Holistic Planned Grazing5-Day Training Course, Shropshire

In collaboration with Babbinswood Farm.

Course Description

This 5-day programme is designed for the farmer who wants to maximise grass productivity by starting holistic planned grazing in Spring 2018, and covers:

• The Foundations of Holistic Management — 3 Days: the fundamentals of holistic management, the ecosystem processes and the tools to manage them, holistic decision-making.
• Holistic Planned Grazing — 2 Days: the fundamentals of holistic planned grazing, creating, implementing, and monitoring your grazing plan.

The Fundamentals of Holistic Planned Grazing

• Holistic decision making and how it relates to Holistic Planned Grazing
• Why plan your grazing?
• Measuring forage utilization – in animal days
• Grazing, overgrazing, and growth rates
• Grazing periods and recovery periods
• Time, density, and paddock numbers
• Forage and drought reserves
• Determining correct stocking rates
• The critical non-growing, or slow-growing season
• Managing a drought
• Watering large herds
• Creating herd effect
• Single vs. multiple herds
• Wild grazers and browsers
• Matching animal cycles to land cycles
• Pests, parasites, and other challenges
• Reading the land to review the brittleness scale, ecosystem processes, and tools and their probable effects

Creating, Implementing, and Monitoring Your Grazing Plan

• When to plan: open-ended and closed-ended plans
• Pre-planning considerations
  • How stocking rate relates to a holistic grazing plan
  • How to address livestock, land, conservation, and social needs
• Create your growing season plan using the aide memoire and planning chart
• Create your non-growing season plan using the aide memoire and planning chart
• How to implement, monitor, and control a holistic grazing plan

Outcomes

The course provides the opportunity for participants to work on a growing season plan, using a scenario provided by the educator. Participants will leave the course with a good understanding of how to apply the principles on their own farm. The focus in this course is on learning the processbecause once that is understood, any situation, no matter how complex, becomes relatively easy to plan.

Why Holistic Planned Grazing is Important

It caters for all the many variables that are commonly left out of grazing planning, such as: erratic weather, different types or classes of livestock, grazing through croplands, orchards or vineyards, wildlife needs, family needs (such as holidays or special events), and much more.

Although people think they can plan all of this in their heads, with assistance from a calendar or notebook, it is simply not possible to achieve the best plan in such a way.

Following the aide memoire step-by-step whilst noting each decision on the grazing chart renders even the most complicated situation simple and produces the best possible plan. This allows you to manage livestock grazing so that animals stay healthy and productive whilst increasing the biological capital that will sustain your business or livelihood for generations to come.