A few pigs on your shoot

Using livestock as a conservation partner on your patch might not be a quick fix, but it really does work

- Richard Negus

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Well, you are if the woods belong to Matt Chatfield, because his are full of sheep. Matt is a silvipasturist, using the woodlands on his farm at Halwill in Devon to graze livestock. Not only does this method of farming benefit the sheep, Matt also believes it has improved the quality of his woods too. The understorey, he says, has become thicker and more diverse, and wildlife has increased.

This form of silvipasture woodland management is a technique that could be of great interest to keepers and shoot managers, particularly on farms and estates where regenerative farming practices are being embraced. The pheasant is, after all, a bird of the jungle; it loves the thick protection that scrubby subspecies in woods bring.

But I was intrigued to learn why sheep improve a wood for game and wildlife, yet as we know too well, deer browsing is invariably detrimental?

Regenerative approach 

The Chatfields have been farming at Halwill on the edge of Dartmoor and Bodmin for some 400 years, initially as tenants, until Matt’s grandfather bought the holding some 40 years ago. Like many farmers of his generation, Grandfather Chatfield embraced the principle of ‘feeding the nation’. Fields were drained, ryegrass was sown, livestock densities rose and production became king. When Matt took over the farm three years ago, he employed a more regenerative approach to agriculture, trying to farm with nature.