Howle's Hints

BY JOHN HOWLE

The cold, winter days of feeding hay will soon bring spring rains and warmer days. As you begin to taper off the winter hay and get ready for spring grazing, this is an ideal time to make rotational grazing a part of your farm plan. There are many styles of rotational grazing, but in essence, this means moving the cattle regularly, giving the grazed portions time to rest and recuperate.

There are many benefits to rotating cattle regularly. If you don’t graze the grass too closely, there will be enough leaf matter to grow back quickly. Overgraze and you begin to shrink the root reserves. This can be a serious detriment in drought.

Another benefit to rotational grazing happens during fly season. The more regularly you rotate, the less of a fly problem you will have because you have moved the cattle from the existing field that has fly larvae in the droppings. If you leave plenty of residual leaf on the plant, this also encourages growth of microorganisms in the soil. The extra layer of growth acts as an insulator giving more growth in cold weather and protection against drought in summer. Any time you see dirt, you’ve overgrazed and upset the balance of the soil and microbes.

Mob grazing is a more intense version of rotational grazing. This is where you move the cattle daily in small paddocks. The cattle will trample a lot of grass as they move through the paddock, but they are moved quickly to the next paddock giving plenty of time for this field to recuperate. The cattle will concentrate their droppings in a smaller area giving you the advantage of free nitrogen in their urine and dung. Finally, mob grazing encourages growth of earthworms, dung beetles, and microorganisms that add to soil health, and grazing tightly encourages cattle to consume more weeds and undesirable plants as they hit the forage like a mob.

Many cattle producers don’t intensive graze because it requires more labor than just turning them into an open field to graze what they want. Fortunately, there have beeninnovative tools to come out in the last few years to make intensive grazing worth the time. For one thing, you can run more cattle on a smaller amount of land when you intensive graze.

The Gallagher Company has come out with a truly compact solar energizer that simply mounts onto any ring-top step-in post. The metal step-in post serves as the ground and you simply clip the hot wire clamp to the turbo wire. With nothing more than a geared reel of turbo wire, an armful of step-in posts, and the S12 lithium Solar Fence Charger, you can put up a temporary grazing perimeter in less than 10 minutes.

If the fence doesn’t have any vegetation lying on it, the charger is rated to charge up to 4 miles or 18 acres on a single wire. This should cover any size grazing paddock you would want to create. The unit is truly simple to operate. Simply press the “on”button when you have everything hooked up, and watch for the green light to start blinking. The S12 lithium Solar Fence Energizer retails for $154.00. You can order the unit from www.gallagher.com, or visit your local Co-op and have them order if the charger isn’t in stock.

Once you’ve got your paddocks squared away, take advantage of the occasional warm days to scout for turkeys on your property. When turkey season opens in March, nothing beats the sound of that early morning echoing gobbler thundering through the hollows and hills. Late in the evening on a hilltop, you can often hear the flapping of their wings as they fly to the roost. If you do locate a gobbler the morning or evening of your hunt, set up on an elevation higher than the turkey if possible. With a few simple yelps, clucks, and purrs, you can often get a gobbling response from the tom. Using nothing more than a box call or slate call, these calls are quite easy to replicate. Just remember to call softly and rarely. You want the tom to come looking for you.

When it comes to taking the shot, most folks prefer using a 12-gauge shotgun. Wait until the gobbler is within 25 yards to verify a quick, humane harvest. Some of the best ammunition for turkey hunting I’ve found is the Federal Premium Heavyweight TSS Turkey Shotshells. They are a bit pricy, but the shotshells deliver a tight pattern of dense tungsten shot. I’ve had guys swear that they shot gobblers at a distance of 60 yards with this shot, but I would recommend staying under 30 yards to guarantee a clean harvest. For a box of five rounds, the TSS (Tungsten Super Shot) currently lists for around 75 bucks. I told you they were pricy.

This spring, get out and enjoy God’s creation and get back to the beauty and tranquility of nature.