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Today I'll give you a detailed overview of how BEST to optimize your cattle pasture. Along the way, I'll talk about the struggles and solutions to common pasturing problems. If you're wondering how to divide a cattle pasture for maximum productivity, this video is for you! Pasture cows are certainly work to maintain, but so rewarding once you get a solid system down.
This clip is from the "on the land" segment of my full-length podcast, Practical Living. If you want to check out the "better homes" and "in the workshop" segments, the link to the full show is below!
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0:00
Well this morning I'm going to be dividing some of my pasture into smaller chunks for
0:22
more productive grazing. This is something that happens once a year. I've already divided out some of the sections
0:29
I have some others to do so let's go take a look and I'll show you how I make it happen
0:47
So you can probably get two to three hundred percent more productivity from a pasture if
0:54
you divide it into sections and you keep the cattle in those sections for a relatively
1:00
short period of time. So these animals here are looking for some fresh grass
1:08
There's still a lot of grass here. They could survive on here for a number of more days but I'm going to give them some
1:13
fresh stuff. But before I do I'm going to show you this drawing here
1:20
So this is a Google Earth view of my fields and you'll see on the sides there's all these
1:27
points marked. Those are points where I will be stringing some of this stuff
1:33
It's the stuff that you saw me go under. It's called polywire and it's basically just plastic twine but it's got some metal filaments
1:44
in it. It's a source of electricity and we divide the pasture using an electric fencer
1:51
So it's not lethal certainly but it's just uncomfortable if you touch it and that's what
1:56
keeps the cattle where we want them to be. I mean these animals are between six and seven hundred pounds most of them
2:04
They could certainly go through a plastic string if they wanted to but they learn not
2:08
to touch it and that's how we contain cattle in different sections of the pasture
2:14
It's simple but so so effective. So this piece of paper I keep in my toolbox and it shows me where I need to start unrolling
2:27
the polywire around the perimeter of these fields and they all go together in a point
2:32
like this because that's where I have two water troughs which I'll show you later
2:36
There's a fence line here, there's a water trough on one side and a water trough on the other
2:40
I get the water from my son Robert's house. His place is, where would it be, it would be right here about a hundred yards into the
2:48
forest and we have a drinking water safe garden hose going out to these troughs
2:57
So I run these polywire lines once in the season and I leave them up and then I take
3:05
them down again in the fall. I don't have permanent fencing for dividing these sections up for a couple of reasons
3:12
because I'm always tweaking the system, adjusting the size of the areas but also any permanent
3:22
fence will attract weeds and brush and trees and things like that and it's very hard to
3:28
trim around it. So one nice thing about being able to take up these polywires is that I can clip my whole
3:35
field, I can mow it off and that's how we control weeds here and encourage the kind
3:40
of growth we want. So I've got all of these are already installed
3:45
The cattle are now in this slot here. I don't have any of these other polywires installed yet so that's what I'm going to
3:54
show you now. We're going to install this polywire so we need to go, the mat goes like this, this is
4:02
the way the fields go. So we need to go over there in order to anchor the polywire and then we're going to spool
4:11
it out until we get all the way to the water trough and then I'm going to back over it
4:16
and put up the posts you see. They just go in with your foot and they hold the wire up
4:23
It's a great system, highly productive. I often think of the old time farmers that didn't have this technology, not that it's
4:31
fancy or anything but the boost in output is enormous. So let's go and take a look
5:01
So one of the things I have to keep my eye out for is thistles and weeds I don't want
5:19
So even though I'm not out getting rid of them right now, I have on board some thistle
5:24
killer here so if I see them as I'm going about my ordinary business I can just, and
5:34
that's it. That thistle is going to die in about a month or so
5:38
Let's get onto the fence line and get this polywire unrolled. So before I get going I'm just super pleased with the way things have grown here
5:45
I mean this was a very poor part of the field when I took it over but the rotational grazing helps
5:52
I've added some fertility, I've done some frost seeding which I'll tell you about later
5:58
and that's how we get nutritious hay plants like this clover and then this vetch here
6:03
So, and my goodness, some of that grass is almost as tall as I am
6:08
Anyway, back to the paper. So we need to attach our polywire to point seven
6:18
Now the reason I do it with Google Earth like this is because for the first two years I was doing this I was just eyeballing it
6:24
I'd say well you know if I put one there and I put another polywire there it'll all be
6:27
pretty much the same size. Then I thought well why don't I just check it on Google Earth, check it with the area tool
6:34
And boy was I ever off. I don't think anybody can properly estimate sizes of sections like this when they're irregularly
6:44
shaped like these triangles because some of my plots that I figured were all the same
6:50
size some of them were twice as big as others. That's how bad eyeballing is
6:54
So our first step is to get this roll of polywire and find our spot on the fence
7:06
I'm aiming for about three acres for each section. Cattle won't be on the same piece of ground except maybe once a month or once every six
7:18
weeks for a short period of time and that allows things to start growing back because
7:23
cattle will trample a lot, they'll selectively feed, make really poor use of the pasture
7:29
if you let them do what they want to do. But if you keep them in certain sections you let the vast majority of your field heal and
7:37
grow back more productively and that's really where the gains come from
7:41
So that steel wire is energized and that is what's going to be providing the power to
7:47
this polywire. So yes I'm working with these things live which means I kind of have to be careful
7:57
Like I said it's not lethal but you don't want to touch that wire if you can't help it
8:04
So I used to use regular bungee cords for this but they rotted out in a year or two
8:17
of exposure to the sun so I thought well gee I'll just try some some rubber bungees here
8:23
see how that works. You think rubber is always an electrical insulator but it's actually not at least not these ones
8:34
I found that when I had the hook connected right to the string I was actually getting
8:40
a short situation I was I was losing power that way so that's why I have this insulator
8:44
on here. Now remember you don't want to touch this and I also want to get an eye on where I'm
8:51
going so that's the direction I want to go. So I will just pay out a little bit of line here and then I'm going to go get the four
9:04
wheeler because I got something neat to show you a real efficiency booster for unrolling
9:19
So come on over here and let me show you this gizmo I made up
9:24
Two inch steel pipe some tubular stock here and now I've now I've got a little arm that's
9:38
going to hold that reel out as I drive. So my job here now is just to drive as straight as I can keeping my eye on my destination
10:19
So that birdhouse there I'm building more of them each year those are for tree swallows
10:34
they don't want to be around other any trees any other nest boxes the reason I want to
10:40
encourage them here is because tree swallows eat a lot of flies and flies are a real bother
10:46
to cattle in the summertime so it's hard to tell how well it's working we don't have a
10:53
lot of flies around the cattle right now but it usually comes later in the summer but those
10:58
nest boxes are my plan to try to deal with the flies in a natural way
11:16
So now it's time to make the connection to the other end so that ratchet was not
11:42
engaged of course when I was doing the the unspooling but I want to get it ready to be
11:48
engaged now so I can tighten up the the poly wear. So if you have to cross these things
12:10
you could do try to do the limbo dance underneath of them but you're not going to get a shock with
12:16
rubber boots so I just step over it it's flexible enough that's no problem. Now these are the posts
12:22
I use there's lots of different kinds of posts for this this is made by a company called Gallagher
12:27
I think they make the best electric fencing stuff in the world they're from New Zealand
12:32
and it's just super easy to use and then and then that's it. These will stay up until the
12:40
cattle leave in the fall and then I'll take everything down again so it's not like I have
12:45
to do this every time I need to move the cattle. I used to do this job entirely by hand walking
12:53
out the poly wire and carrying a bundle of posts in my hand because you can never carry all that
13:00
you need so you got to walk back and get more. I'm all for exercise and things but sometimes you
13:07
just need to get stuff done too. So we've got one more thing to do and that's to give the cattle access to their new section so
14:24
let's go back to the water troughs and make that happen. Unlike people cattle really do know when
14:39
grass is greener on the other side of the fence so I'm not going to need to persuade them to
14:44
move over. They're kind of anticipating it as you can see. So for the time being I'm just going to
15:01
let them have access to the section they're in because that's where they are now and then this
15:09
section and then when I've noticed they're all here I'll just take this poly wire and zoom it
15:15
over there so they can't get back in because like I said the whole advantage of this rotational
15:21
grazing thing is that you let some sections have a chance to heal and it really does make a big
15:27
difference so and it's normally not this much work moving the cattle around it's just I've had to set
15:31
up that poly wire so typically as the season progresses I'm just going to open and close
15:37
wires and it's surprisingly easy to get them to go where you want them to go especially when
15:43
there's a reason for them to go there. So there you go pasture division on Manitoulin Island
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