Thursday, March 28, 2024
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The 2018 Free Grazing Charts Are Here – Dust Off Your Grazing Plan and Create Personal Resiliency

As winter wanes and the longer day-length activates the neurons that control the body’s daily rhythms, a grazier’s mind can wander into a pastoral scene of warm breezes, children playing, frolicking animals, dancing microbes, unending succulent forage and a wheelbarrow full of greenbacks. Ever wonder if this dream could become a reality? It all starts with a “why” plan and creating what you want for the future. The sooner the better!

Grazing Plans Are Good For Your Triple Bottom Line

Ray “the soil guy” Archuleta has emphasized, “Our lakes and rivers are filled with nutrient, grazing, and conservation plans, and not crystal clear with understanding. You’ve got to understand: conservation planning is not the goal, it’s the process. You cannot become economically resilient until you become ecologically resilient.” I believe it’s time to dust off that old plan, or perhaps start a new one with your conservation professional, private planner, a mentor or a family member, and chart a path towards triple bottom line improvement.

I happen to believe that plans without some sort of measurement are opportunities lost. I believe that without active monitoring, your habits are more reactive than proactive. You lose some resiliency to handle the unexpected events at the farm and in life. Monitoring tools such as grazing wedges, grazing charts, pasture apps, excel spreadsheets, journals, calendars and the like are essential elements in making quality decisions whether it’s for cows or vacations.

Here’s Troy’s own grazing chart from his 2012-2013 grazing season. Click to download it as a Microsoft Xcel file so that you can enlarge it and take a closer look

 

Grazing Plans Help You Deal With Emergencies

The most important use of my 5 dollar paper grazing chart came swiftly and totally out of left field, when my only brother passed away suddenly last July. We had to leave the farm for a week to mourn with our family 3 hours away. Because we had, a plan, and had our forage inventory tracked, we could leave the cows behind in brisket-high grass with minimal supervision and worry, at a time when we were demoralized. If there was ever a reason to keep a decision-making tool, this was it. It proved to have significant emotional, financial and environmental benefits. I’m so thankful to have this process in place for the well-being of all who inhabit our land.

My hope is you will adopt the tools, no matter your personal preference, and achieve the things you want out of life.

Get Your Free Grazing Chart Here

Choose the one that works best for your operation. For a wall-size version, take it to a local print shop. For about $5 they will print it out for you. For most you will need Microsoft Xcel to open the files.

20 Paddock pdf – No date

Ten Month Grazing Charts

10 Paddock xls – April-Jan
20 Paddock xls – April-Jan
30 Paddock xls – April-Jan
40 Paddock xls – April-Jan

Full Year Grazing Charts

10 Paddock xls – April 1 – March 31st
20 Paddock xls – April 1 – March 31st
30 Paddock xls – April 1 – March 31st
40 Paddock xls – April 1 – March 31st
50 Paddock xls – April 1 – March 31st

Morning and Evening Paddock Moves

25 Paddock xls – AM-PM Grazing Plan April 1 – March 31st

More Tools

Troy has some more ideas for tools you can use. We’ll cover those next week.

Want More?

Visit Troy’s website

And how about sending Troy a note to say thanks for all his hard work for all of us.

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Troy Bishopp
Troy Bishopphttp://www.thegrasswhisperer.com
Troy Bishopp, aka “The Grass Whisperer” is a seasoned grazier and grasslands advocate who owns, manages and linger-grazes at Bishopp Family Farm in Deansboro, NY with his understanding wife, daughters, grandchildren and parents. Their certified organic custom grazing operation raise dairy heifers, grass-finished beef and backgrounds feeder cattle on 180 acres of owned and leased pastures. Troy also mentors farmers on holistic land management for the Madison County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition as their regional grazing specialist. This award-winning free-lance writer, essayist and photographer maintains a website presence at www.thegrasswhisperer.com

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