Richard Perkins narrates a farm walkthrough showing rapid pasture recovery after grazing by cows followed by chickens. He highlights species diversity (roughly 45 species noted historically), soil improvements after breaking a 22 cm plow pan with a keyline plow, and a shift of root mass to deeper soil (reported 90% of root mass down to 50 cm versus ~18–20 cm on arrival). The video also describes practical poultry management (egg collection timing, egg handling) and observations of soil life (dung beetles) as evidence of increased resilience during a dry season.
Questions this video answers
Richard Perkins (creator/uploader).
June 10, 2018.
22 cm.
90% of the root mass is now down 50 cm (previously ~18–20 cm on arrival).
About 45 species.
Chapters
I'm totally amazed at the incredible power of chicken again. So this is two weeks recovery since the chickens were in here and it was very bare ground. We've got the cows running through. They're going to start grazing horizontally between the savanna nut planting now. Amazing how resilient the ground has become. We've had no rain in that time except one little shower. Amazing to see the resilience our pastures developed. So we're in frontfield. It's going to be hard to see the chickens today. Amazing the rampant growth we got here. The cock's foot's up. It's up at my chest height already. And a lot more cow parsley in this field now. It's interesting to see the species complexing because we're often not in this field because it's heavy clay soil. Top field is silty and sandy clay at the bottom. Nut field is sandy on the hills, as it were, and clay in the bottom. But fun fields is clay. This was all underwater like 10,000 years ago, not very long ago. Very different compositions in the soil. And it's always been the most diverse field ever since we did our first surveys in the first year. But we often avoid coming in here with the eggmobiles when it's really wet. And it's very interesting to see how the species are different. We have thick swards of cow parsley which you don't even see in the other fields. You can just see Toby's top half. It's pretty rampant in here. Pretty amazing to see. So you can see this cock's foot's up to my eye level. It's pretty amazing to see the grass express itself up on the neighbours up on the hill. We had a big tour yesterday, farm tour, showing people how the grass in other people's land is stunted because we've had no rain, but we've got no dry issues at all. The grass is growing rampantly at this time and life's a mirror. If something is growing up to my eye level, it's rooting deep now. When we came here, we had a plow pan at 22cm across all of our fields from a plough being pulled repeatedly over and over in the same space. We smashed it up with a key lime plow two years and we've been planning our grazing since. And we've already shown in the video last year we've got 90% of the root mass is now down 50cm last year already, as opposed to 18-20cm when we arrived here. But anything growing like this has got roots. Well, you can guess what. So very happy to see how our planning and work and the work of the animals has allowed this to really boost into a different level of resilience and production. Challenging to put the chicken fences up. We're using pegs in between each post just to ensure that they're not able to escape out the bottom. So I'm going around just pegs that we use in the market garden, but I'll show you them coming out in a second. So some would see this as a waste of forage. But why we want to trample this all down is because when we get down in here, you see the ground is totally covered here. This is last tramplings. And so the ground has a layer of mulch essentially, and now it's going to receive another layer. And everything we trample down is essentially putting stocks in our carbon bank. That's basically what we're doing. If we aim to trample 40% of this down on the ground, then we're investing in the future. That has been working very well in the way this has developed over time. Now, when we first came here, you would not see grasses up like this because they had no opportunity to express themselves by rooting deeply. And so we're not trying to take everything off as forest, we're trying to trample it in. For us as a small farm, I've said in many videos it's more economical in the whole sense to actually buy things like when to feed in because we have a small amount of ruminants. We just have nine cows and we don't have the finances to run hay gear. And there's a lot of people cutting hay around who don't have livestock. So it's better for us to import that nutrient and just keep building on our reserves. And that's the, you know, you might have different opinions on that, but that's the approach we have. Let's let these birds out and see what happens. So here's a good example where the ground is not covered. This is a muddy area where perhaps the eggmobile was stuck and we were wheel spinning in the rhino, the atv. And you see we have quite expansive clays here that crack when they get dry. This is making an audible note. That's what soil sounds like down in parts of the Mediterranean typically. And yeah, you just don't see that in adjacent areas where the ground is covered and moisture is retained and life can carry on. And so it's a very different. This is an exponential process of decay, potentially, maybe not in our humid climate, but this is, you know, bare ground is what leads to. To this spiraling death cycle, as opposed to the exact opposite, spiraling regeneration. Where even in this intense dryness, where there's moisture on the ground, where condensation is absorbed and dew is absorbed in the morning, then microbiology can keep processing material, putting it into the ground and life cycles are not slowing down, they're actually accelerating despite the dryness, which is what we're seeing this year. Now, pasture. So for reference, this is what the ground looks like, similar to what the other field with the tall grass is like, but when the cows have been through, taken off the tops, trampling a load, leaving their manure. We've been looking through the cow manure on our tour yesterday, finding dung beetles and talking about the life cycle of the insects in there. Hard to assimilate that because it's sitting on such a thick layer of grass. There's a dung beetle here, you see. A bit early for the maggots yet, but yeah, you get the idea. Like this is what happens, bringing the cows in first and then this is the second day for the birds, so you can see they've trampled down a lot. You can see into the other paddock. These are both being moved tomorrow, but just as a comparison to the long grass you've seen this morning that hasn't been grazed. And we'll see what that looks like later. So we moved opening the chickens forward to nine, sorry, six o' clock now. And I've moved egg collection forward to half past nine. So we've done two of them already and it's about half the day's eggs, which is good. It's taken 20 minutes to do those two. But you see this is back in front field where the hens have done a lot of flattening of the tall grasses here. But I actually think we might move egg collection to 9:15. It's all a time we gotta come and make sure we get half the eggs. Gracie, the grass is taller than you. Unbelievable. This is coxfoot. The type of grass. There's rye grass here you can do. Here's a tree in summer, here's a tree in autumn, there's a bunch of flowers. Yeah, it's a timing game. We've got to get here early enough to get them out before they're stressed to get out. It's all light dependent. And then we've got to get up here and collect the eggs and do that really fast so we can open the nest boxes back up again. Because it's in the middle of their lay. But seems like timing is working well right now. So it's a bit noisy in here, but, Gracie, how are you collecting them? What are you up to? Pointy side up. Pointy side up. And why do you do that? Because then when you clean them, you try and that's right, they flip them over so the eggs are coming out really nice and sometimes get a little bit of down on them, but that comes off really easily. And then we put them pointy side up, stack them in layers of six in these trays and then in the egg packery, we flip them over, check them all, make sure none are cracked, and then stamp the eggs. You're a great egg collector, Grayson. So here we are, late afternoon, 3:30 egg collection time again. Big difference they've made. Different colour in the sky. Feels like thunderstorms coming, but nothing yet. It was forecast, but it's now forecast. No rain. We need the rain. But it's. Yeah, it feels very muggy and hot and humid today, but it's now saying there won't be any rain. But all the birds are hot. Broilers up in top field up here are hot and we're all hot too, being in the lake. So you saw the bear patch where the chickens have spent their couple of days, but that's exactly what this looked like here two weeks ago. And you can see it's recovered very nicely into the grass here you see plenty of diversities. Clovers, dandelion, and we've got different variety of grasses. Buttercups here, we've got field daisies. We've also got ducks and cleavers here, a little parasitic one. There's cleavers, vetch flowering here, different types of vetch. Oh, there's just beautiful diversity. About 45 species we've counted in the past. But just to see two weeks of recovery and having the animals back on, they're moving through and a new roller boiler pans are going to be in here next for the next batch of birds coming out. But you see, it was up, you know, up to my chest in front field where we haven't grazed yet, and now it's back up to thigh height here. So pretty amazing to see the resilience of our pastures in this very dry season through the plant grazing, use of a key lime plow to tickle the subsoil and the addition of a lot of nutrients through the poultry. Sam.
