Cleaning up the Pasture

We've shown you before how we rotational graze our 3 acre pasture.  We use temporary electric fencing to cordon off various paddocks and allow our cows to eat from one of the paddocks for 3 or 4 days.  Then we move them to the next paddock, blocking off the one they were just in.  We have the fencing set up so that they can always go to water and to shade, but all but one paddock is blocked off and 'resting' (and growing fresh growth on top) until it is time to rotate them through.

There's not really a set formula on how many days we leave them in a particular paddock.  We watch the cows' conditioning along with the length of the grass.  Our goal is that we never want them eating lower than 3 inches down since the fresh growth on top is more tasty and nutritious and anything lower than 3 inches runs the risk of the cows picking up parasites.

We've gotten better at rotational grazing over the years and although we haven't entirely mastered it, we feel that we get better usage of our limited pasture.  Cows, like people, are very wasteful.  If you allow them to graze the entire pasture, they'll go to where their favorite grasses are and eat there. Meanwhile all the other grass is growing tall and once it gets taller and tougher, the cows won't eat it. Limiting them to a particular area forces them to eat it all and they'll clip it down uniformly-without much waste.

In the photo below you can see that I'm standing in one paddock, looking a 3 more paddocks in front of me.  In back of me, although you can't see it, there are 3 other paddocks.  There is a lane against the perimeter fence that allows them to walk back to water and shade as needed without crossing into the blocked off paddocks.  So you can see that on a 3 day rotation, we're moving them so that it take them about 18 days to get back to the first paddock again.  You can tell how excited they are to move into a 'fresh' paddock.

Electrified Poly-wire temporary portable fencing

We're in the first part of November and a very dry October coupled with cooling temperatures has caused the pasture grasses, which consist of Bermuda and Bahia grass, to go dormant.  It is not very nutritious anymore and you can tell that it is not quite satisfying the cows.  It is time to end the rotational grazing until Spring.

So yesterday I used my reels and wound up all the poly wire fencing except for the one that blocks off the rye grass paddock and the Amy's paddock.  We keep Amy separated from the others.  She's old enough to go in heat, but not old enough that we want her bred, so we keep her partitioned off away from the bull.  When she comes in heat we actually move her into the stall in the barn.  A little poly wire will not provide discouragement to an amorous bull.

Now the cows can roam freely throughout most of the pasture and they'll do their best over the next week or two to clean it up, clipping down all the grass that remains tall.

Pulling up the polywire and temporary fiberglass step-in posts

I've called the gentleman that we purchase round bales from and have asked him to put somewhere between 20 and 24 round bales in reserve for us.  He delivers them 6 at a time to our home and we'll roll out the bales one at a time for the cows to enjoy.  In another week once the cows have 'cleaned up' the pasture, I'll have our hay man deliver the first bales.  Those bales will take the place of our pasture grass over the next several months, until the clover and first grasses of Spring begin popping up in the pasture.  Then we'll set up the temporary cross fences and begin rotational grazing again.