ON THE LAND
From page 29
❑ Deep tracks develop along fences or stock camp areas, which then act as runoffs for surface water. ❑ Water in drains and streams beside the grazed paddocks becomes coloured by sediment. ❑ There is nutrient loss from surface runoff. ❑ It becomes impossible to walk across your field without sinking in or your stock is sinking into the veld while they are grazing. ❑ You will observe lower overall production when the pasture dries out. ❑ You will have areas of bare ground that do not grass over for long periods or you have rapid weed growth on bare areas, leading to more work and cost of spraying. ❑ Damaged drains no longer function, so surface water is visible. On the other hand, you will know that you don ' t have that problem when you can continue to use that field for grazing into winter and the signs of hoof marks disappear.
30 www. sasmallholder. co. za
Your pastures should then achieve their full annual growth potential. If you do have a pugging problem, ideally you would withdraw the animals altogether for a number of months to enable the soil to recover- but few smallholders have enough grazing land to be able to do that. So you will need to keep a
Waterlogged field
close watch on the pastures when they are grazed in wet conditions. Be prepared to remove stock from pasture when the first signs of damage appear and then use on / off grazing strategies. We need to be creative in managing what grazing we do have. You might have to temporarily fence off the damaged areas and where stock like to congregate, and only allow the livestock onto the well grassed areas. You can speed up your rotation system, so that the animals are not in the field for as long as usual. Don ' t graze areas next to waterways- fence them off. Provide enough water troughs to prevent stock walking long distances to drink. If you can, move stock across grassed areas rather than across grazed areas. Don ' t let stock get too hungry so they walk along the fences while waiting to come in at night. Then you must consider if you need more than just rest to bring about rejuvenation of the grass. You might need to plough up the damaged areas and reseed in spring with a good veld grass seed mix. Alternatively you could embrace the collection of mud and water and turn the area into a mini wetland, wildlife pond or marsh garden. If you already have water in your field that has not drained away or evaporated, and it is in a convenient spot, you can design a pond next to it. The land needs to be reasonably flat –
Continued on page 31