Beefing Up Cattle Using The Continuous Grazing System

While intensive and fast-rotation beef grazing systems are becoming more popular in South Africa, the Duminies of Duminy Boerdery in Vryheid have stuck by their extensive continuous grazing system. They explained their strategy to Lloyd Phillips.

- Lloyd Phillips

It requires stockmen on horseback to count or move the Bonsmara-type commercial beef cattle on Duminy Boerdery in KwaZulu-Natal’s Vryheid area. This is because much of the 9 000ha property comprises 13 grazing camps ranging from 470ha to 840ha in size.

The farm’s mixed sweetveld/ sourveld natural grazing is spread across hilly terrain, making it easy for the cattle in such large camps to spread out and become lost to the naked eye. They therefore have to be sought out and found.

This system of large camps in which the cattle roam and graze as they desire has been used by the Duminy family, semi-retired father Boetman and his two sons, Jaco and Martiens, since 1998.

“I actually got the idea of using one-camp [continuous] grazing from my late uncle who’d been using it on his 500ha farm in our area since 1945. His entire farm was just one large grazing camp.

“And his cattle always had far fewer ticks, were sick less often, required less supplementary licks, and were generally in better condition than mine on the conventional rotational grazing system I was using at the time,” Boetman recalls.

LONG WEANERS

 Jaco and Martiens have continued to implement one-camp grazing, using it to produce approximately 500 long weaners annually for sale to feedlots and ox farmers via livestock auctions.

The brothers start selling weaners in May when the animals are seven months old and at a live weight of 220kg until they reach 15 or 16 months and a weight of 290kg at the end of the following February.

“The weaners are produced by our 1 200 breeding cows, which we put to about 75 bulls ranging in age from two-and-half to five years old,” explains Jaco.

“All our breeding females are own-bred, as are most of our bulls, but we buy in one or two bulls every year to bring fresh genetics into our herd.