Rotating the Cows Through Paddocks

Five cows and four goats on three acres puts a strain on the pasture.  We'll be getting rid of the bull in a month or two, so that should help, but the cows clip that grass down and groom it better than a finishing mower.  It looks like a manicured lawn, doesn't it?

I have 7 paddocks separated by portable electric fence that is rolled up using a Gallagher reel.  I use step-in fiberglass posts to hold up the electrified poly wire powered by a Gallagher Solar charger.  The sun charges the fence and makes the grass grow.  How about that?

I keep the cows on one paddock for two days and then I move them into the next paddock. As you can see below, there is fresh, tender growth on the grass.  This is the most tender and nutritious part of the plant, and the cows know it.  Right over the electrified fence, the cows can see the tender growth, beckoning the herbivores to come eat.

The cows are very resourceful.  They will crane their necks under the fence as far as they can as the photo below indicates.  One careless lift of the neck, however, and they'll feel a pop that will send them running!

The cows have been conditioned to come running when they hear me rolling up the fending on the reel.  That signals to them that a new paddock is opening up.  It is like ringing the dinner bell to the bovines.  They will come running, enter the new paddock and immediately begin eating grass.  Crunch, crunch, crunch...

We still supplement with hay, but if you are a cow, this is where you want to be - on a fresh new paddock that has just been opened up.  In just two days, they will have this grass eaten and will be ready to move to the next paddock.  And so it goes until fall when the grass peters out.  Rotational grazing has helped us better manage grass consumption and contributes positively in animal health.

Putting up Fencing

Saturday January 2nd was a gray, chilly day - one of those gloomy winter-like days that is perfect for sitting in front of the fireplace, looking at seed catalogs, and planning the spring garden.  But there was work to be done.  At 10:30 a.m. Russ, Benjamin and I arrived at the farm in Oberlin.  Dad's rye grass field (which looks 100% better than ours) needed a little work.  Dad mixed wheat seed in with his rye grass and it is thick and healthy.

We always put a dividing fence right down the middle to separate the field into two large paddocks. The electric fence is then turned on and the cows are put into one half of the pasture to eat.  Later they are moved to the other side and in such fashion half of the field is 'resting' and growing.  If you left the cows in one side for too long, in their exuberance to eat the lush, green grass, they would walk around and mash all the grass into the mud, ruining a lot of it.  Rotational grazing prolongs the life of the pasture.

Lush, green pasture under a gloomy, grey sky

With the abundance of rain we've received lately, the field was saturated with water and muddy.  We had to put the Kubota ATV in four wheel drive to make it through the muck.  Dad stood at the other end of the field right in the middle and we drove to him.  Then we strung the electric wiring from one end to the other, pulling it tight.  Once the fence was pretty tight, we had the straight line traced to put in the T-posts, ensuring a straight fence.

Putting up fencing

We do this job every year at this time like clockwork.  The job is not for average folks, no sir.  This job requires a PhD - in this case that doesn't mean a Doctorate of Philosophy.  It means a Post Hole Driver.  My nephew and Russ and Benjamin split up the jobs.  Since I'm the oldest, I had the easy job.  I stepped off 15 steps and put a post in the ground.  Russ was the post driver, banging the T-post into the ground with a banger and Benjamin drove the Kubota, delivering the posts as we'd go along.  Conner would then attach the plastic insulator to the T-post and put the electric wire on the insulator.

Division of labor

Then we took a lunch break and headed to Oberlin.  Right down Main Street there is a grocery store called Landreneau's.  As you exit the vehicle in the parking lot, the aroma of smoking meats fills your nostrils.  The smokehouse is billowing out back and the scent beckons you inside.  They have a full service meat market and deli and their meat case is filled with fresh smoked sausage of all varieties, smoked rabbits stacked high, stuffed ponce, stuffed pork roast, a big pile of smoked pork ribs, and a wide assortment of other specialty meats like cream cheese and jalapeno pork pinwheels and bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers.  Landreneau's also has the best hamburger around.  Huge, freshly ground meat patties in a buttered bun, loaded with onions, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes.  You need both hands to hold this burger.  You need a big appetite to finish it, but we had that covered. The only hard part was going back to work after lunch!  I needed a nap instead.

With our fuel tanks topped off with the Landreneau burger, we were powered with sufficient energy to finish the task.

Gittin' it done!

In no time the task was complete.  In a day or two the happy cows will be turned into one half of the pasture and they'll eat to their heart's content on that green, green grass.

Moving the Cows From One Paddock to Another

We have a 3 acre pasture for our cows to browse around on and eat grass.  Although we have a nice-sized vegetable garden, the crop on our little homestead that gives vegetables a good run for the money is grass.  Let me further define that - a Bahia-Bermuda mix that grows out on the pasture intermixed with various weeds that grow up from the seed bank in the soil.  The more noxious weeds like Bitterweed, I pull up from the roots when I spot them growing.

The Bahia and Bermuda grass that grows wasn't planted.  It just naturally comes up.  I've found that the easiest, cheapest and best forage for us is not grasses that you plant from seed and 'force' to grow, they are the grasses that just come up on their own.  They are native to our area and seem to thrive without any inputs other than sunshine, rainfall, and animal fertilizer.  I'll probably add some lime to the pasture at some point, but really there's not much work in making our pasture grass grow.  There is, however, a little work in managing the 'buffet table' that our cows graze on.  I'm talking about the pasture, of course.

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The photo above shows the two northern-most paddocks in our pasture.  We have the 3 acre pasture divided into six individual paddocks, and the animals are allowed access to only 1 of the six at any given time.  The remaining five are blocked off as we rotate the cows through the paddocks and allow them to dine on fresh green grass that they love.  The paddocks are arranged so that the cows always can walk to shade, hay bale, and the water trough.  This is done by having a lane that all the paddocks open up to and share.

The paddocks are divided by portable electric fencing  I use poly-wire supported by fiberglass, step in posts.  Our paddock sizes aren't uniformly sized as our pasture isn't a perfect square or rectangle. Moving the cows through the pasture takes some management as there are several variables in deciding when it is time to move them from one paddock to another; it's not as easy as just moving them to a fresh paddock every day.

First, the time of year matters.  During early spring when it is still cool, the grass grows slowly and the cows quickly eat the tender growth on top.  In this case, I do cycle them to the next paddock quickly.  Next, the heat index matters.  During the heat of summer, the cows only eat grass first thing in the morning and in the late afternoon.  In this case, it may take 4 days for the cows to eat the grass in a paddock.  Also, in this environment, a lot of the grass is wasted since it grows faster than they can eat it, and the grass grows a long stem and seed head, which the cows avoid. Finally, the level of the grass eaten matters.  We try to ensure that the cows aren't eating any lower than 3 inches down on the grass.  Any lower and they can pick up parasites, so when the grass is eaten down, we move them.

Cows are true grass aficionados.  They are connoisseurs of grass and when they see me reeling up the poly-wire, they come running to get into the paddock with the fresh grass.  They know what they want and go get it!  I have several of These reels and they make opening up new paddocks easy, fast and efficient.  The picture below best illustrates this.  You can see the poly-wire running across the top of the photograph, and you can see how the grass is clipped short at the bottom in the paddock where the cows have been eating and the longer grass at the top, where they'll be moved.

See the difference in the grass height?  The difference is a miracle of sorts.  That grass has largely been converted into milk!  The sun grows the grass which is eaten by the cows, converted to milk. The waste is deposited (plop, plop) back on the pasture and combined with sunshine and rain, grows more grass and the cycle continues.

The advantages of splitting the pasture into paddocks are numerous.  This helpful link from NRCS shows the benefits of rotational grazing.  In our experience we've found all of the benefits to be true. Believe it or not, rotational grazing allows your pasture to produce more grass than in a continuous grazing arrangement.  Rotating them through different paddocks allows the pasture to "rest" and gives your pasture diversity in grass types.  The animal can pick and choose what she likes to eat and not just "cherry-pick" only one type of grass.  More grass growth, as opposed to constant-clipped growth, allows the grass to grow a deep root system, making it more healthy and gives some semblance of being drought resistance.

When you employ rotational grazing you can 'stockpile' grass.  We call one of our paddocks the sacrifice pasture.  We allow it to grow up at the end of the season and turn the cows in it to clean it up after the other grass is gone.  It is sort of like having a pantry full of canned goods for them in the off season.  Finally, as discussed above, rotational grazing allows a form of parasite control, since the cows are grazing off of grass tops instead of eating close to the ground where they pick up parasites.

We feel that rotational grazing has been a great pasture management tool for us in giving our cows the best from our limited pasture and we constantly try to improve our management of the land.

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.

MOOving the Cows to New Grass

As I talked about in earlier posts, we are a diversified little homestead farm.  I emphasize the word little because we sit on a 5 acre parcel of land.  That's it.  2 acres comprises the 'yard' where the house sits, but I've overflowed the garden into this area along with numerous fruit trees.  The pasture encompasses 3 acres and holds 2 mature Jersey cows in milk, 1 Jersey bull and 1 Jersey heifer, 1 Nubian dairy goat in milk, 1 Nubian kid, 70 laying hens and assorted roosters, a guinea, a peahen that adopted us and two dogs.  Those are a lot of animals occupying that space.  The growth of the grass is crucial.

It is for that reason that we rotational graze.  We probably don't do it perfectly as ideally you measure the height of the grass, the brix level, and there are formulas for number and weight of animals on square footage of pasture that determine when you move them.  At this point, I don't get that technical.  I have the 3 acre pasture broken into 5 or 6 paddocks and I move them when the cows tell me.  Of course I don't speak their language, so I just observe and they tell me in non-verbal ways.

Let me squat down to ground level and give you a hen's eye view of the pasture.  This particular paddock has been grazed for about 3 or 4 days and I've just moved them into the next paddock.  You can see that the grass has been clipped down by the cows some, but it is not eaten down to ground level.  You don't want them eating that close to the ground as they are susceptible to picking up parasites there.  Furthermore, the fresh, tender growth of the grass on top is sweeter, tastes better (ask Les Miles), and is more nutritious.

Moooving the cows out of this paddock

Here is a hen's eye view of the fresh paddock that I'm moving the girls into.  Can you tell the difference?  If you were a ruminant, you'd look forward to moving into this one too!  Can you see the flag leaf of the grass that is putting out seed?  The cycle continues.

Where the green grass grows

Daisy, Rosie, Bully, and Nellie watch me.  Although they are farm animals and don't possess what I would consider to be above average smarts, they know that when I walk out there and start messing around with the fence, that fresh grass is right on the other side.  Moving them doesn't require any coaxing.

Heads down, chowing down

In the late summer, winter and early spring, I have to supplement their diets with hay.  During those times their conditioning falls off a little bit.  Rains have encouraged the growth of pasture grasses and the cows are fat.  They spend most of their time in the cool parts of the day eating and their conditioning is one I would call - FAT.  You can't see their ribs and their milk boasts a very thick layer of yellow cream.

God is Good, God is Great, Thanks for the green grass on my plate, Amen.

The chickens enjoy clipping off the tops of the grass, too!

Sally and Daisy sharing a meal

I like this next photo because it illustrates rotational grazing.  You'll notice the poly wire cutting almost diagonally across the picture.  We use this to separate the paddocks.  A jump wire connects the perimeter fencing that carries an electrical charge to the lateral poly wire and electrifies it.  The cows respect it.  The paddock on the left has been grazed as evidenced by the shorter grass on the left side.  I've just moved them into the new paddock on the right.  It is kind of humorous the way they are able to contort their necks and eat underneath the wire for a little distance without getting shocked.

Grazed (left), Ungrazed (right)

I use some nifty reels that I purchased from Gallagher that have a locking ratchet to wind up and unwind the poly wire that separates the paddocks.  I have several insulators in different set places upon which to hang the reels  There's no grass in this portion as this is my low spot.  I need to get a load or two of dirt hauled in.

The Reel Deal

Finally, here is Amy, our little fat heifer.  She's in her own paddock by herself.  If we kept her with the other mama cows, we'd probably never get any milk.  We've been weaning her for a while and it may be time to put her together, though, and test to see if the mama's would let her nurse.  As they get older and try to suck, the mamas will kick them out of the way.

Little Fat Amy

The point of rotational grazing is to not over-graze your pasture.  Keep moving the cows to fresh pasture where there is fresh growth versus leaving them in one big field to 'cherry pick' all the best grass.  A good analogy is a bowl of mixed nuts you put out at a gathering.  You can take it to the bank that people are going to pick out all the cashews first.  When the cashews are gone, then they'll nibble on the pecans and then peanuts and finally the only thing left will be Brazil nuts.  Cows pick out the best grass first and so it helps to employ portion control.

You want to limit what they have available and let them eat what they want for a set time frame and then move them to 'another bowl of mixed nuts' at a later time that has 'cashews' in it.  It is a management practice that is good for your pasture and good for your animals.