Rotational Grazing: How I Move My Cows

One of the common questions rotational grazers "field" (Haha!) is how do you get your cows to move to the new paddock?  The easy answer?  You open the fence.  Bovines aren't super intelligent relative to other animals, but when it comes to food and water, they have very good memories.

When I first started rotational grazing my cows, I had a whole bunch of "slots" separated in the larger field.  Imagine them being set up like a bowling alley where the cows are the ball.  They use whatever lane they have access to, eat all the grass in it, then I had to chase them completely out of that lane, close the fence, then open the next one.  

That method didn't work very well because a full, extremely tame cow doesn't chase very well.   There was a lot of arm waving and yelling coming from me whilst my bovines sat there and watched the charades while they chewed their cud.

My next and now employed method is to take advantage of a cow's natural tendency to walk around humans and go the opposite direction the human is going.  So, I still have my bowling alley lanes, but instead of having to move the balls (aka, cows) all the way out of the lane they are currently in, I simply get them close to the end where I have my polywire reel, and then roll up the divider between the lanes.  The cows then happily walk around me and into the new paddock.    I am not yelling or waving my arms, and they aren't stubbornly standing there watching my machinations at leadership.

Here's a couple videos showing what goes on in one of my daily moves.   

The first video shows how my cows line themselves up for the first move.  The following video shows one of my temporary fence "joints" and actually moving the cows. 

Pretty easy, right?   Let me know what you think in the comments below!  

Be blessed.  -Kenny