Separating the pasture into paddocks

Ah summertime.  The grass grows fast and rushes to go to seed.  This makes yours truly really get a workout each day as I push the chicken tractors through the tall grass.  Which reminds me, I used to work with a guy at our family grocery store who would go in the back room and listen to Cajun French music while he ate his lunch.  One day I walked back there and he was laughing while listening to the music.  I said, "Johnny, what is he singing about (I can't understand much French) and why are you laughing?"  To which he replied, "Well, Kyle, it's kind of hard to translate into English, but he's singing about a large woman and he's saying that dancing with her is like pulling a sled through some tall grass."  I about lost my mind laughing.  Quite a vivid illustration.

Back to our story.  The grass grows so quickly and goes to seed in the heat and long days so that the plant sends all of its energy toward growing the seed head and not much toward growing the grass itself.  The cows need the nutrition in the leaves of the grass.


Chicken tractors in the tall grass

The photo below illustrates the seeds.  You can tell that it wouldn't be very appetizing to eat the long seed heads.  Instead, the cows will spend a lot of time roaming around looking for select, tasty, nutritious grass.  Joel Salatin likens that to what people do at a salad bar.  They circle it and select only things that look tasty.  The cows will do this and eat the tender grass down to the ground, while the rest gets tough and overgrown.

Grass going to seed

 A big problem with the animals eating the grass down to ground level is parasites.  They'll pick up parasites (people refer to them generically as 'worms') and they'll get sick.  You don't want them to eat that close to the ground and get wormy, so you have to manage their grazing.

Here's how we do it.  I've been researching it and have been learning about it.  There's probably a better way, but we're going with this until I find a better system.  We use a poly rope electric fence.  If you look closely in the picture below, you can spot that wires are woven into the rope.  Those wires conduct electricity when attached to our charger.


Poly rope electric fence

I have some reels that are ratcheted that allow me to attach the poly rope on one end and stretch it to the other fence, creating multiple paddocks.   

Having a REEL good time...

I have some temporary step-in posts that I use to support the poly rope at intervals.  You can see that the bottom has a sharpened iron stake and you put your boot on the flat portion above it, push it in the ground and then run the wire into one of the brackets.  Quick to install.  Quick to move.


A step-in post

Below I've run one strand and have separated the pasture into a couple of paddocks.  I'll graze them on only the paddock on the left and then move them after a few days to the paddock on the right and keep moving them.  In all I have 5 separate paddocks and I rotate the cows to a fresh paddock after a few days. 

Separate paddocks for the animals

 I have a permanent hot wire that runs along the south and west sides of my pasture and it is powered by a solar fence charger.  You can see the poly rope attached to the fence with an insulator and then I use a 'jump wire' to transfer the electricity from the permanent wire to the poly rope, which conducts electricity due to the wires woven in it.  The cows respect it!  So do we.  It hurts to get 'popped.' 


Jump Wire

Here is a 'parasite-level' view.  You don't want you animals eating lower than this.  

Beware, Maggie Mae

Nellie and Annie, being smaller animals, can shimmy underneath the wire.  If push comes to shove, I can run two poly ropes to keep them out.
 

The grass is always greener...

On one side the poly rope is attached to the fence with an insulator.  On the other end, I made a bracket that the reel fits right into.  When I'm ready to move it, I simply take it off the bracket and begin reeling in the poly rope after unhooking the other side from the fence and jump wires.  Again, quick work.
 

The other end of the fence

As I rotate them into a new paddock, I mow the seed heads off the grass in the paddock that they were just grazing in to encourage the grass to grow fresh growth.  In a week when the cows are moved back to the original paddock, the grass will be green and lush and a nutritious salad bar for Daisy, Rosie, and Maggie.  Rain will help that scenario.  I don't know if you can tell, but the grass to the left has been mowed as they are now eating in the paddock to the right and blocked off from the one on the left until next week. 

Rotating the cows through the paddocks

This requires a lot of management as the grass grows differently depending upon the season and the rain.  The size of your paddock is also dependent on the total weight of the number of animals grazing on it.  There is a formula that tells you the square footage of pasture per pound of grazing animal per day that is optimal.  I'll get to that next.  Right now I'm just trying to get the system set up.  This management system should help me control the parasite load and give our animals the best grass to graze on.