last spring I went to Greg Judy's farm for his annual grazing school and they talked a lot about ultra high density grazing and how it has the potential to revitalize farms in just a couple years normally when we talk about grazing we talk about stocking rate which is how many animals are on a set number of acres for example here in Tennessee on a normal year we need about 2 and 1/2 acres per cow CAF pair so on a 100 Acre Farm we could run about 40 pairs another way to think about stocking rate is by animal weight if our cows weigh about 1,200 lb and we can run 40 cows then our Farm's carrying capacity is about 48,000 lb if you divide 48,000 lb by 100 acres you get 480 lb per acre now let's talk about stock density we'll use the same numbers as before to keep this simple remember our farm supports 40 cows that weigh 1,200 lb each for a total herd weight of 48,000 lb if we give the cows access to all 100 acres our stock density is 480 lb per acre but what if we use temporary electric fence to cut the farm in half and run the Herd on one side at a time now we have doubled our stock density to 96 60 lb per acre if we cut it again stock density would jump to nearly 2,000 lb per acre and so on leading us to wonder what is the maximum limit what do ultra high stock densities look like and what would it do for the soil this brings us to today we're going to use our little herd to graze at a stock density of 500,000 lbs per acre on this cover crop field and we want to see if the extra density while grazing will have a more positive impact than just grazing rotationally like we normally do for this experiment our herd was 27,500 lb and our Target density is 500,000 lb per acre this gives us a Target pin size of 0.055 Acres obviously this would be impossible to measure so we need to multiply this by 43,560 ft to convert the figure from acres to square ft now our Target pin size is 2, 396 ft we will use a temporary wire to fence a strip through the field that is 50 ft wide this means we should cross fence every 48 ft to achieve our density goal of 500,000 lb per acre for a lot of the day the Cales have been outside the pin guess they have more room and they're more comfortable out there now they're coming back and really even at 500,000 lb per acre this is not too cramped for little baby calvs e they are definitely eating the cover crop a little better now that they're a little bit hungrier I'm sure they'll still walk a lot of it in the ground this time also but this time we did put up a Back Fence here to keep them from walking back on this part that they've already graced there is the question of what happens if this actually works we know that grazing like this at ultra high densities won't actually work on a large scale but we would like to know if increasing the density does make a difference while grazing cover crops because the reality is we can lay the cover crop on the ground like this with the roller crimper uh we just can't add the beneficial biology that uh is in the cow's manure and the other part of that is when the cow is digesting what they eat um it breaks that down and decreases the carbon to nitrogen ratio so those are all benefits of grazing um but we want to know if we can improve that those benefits or um increase those benefits by increasing the density that we graze at and so the quickest way to find out if that makes a difference is to do these small scale tests for 500,000 lb per acre we've been running our pins 48 ft long this time we're going to try a million pounds per acre which means we're going to stop here at 24t and then we'll go 50 ft that way I've always wanted to know what a million pounds per acre would look like and here it is not much extra room they do seem to be getting the hang of it as far as eating more of it and there's still plenty full if you look at right here on their side there's a little triangle right here I'll see if I can find one if you can see on this cow right here there's just a tiny little divot there it's shaped like a triangle when the cows are really hungry and it's a good thing that we can't see any of them very defined right now because that means the cows are still pretty full and when you're moving when you're rotating them like this it's good to watch that spot on their side to make sure that they're not getting too empty there is still a lot of trampling going on but I think as they've gotten a little bit less full from this morning it seems like they have gotten a little bit more aggressive in their grazing which is another benefit of increased stock density but overall they look pretty full and content so if we were going to continue grazing we would build more fence and just keep going just like this um but honestly it is a lot of work and that has to be considered um when creating a grazing plan what would I graze longterm like this no way too much work but it is nice to know what a million pounds per acre looks like and it's also nice to have that tool in your pocket just in case you need to improve a specific area and this is the end of our experiment for today we will be planting corn and I'm sure we'll make another video when the corn coming up and then also again at Harvest to see if our efforts today made any difference on this tiny strip and to see if the increased density actually does make a difference compared to normal rotational grazing and roller crumping so if you're still watching and you like the video we hope you'll like it if you have any ideas for us to try we hope you'll leave us a comment and if you don't want to miss the next videos Please Subscribe thanks for watching
