Turn, turn, turn

Let the rotating begin!  One of the things we're most interested in investigating this growing season is the introduction of management intensive grazing to P's parent's pastures.

We've done plenty of fencing in preparation, some of it in the wind, but this past week we started rotating the cows on the pasture.  We've now worked through 5 paddocks.  In that particular pasture of about 38ish acres, we have 33 cow-calf pairs of animals and we're planning on rotating the animals about 30 times to new grass before having them repeat over the same turf.  The idea is that this will force the cows to be less picky on a day by day basis, and not allow them to continually go back to their favorite grass in the larger pasture and re-graze it too soon.  Over time this should bring more diversity of plant life to the pasture and also allow for more tons of forage to be grown on the same amount of land.  All in all a pretty good thing we all think.

The cost to all of the above is management — that's where the chumps come in.  We move the cattle once per day and it currently takes us about 30-45 minutes every other day and 10-15 minutes on the other days.  This assumes we would just move the fence, look over the ladies and their calves, and move on.  The reality is that, at least for this first week, we're absolutely enamored with watching the cows and calves get super excited by the new grass.  Additionally, the other wildlife is fun to watch.  Swallows come out to swoop over the cows as they stir up insects from the grass and I think we also saw some finches and robins tonight.

Moving the cattle, at least in good weather, is really one of our favorite parts of the day.