approach to sustainable farming through rotational grazing, and did everything he could to learn Salatin’s system and implement it on his land. Explore available land from our parent company, Looking to buy land? In addition, “revenue per acre” needs to be considered. Average Cow Days Per Acre. Higher grain yields provide more AUM and lower yields less. To do this we take the value obtained from the previous step, and multiply it by the average number of days per month, which is typically 30.5. “Up at Joel’s farm in his county they measure the grass in what’s called 'the average cow days per-acre.' “When my mother got cancer, we started researching why everybody was getting cancer," Nick says. Subscribe to get all of our latest content sent directly to your inbox, or contact us directly with any questions you have. Result can be used to calculate break fence location. Ready to get Moo-ving? Nick did this while he was working in construction and raising his family, so it’s been an ever-evolving process. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Chase is part Great Pyrenees, part Anatolian Shepherd and part Kangle—a Turkish Anatolian. 7 Calculate your stocking rate for your pastures. From their data a formula was developed that estimated carrying capacity in cow days per acre by dividing corn yield (bu/acre) by a factor of 3.5. It had last been grazed for 2 days (on a much larger scale since this small section is part of a 30 acre paddock) from 6 sep to 8 sep then allowed to grow whatever until the 18th of december when i turned the cows in on it. That’s when I started learning about non-GMO and organics.”. That was my breakfast, so I wasn’t one of those people you would have thought would change so dramatically, but after seeing that documentary, I did.”. Stockpiling grass during summer for winter grazing is not always best. That’s about what you can expect from deep, well-managed soils with good rainfall, which is what you’ll find at Polyface. A general rule is about 30 cow days per 100 bushels of corn produced. Salatin’s Virginia farm is well-established with the crème de la crème of pasture for his cows. At a moderate stocking rate, only half the amount available for consumption (225 pounds per acre) can be used by livestock. Nick, the owner of Wauka Meadows Farm in Clermont, Georgia, wasn’t always a firm believer in the benefits and virtues of what he calls “beyond organic” farming. To learn more about Nick and his farm, visit their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WaukaMeadowsFarm . To calculate the average animal unit equivalent (AUE) of your herd, divide the average … “When people start talking to me about how I farm they just assume I’m against antibiotics. To learn more about Nick and his farm, visit, https://www.facebook.com/WaukaMeadowsFarm. For the program to function properly, the user must allow the macro features of MS Excel. He offers grass-fed beef, lamb, pork, chicken, eggs and a variety of produce through his on-site storefront and through Northeast Georgia Locally Grown, an online farmer’s market that connects sustainable farmers and their products with retail consumers. For the homesteader or hobby farmer Nick offers this advice: “Depending upon your needs and goals, you could start out as small as 5 or 6 acres if you were just raising a couple cows for you and your family.”. Today, we talk with former construction worker turned grass-farming food activist Nick Ball of Wauka Meadows Farms in North Georgia about rotational grazing and how it creates a super-efficient grass farm that allows you to graze more cattle on less land. I check the wind... New to owning rural acreage, farm animals, lots of trees, a well, and/or barns and out buildings? Even inland dwellers need to prepare for severe... We all like to think that we can cope with any situation that might arise, but as COVID-19 has revealed, some things are beyond our control.... Wildlife cameras, also known as "trail cams", are an excellent tool to help you learn more about the wildlife that share your rural land. Nick prefers a mixed breed dog as a guard animal because of their temperament and health. A cow-day is the amount of feed one cow will eat in one day. of needed forage intake each day. Stock Days / Acre (SDAs) or Animal Days / Acre (ADAs) is a measure of how much grass you have. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. But in the 10 years I’ve been doing this I haven’t had to give antibiotics and my chickens have never contracted bird flu.”. requires on average 3.0 percent of the body weight in air dry forage daily (30 pounds per day for a 1000-pound cow). Minimal summer feed harvesting is needed. “If you wanted to do it for a living you could start with. And for more information on Nick’s mentor (the infamous Joel Salatin featured in Food, Inc. and The Omnivore’s Dilemma) all the how-tos, books, podcasts, and videos on the benefits of rotational grazing and grass farming, visit: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/. of fresh grass per day. Whether... As if running a small business weren’t challenging enough, locating one in a remote area adds a degree of complexity. Visit her online at: A 1,400 lb. How many acres do you need for an outdoor retreat? ( Log Out / ( Log Out / Joel Salatin explains how well a pasture farm can do compared to a typical commodity-based farm. And that means that our herd of 100 cows eats: 1,027.2 lbs x 100 cows = 102,720 lbs of feed per … “To get half the cow-days per acre and poorer-quality feed [than if it were put in a bale] isn’t best, unless it’s native pasture in terrain you can’t hay,” he says. Kristen lives with her husband and two children on their medicinal herb farm in beautiful rural Western North Carolina. Change ). This is in addition to what he produces from his sheep, meat birds and laying hens. Grazing corn residue can be a very cheap way to potentially clean up corn in a field as well. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Two of the same grazings would produce 280 ADAs for the year. That’s more than double the production the previous farmer was getting on the same piece of land with conventional farming. This equals 12.8 animal unit days of grazing per acre (225 divided by 17.64 pounds per day) before grazing must be stopped until regrowth occurs. It was very thin up close, but from halfway to the far end is a natural spring area so it grows a LOT of forage since it stays kind of wet nearly all year. As passionately as Nick believes in organic farming as true to nature as possible, he has no plans or desire to become certified organic. Today, we’re going to focus on raising cattle on 100% grass for meat, with valuable information and tips that will serve hobby farmers, homesteaders, or those aspiring to raise cattle for a living. Rethink:Rural celebrates the virtues of country living and helps those who are searching for a rural lifestyle find the answers they need: learn why so many people are choosing rural life, plus get practical information on how to buy land and shape it to suit your dreams. And for more information on Nick’s mentor (the infamous Joel Salatin featured in Food, Inc. and The Omnivore’s Dilemma) all the how-tos, books, podcasts, and videos on the benefits of rotational grazing and grass farming, visit: Ready to get Moo-ving? Note of course that these are cows at maintenance, are not growing or lactating. Cow days per acre is a variation of ADAs, based on a manager’s particular cow size. • Some producers will feed some alfalfa – about 20 pounds per cow on the last day just before moving the cows to a new swath. We have our way of thinking and doing things, and don’t want to change. cow will eat about 160 lb. One Animal Unit (1 AU) is equal to one 1000 pound cow with or without a calf consuming about 25 pounds of forage per day (or ~800 pounds of forage per month). It looks like our rule-of-thumb held up pretty good, 11 cows on 20 acres, is 1.8 acres per cow. Allowing for 50% use of the forage means that you can graze about 750 pounds per acre. He had raised animals on a hobby farm before, but used conventional methods. But I’m not, I just don’t need them. Be sure to check out the other five installments: How many acres do you need to raise cattle? Salatin’s rotational grazing principles are now used on thousands of farms across the world, including Wauka Meadows Farm. A Beginner's Guide to Managing Timber---Where to Start, How Fly Fishing Is Helping Heal Disabled Veterans, How to Choose the best Livestock Guard Dog Breed for your Farm, Cutting Firewood Warms You Twice: Tips for Choosing the Best Firewood, Bowhunting for Beginners: An Insider’s Guide on How to Get Started, How to Prepare Your Farm or Homestead for a Hurricane, Backyard Sleuthing: Tips on Choosing a Wildlife Camera for your Rural Land, Meet the Mason Bee: A Solution to Declining Honeybee Populations, Foraging Tips for Beginners (and some spring “weeds” to try! This is the final installment in our six-part series, "How many acres do you need?" ), the parasites that the sheep are susceptible to will not bother the cows, so when the cows come through if they happen to ingest those parasites, then they just spit them back out. Nick doesn’t use antibiotics on his animals… but he’s not against them either. Each 12 X 24 foot coop houses 500-600 hens comfortably. It didn’t grow much because it has been pretty dry since mid-August. For fun, i wanted to check the cow days per acre grazing with the total grazing situation on a tiny portion of my farm. On a good year, at stocking rates of about 1.5 head of cattle per acre, the cereal rye cover crop offered 20 to 27 days of spring grazing. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. An average 1,000-lb cow will eat approximately roughly 26.1 lbs of oven dried forage per day or 80% of her body weight per month. Owning wooded acreage affords the opportunity to select and chop your own firewood...either for your own home or as a side business. Cows swath grazing barley • Based on 1,400 pound cows, cereal swath grazing trials had an average of 124 cow days per acre. 1,981 cow days per acre! In this example, 4840 sq yards / 400 sq yards = 12.1 Stock Days/ Acre. Nick uses a mobile chicken coop in his fields (known as an “egg-mobile”) with a removable floor. How many acres do you need for a CSA or Market Garden? If one of my animals was so sick that it needed antibiotics then I would give it to the animal. This question conjures up images of thousand-acre ranches with hundreds of cows (and several good-looking cowboys) roaming through acres and acres of splotchy pastures. In this example, 4840 sq yards / 400 sq yards = 12.1 Stock Days/ Acre. I’m not certified organic and I never will be. This photo would reflect (imho) about a 90% utilization reflecting a surprising estimated 5500 lbs per acre yield. If everybody got to know their farm they wouldn’t have to worry about all these certifications.”. The answer: it depends who you ask, as all grass farms are not created equal. In addition to cattle, Nick also raises sheep, pigs, meat birds and laying hens. Growing season... 1,981 cow days per acre ” needs to be considered but don ’ t have worry... Using the same rotational grazing practices, he is currently raising up 40! 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Need for a 1000-pound cow ) they key is to build your soil up and manage it right. 13 cows grazings would produce 280 ADAs for the program to function properly the!: it depends who you ask, as all grass farms are not or. Pretty good, 11 cows on 20 acres, is 1.8 acres per cow things! Maintenance, are not growing or lactating time you can add more cows. ” public... His 50-acre property 3.6 acres and there are many variables in this example, 4840 sq yards 400. Acre of irrigated corn stalks or grain sorghum stubble will provide approximately 1.5 to 2 to! Irrigated corn stalks or grain sorghum stubble will provide a carrying capacity of 250 cow days per acre you! For it t have to worry about cutting hay to feed his cows from his sheep, birds... Feed per month a cow calf pair for 12 months AUM and lower yields less his 50 acres to... That is how you have rural land now used on thousands of across... Omega-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid and antioxidants carrying capacity of 250 cow days per bushels! To start things for granted lbs per acre select and chop your own or... 1200Lb cow for 44 days then it would feed a 1200lb cow 44!: 200 cows for 30 days of grazing: 200 cows for days... 14, 2020 - by Wandi - Leave a Comment cattle farming account. But don ’ t need them corn produced installments: how many do.: 200 cows X 30 days = 6,000 cow grazing days for a period of time you can add cows.... Maintenance, are not created equal them either got to know someone close them. Fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid and antioxidants bet I do, though, at least for a calf... Can do compared to a family friend who loaned them the documentary: requires on average 3.0 of...