how to divide pasture - long

[ajplmama]

I'm trying to decie how best to split up my pasture for next summer's grazing. The land is shown in this arial view. The red spots are our house, garage and barn (and a little shed off by itself). The barn is really small and will someday be replaced with a bigger barn but same location I hope.

The blue is the permanent paddock and measured about 1/4 of an acre. She'll be in that all winter. Is it big enough for her exercise needs? There will be very little nutrition value in the pasture in the winter so I'd like to keep her off it.

The Orange is the area we temporarily fenced for her last summer. It's about 2.5 acres. We added to it periodically when it looked like she needed some fresh grass but she always had access to the previously grazed pasture as well. Right now she still has access to this but I'm wondering if she may ruin it in winter.

The yellow is the total cleared area on the barn side of the driveway. I think in total everything is close to 10 acres.

I'd think it's probably better to run a fenced lane beside the driveway and then give her access to grazing sections one at a time than to just keep adding more to the big pasture as the season progresses. I want to continue to give her free access to her barn. Opinions?

We also keep pigs in the summer. We're thinking of keeping them apart from the cow next summer when she's pregnant. The would likely be fenced seperately towards the bottom of the photo. They really made a mess of the barn yard last summer. They have a portable house for nighttime til they are big enough that I don't worry about predators.

Any other suggestions? What else do I need to think about? How big do the sections need to be for one cow?

I'm also including pasture photos. These are late summer (August) and as you can see she's not keeping up with the pasture. It's pretty long. We mowed a section about a week after this and she spent a lot fo time in that section. The pasture is a mix of timothy, red and white clovers and native weeds/wild flowers. She had no problems keeping condition last summer.

[Janene]

My quick answer: use electric fence, set it up so it looks like wheel spokes from above. Trying to make sense here: Make wide "lanes" (1/4 or 1/3 acre?) that (all) go back to the shed/water area.
I'd start at the bottom of the first photo, then make another 'lane' and so forth all across the property.
Then I'd move her daily. You might even want to scythe or make/bale hay as well.
Janene

[Jenn]

The yellow is fence line?
take a lane from the corner of the blue, down the middle (up the pic) of the orange and smart fence small daily paddocks.

-jenn

[ajplmama]

Thanks, The yellow is currently hay/pasture but not fenced. We don't need hay from there (because we have the same amount of land cleared on the other side of the road) and have found it really hard to get someone to make our hay for us. We need equipment but it's expensive - way more expensive than buying hay around here. So we cut it with the bush hog when it gets long.

I could move her daily from one semi-permanent lane to the next but I'd never manage to move fencing daily. Everythign is electric already. The paddock type area is permanent wooden posts and the rest is step-in posts so easy to move. Just time consuming before or after work.

Would you graze the pigs with her? In the lane next to her? On completely different pasture?

[Jenn]

I would follow the pigs AFTER the cow, in rotation. The pigs will clean up after the cows and are a dead end host for ruminant parasites.

-Jenn

[rosalind]

There's another thread about rotational grazing going on right now too: familycow.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=pasture&thread=43420&page=1#375419

Here are a couple options (roughly sketched) below. The first option would be preferrable in that the paddocks would be squarer and I think you could get the paddocks smaller sized for the cow. The purple line in the middle represents a "alley" and the blue lines represent your dividing fields.

I like the alley, because your pen is always open to the alley, and you can have just one water trough near the barn, so the cow always has access to water and you're not having to mess with lines or any other bother!

We usually take our electrical "guts" down each fall and put them back up just before we pasture. Most of the border fences are permanent.

[rosalind]

Dec 5, 2011 10:59:48 GMT -5 ajplmama said:

The blue is the permanent paddock and measured about 1/4 of an acre. She'll be in that all winter. Is it big enough for her exercise needs?

The Orange is the area we temporarily fenced for her last summer. It's about 2.5 acres. Right now she still has access to this but I'm wondering if she may ruin it in winter.

How big do the sections need to be for one cow?
Would you graze the pigs with her? In the lane next to her? On completely different pasture?

1. Yes, 1/4 acres is enough. As long as she can get to sunshine when it's available, that's the most important thing in winter, I think. And best not to ruin your pastures in winter. We keep our cows in for the winter, they usually get back out to pasture in April/May.

2. One cow will probably not completely eat up a pasture as well as you'd like unless you make the pastures tiny. LOL We clip each pasture to keep the grass at a palatable height for the cows. So, our paddocks are big enough for a tractor and brush hog to turn around in.

3. Never done that, but from what I've seen others do, the pigs would be in separate pastures. Preferrably, the dairy cow should get the first pick, best freshest pasture. Then behind her comes your other critters... steers, pigs, chickens, etc.

[ajplmama]

Thanks for the great responses. I'm going to get my husband to look at some of the suggestions since it always seems to be him implementing my plans (I work away from the house full time and he's home with the kids and animals).

[Deleted]

We have a one acre pasture and would like to get a Dexter cow. Would this pasture be big enough to support the cow? Does a cow have to have shelter during the winter? We have never had a cow before so any suggestion would be appreciated. Thank you Ellen

[Deleted]

I know you asked about how to split up your pasture, but after that there are some other considerations for rotational grazing, so I thought I'd share the mistakes I made. Before I started, I researched thoroghly and then proceeded to do it my way....and you can guess the results Anyway, just a few thoghts:

One was a stocking density of good pasture is 1.5 acres/cow calf pair. The idea is that in a good year, it's too much acreage so clip or cut hay if you have too, but in a drought year you are still OK. (With 10 acres you're cool, but now more details to manage.)

Second was don't let them back track over a previously grazed area until it recovers. In most cases its about 10-14 days. Your cow will like the sweet new growth best and will keep nibbling the recently grazed areas if given a choice.

Third was not go graze below 4-6 inches in height. I completely ignored this. Once you open up the soil to sun and rain, the weeds can start to outcompete your pasture. Also, 6" tall pasture just bounces back because of more root mass, shortly clipped grass takes a long time to get going again.

At first getting the pasture diced up into the right size segments was a pain, but now it saves me a lot of money. It'sworth the time you are spending on it.

[Jenn]

Rest period is good...so is not over grazing.

However, you can not ASSUME that YOUR pasture will support the same amount of cows to acreage as someone else's. Growing season, weather, MANAGEMENT, nutrition in the soil can vary significantly from one farm to another.

-Jenn

[ajplmama]

Thanks for the info! We haven't done anything yet as it's frozen and snow covered but are making plans for spring.