Yes, you can use equipment, herbicides and fertilizers to reduce your weeds and increase your grasses in pasture. But is it really cost-effective? Just a thought - maybe if your livestock ate nutritious weeds, everyone's life would be easier.
Spring has barely arrived, and some of you may not even have moved your animals to pasture. So why are we talking about stockpiling? Because as you're putting your grazing plan together, knowing what you have to do to extend your grazing season will help you make sure you get there.
The term "Bud Box" describes the kind of handling facility preferred by low-stress livestock handling expert Bud Williams. By moving animals quietly and standing in the right spot, you can quickly and easily move animals into a chute for treatment, weighing or loading. Here's information on how to build your own, including a video showing how it works.
This is the season when spring, long-awaited, reminds us that with every season there is some discomfort. So, though we may damn mud when we're stuck in it, here's a poem to remind us why we love it too.
Dairy farmers wanted to know how to implement this practice on their farms the authors took on the task of checking out how it works for farmers using it in Pennsylvania and New York.
In Part II of this series summarizing Bob Budd's lessons learned, he describes how understanding and using an animal's natural behavior makes it easier to move them and use them to improve landscapes and create habitat.
