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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >How long would it take, do you think, to plant and establish pasture?
> 

If you plan on it being a permanent pasture, one year.

There are two major ways of looking at pasture, at last two:

With plenty of mechanical or animal power an no reluctance to use it, many 
farms rotate pasture and crops on the same land.  This means you will plant a 
hay crop, same as if you were planting corn or wheat or potatoes, then you 
harvest the crop, or graze it and then harvest it.  Or in some cases harvest 
it 
then graze the leavings.  Then you plow it back up and use the land for some 
other purpose and plant a hay crop eleswhere.

The other apporach is to establish a more or less permanent pasture.  These 
pastures will tend to be diverse with lots of different types of plants 
growing 
there.  We have some experience with this here in the higher parts of the 
Appalachians because much of our land is too steep to ever be rotated into 
anything but pasture and hay.  It is in perpetual meadows.  When undesireable 
plants 
grow up, they are eliminated.  Tree seedlings, ironweed, joepye weed, and 
thistle are mowed off which gives the grass and clovers an advantage over 
them.  

A diversity of animals will make the best use of permanent pasture.  What one 
favors the others will ignore.  If that diversity includes chickens and 
geese, all so much the better.  If you have chickens in a pasture, you will 
never 
have to drag it to distribute the manure.

In the case of growing a crop of hay in a rotated field, the heavier grasses 
such as timothy, rye, wheat and such can stand up to some trampling and 
thrive.  So a common practice is to get the crop established and then turn 
the 
animals out onto it to graze when the blades are only a few inches high.  The 
animals will bite off the emerging seed stalk and so the plant will react by 
creating six or ten or more seed stalks and expanding its crown to accomodate 
them.  
When you remove the animals after a few weeks, the plants are many times as 
thick and sturdy and send up a much heavier hay or grain crop.  Likewise, 
after 
the hay or grain is harvested, turn the animals back in to clean it up.   I 
wouldn't do this with sheep, at least not long.  They graze the plants off 
much 
closer to the ground and don't mind grubbing up the roots and eating them as 
well.


As fuel gets more and more expensive, the notion of permanent hay fields gets 
better and better.

James   </HTML>