Holistic Planned Grazing with Jordy Mylrea

Jordy Mylrea and his cattle at The Farm at Byron Bay

The Farm implements a holistic planned grazing approach as part of our wider regenerative farm management framework 🌱🐮🌍 

Holistic grazing essentially aims to echo the natural herding behaviour of animals.
Livestock are intentionally moved from paddock to paddock at a frequency that aligns with the unique climate conditions of the region, while responding to the natural grazing requirements of our livestock.
Holistic grazing allows each paddock ample time to fully regenerate before being regrazed, which in turn keeps our soil in optimum health and encourages a thriving natural ecosystem at The Farm.

Our growers collective and our farmers work together to incorporate excess organic plant matter and manure into the soil, allowing for the efficient recycling of nutrients. 

This sustainable grazing approach promotes soil fertility and natural regeneration, without relying on excessive equipment, technology, or funds. 🌿 

This is all part of our ongoing journey of sustainable, regenerative farming in the Northern Rivers. 

We caught up with Jordy to get a deeper insight into what holistic grazing means to him. 

Jordy Mylrea grew up in the Northern Rivers. In the past decade he’s really found his niche, creating his own grazing and livestock management business.

Now Grazing Manager at The Farm, Jordy shares his approach to Holistic Grazing and explains why it works so well at The Farm. 

“Of the eighty-eight acres of land we’ve got here at The Farm, around two-thirds of it is utilised for grazing. 

We want the cattle to get the most nourishment and optimum nutrition, but also ensure that the grasses and soil have time to recover and regenerate, which helps maintain soil biodiversity.

It changes from season to season. It can struggle in dryer years, but what is grown is incredibly rich in nutrients. We’ve been fortunate the last couple of years to have sufficient rain and sun to produce great feed. That can all change from season to season, as all farmers would know. 

We’re relocating our herd every few days in line with the seasons, and I keep an eye on it every day. The cattle let us know when they’re ready to move on and ideally we want to move them before they’re ready to, so that the grass isn’t depleted and it will regenerate quickly once the cattle have moved off it. 

In terms of our grasses here, we’ve got a lot of different species although the most abundant is Kikuya; it’s prevalent in this region and most places north of here. The Farm has planted over 10,000 trees in the past nine years; once they’re mature enough the cattle will be able to graze them as well. 

We’ve also got to be mindful of soil compaction, which happens naturally as a result of these bigger animals spending more time grazing in one place. 

Soil compaction can really affect the soil microbes and limit the soil's capacity to regenerate.

Tractors are common in commercial farming, and they’re often a necessity in order to cover the larger pastures - the downside being that the weight of a tractor can be pretty devastating for the soil.
While we do have tractors, utes and bikes on-site at The Farm, I try to use my horse, Roy, for mustering and yarding whenever I can. He’s lighter on the soil and we get the added benefit of his manure.

Speaking of manure, Ollie (founder of Olivers Hens) and I work really well together in collaborating on our grazing plan. Chooks take the tops off the grass and lightly fertilise, which works really well in the paddocks where we’ve either just had cattle grazing. Again we monitor this really closely, as just like cattle we can’t leave chooks too long in one spot or they’ll graze too deep and it can take far longer for the soil to come back to full health. 

Ollie’s chooks help to scratch and fertilise, and they actually turn the soil in the paddocks they’re in, which integrates their manure - and since he feeds them only organic feed, their manure is excellent fertiliser and all part of our regenerative farming approach. 

There’s another consideration in holistic grazing and that’s dung beetles. 

Regular, intentional cattle rotation gives the dung beetles time to go through the dung, where they assist with pest control by removing buffalo eggs from the dung.
Dung beetles then safely return to the soil to start reproducing - this whole process helps to keep our soil super healthy and adds to the diversity of soil microbes.

An abundant microbial count ensures longevity of soil, better crops, and healthier livestock. 

We’ve got a great dung beetle population here at The Farm, at last review we had 6-7 species and we’re aiming for ten to twelve in total.

We’re part of a paddock to plate cycle here, so when the cattle are at full weight they’re sent to the Ducks’ restaurant (Three Blue Ducks), and this also helps to ease the pressure on the paddocks and soil. Our cattle are organic, grass fed and grass finished - and of all the farms I’ve worked on, this is definitely a stand out. The cattle demonstrate healthier behaviours, and it produces a higher quality product.

We use citronella-based pest deterrent, instead of chemical-grade repellents, to protect cattle from buffalo fly; they affect cattle with diseases like pinkeye and can cause cattle to lose condition through loss of appetite. Citronella is around 175 times more expensive, but the alternative would mean using acidic toxins - and we just won’t do it. We’re committed to organic, sustainable products because this is part of a long-term vision for our regenerative farm. We want to still be doing this ten, twenty, fifty years from now - and that means keeping our cattle in the best health possible, and keeping our soil in great health both now and into the future. 

It’s definitely more work and far more demanding this way, but the rewards are so worth it. Seeing how pastures bounce back, letting the soil breathe, the health of the cattle - you can really see the benefits. Being a smaller scale farm, we can monitor the stocking rates to benefit the land and cattle health - this is one of the benefits in our grazing systems that we have the opportunity to utilise. 

Now five years into his role at The Farm, Jordy says, “This is the first job I’ve had that I actually look forward to coming in for. I want to be here for the animals, for the people, and for myself. I actually really miss it when I’m not here”.