One of the most important things that a farmer has to think about, and here at Diamond Forest Farm Stay we are no exception, is feed for their animals. To buy feed like hay, chaff or pellets can be very expensive so most farmers like to have good, healthy paddocks for their animals to graze on to limit the amount of bought feed that they need in any given year. Part of ensuring that you have good healthy paddocks is stock rotation. Another part is seeding and fertilising paddocks.We’ve not been particularly good at doing either, unfortunately, but this year we are striving to be better.
Good stock rotation is hard for us as we have quite a variety of animals most of which have different feed requirements and, as a result we have too few paddocks free to allow for successful stock rotation. Our horse and cows need a lot of feed but can’t go in the same paddock (A cool breeze can have our horse losing weight almost overnight. I think it’s a Thoroughbred thing!), the sheep can very hard on a paddock very quickly, the ponies and donkeys need a paddock without too much feed or they get obese almost overnight (poor Katie, our pony, only has to look at food and she puts on weight. I know how she feels!), the pigs have to have their own paddock as they dig up all of the grass leaving no feed at all, the goats will eat anything but can’t always go with other animals because they use their horns to bully other animals and the alpacas won’t come to the fence so the guests can see them if they are in a paddock with other animals. But…the large variety of animals we have is what brings in our guests so that’s not going to change in a hurry. It does my head in some days.
So seeding a few paddocks is a good option for us but this too requires us to have spare paddocks and keep them spare to allow the feed to grow. Sadly the only paddock that seems to grow feed exceptionally well all year round is the paddock around the dam, which is generally kept clear of animals for most of the year to allow our guests to fish and canoe. As a result we actually have to mow this paddock. Go figure. So once again we are swapping animals from paddock to paddock. The ponies and donkeys can go in the sheep paddock because there’s not much feed left, the sheep can go in the alpaca paddock because there is more feed, the alpacas can go in this paddock, the goats in that one…..These deliberations can go on over the course of a few days until we’ve sorted out where everything can go and stay while we seed some paddocks. We change our mind so many times that I start to lose track on what we’ve decided is the best way to go. This sometimes ends up with me going in one direction to move animals and Mark going in another, with both of us thinking that the other is on the same page when in fact we aren’t and we end up at different paddocks, with different animals on opposite sides of the farm shaking our heads at each other in confusion. Farming can be somewhat frustrating at times but we usually manage to see the funny side.
Still all is not organised as we have to take into consideration the weather. Too much rain will wash the seed and fertiliser away. Not enough rain will cause the seed to sprout and then die. Many weeks were spent discussing the weather (I’m not joking here. Farmers really do talk about the weather A LOT). By the time Mark had decided that yes, he was going to seed one large paddock, one medium-sized paddock and two smaller ones he had talked to no less than five different farmers to get their considered opinion. That’s not counting me. I know we had the ‘to seed or not to seed’ conversation so often that the mention of it made my eyes glaze over and my brain switch off despite my best efforts to appreciate the seriousness of it all. Yes, I understand the financial consequences of getting it wrong with the loss of seed, wasted fertiliser and having to buy feed more often during the following year but there are only so many times I can go over the same topic before it starts to drive me crazy.
Luckily Mark has far more patience with these sorts of things than I do and, as a result, we now have five seeded and fertilised paddocks. So far the weather has been kind to us and all we can hope is that it continues to be so. . . and that our free range ducks don’t go into those paddocks and eat all the seed!