Holistic Planned Grazing, 3-Day Training Programme, Fernhill Farm, Bristol, UK

Learn how to plan your grazing at Fernhill Farm, 13-15 June 2017.

When managing livestock, their movements must be planned. If left in any one place too long, or if returned to it too soon, they will overgraze plants and compact and pulverise soils.

But more than this is at stake. The traditional goal of, ‘producing meat, milk or fibre for profit,’ generally becomes a by-product of more primary purposes — regenerating soils and harvesting sunlight to create a landscape that can sustain you and future generations.

In the process of creating a landscape, you must also plan for the needs of wildlife, crops, and other uses, as well as the potential flood or drought. To harvest the maximum sunlight, you have to decrease bare ground and increase the mass of plants. You must time livestock production cycles to the cycles of Nature, market demands and your own abilities. If you seek profit from livestock production you need to factor that in too.

Plan your grazing so you can…

• Create a landscape that sustains itself over time;
• Achieve the profit you’ve planned this year;
• Enhance animal performance;
• Increase livestock numbers;
• Minimise the overgrazing of plants;
• Reduce or eliminate overrested plants and soil surfaces;
• Speed the biological decay of plant material to recycle nutrients into the soil;
• Coordinate a variety of activities — for example, breeding, weaning, calving, lambing, etc. and cropping, hunting, wild bird nesting, natural reseeding of wildflowers, personal holidays, open farm days, etc.; and
• Reduce labour and improve efficiency.