any ideas for converting to rotational grazing?

CBinTexas

Most of the time I disconnect the wire that makes the entire fence hot. I have a wire from the charger that feeds the main entrance that acts as a gate.

However, I can and do work the fence hot with no problem. Any polywire that is strung across the paddock will be disconnected from the charger by removing the reel from the hot side of the metal fence and placing the reel back on the fence post without making electrical connection. Then I simply put the total nonconductive reel with the polywire that I am going to install on top of the fence post and pull the polywire across the paddock to the opposite wire fence. The opposite wire fence will not be hot having done the above. I tie the polywire as shown in the pic and return to the reel side and install the reels to the hot wire with the fence hot. Since the reel is nonconductive there will be no shock. If you need to touch the wire and you think it is hot lean back so only your heels are support yourself and with one hand swipe over the the fence several times until you get a mild shock or no shock. Your shoe heels are much more of an insulator and you will have less ground contact thus resulting in less shock. Sometimes you just have to "cowboy up!" and get the job done.

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

qAgmantoo, I was not aware that one side of your high tensile fence was not powered, that explains it. So it is actually powered by your polywire? My calves also go under our wire but I've only had the hooks knocked off once or twice and never in a regular, single day paddock, always by the barn or something that was more long term, over winter, etc.

I'm not doing anything to the manure, most has been stepped in a few times and it's distributed all over the paddock, not usually concentrated in any one spot.
Here is a bunch of pictures, all in order of time showing what the pasture looked like, how it looked after grazing, and how it looks this week.
This picture (edit: I left off the early picture and will add it later) is from the beginning of the spring, when growth was just starting. Last year we didn't get the seed in the ground until April 17th so it had been about 10.5 months or so since it was drilled. We are very heavy on the alfalfa, and didn't plan it this way, but it seems to be working. On the regrowth it seems that the grass is coming it more and the alfalfa a little slower.... it will be interesting to see the change in a couple of years.



This is the day after I moved the cows and with a little rain and time it really recovers.

I took this picture while rounding up one of our steers that I had taken to the barn for a few days. He didn't want to follow me when he had all this nice regrowth to stop and eat.
This grass is ready to graze now, if we had to, but we probably won't get to it for 30 days or more.

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www.franciscanfamilyfarms.com
Chaffee, Mo

wstevenl
The forage looks great! There are many seasoned cattlemen that cannot produce a pasture that looks that good. You should be proud of your accomplishment.
I am going to make two recommendations. Scatter the manure. If you do not the cattle will graze around the pats and the forage will not be uniform from the nutrients in the manure not being uniformly dispersed.
You see the drill pattern in the after grazed paddock? It is for this reason that I do not like to drill. I prefer to broadcast and to not have the defined rows. The gaps are great for letting weeds get started. It takes a long time for the plants to grow into the row centers. Consider letting the cattle walk some seed into the area between the drilled rows. Do you have a small broadcast seeder? If not look at those made by Herd. The Herd unit is great for seeding small seed. The setting of the amount of seed to be sow is a bit annoying but it is a good seeder. I suggest you do some research on Red River Crab Grass. Now is the time to plant it. The RRCG could carry you through the hot dry months. Once established it is with you from now on.
Let me reiterate, you have done a great job on getting the system going in a short time and you should see great benefits.

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

Thanks for sharing, wstevenl. Everything looks great!

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Godsgapeach

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

–GK Chesterton

Agmantoo,
Thanks for the compliments. I too am pretty upset with the drill lines. In the future do you think we would want to broadcast and then use a culti-packer or something to press the seed into the ground or drag the ground? We have been broadcasting orchard, timothy, and rye grass at different times to try and fill in some of that bare stuff. In alot of places the clover is filling it in very well.
We don't own a 4-wheeler or tractor so distributing the manure would be pretty burdensome. If it became a big problem I guess we would have to find a way to do it. Right now it seems that the dung beetles are really starting to work well. Many many of the cow paddies were nothing more than a shell and the inside was ether hollow or full of dirt because the dung beetles have had their way with them. I walked the pasture yesterday and there was alot of seedlings coming up, I believe from what I saw last year that these are both crabgrass and foxtail. Do you know if crabgrass that is volunteer is comparable to RRCG?

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www.franciscanfamilyfarms.com
Chaffee, Mo

wstevenl, There is some information about crabgrass and RRCG available online at:

http://www.noble.org/Ag/Forage/Crabg...age/index.html

It includes a section about management of volunteer stands of crabgrass and just about everything else anybody would care to know about crabgrass and its management in the links on the left hand side of the page.

Not sure I'm following you. Is one side of the paddock hot, and the other side not hot until you connect it with the polywire?

ArmyDoc,
Due to the distance to some of the back paddocks I just use one side of the lane or one side of the single wire paddock to get power to the area being grazed. I then use the polywire to power the other side. Since I have a polywire behind and ahead of the herd the four sides of the paddock are hot. I also use polywire to partition the lane off in the same manner to get the cattle to water. Your statement above is correct.

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

Thanks. I would have never thought of doing it that way, but it makes perfect sense - easier to route power the high tension wires and a lot easier to move the poly wires, and most importantly, the area you are most interested in is powered. Thanks again.

Agman, I'm looking at the Parmak chargers. http://www.jefferslivestock.com/ssc/...ak&cmkw=Parmak

I'm wondering if the SE-4 Supercharger is sufficient with a supposed 50 mile range. I was also looking at the RM-1 but just saw that it's for indoor installation--we could swing that but it would be more difficult.

Basically I want to know if the SE-4 would deliver a significant enough POP or if I need more bang

Thanks!

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Godsgapeach

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

–GK Chesterton

Have you considered at all following your cows with a flock of chickens...ala Joel Salatin style? I realize that may not be part of your over all plan, but they do a fantastic job of scratching out the cow pats.
Just a thought.
Trisha

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Trisha in WA
Visit my blog @
Diamond Belle Ranch

What else does a man have to do in his short time here on earth than build soil and feed people~Forerunner

Agmantoo

A bunch of questions for you

1) Assuming that my perimeter was polywire also would the same wrapping technique make a good enough electrical connection between the perimeter polywire and the dividing polywire?

2) How many times can this type of polyrope be tied this way before the internal wires start to break? Do you just trim off the last couple of feet every once in a while to prevent prblems with that?

3) I'm getting set up with paddocks for 2 cows. I have wood posts driven at the perimeter of the field with no provision for a lane. I figured I'd divide things up internally later if necessary but for now use steel posts temporarily. My one field is about 128 ft wide and 275 feet long. If I divide up the field the narrow direction I probably only need a few feet of grass a day. I think I would be better dividing into more squarish segments so the cattle have room to move between the front and rear sections of the wire. Could you suggest a clever and simple way to divide this into sub paddocks that would suit two cows and be easy to change the ropes daily without having numerous reels out there. I think I'm overthinking this a bit and I could use the help of someone who's thought and lived with this kind of thing for a while. I know you'd give a better answer if you know more but I'd say my grass is pretty good and is about shin high right now and I plan to move my water daily with the cattle.

Thanks

Ed

We do have hens in the pasture. Last year we had them moving behind the cows a little better than this year, so far....
The hens tend to want to return to the barn so we're trying to enclose them with electric netting and move them every 5-7 days... after a while they may choose to stay near their chicken tractor without the netting. That would make things easier to manage. When the cows get back to the barn to start rotation #2, we'll be trying to follow them again. Also, we only have about 30 pullets and 12 hens. They would work better if there was a couple hundred in an eggmobile like Salatins... again, we would need a tractor to move it. :-(

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www.franciscanfamilyfarms.com
Chaffee, Mo

Ed,
On using polywire for the permanent lines also.... I wouldn't. It tends to stretch and get loose over time so it works well where you move it often, but other than that, I would use High Tensile wire.
I too wonder if the wires wear out where they are being wrapped and tied.
Steven

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www.franciscanfamilyfarms.com
Chaffee, Mo

Ed K
As wstevenl stated, you need the high tensile wire on the permanent portion of the fence.

The polywire can be tied off in the manner above at least 50 to 60 times before the small wires start to break. I know I get more than a couple of months use out of the ends. When it starts to break I cut 18 to 20 inches off the end.

Ed, I would just not move the polywire that prevents back grazing as close to the cattle. Once you get underway with the grazing, I would just keep the bach grazing ploywire two to three days behind the cattle. This would give the cattle more area to move around. As long as you provide enough area of fresh grass the cattle will not graze the area they had the day before. Having cattle on the same ground for up to 3 days is not a problem. Just do not leave them a longer duration. You will have more grass than you ever expect.

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

wstevenl
You need to be locating a tractor along with a drag harrow and a mower. The drag harrow will let you distribute the manure so all the plants will share in the nutrients. If you do not do this you will soon see very dark green and very light green areas in the forage. The very dark will grow but the cattle will be reluctant to eat it due to the manure smell that will prevail. They will graze the light green but since that area is lacking in nutrient it will be poor quality feed. As the pasture gets segmented with the very rich patches and the not so rich patches weeds will start to get a foothold particularly in between the drill rows. The cattle will not eat some weeds and those weeds will start to flourish and go to seed since you cannot cut them to prevent their going to seed

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

AG. Ok you answered my question about giving them space by lagging the backwire but are you saying that you would reccomend that for even as few as 2 cows I would strip graze with my front and back moving wires in the 128 ft dimension only advancing the front wire a few feet as necessary or two rather than trying to subdivide the width into 3 more rectangular sections of roughly 40 ft wide. If so that would certainly be simpler. When I thought of how to divide thge width and still advance the cattle it got a little confusing when I get to the end how do I move them forward but If I go with one wide trip that sure makes it easier for my pea brain to figure out.

Thanks

Ed

Wstevenl,

I wasn't thinking of any of my fence as permanent so that's why I was wanting to use polywire everywhere. My front pasture and my back pasture are separate from each other so when the cattle are in fron I would set up there and when in the back all the wire would be removed. The idea being to give the deer and my kids a place to move around in when that area is not in use. When in a certain area I was thinking of setting up the perimeter as stationary and just advancing the cross wire.

Thanks

Agmantoo,

What does your drag harrow look like? How do you drag the pasture without ripping up the grass? Don't the cows have to graze it down to 3-6in to be effective? I don't have enough cows yet and my pasture is knee high with mostly clover and some orchard grass. With all this rain, the clover is taking over, and we just mowed it 10 days ago.

BTW, outstanding thread, I am learning so much!

John

Now I'm really confused since you have up to three polywires across the paddock at any time, which one powers the "other side"? Can you provide a simple line drawing showing the setup and where the "input" connection is?
Thanks,
CB