Mob Grazing our Dexter Cattle, first move of the season!

what are you doing out silly bird hello everybody right this time so so what's up you guys thad here with climber ridge farm beautiful spring morning it's april 10th uh been a while since i've checked in a lot's been going on here but um finally said you know what i'm gonna grab my camera again try to get a little footage this morning so uh our grass has been growing pretty well and uh three or four days ago um went ahead and made a small area moved our dexter cattle out they were looking forward to getting on grass tired of the hay i believe they had we had a small sacrifice slot um the last like month or so i moved them out of the woods so they uh mowed down that grass really quick and actually refused a couple days to even touch the hay but uh i'm gonna show you guys the dexter's here in just a minute they are doing pretty good they've already knocked this area down pretty quick probably a little more than i would like i think most of that's just out of excitement but uh i will get them up here and i'm hoping i can just call them and they'll come up but i'm gonna show you uh what they've done so far and where they're going so you can see where they're at right now it's a little bit bigger of an area this is not an everyday move area our grass is not 100 in it it wasn't super long but you can see the line and there's still there's about three or four inches left and that's what we want we don't want them to mow it down to the nub three or four inches of grass left that takes it back down to kind of the juvenile stage but not the infancy stage um it'll recoup faster it will during its rest time and it will also um it will sequester more carbon that way put that back into the soil which is going to make everything a little bit better but you can see a couple bare spots we've been clearing out this old hedgerow there was briers and old barbed wire and we're just thinning it out some so we made a little bit of a mess a couple weeks ago here but i get down there's a it's pretty awesome to see we haven't ever put anything on these fields this is just a volunteer but you can see a lot of this stuff's nice 12 14 inches tall already so they'll be excited i'm about to move them so let's see what happens here i'm gonna try to get him on up this way here it goes here it goes come on see if i can do this with this thing in my hand i gotta roll this fence up real quick take these wires up this is some of the mess still hooked up i did turn the fence off disclaimer i have forgotten to do that before i'm reminded real quick when that happens i might be able to get them through this small area right here i'll try it might just keep it open for a little bit once they're all through i'll close this off that way the area they're in truly gets some rest i don't know what the camera's doing sorry uh they're starting to come up here to me though so hopefully i can get this sudden through our leaders are gonna be up here first here it goes [Music] that one steer he sounds like an elk yeah you can see the line the difference and the cool thing is and that's still a pretty big area really but they've been in here almost three days i think they were a little excited too to eat but uh cool thing is they don't waste as much as if they had all i think these are fields here about 14 or 15 acres when they have the whole thing they just see what they want when they're closed into a smaller spot though they are less picky here comes this way come on here comes [Music] here come on come on into the wires up here come on here comes here goes come on figure it out come on this is the first time i've moved them like uh in this sort of pattern so it's they're not entirely sure what's going on but [Music] they're eager enough to come on up here come on guys here comes it's best if i can get them all up here at once and all the cross together if a few run through then the others will just run beside them but they'll be on both sides of the fence and i mean it's not a big deal they'll figure it out but uh i'd like to just get them all through it once come on here it goes here it goes come on come on here it goes here's titus big boy coming up front here comes come on here i might have to open this up a little more [Music] here cows it'd be nice if they'd come up here kind of just learned something new come on guys here comes here come on here it comes come on come on i don't really want to push them because that stresses them if they'll just follow me that's the most uh that's the ideal situation just to get them to follow rather than me have to push come on let's go here guys here it goes come on let's go come on all right i'm just going to open it up a little more they're not seeing the grass up here like they are right beside them so i'm going to set this down a little bit let's see where you guys can see it still will that work [Music] um [Music] come on you're good come on all right let's see what they do come on here here goes come on come on come on come on there they go there's that's the matriarch she's the she's the boss lady oh yeah she's they're excited now they're not going to be excited that it's not a huge huge area it wraps around this uh little island of trees we got they're excited good everybody but a couple of the little ones they'll get through here in a second those are two youngest sir you guys got to get with the program sorry i'm not good with this camera come on you two they can go under that wire there's just something about hearing the cows rip the grass up i'll let you listen for a second say they're excited it's good stuff i can't stay down here too long i've got to go turn this fence back on before they figure out that it's off they should be happy for a while though not they're not going to test it if they have good feed i try to get these little ones may have to push them around i'm sorry buddy hey you two there's ella she's running around she's the most recent little thing all right you two go that way okay go up that way it's okay there you go just nice and easy not too stressful go up there go that way go up that way there we go oh she's just gonna go under that's fine and there she figured it out nice close this back off yeah they're happy um this will last them uh probably two days so we'll move them again monday morning i'll get the next section set up probably this afternoon all right guys well uh that uh went pretty smooth for uh moving 27 dexters some people have asked you know did i grow up farming or any uh have any background at all and i'll tell you i'm as about a green horn as you can get when it comes to farming we have we bought our first two dexters last may and 2020 so not quite a year yet and they added up pretty quick some had calves and then uh i realized well we have enough grass to support some more so we just kept kind of buying them um although five are going to uh to the butcher here in a couple months but um anyways you know not too bad uh for their first move that was rather painless first official move i mean we move them all the time but their first grazing move but um yeah it's pretty cool uh if you've thought about getting into farming whether it's chickens or goats um cattle sheep pigs anything uh you know reach out to us we'll give you any advice that we've been given and some of it we've learned the hard way um but if you if you've thought about it you know what's holding you back just go for it just give it a shot that's really the best way to learn um just to dive in so uh you know thanks for watching and let us know what you think i'm gonna hopefully do another video in the next day or two and uh we'll do an update on this and we'll check out our our berkshire pigs they're coming along pretty well i wanted to show you guys something real quick so two weeks ago uh we took them across we had the little ui river splitting our property and uh wanted to take them over there there was a bunch of grass growing in areas we had cleaned up um and so in the couple days before that i needed a lane basically on the outer edge of our property i wanted to keep them off of the main grazing pastures but um needed a way to get them there so there was uh this lane from like right here you can see the line that's just where they were and basically the edge of the river creek whatever they had mowed this grass down this is not even two weeks of recovery i mean this stuff they ate down normally like further than i would really like them to and uh i mean it's already growing back like crazy pretty cool to see you can see the line there was a this was a terrible spot of mud we had a little drunk hay left over do it down here let them eat some of it they really didn't want any though but uh yeah this and the soil against the creek is super rich anyways but they had eaten all that down to the nub and it's going back and this whole strip it just happened that uh we got about six inches of rain that couple of days they were in this area and so this was like a mud pit and now it's already super green and growing again and you can see where this is regrowing versus where they just were right down the the crooked line so just wanted to show you that okay i'm still walking gonna turn the fence on just wanted to show you so this was uh yeah so this strip that i was just talking about they were in this area for about two days day and a half the days before that they were in another area up here and you can kind of see the sequence of what rest will do for the grass minus this big mess right here but this stuff's even better two days difference this was great two days sooner the depth perception is probably tough on this camera for you guys to see but uh it's got some height to it and this was just brambles and briars before too kind of like what you see right there beside it and there's actually some decent grass growing in here now it's pretty cool pretty cool to see they were on this for about 30 hours not quite two days on this section as the season progresses and our grass is still not in 100 i mean you can probably see there's hardly leaves on any of the trees this year my wife and i were looking this time last year all of our trees were fully bloomed the grass that we did have was probably 10 inches taller than it is this time right now this year so it seems like there's been a little delay in blooming and germination for us but uh as we progress through the grazing season when they come back around this area will be ten times better than it was the first time that came through also so we'll actually get a little more time on each paddock and they the paddocks will also get smaller as we get further along there's the laying hens they've been in there moving them around in that area where the cows just were that's what they're doing there doing their jobs all right keep scratching that stuff up chicks you

Channel: Klymer Ridge Farm & Homestead

Views: 5,585

Keywords: Pastured, Grass fed, Irish dexter, Cattle, Grazing, Mob, Strip grazing, Regenerative agriculture, Polyface farm, Justin Rhodes, Poly fence, Pasture bird, Pastured poultry, Pastured pork, Spring time, North Caroline

Id: Nb3uyWcTn3Y

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021