|
Ripley, Ontario Canada | A question first. How much pasture do you have, and are you prepaired to cut some for hay.
If I was laying out a field again, I would want no less than 7 fields. They should not all be the same size. I would make 3-4 at about 8-10 cows per acre and the rest at about 3 -6 cows per acre. If you have lots of pasture (in my area that would be 1 cow per acre but your results may vary) you will have too much grass at certain times. The best answer for this is to cut the extra for hay. This is why you want a couple sections that are 3 cows per acre not 8. The really small fields are a pain to cut. Also in the spring when the grass is growing well, you need the smaller fields to be able to rotate fast enough. Later in the summer the big field will give the smaller ones a chance to catch up and regrow. Be sure to plan your gates and lanes so you can get to all fields with the haybine. I use 14g steel wire, 1 strand to divide fields. Put a spring in each run, and I use 10mm rebar 4 feet long for posts with a screw on insulator. Rebar was running something like 22 cents a foot the last time I bought some. I recommend making gates dead when open, this makes it easy to tighten and replace handles when you run over them :( . Also don't make any complete loops in your fence if you have one of the new testers that point you in the direction of the short, the loops confuse them. I have a ghallager(sp) smartfix tester and it works well. | |
|
rotational grazing
