Webinar: Balancing animal performance and soil health
In the latest in our Winter Webinar Series we brought together a panel of farmers to discuss what trade offs there are in balancing improved soil health with animal performance.
We were joined by Dr Allen Williams, from our mentoring partners Understanding Ag, as well as James Daniel, of Precision Grazing, based in Cornwall, and Nottinghamshire farmer Joe Howard.
Joe manages a mixed farming business growing and finishing approximately 1500 dairy beef a year on a grazing and forage system integrated with root crops and cereals. He was recently nominated for the 2024 Farmers Weekly Beef Farmer of the Year.
You can watch the full webinar below:
The benefits of regenerative practices on soil health
Allen says analysis of over 120 farms that Understanding Ag works with has revealed huge improvements in soil health over the first four years in which they adopted regenerative practices.
"Often, to begin with, the soil was tight. It was crusted on top, with very little to no aggregation,” he says.
Dr Allen Williams
"By the end of four years we had this nice deep aggregation.
“At the end of year one, they were able to increase the depth of the soil aggregate by an average of 2.3 inches across these farms.
“By the end of year two, it had increased to 4.5 inches and 6.2 inches by the end of year three.
"What we saw was that by the end of year four, the average aggregate depth was almost 15 inches deep.
“It takes the first two to three years to build adequate microbial biomass in the soil, along with the adequate microbial profile of bacteria to fungi to protozoa. Once we achieve that adequate biomass and profile we shift over from a linear response to an exponential response.”
Soil aggregation has been shown to increase on farms which use regenerative practices.
Over that four year period, total fungi in the soil increased by 176%, mycorrhizal fungi by 153%, saprophytic fungi by 199% and plant species diversity by 123%
"What's important to note here is that none of these plant species was planted,” says Allen.
“The diversity was the result of the existing seed bank being able to respond and to germinate and to become a viable part of the total mix.
"There was no need to spend any money on seed, on planting it or on fertilising it.
“Other benefits that we noted were significantly enhanced water infiltration and retention and far greater forage biomass production. The average increase in biomass production compared to the beginning of year one was between three times and four times.
“We also saw a significant improvement in plant species diversity and an increase in beneficial insects, pollinators and birds.
“Animal health was significantly better, coupled with better animal performance. In plants we saw greater nutrient cycling and greater resilience when we had climatic and weather challenges.”
The importance of rest, recovery and disruption
To achieve the best results it is essential to give pasture time for both rest and recovery.
"Plant recovery is the time that it takes a plant to physically and physiologically recover from a grazing event,” says Allen.
“During the recovery period, the plant is recovering the original leaf material and leaf volume that it had prior to the grazing event, and it's recovering the original root volume and root depth.
"Rest is the period of time required after a grazing event recovery for the plant to then grow new root depth, new root biomass and new plant shoot biomass above the soil surface and also build a stronger phytonutrient profile in that plant.
"The basic rule of thumb is that however long a period of time it takes the plant to reach full recovery, we need to have at least the same period for rest to occur.
"We have also found disruption to be critically important.
Giving plants time to rest and recover is essential to building soil health
“We can make progress through an initial disruption, but if we then begin to do the same thing over and over that's often our biggest mistake. To make ongoing progress, it's going to take intentional, applied disruptions.
“Some of the key disruptions are things like alternating stock density. We can alter rotation patterns across our farm. We can alter grazing heights and alter rest periods.
“If you're farming multiple species of animals you can alter the species order, alter the time of season or year a paddock is grazed or the total number of days it may be grazed in a year.
“All of these can be very important disruptions that we can introduce from time to time to make ongoing progress.
"Finally, we can use combinations of disruptions. For example, I can alter stock density, I can alter rest period, and I can alter paddock configuration or shape, all in the same grazing disruption to even more rapidly increase our rate of progress and then my subsequent animal performance following that.”
Comparing set stocking and cell grazing systems
Precision Grazing has carried out trials to compare the impacts of cell grazing (also known as mob grazing and AMP (adaptive multi-paddock grazing) systems.
The trial ran for four years at the Rothamsted Research site at North Wyke, Devon, with two cohorts of cattle, the first from 2018 to 2019 and the second from 2020 to 2021.
James Daniel of Precision Grazing in Cornwall
"We brought in weaned dairy beef calves in the spring of year one, grazed them for a season, wintered them together on the same diet, split them back out into their groups in the following spring, and then took them through to finish, with the aim of finishing as many as possible off grass,” says founder James Daniel.
“The plots were divided by contour and soil types, so all the replicates were designed to have as little bias as possible. It's as scientific as you can conduct in a field situation.”
Increase in dry matter
James says the amount of dry matter produced per hectare was much more on the cell grazed land over the four years, with the cell grazing peaking at just under 12 tonnes in year three compared to just over eight tonnes in the set stocked system.
"Pasture utilisation, under the cell grazing scenario was better, so the animals were able to eat more of what was available,” says James.
“What was pretty evident in the first couple years of the project was that the animals in the first cohort worked pretty hard to nail down those docks and other less desirable weed grasses and to give space for some more clovers and other legumes and productive species of grass to come through.”
Greater stocking rate
The cell grazing system was also able to achieve a higher stocking rate which grew consistently over the four years, starting at around 1700kg of liveweight per hectare in 2018 and increasing to just under 3000kg in 2021.
The set stocked pasture stocking rate remained below 1500kg for all four years.
“There's a saying that the mark of a regenerative system is one in which the carrying capacity or productivity continues to increase and we certainly saw that in the trial,” says James.
“The set stocking productivity stayed about the same. Every time we tried to put another animal in, they just grazed the whole thing too low, covers dropped, growth slowed and we had to take something off.”
Increased production
On average over the first two years, the cell grazing system produced 500kg of liveweight per hectare compared to 350kg in the set stocked system.
In the second cohort in 2020 to 2021, it achieved 900kg per hectare compared to 600kg.
"At today's money, if you believe the market reports, that's about £1200 per hectare extra liveweight produced over that two year period,” says James.
Nutrient runoff
"The level of nutrient runoff was similar between both grazing methods, despite the stocking density for the cell grazing - in terms of the kilos of live weight per hectare - being nearly twice that of the set stocked areas,” says James.
“The cell grazing areas had a lower leaching potential per kilo of liveweight produced. So in essence, those areas being managed with more stock were leaking less nutrients.”
Balancing kilos of liveweight per hectare and per head
While the cell grazed areas showed increased liveweight per hectare performance, cattle in the set stocked system showed a better average daily liveweight gain per head.
"We had four years of continued productivity improvement and continued pasture quality improvement, we had increased live weight per hectare but we had slightly lower per head performance,” says James.
“There is a balance between performance per animal and performance per hectare, and it's deciding what fits your business in terms of the days-to-finish target.
"I think it's really worth being aware of what you are managing for and what levers to pull to get the kind of outcomes you're looking for.”
Precision Grazing runs discussion groups which provide expert guidance, peer support, and practical tools to improve profitability and sustainability. You can learn more here.
James also runs Grassroots Farming, which helps farmers who are using regenerative principles to finish dairy beef cattle to attract a premium price for their produce.
If you would like to learn more please get in touch via email james.daniel@grassrootsfarming.co.uk
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