Conservation grazing
What?
Conservation grazing means using livestock to maintain or restore a particular habitat – which might be woodland, meadow, marsh or scrub. Different animals – sheep, cattle, goats – all graze and impact land in different ways and different breeds will also behave in different ways, making some more useful in conservation grazing systems than others. How livestock are selected and managed will depend entirely on the landscape in question and why/for what it is being conserved. Generally speaking, grazing livestock add nutrients back into the soil through their manure; their hooves help to break up compacted soil allowing for new plants to seed, and by preferentially eating some plants (e.g. grasses), they reduce competition for others (e.g. flowering meadow plants.) Cattle are particularly useful where a variable sward structure (vegetation height) is desired, as they pull and tear at vegetation with their tongues and trample it while grazing. This helps to create micro-habitats where a diversity of invertebrates and small mammals as well as predator animals like snakes can thrive. See Rare Breeds Survival Trust for more.
Where?
Our own farm is only large enough to support a couple of cattle – at best – in the low input pasture-fed system that we use, so when we were approached by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust to graze our Belties on Swifts Hill, a 25 acre Site of Scientific Special Interest (SSSI) across the valley from us, it was the perfect opportunity to both grow the herd and work with the Trust to optimise the site’s calcareous (limestone) grassland, a key habitat for more than 130 species of wildflowers, including 13 species of orchids and several kinds of butterfly which are dependent on them.
Next came Leckhampton Hill and Charlton Kings Common, another 160 acre SSSI managed by Cheltenham Borough Council. The addition of this site allowed us to expand the herd to nearly 20 and begin our own breeding programme of Riggit Galloways specifically, an archaic strain of Galloway cattle with less than 300 breeding animals in the UK.
We also graze our cattle on some privately owned land in the Slad valley, helping to support the Trust’s vision for creating wildlife corridors to and from Swifts Hill.
How?
Galloways are a very hardy traditional breed from Scotland that do very well being outside all year round, grazing the roughest of forage and turning it into high quality beef. This means we don’t need to keep them in sheds in the winter or to feed them grain for them to keep their condition. We work closely with wardens on each of our sites, monitoring sward height and observing grazing impacts to determine when best to move cattle on and off specific areas. The cattle wear NoFence collars which allow us to set boundaries by GPS – particularly helpful where boundary fences are not well maintained or where we want to concentrate them in a given area of the site without the use of electric fence. You can see our cattle and those of all other No Fence users on the No Fence map.
Why?
Living an outdoor life and grazing a high diversity of grasses and herbs is what livestock are meant to do. With the added benefit of helping them to stay healthy without veterinary intervention.
Healthy animals means healthy meat. Compared to cattle finished on grain, cattle grazed in on pasture-based systems like ours produce meat that is lower in saturated fats while being high in omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, vitamins A, E and K2 and minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium.
It’s a low input system producing high quality, nutritious food for our local community, while having the equal benefit of supporting some of Gloucestershire’s unique calcareous (containing lime) grasslands. The UK has lost 97% of its meadows since the 1930’s with devastating effects for hundreds of species of pollinators like bees, and other wildlife. Our profit margins might be slim but for us the bottom line is farming in a way that works with, rather than against, nature.
Our services:
We are interested to take on new grazing sites and will work with the landowner, Wildlife Trust or FWAG to establish the best approach to grazing based on the landscape, ideally following an ecological survey.
