any ideas for converting to rotational grazing?

I'm just a little further south of Agmantoo and I have been getting regular rains here - it's been just amazing - as soon as the ground starts to dry out on the surface down comes rain. When I seeded clover some areas took better than others, the area's it took I have 2 foot high clover in front of the cattle - not a patch here or there but so thick you would think it's the only thing I have growing.

I made a mistake however with my shade situation and I think it may have cost me a calf that I believe was stillborn or just too stressed because in the 24 hours between checking on them it dropped and was already in rigor. The cattle had no access to shade and the temp hit 90 - when I checked on them I debated letting them to shade that day and just working them from the other end of the lane back toward the middle but I checked the weather and the 90 of the day was going to be the hottest of the week with temps falling the rest of the week. Lesson learned =(

Not that I have had the opportunity to use it recently but I thought that I would share a pic of the drag harrow that was made from some recycled materials I bought. The only new items was the pipe used for the tongue and some bar stock. With the limited use to date of the harrow I have been satisfied with the results. Being nearly 20 wide it doesn't take very long for just a 40 HP tractor to cover some acreage. My rough calculations indicate about 4 acres/hour.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Agmantoo, in previous post 2872, you mentioned you were using epsom salt in your fly spray. What is the reason? Tnks. KB

In the past while doing research online I came across a story of someone using rotational grazing, but the difference was he didn't have any interior fences. He used a mower. If I remember correctly he would mow an amount that would be like a paddock every day for the cows. Has anyone else tried using this method. If you know of the article and can post I would appreciate. Tnks, KB

I cannot substantiate that the epsom salt actually contributes to the fly control but I read that epsom salt contributes to the healing of insect bites and I also thought it may discourage the flies from biting. Magnesium sulfate is not very palatable. I tasted it! I had read earlier that there was a homemade fly spray that contained the epsom salt so I included it in my concoction knowing it is approved for human consumption.

Having read your question, I made it a point to thoroughly look the herd over today when I moved them. Even with near daily rain storms the fly load per animals was minimal with no more than ~15 to 20 flies.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

I have to limit the available area allocated because the first thing the animals do is to walk the area over to determine what is the most desirable forage available. I know of farmers in the past that would plow a furrow around standing corn and then install a hot wire in the furrow to limit hogs as to what they were to consume. After doing this for a few days the hogs would come conditioned to not cross the furrow and the farmer could cease to use the hot wire. Never seen it done with cattle.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Someone needs to invent a white laser beam that would project about 300 to 400 ft so that the cattle could see it and think its an electric fence. Just set it over your post and point it in the direction you want.
Now there's an idea somebody can take and make a million dollars off of it.

found a good video on rotational grazing on YouTube....

Thanks, ATP. That was a good video. I am pondering the conversion of our current rotational grazing setup (weekly moves) to more of a strip-per-day type of arrangement. I have a couple of mega-sized paddocks (relative to the others) that just don't get grazed well. On a whim, I just put up some temporary polywire to bisect the pastures to shorten it--with the goal of keeping the cows from overgrazing the regions nearest to the waterer. The first half of the grazing period went well. They grazed the whole area fairly uniformly. In the first half, water and shade are at opposite corners, so they seem to travel pretty well across the entire half. The second half was a more of a mess because my feeble attempt at quickly putting in a lane using the polywire did not go as well as I had hoped. I'll try a tiny bit harder next time...However...I did not see the use of lanes in that video. It looks like a single strand was advanced through the paddock. That is basically what I had after the lane was destroyed. They still spent the majority of the time grazing the new grass, but I am finding them more and more frequently on the first half, even though there is what I would consider good grass left on the 2nd half. I've looked at the pasture on google earth. It looks like the far corner of the 2nd half is 1200' away from the water. Almost all of it is further than the recommended 800', especially with the way I had my lane. I am suspecting that the distance is at play on what I am observing...

What are your thoughts on the using a lane vs. allowing the cows to back-graze? Does your answer depend on the season?

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Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

Permitting back grazing is a sure way of reducing the preferred forage and promoting the undesirable plants. That was a well done video and it had much of the content recorded near me. I do not know the people in it however.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

The video looked like it was made in the winter or early winter because the theme of it was reducing the need for feeding hay.
I personally don't think not having a back fence is a problem as long as you keep the backfence no more than 3 or 4 days out. What you don't want to do is allow them access to pasture grazed a week or two weeks back. Even in the winter the fescue will grow a little if it gets above 40 degrees.
I'm finding that lengthening my recovery time out to at least 45 days to 2 months or even longer is helping me.

What's the best way to wrap electrified high tensil wire around a metal pipe fence corner?

Also what's the best pin to use on poly posts so that you can easily drop or raise the wire at any given point in the line?

I use the "hair pin/cotter pin" wire clips sold to attach the high tensile to a drilled post. I prefer the longer length version which is roughly 6 inches long. I put the hair pin over the high tensile fence wire and then twist the legs of the hair pin once around the wire so that when I take the hair pin from the post the hair pins cannot lose off the high tensile fence wire.

__________________
Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!

Regarding back grazing - I try not to do this but when the temps reach above 85 degrees shade becomes more important to me than keeping the cows from back grazing. I have 4 long permanent paddocks that are 200 feet wide by ~2500 feet long but pasture is only about 2000 of the 2500 feet.

With out the hunt for shade I usually give my cows a 200 ft by 100 ft section for them to graze and perform daily moves however once the temps go over 85 I start at the shade and don't put up the back fence thus allowing them to reach the shade which also allows them to back graze.

Ideallly I would like to limit them to not have access to any 1 spot for more than 6 days which in 3 of the 4 long permenant partitions is no problem but I have 1 of them that the middle is 10 days from the shade so the worst case for me is 4 daily moves worth having more than 6 days of back graze on it.

I could try to make lanes and all that but it's simply not worth the extra setup it would take to create a dynamic lane that is up to 1,000 feet long.

What about water you may be thinking if your not familiar with my setup - I have 6,000 feet of buried water lines with a hydrant every 200 feet, each hydrant serves 2 permanent lanes and I have a mobile water cart that every other day I pull 200 feet down the lane to hook to the next hydrant. My cows are never more than 200 feet away from water except when I am allowing back grazing then I get lazy and leave the water cart in one place close to the shade.

If I figure right you have about 80 days of grazing or 80 days of recovery. If you are in one paddock for 20 days they will definitely be picking new growth, but if you can let it rest for 60 to 80 days you maybe able to overcome it. If you see improvement from year to year it may be ok.

I've seen in several posts links to buy fencing supplies and i was curious where was the best place to buy it all....energizer, posts clips, wire...polywire...etc...
i had made a out a pretty good order at kencove then noticed the shipping (over $100).. and i thought i would wait and post this question.... there was about 200 posts in the order(4ft by 1/2 fiberglass and step in's)...i suppose that will add up anywhere... anyone know of free shipping...?
thanks.

I buy my posts and hi-tensile wire at the local TSC - best prices I have found in my area; everything else I ordered from Kencove including my post driver.

I drive past a Ken-Cove distribution place twice a day. I get quite a bit from them, but not all. I mostly shop around the farm and lumber stores for the best deals.

__________________

Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

could I ask someone to post a review of exactly how to stockpile grass for winter grazing...currently we are fairly easily doing a 12 week rotation....we have had rain and the grass is thick and green....but if I set half the area aside for January....do I just keep rotating the herd on the other half?.....we are only half way through the second rotation of 2013...we started late into April.....and the cows are fat and sassy now....we will pull off a few calves to sell soon and the cows are due to calve in the fall....

this year with all the rain and improved pastures, (our third year of rotating) it seems like we are ready to see how far we can get with out hay or using very little....we will have 9 cow/calf pairs and a bull and two steers to feed on a total of maybe 25 acres....the pastures are of varying quality......though with the rain all look good for the moment...

our goal is to do without hay, but we also want the highest quality soil/grass we can develop out here..these pastures were almost ruined with cotton and corn so it will take a while to restore them...

I understand stockpiling but would just like to know more of the actual how to do it...thanks

Hi gwithrow,

Here is what I do.
Around the end of September when the fescue begins its growth I put the herd on a fast and controlled rotation on the tallest forage. I set aside the area that I will use for stockpiled Winter grazing. I usually use the hilly ground with an eastern or southern exposure because it will be the warmest and the less muddy land during Winter. This time period is the Fall growth season for the grass and the nutrient level is good so I may reduce the area allocated particularly in the drier years. During this time I will pull the drag harrow behind the grazing cattle as I want a uniform distribution of the manure so that when the cattle return they will graze the complete paddock rather than avoiding the cow patties. If I have bare spots or insufficient stands of grass in the area that I am stockpiling I would have seeded Marshall ryegrass in early September. The area that is being grazed will be rotated several times before going onto the stockpiled paddocks. If you utilize the area being grazed to maximum you will find that even late in the year you will still get some growth on warm days. I would not expect you to go onto stockpiled grass until mid January at the earliest. Do not concern yourself with grazing the grass too short in late December and January as the fescue is going dormant regardless. I do like to have at least part of the stockpiled area overseeded to give a burst of growth starting in March. In difficult years I will sometimes in Spring have to return to the area that was grazed in the Fall to get a few more days of grazing till the weather warms breaking dormancy.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!