Marty Mitchell

Update: 01 Sept 2024

First baby calf hit the ground yesterday!

This first-time mom had no issues birthing and took to all motherly items awesomely. His birthweight looks very low too… even out of the mother who seems to have an eating disorder on just grass. 😆

Even the other heifer out there was getting excited and treating him like he was her own. Looks like this breed really will be easy-birthing and good mothers (usually). She even laid down next to her calf and was mooing softly to him.

Had to get the other heifer away so new mom could focus on/bond with her baby. Little guy kept trying to nurse as soon as he could stand. It was cute watching him take a tumble every time she tried to clean him.

After a few minutes of being alone… he was nursing.

Anyways, plans are to register and halter train him… then find a new home once he is weaned naturally.

He comes from a great line (Sire is a National Grand Champion and has several offspring who are as well). Turns out birthing weight is indeed very low as well! Awesome.

Dam:  Thomas Farm Independance
ADCA # 052135

Sire:  Timberview Kade
ADVA # 039498
https://dextercattle.org/ai-dexter-bulls/#Timberview-Kade

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Marty,
That is an awesome before and after picture. A testimony to good grazing methods.

Thank you, Matt!

I really don't know what I am doing... but have been nerding out on YouTube and Podcasts on the subject. Had been for a long while before enacting everything.

Congrats on getting started with cattle!

I am about a year ahead of you. I just got two Dexter heifers a little over a year ago. The pasture has already taken a dramatic turn for the better with a few practices. They say that you will see 60% of the benefits of rotational grazing by making 3 rotations. The more the better though. Just have to find what works best for you in your situation.

Started in 2021 (when we bought the new home) with a horribly destroyed pasture that was mostly mud/buttercups/and some small patches of white clover/bermudagrass/whatever could survive 3 horses grassing on it constant.

It is now a few years later/one year since we got animals spreading manure/urine into the mix. It is taking off really well for me!

I spent last year moving them rapidly in small strips back and forth. I then pulled them to a sacrafice lot in early Fall to let the grasses get big and build stockpile for the Winter. Let them constantly graze/rotate all winter. Putting hay down on the patches that had no cover on the soil. Then pulled them off again for several weeks in the Spring so it could get ahead of them and get strong/big again.

I am now so buried in grass that having my pastures divided into 5 semi-permanent plots with step-in posts/electric poly is really so incredibly easy. I just leave it there and open the next section every week or so. Which costs me about 15mins a week for work most weeks.

I would not have been able to do that last year with the grasses so young and vulnerable. I just either put a halter on them to bring them back to the beginning... or setup a skinny path of poly and they follow me.

Here is my thread I have been putting together.
https://permies.com/t/204982/Dexter-Cattle-small-homestead-AC

Here is what the pasture looked like this time of year in 2021 vs 2024. Of course, most of that is annual ryegrass I am letting go to seed so it comes back this Fall. It greatly extended my grazing season. We will still have to wait to see what the summer slump looks like.

Update 27 April 2024:

Yesterday, (27 April) that large swarm from my most productive hive that had been sitting high up in a tree for a week… moved into one of my traps. Awesome!!

I have now caught 3 large swarms!

I need to start building two more 20 frame boxes and about 3 Nuc boxes so I can put the spares swarms I catch into something with thick walls on it.

There was a small swarm that had shown up and was sitting on a fence post near the trap. They got spooked up when the bee-nado went flying over them. They now reside up in the tree next to where the big swarm was sitting.

Mike Bettis wrote:This is such a a great post! I'm so excited to get started. I'm appreciating all the info here so much. Is there any issue you believe in building this out of cedar? I have tons of cedar on my property. I'm also curious if I could build this out of "wet" wood. Meaning not dried to 5-8%. Most outdoor applications it's not necessary to dry it to these levels because it's environment won't reflect a cool dry place that causes warping. But I have little experience with these hives. I did attend Dr Leos lecture and bought his swarm trap. I've just yet to build the layens hive.

Thanks! I am glad you are enjoying things as they happen!!!

I am no wood expert honestly. I am betting the Cedar is fine though. I made the bottom of one of my hives out of cedar and they seem to be loving it.

Perhaps contact Dr Leo? Or someone will chime in that knows.

My brother said they they love pine.

If you take a look at the build plans on his website… it may talk about wood types in there.

Update: 25 April 2024

I just wish I could post some of the video clips I have of it… you can download a clip below.

Both of these pictures are from the same pasture at about the same time of year. The buttercup pic is of when we first moved into our home in 2021. The second is of a few days ago!!!

There is more to what I did… but things really took off when I brought the girls in as two heifer calves on about 3.5 to 4.5 AC worth of usable pasture (not counting the dry lot or wooded bits) this time last year.

After continuing to rotate them through the Winter (with proper management)… the girls can disappear at times out there in the patch I just moved them to.

This is temporary… but full of promise. It warms my heart.


~Marty M.

Update 25 April 2024:

It is a week later…

1) The first swarm I grabbed… stayed and are bringing in pollen now. So they have made comb and the queen is laying. Woot!

2) The big hive swarmed two big swarms. One flew off almost immediately. The other is hanging out 3 stories up in a tree. 1st swarm was the size of one of my swarm traps (mega!) according to my son. Second swarm from them is the size of a basketball…. Still very large. I hope they move into a trap!

3) Then, yesterday afternoon, the swarm in the pic below landed on the round pen/next to the trap in the background. Then, it took off again and landed on the fence 50 yds to the other side. A miss….

Last night, I stayed up late, and prepped an entire hive box for them… put it into the bed of the UTV… then went and physically grabbed them (my bee guide and brother were both freaking out that i was just going to leave them on the fence! 😆). Hopefully they stay. If they do… I will bring them to the bee yard in a few days.

I have transplanted several of the "Bocking 14" comfrey plants out into my pastures. The cows have a tendency to graze it all the way back to a nub when they find a clump out there. Which means they really like it.

I have a great many copies in pots I made that I totally intended to transplant out there this past Winter but didn't.

Anyways, I think that pastures are the most resilient when you have a great mixture of species that will be at max performance during the cold months, cool months, and hot months. As well as a mixture of species within each of those periods. As stated in a previous post... it goes dormant and disappears out there during the Winter.

I aim to have more comfrey out there at some point. However, since I have dialed in the rotational grazing and pasture management, the grasses are going gangbusters out there here in year two. I am no longer sure that the comfrey would survive long enough to establish out there without being shaded out. I may have to work the comfrey into the micro-climates along the forest edge or something.

Here is a pic of the girls (Dexter cattle) I took this evening after I moved them into the last section before starting them over again in the rotation after a week or so of this section. Some parts of the pasture… they disappear. 😂

I am now falling behind on keeping up with the grass… and wondering if I should acquire a steer for help/the table.

larry kidd wrote:

You might want to look in to Daikon radishes and buckwheat to help break up hard clay soils and they both can be grazed with excellent results. The radishes are very high in protein and they drill the soil deep pulling nutrients from down to and often past 20 feet. First you can let the cattle graze the tops a few times then come deeper winter they can eat the tubers. I've had them overwinter here.  After the cattle eat what they can of the tubers what breaks off still in the ground and rots leaving nutrients from down deep much nearer the surface. Gabe Brown has some good video's on youtube on soil regeneration.  The radishes and buckwheat have my pipe clay soil draining now everywhere they've been planted. Nothing else around here drains at all, water will stand in holes for months in this clay. The buckwheat breaks up the surface and it grows extremely fast. Some people in Va get 4-5 crops a year.  IT DOES NOT HANDLE FROST AT ALL!

I actually messed with Diakon many years ago in a yard… and was wondering if it would handle the animals. Thank you! I may give them a try.