The pasture fed livestock association

tractorporn

Was reading an article of the Farmers Guardian and the guy had a herd of Murray Grey sucklers and was part of the Pasture Fed Livestock association. Why has something like this never taken off over here? Is it something we should be heading towards? At a stretch it wouldn't take much for a lot of guys to just go the whole hog and cut out meal.

http://www.pastureforlife.org/

djmc

Seems like an idea I assume they will still need silage and dosing for fluke and worms and to be housed for bad weather unless you have very dry ground and low stocking rates.
The calving date would probably need to be pushed out to later spring to stop cows losing condition.
If you couldn't market the meat at the right price you could be at a loss if you sold to the factory's here.
I'd like to see bord bia or the state being some help on this regard especially on hnv ground or where there are restrictions on commercial farming.

tractorporn

djmc wrote:

Seems like an idea I assume they will still need silage and dosing for fluke and worms and to be housed for bad weather unless you have very dry ground and low stocking rates. The calving date would probably need to be pushed out to later spring to stop cows losing condition. If you couldn't market the meat at the right price you could be at a loss if you sold to the factory's here. I'd like to see bord bia or the state being some help on this regard especially on hnv ground or where there are restrictions on commercial farming.

I didn't get a chance to look at their standards but the gist of it is you can feed as much grass and silage as you can produce you just can't feed any cereals, root crops or fodder rape/kale.

It would mean a relaxation on the 30 month rules in the factory imo it would be hard enough to finish cattle under that on grass alone.

I could see there being an uptake in something like that if there was a price premium akin to the Angus and Hereford schemes.