Intensive Grazing 101

(THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.  PLEASE PARDON OUR MESS!) Intensive grazing is the new catch phrase in the cattle world.  What does it mean, though?   It means you put a lot of cows in a small pasture or "paddock" so they eat it quickly, evenly, and minimize waste from laying on it and walking all over the place before deciding to eat somewhere else.  That's mostly it.  There are some numbers thrown around, such as stocking rates, pounds of animals per acre, animals per hour, etc., but intensive grazing largely just means that you're moving your cows to a new paddock at least a few times a week and sometimes a couple times a day.   Some folks out there will get a little up in arms about terminology and the number of animals you have per acre, but don't get excited; you're just putting a large number of animals in a relatively small section of land and moving them once they eat the amount of forage you want removed.

The following columns share my limited experience with intensive grazing.  First, the equipment I used, my methods for figuring out how much to graze, and then how I actually set up my fences.  I hope you find the information useful!  

Equipment

Having the right equipment really makes the transition to intensive grazing much easier.  I started out with some of the wrong equipment, but I made it work.  I learned very quickly that spending some cash makes life a whole lot better though!  I started out with 3/8" posts made from steel rebar and with the "fiberglass post" type insulators.  The first thing I did was cut a whole bunch of chunks of angle iron and weld a piece onto each of the posts so I could step them in rather than having to carry a hammer and pound each one in.  

That worked OK.  Except that the rebar posts were heavy (I don't own a four wheeler or UTV), and I kept having to adjust the insulators as they would slip or rotate or something between pulling, hauling, and reinstalling them.  I also had the standard reels for my polywire.  Those worked fine, except when I had to roll up an entire quarter mile of fence twice a day and my arms started screaming at me by the end of that quarter mile.  In summary, my initial equipment was heavy, time consuming, and a little painful to operate.  Thus, we enter the lesson that I wish I knew before I started:

The best advice I can give you is to get geared reels for your polywire.  All it takes is one field that you haven't cross fenced for you to realize that double the price is totally worth it.  I've used Gallagher, Stafix, Speedrite, and O'Brien geared reels and all are approximately equal.  None of them have exceptionally superior fit and/or finish, but I appreciate that the Stafix reels come with a handle that can either be "dead" or energized.  You can also get the same handles separately for $3 locally.  I highly recommend the Stafix style handles.  They add a degree of flexibility that is very useful when you are learning how to best move and energize your fences.  They are designed like the ones shown here.  

I bought the medium reels for all my 1/4 mile long runs with the standard polywire and one large reel for the fields we have that are a a bit over 1/4 mile long.  I linked a couple of the geared reels in this column.  I would have bought them locally, but the local farm store only had the large reels and I didn't want to lug any more weight around than I already had to.

I also found a place where I could buy 1/4 mile of the polywire for about $26/roll shipped, so I loaded up on that deal.  The downside to the cheap polywire is that you can't use it for your main power if you have a lot of fence; you still have to have galvanized wire around your perimeter otherwise even the super powerful energizers will lose a bunch of voltage if you have long runs of polywire for your primary feed.  

If you want your wire to last longer and render more fear in the local wildlife, invest in the lower impedance polywire such as Turbowire and the like.  Since this was my initial purchase and I was trying to conserve cash outlays, I went the cheap route with the standard polywire and I will upgrade my spools as I can.  The lower impedance wire is about double the cost of the polywire.

I have also tried the electronic electric fence alert devices that hang on the energized wire and flash a red light at you when your fence voltage gets too low.  These have saved my bacon a few times.  They only downside is that they only have a 2 week battery life if your fence voltage is low and they are a little hard to see in daylight.  These work well, but I would instead first spend your money on a high quality digital fence tester for around $100 and just check your fences periodically.  I went with a Stafix tester because it didn't require a ground wire and had good reviews.  I am very pleased with the Stafix tester.  The link is embedded in this post. 

If you don't have a lot of fence to worry about and it's relatively new and properly installed, you can probably get away with a cheaper light-bar style fence tester.  But if you're like most farms where fence is cobbled together all over the place, invest in a good tester and thank me later.

For the step in posts, my first purchase was a whole bunch of "pigtail" type galvanized step in posts.  I bought my first two batches of pigtail posts from Kencove.com for just under $3 apiece.  Odd thing though, the first set of 50 I got had one loop and then the end was still straight and curved up slightly.  I loved these as I could hang my reels directly off the posts.  The first set of posts resembled this product.  

The second set of posts I got, same part number, instead had one loop but the end was curved straight up and made it so I couldn't hang my reel directly on the post.   The second set of posts resembled the first photo displayed for this product.  Note that the photos for the second set of posts has a different style pigtail.  Annoying, to say the least. 

Kencove.com had good service and reasonably fast shipping, but I feel like their inventory control and their photos aren't always representative.  I had a couple other products that I bought once but the product I ended up with on my second order ended up being a different product (though almost the same functionality) the second time I ordered them.   

The pigtail posts are probably one of the easiest styles for running your polywire into and out of (it's just a looping motion with the reel hand) and you can roll and unroll a line that is energized without (mostly) shocking yourself.  One downside to the pigtail posts I purchased was that they were a good height for cows, but any calves less than a month old could easily walk underneath the wire which caused a couple of my new mothers to ignore the polywire to join their wandering calves.  It wasn't a big deal because my cows were easy enough to get back in with the rest of the group (I would just set up the new fence around them), but it was a little annoying.  

Another downside to the pigtail posts that I purchased was that the plastic insulating sleeves on the tops of them would wear very quickly if you pulled the polywire through them.  They must have been a pretty soft plastic because it was pretty alarming really.  I have grooves worn in several of my pigtail post insulators after just one summer of use.  I can't comment how other brands of pigtail style insulators will hold up, as I've not used any of them.  

My next set of posts will be the plastic step-in posts.  The nice part about these posts is that you can adjust the height and run multiple strands if you need to run a ground wire for deep snow.  I have heard that the best is O'Brien's or I might try something a little more reasonable first like the offerings from Patriot or Stafix.  I've posted a link here.  50 posts is about enough to do two 1/4 mile fences.  I prefer to use about 30 posts per quarter mile line of fence, but you can get away with 25 if your terrain isn't too hilly and you don't have a lot of pressure from the local wildlife (we have massive amounts of deer). 

If you're still crop farming and building cross fencing isn't an option, you're in my boat.  I started out with 100 posts, 3 geared reels, two standard reels, four hookup wires (basically short pieces of wire with alligator clamps on either end to ensure a good connection), and a whole bunch of grounding rods to get our fence energizers to "hit" harder.  All told, it was about $500 worth of gear to get started.  That's assuming you already have a good fence energizer and perimeter fencing.  If you don't, your start up costs are going to be significantly higher.  

If you find any of this information helpful and you're doing some rotational grazing yourself.  Please consider purchasing through my Amazon links in this column to help support this website.   Be Blessed!

-Kenny

Here's a couple more links to things that I purchased:

Methods

First, make sure you have a very hot perimeter fence and your cows are trained to electric fence.  If you don't have that, stop everything and get your fence at least 4,000 volts and set up an electric fence inside your current pasture a couple feet off the permanent fence to train your herd.  If your fence is hot, they will learn quickly.  

When you set up your fence for the first time, you're probably going to do it the most inefficient way possible.  It took me about a week of trying different methods and orders of operations until I could change my fence in less than an hour, and most of that was because I was walking about a mile when moving 1/4 mile of fence.  I'm much faster now. 

How much acreage per paddock should you start with?  I liked to do about a day's worth of feed per paddock.  I had about 30 cows when I started intensive grazing, so I gave them about half an acre of alfalfa/orchard grass mix that had roughly 2 tons per acre on it if we'd have made it into hay.  Each of my cows eat, very roughly, 30 lb of forage (dried) per day, so 30 cows would eat around 900 lb of forage per day, or about 1/2 ton of dry matter per acre.  Since I gave them 1/2 acre per day and each 1/2 acre produced 2 tons of dry matter feed, they were eating approximately half the foliage on that half acre in 24 hours.  The equivalent stocking rate was around 84,000 lb live weight per acre.  Compared to some folks you'll find on the internet, that's a pretty low stocking rate.

To get started, I just guessed at how much forage was available, how much was left after they'd been on it for 24 hours, and then refined how much pasture I gave them the next day when I moved them again.  When the cows had been left in an area too long, they let me know.  When they were content, they were quiet.  No matter what I did, they were always ready to head into the next section of pasture and moving them (once I figured out how they liked to move) was never a problem.

Finally, after three or four days, I would set up a back fence so the cows couldn't go back into areas they had already grazed.  Back fencing is important to avoid overgrazing, allow the plant to repair itself, and allow the forage to regrow more quickly.  If it's the last grazing that field will get for the year (such as fall or winter grazing), I didn't bother with the back fence as the pasture is already dormant.

Note: DO NOT let the cows graze it down to the ground if you want any kind of regrowth.  You need to leave at least 4" of height if you want your pasture to come back quickly (assuming it's the kind of pasture that will regrow in a season).  Most of the energy of the plant is stored in the part closest to the ground, so manage how long you leave cows in an area based on how much foliage you have left.

How I Fenced

I would initially set up two paddocks for the cows and let them only into the first one.  I would use around 29 posts for each quarter mile fence and one geared reel.  After the cows had eaten as much of the first paddock I wanted, I would then walk to the end of the field where the reel was for the second paddock.  The cows would generally follow me there after they got used to the routine.

I would unhook the reel and start rolling it up, looping it out of the posts as I went.  Once there was a little gap, my cows would boil around me to get into the new pasture; it was never an issue encouraging them to go into the new area unless they were too busy sunning themselves on the hillside.

I would continue rolling up the polywire and removing it from the posts as I went.  When I got to the end of the row, I would leave the reel at that end of the fence, then turn around and walk back in my tracks, pulling up and carrying the now wire-free posts with me as I went.  When I got to the end of the fence again (so I was now on the opposite side of the field as the reel I just wound up), I would step off how much new pasture I wanted, and walk back towards where the reel was waiting for me, putting posts in about every 15-18 big steps (approximately 45-55 ft).  

If I felt motivated for that day, I would grab the reel and unwind it on the newly installed temporary posts to be ready for the next day's paddock change.  If I didn't feel motivated, I would just walk home after putting in the new posts.  

You can see in the photo above this how I laid things out.  The main features are the permanent perimeter fence that was made from galvanized wire (also known as low-impedance or low-resistance wire so your voltage stays high).  The sacrificial alley allowed me to use a section of land that we couldn't farm anyways as the alley for my cows to get to the water trough in the lower right hand corner.  This enabled us to avoid having to move the water for this field.  

The shorter dashed lines represent the geared reel polywire fences.  The longer dashed lines represent the standard reel polywire fences which I moved just a little every day to allow a new "access point" to that day's current grazing paddock.  This field was a total of 29 acres.

As a data point, I grazed my 27 cows (including 19 calves) for 48 days on 29 acres up through November 28th in 2017.  I only fed two round bales when the snow got over 10" deep before it melted off in late November, though they were still digging through the snow when it was soft in the afternoons.  

In summary, I learned a whole lot about intensive grazing in that first year.  My main suggestions to a newbie would be: buy good posts, geared reels, have your herd close to you for the first time you intensive graze them, and make sure your perimeter fence is throwing a good spark while you're getting your animals trained.