Sustainable Livestock Production........

[SDGsoap&dairy]

We only remove timber for firewood and leave the bulk of it there as habitat for birds and reptiles..........

We have and excellent native grass species which thrives in 'shade'(Microlaena stipoides),responds to rain at any time of the year and has evolved over ,000s of years to handle our highly acid soils.

So we just work with what we have got.........

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

Hi Bossroo,sorry I did not get all of your questions ....We breed Suffolks(an internet friend in the US describes our stock as not American,not British,but somewhere in between,like 'bricks' with wool growing off of them)...................We are not a 'stud'(I have no time for the paperwork and all of there rules),but breed strong, self-reliant,easy lambing and able to cope with our difficult conditions.Our extreme's are 40C in the summer and -8C in the winter .We shear in early winter and lamb early spring(outside in the paddocks)..................I will post a few pic's if anyone would like....The question on fencing could be a whole new 'topic 'in itself,as is the 'Economics' of Sustainable Livestock Management...............

To ATK,NS and OFG,The question of 'how we did it'is a complex one and our changes have taken over 5 yrs to get where we are now.So the posts do not become 'novels',if you have a question about a particular aspect of the way we went about changing ,I am happy to 'try' to answer it for anybody who wishes to ask............
regards T.O.R.

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G,day NS,glad you approve,thought you might enjoy some 'wildlife photo's..

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We also have Eastern Brown and Tiger Snakes.But a lot of care must be taken to get a photo of those...................Hope you like,regards T.O.R.

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

I just watched a documentary the other day on Australia's monitor lizards! What a beautiful critter the one in your picture is.

I think it's great when folks are able to integrate doing what's right for the natural ecology into what's right for their livelihood.

 

[Bossroo]

It is a challenge to grow things in very acid soils, but it can be done as you are proving. I was judging the trees from your photos and it seemed that harvesting some would be beneficial. 12 years ago, I baught 20 Acres what was open range land for beef cattle since 1860s in Central Cal.. 1-4 foot rolling hills with Alkali soils with a hardpan at the surface to 2 ft below grass cover was from bare ground with white salt deposts on the surface to 3" tall grass. Average rainfall for this area is 11 " / year from Dec-April however the last 3 years we got 6.5". All grasses are brown for 6-7 months of the year. Only one 300 year old Oak tree. I hired a guy with 3 D9s to rip the soil down to 2+ ft and level it to grade. I raised 30+ horses feeding purchased 100+ tons of alfalfa hay and 15 tons of corn/ oats/ barley grain / year on it for 12 years using their manure as fertilizer. I reseeeded with endophite free fescue and some original rangeland grasses and oats came up too along with burr clover and fillaree. In good rainfall years I now have grass knee high. On my previous ranch, I raised a flock of 30+Suffolk then used the rams on my flock of 400-500 Rambollet ewes for wool/ meat production in Cal. I sold out when the price of wool was so low that it wasn't worth shearing. My next door neighbor has a flock of 50 Suffolk ewes and uses a Dorper ram. I first heard about and saw my first Dorper 4 years ago. The lambs are born quite small but oh so ACTIVE. They grow in leaps and bounds. He gets on average a 7 pound meat gain at weaning over his straight run Suffolk on the same pasture. A friend in Oregon now uses a Dorper ram over Katahdin ewes and says she gets a 5-10 pound increase per lamb at weaning. That equates to marketing an extra lamb for every 10-12 preveously produced. I have heard and read reports about similar increases in yields. I have never heard of an Asswarsie sheep. Do you have a photo and a physical description and production record for them?

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

Hi BR,thanks for the note ,I got the spelling for Awassi wrong,look in"sheep Breeds A-Z"......................Those sort of results are to be expected,its about normal for the F1 effect...................My god that was hard country you were farming,we have country like that around our deserts,in the south its "wether"country and in the north its cattle country it runs a cow to about one square mile and the stations run to 1 million acs............................Have you heard of a Yeomans Plough it was developed down here for use on 'salt pans and to encourage water to penetrate into the soil profile( I am sure there is some 'stuff" if you Google it...................Our rams are 'smooth shouldered and produce lambs slightly lower in birth weight than the average,but we rarely have to pull a lamb and if we do the mother and lamb are culled.The combination of the low BW and Smooth Shoulders permits easy birthing ,even in our maidens and the lambs hit the ground looking for the teat...................I will add a few photos from last Sept/Oct drop.....................................

Group of ewe's prior to lambing

Lambs are one or two days either side of 2 weeks old

Lambs are 5/6 weeks old

................ Hope you enjoy,regards T.O.R...............

 

[Bossroo]

Hey TOR... in the 1950s-1980's the farmers used dynamite or backhoes as well as D9s with deep soil rippers to dig planting holes for all types of orchard trees. Dams and irrigation canals were installed. Drip irrigation is the norm now due to increase water demands and therefore increased costs.Now there are millions of acres of orange, lemon,fig, almond, walnut, pistachio, peach, plum, etc orchards starting within 2 miles (W, N, S. The Sierra Nevada Mountains 1 miles E ) of my place ( our immediate area is still gently rolling arrid grassland) as well as Thompson's seedless grapes for raisins as far as the eye can see. Spring starts and all the orchards are in full bloom in mid to late Feb. and thausands of bee hives are trucked in from all over the country. Wine grape vinyards into thausands of acres 100+++ miles farther west and north. With more irrigation water came thausands of acres of tomatoes, vegetable crops, alfalfa, cotton, sugar beets, strawberries, corn and other grain crops. In the county just S of ours, in the last few years, there are dozens of new dairy cow barns ( covered corrals and all their feed is trucked in and fed in long traugh rows... no pastures) opening up every few miles where 3,000 cows is a small dairy. Last year one was built to milk 44,000 cows. Milking parlors operate 24 hours / day. Beef cows are retreating to the mountains, as well as sheep. However the sheep numbers have fallen to just a mere shaddow of itself due to the callapse of wool prices. The larger mountain sheep flocks are trucked into the valley orchards, alfalfa, and row crop fields to lamb out there and eat the new winter grass from late Nov.-early April. Lambs are then sold and the ewes are trucked back to the mountains to eat the green grass still there.

 

[kooltex]

Nice lambs!