This is the happy circumstance I have spent years dreaming of, researching and planning for. After a decade of preparation, including a great deal of reading and studying, many workshops and seminars, and six years of farm ownership before retirement allowed me to move here, I finally have a small herd of beef cows to rotationally graze and improve the pastures.
It sounds so easy when you read about it and imagine how it will work. What can be easier than cows eating grass, after all? But not all grass grows the same; some pasture is quite lush while in other areas the stand is thin, weather factors a lot in how well a grazed area regrows, and moving the grazing herd around a farm in sync with the forage growth cycles can be quite tricky. So, it is anything but easy.
I suppose this is some of what the “intensive” part of Management-intensive Grazing, or MiG, refers to. I’m not talking about intense physical effort, although it takes a fair amount of walking to string electric fence every day or every couple of days, and my neighboring cattle farmers would no sooner hike around their fields with an armful of fiberglass posts and reels of electric wire, than fly to the moon. No, the muscles most used, I’ve found, are between my ears – and as a novice to both the art of grazing and bovine husbandry, I am learning to use them and stretch them beyond what I’d ever imagined.
This is the first year I will have seen these pastures grow from dormancy, and the first full year they will be repeatedly grazed by animals instead of mown. Last August the herd arrived to the dense stockpiled stand that had grown unmown since spring, and worked their way through it in about 6 weeks before returning to regraze their first paddock assignments. That was an abnormal grazing situation and there were more animals then, too. This year I’ll be learning as I go, with some basic grazing concepts to guide me, and the realization that it will take years to achieve what the books and experts make sound so simple.
I have enough animals to concentrate their efforts and achieve the benefits of what’s known as high-density mob grazing, where the herd, constrained to a fairly small grazing area, consume a portion, trample a portion, and leave a portion of the forage standing. Currently I’m building paddocks sized to last them a couple of days, moving them before they crop the undergrowth right down to the ground. They aren’t crowded, but they aren’t free to roam and cherry-pick throughout an entire pasture. Since the cows are highly competitive grazers, this method gets them to eat more of what they would rather leave – grass stems and seedheads, for instance. They don’t eat everything and they only get it down to 3-4″ before I roll them into a fresh patch.
Concentrating their grazing also concentrates their manure and urine deposits. This is absolutely critical to the task of pasture improvement. All my neighbors let their cow herds roam on acres and acres, and they never see much of any benefit from the cows’ fertilization. It’s just too spread out. Without a pack of predators to keep their herd formed up in a group and moving together, the animals disperse and nibble here and there, moving quickly through the pasture and depositing most of their manure under the trees where they rest and ruminate in the shade.
This is what the paddock looks like by the time I move them forward. That’s fescue seeding on the other side of the line, and you can see they’ve cropped most of that down where they’ve grazed.
Leaving a residual of several inches and a fair amount standing, cleaning up all the weeds and forbs and native clovers, as well as other plants I have yet to identify. Plenty of plant matter trampled into the soil as well.
Here is where I take a different approach from many graziers. For many reasons, but mostly to help manage what is already a burgeoning fly population, I drag their manure either the day I move them or the day after. I don’t have Joel Salatin’s egg-mobile chickens following my herd to disperse the cow patties and eat the fly larvae, at least not yet (and won’t for some time). We had significant pink eye infections last fall with outbreaks throughout the very mild winter, and face flies wintered over in great numbers. Face flies are manure-breeders; their larvae hatch in three days, so if I can disrupt that breeding cycle it will help, I hope, keep their population in check, and lower the risk of another cycle of eye infections. Doctoring an entire herd of 1,000 lb beasts of prey with a flight zone of 15 – 20 feet at best, is not fun, for either the animals, or the farmer doing the doctoring.
I know all about the drawbacks of spreading cow crap, believe me. Cows avoid patches of grass near manure pats for good reason, and most of the experts say dragging their pies out just makes more grass unpalatable to them next time they graze an area. I’m not so sure it’s as bad as all that, and I’m willing to make that mistake if in turn I’m able to beat the flies down to a low roar by reducing their breeding resource. Chickens would do a better job I’m sure, but I’ve called a moratorium on gaining new livestock until after I get the horses here and settled.
And that’s another blog post. Heading up the hill now to continue work on the new horse barn.
Thistledog's Farm 
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing so many details. I’ve read about those mobile chicken yards that are pulled by a tractor every few days to a new spot so the chickens systematically eat insects and fertilize an entire field over time. I think there’s a special bond between the farmer and her cows. I remember how much my grandparents loved their cows, loved to talk about new developments in the herd, and how they often remarked how much they missed them after old age forced them to sell the herd.
Thank you, Mark, for sharing that about your grandparents’ love of their cowherd. I can so relate. And, am not at all looking forward to the day I’ll have to admit I’m not up to taking care of them! They are a hoot, I’ll tell you that much. You’ll road-trip up someday and meet all of them, and see what I mean. My redheads. *sigh*
Good for you for using MIG. I studied this method and am convinced it is the way to go One of the reasons we got rid of our cows is that I wasn’t home enough to manage the paddock switches. I am now, but now we have a pasture full of goats.:)
So do you put up any hay? That chore is facing me this week. I know some who graze using MIG sold their hay equipment and if they end up needing a little hay they just buy it. That sounds real good to me right now. And for you neighbors who think your method is too much work, I’ll bet they aren’t factoring in the amount of time they spend making hay.
Yes Bill, managed rotational grazing makes so much sense to me as well. It is not much practised around here although I do see some Amish farms with small electric-fenced paddock areas. The mainstream cattle folks just set-stock, turning their herds out into large pastures. I am very contrary in that regard.
No, I don’t yet put up any hay, although if I had a baler I would. Got a cutter bar and a rake, but no baler. Not sure if my acreage will support hay-making as well as grazing, so at least for now I’m happy to buy what I can locally. It will be some years before I’ll be good enough to stockpile sufficient forage to graze throughout our admittedly mild winters. My neighbor spends weeks and weeks each summer putting up hay of dubious quality, starts feeding it by the end of October, and worries about runnning out before the grass starts growing. If he would spend a little more time and effort directing his cow herd’s grazing activity I reckon he wouldn’t have to put up any hay at all, as his acreage is so immense.
This is fascinating to me–not that I’ll be farming, but the details and information are very interesting. And you know I think your cows are beautiful! Thanks for letting me share in your adventures vicariously!
Thank you Laura. Your interest is so invigorating, believe me. Truth is, not everyone is a writer, or a doctor, or a priest. Or a Farmer either. But we need all those sorts of people to keep our culture alive and make a community. Small Farmers like me need folks who are interested in and appreciative of what they do. I’d wager if we lived in the same foodshed you’d be a customer of mine.
I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see fly numbers go down when the herd and pastures have had more minerals. I’ve been able to cull for flies but it took awhile. Salatin’s herd is so big now that there is no way to keep up his 3 day eggmobile rotation with the entire herd as it moves from rental farm to rental farm. Good idea to skip the hens for now, I would rather drag pasture any day than babysit chickens in remote predator prone pastures. Plus there is some satisfaction in the doing too, it’s a good tool that harrowing.
The cows look great, I can’t wait to see some posts about the Suffolks!
Oh, that is so heartening to hear, that over time and with improvement of overall mineral balance this fly infestation might decrease. It is such a concern for me, having spent enormous energy and effort keeping these animals healthy. They were disadvantaged from the start, I know,and it is so obvious to me how their nutrition drives their resistance to bacteria. I would not have guessed that better mineral balance would actually make them less palatable for flies. You’ve opened my eyes, again; thanks!
Horses coming soon, and I am so glad to be moving in that direction finally. Waiting for my mare to be re-bred then we’ll journey up north to pick up all three – the mare, her colt foal, and the yearling stud. A ready-made herd if there ever was one. It’ll be awhile before I have any useful labor out of any of them but I am in it for the long haul, and pleased to be able to breed replacements for Suffolk owners in this area. Stay tuned!
Just to add to Matron, she mentioned minerals, I would specify kelp. It has 3000% of our daily iodine requirement so pinkeye goes away.
I also agree with skipping the hens for now. One thing at a time.
Most certainly, Kelp! I’ve been feeding them Fertrell’s kelp meal since last November and they love it. I call it their cow cocaine, as they will scrum ’round the mineral boxes like rugby players to lick it up.