In addition there will be much more opportunities for flies with cow pats
lying around the place. If there is a good population of dung beetles, these
should be taken underground quickly, if the dung beetles are happy in your
soil, and the right dung beetles are established there (there are many
species, different gourmet tastes).
The other possible issue is overstocking. You have a small number of
animals; and this may not be a problem. Overstocking can lead to ground
compaction and will leave you with more manure on the surface than
otherwise. The nature of your soils, their compactability is a question.
When the steers have moved away from a pasture, what do you do with the
manure remaining? Running harrows over the ground, or tossing it around with
a fork will break it up sooner, have it underground sooner. And if there is
any degree of compaction, some deep ripping after the steer rotation may be
of value.
Although we previously had a breeding cattle herd on another property, we
have no large animals on our present property because of our concern to
avoid compacting very deep black soils. Neighbours brought in cows to the
neighbourhood about three years ago, and overstocked, and we then had not
only many more but new varieties of flies. Now the neighbours have gone back
to a small herd, and the problem has dropped. Their cows and others from
three miles away used to break in because we had decent pasture under the
orchard while they had none. I noticed that the performance of dung beetles
varied with soil type. Cow pats could sit for quite a while on the light
sandy soils near the creek, but on the heavier soils a little further away,
in a day the cow pat would be tossing and turning with beetles and in
another day or so only crumbs would be left. There may also have been
different treatment residues in these droppings, altering insect
performance, survival.
Dennis
>Hi...
>We have three Holstein steers who are rotating through 5 paddocks in our
>4 1/2 acre irrigated pasture. This is our first time having any
>livestock (which you will be able to tell by the next question). For the
>past few months they have looked nice and healthy, but I noticed today
>that they are attracting a lot of little bugs that seem to light on them
>and kind of just hang there, mostly. These look, in size, about halfway
>between a housefly and a gnat. Is this common and/or no problem, or is
>it a sign of some gross negligence on our part? :) Help please.
>Diane
>outside Nampa, Idaho
>
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail