watering system design and paddock design

[Bootheel]

To me the ship has sailed on this topic, amazingly not everyone gets or understands the reasoning or economics.

It is not about buying or selling hay, it is about reducing out of pocket cost along with labor, just a different kind of labor. When I first started this I was still trying to make all the hay I could, bushog, spray and do everything else the so called right way......I finally had a saving grace moment one day.......the way I was doing it was like going to the bars friday and saturday night and still trying to make it to church on Sunday morning...something had to give, and I knew it wasn't the grazing program.

I had a good reserve of hay, bought a little more, and sold nearly all the equipment, freeing up considerable capital, you all know what it costs, all good late model equipement.....custom baled a lot of hay so I could have the good stuff.

The change in the pastures and my quality of life has been phenomenal, I have burnt a whopping 15 gallons of diesel in my little tractor since April. No every year ain't going to be like this one but its a heck of a start. Years past I would burn that much before lunch for half the summer.

2000 dollars worth of temporary fence saved me 300 plus tons of hay last winter alone, most of it should last 10 years or better. The policy in this area was to be out of grass by Dec or Jan, I left some stockpile till April 1 and the cows were thrilled to get it. Yes I will always keep hay around, it should be an insurance policy not a way of life for me.

I could go on for pages but most of you don't care anyhow,
Life is good and gettin' better,
Bootheel

[flyingS]

I think that before you start you need to write down what you intend to accomplish. I am a big advocate of pulse grazing, although I do not believe that you have to always divide your pasture into small paddocks and move your cattle everyday. Without knowing your situation or what your country looks like as well as what your stocking rate is, I will make this suggestion. Do not make your pastures pie shaped. A central water site for multiple paddocks tends to be awful tough on your water site. If you are trying to increase pasture quality, concentrate on recovery. Do not mistake rest for recovery, they are not the same. You can rest a pasture with out it recovering but you can not recover a pasture without rest. I would make my paddocks square and put a tank in each fence line, so that 2 pastures share one water source and every pasture has 2 water sources. I could go on forever but those are basic suggestions. I have had great success with these ideas.

FlyingS

[Bootheel]

Flying S, that is that most efficient use of words I have seen, excellent post.

Bootheel

[PureCountry]

100%

[Gomez]

is there a maximum number of head you would manage as one group? Would you consider putting 1200 grassers on a quarter (160 acres) with 4 water spots (240 ft of water troughs per quarter) and moving them every 4 days to 1 week? 12 - 160 acre paddocks available and would cover each paddock twice per season. Good idea or crazy? Can I build soil and do this too? The water and fence investment would approx double my carry capacity. That is, season long grazing is 200 grassers per section drinking from dugouts?.
Thank you to all

[Bootheel]

Gomez we had been doing the 3 to 7 day moves for the past 10 years, last year I went to everday, sometimes multiple, my country is a whole lot smaller than yours though....increasing stocking density not rate immediately, I think made the biggest difference.

There are challenges to increasing herd size, 1--1200 hd group instead of 6 200 hd groups, corral size and water capacity are obvious issues.

Beyond the challenges, I think you will be well rewarded with a much healthyier landscape, I know mine is.

Be very careful with increasing stocking rate to quickly, I would probably stick with what you have traditionaly ran, then if need be keep them longer, let it rest, or get a new group. As flying S said earlier the recovery is the most important thing.

It is very easy to reduce animal performance, learning to read what is "actually there to eat" is one of my biggest challenges.

Bootheel

[Soapweed]

One consideration with having 1200 grassers in a mere 160 pasture would be the chance of lightning killing a large number at one time. A ranch in this area that did intensive grazing about twenty years ago lost over 90 steers with one bolt of lightning.

A friend who buys a lot of cattle told me that he loves to buy yearlings that have been on intensive grazing. He says that there is "compensatory gain" to be had by the buyer. Here is the definition for "compensatory gain" -- A faster-than-normal rate of gain after a period of feed restriction. In other words, yearlings being crowded in intensive grazing programs don't do quite as well as yearlings on plenty of grass with plenty of room to roam.

Another thought is if you ever intend to sell the land being "improved" with all the new fences and water facilities. My guess is that these improvement costs would never be recovered, and that "unimproved" land would bring more money because every operator likes to put their own management styles to work.

Intensive grazing can be a wonderful program, but there are a few pitfalls that could spring up along the way. Another consideration is how hard do you want to work, and do you want to be stuck staying home all the time. Intensive management doesn't work without close attention. Even a few hours with too many cattle in too small a pasture can wreak havoc on the whole system.

Don't mind me, I'm just trying to convince myself why I don't want any part of it.

[PureCountry]

I think the size of herd you run as 1 group is almost limitless. Zach and Shannon Jones in Montana, together with his cousin, are running 3-4000 head in one group. Last I heard of him in the Stockman Grassfarmer he was talking about making plans to accomodate 10,000 in one group. The would be a sight to see. I've seen 2000 in one group and the litter left behind was an absolute mat of forage and manure. The regrowth was unbelievable. Even in dry years, the place where I witnessed that system was green while the neighbours - and my place - were brown. Same rainfall, same conditions, different management.

Will you build soil? Without a doubt, as long as you move them quickly and don't overgraze. If you leave that many critters in 1 place for even a few hours too long, they'llsend your program backwards and as Bootheel said, animal performance ultimately suffers.

Just work out the math. If your quarters are carrying 3000lbs of dry matter per acre right now, and we say yearlings will eat 30lbs per day, then you could sustain 100 yearlings per acre for a day. However, bear in mind that is eating every pound of forage. That will send your land backwards. If you set a target of eating 50% and leaving 50%, you would be able to sustain 50 head per acre for 1 day. If you want to do 1200 yearlings that means they'll consume a quarter in 6.7 days. This is all theoretical and obviously changes depending on your production and various other factors

Anyway, at that rate, they'll go through your other 11 quarter section paddocks in 73.7 days. Will the first one be fully recovered in that amount of time? This year with the rain we had we saw some paddocks recover in 60 days, which I have never seen in this country in my life. We're usually 120 days +. And by recovery I mean the plant has flowered again. Recovery is about plant life cycles, not shooting up 6" and looking green

I think Bootheel has some wise words for you about starting slow - you can always add more cattle. However, if you think you can handle all this and have the water, go for it. I've always been one to jump in and learn the hard way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't, at least I have the experience and knowledge of what it was like to try. As Don Campbell says in Holistic Management - There are no mistakes, only learning opportunities.

[Gomez]

Thank you. Some very sound advise delivered with good intentions. I hope I can return the favors sometime. Thanks again.

[Bootheel]

Glad to have your input Soap and you bring up some valuable points,

Lack of Gain...usually from misreading available forage, also poorly adapted grasser cattle, can be made up by more total pounds of gain per acre, dont lighter generally bring more per pound


Lightining....come on now your borrowning worry, you can only fit so many in a given area, my insurance rates have not gone up any due to grazing tighter.

What's them balers and tractors worth in a couple of years, mine cost$12 an hour (tractor) in lost value alone, baler about $2 a bale

Pasture damage....Soap I get more rain in a week here than you get probably the year....dont know for sure, not being a smarty pants.
Had a buddy real concerned about trompling damage, until he seen what my mess in the wet season looked like come spring... the best it ever has.

Permanent damage is more of a function of time if that makes sense to you......leaving 30 animals in for 10 days versus 300 for one day.

I use to think we were pretty good grass farmers, by comparison in the area,,how ignorant I truly was and am. Been terrible dry this summer, folks around sold off cows in june, I still have not grazed about 1\3 of the pastures yet, need more cows now.

Yeah, I got weeds, also more grass than ever

Ya'll have fun
Bootheel

[flyingS]

If a person wanted to see what the effects of a good planned grazing system compared to a traditional grazing might be, the first place he or she might look is the water sights. In a traditional grazing system most of the water sights have bare ground around them year round. With a well planned grazing sytem you will heal those water sights as well as a lot of the other areas of bare ground. Lots of people are miss lead to believe that in order to rotational graze you have to move your cattle often. The key is not how often you move them but how much stock density their is. When you match your lifestyle and personal goals to the rest of your management practices you can decide how to plan the system. I prefer to use 120 day rest period and like to have between 20 and 30 pastures. If I have 20 pastures and 120 rest I will move my cattle approximately once a week. For no longer than it takes to move a set of cows, I think it is worth the time to get a good look at my cattle. I have not ever seen stockers gain poorly on a well managed rotation. The sad part of the whole discussion is most people will focus on those that have tried and failed istead of listening to those that have been successful and trying to learn from them. If you want to develope a system do not half ars it, make sure you have the tools to make it work and use them.

[Northern Rancher]

If you were in a situation where u were hauling water you could do away with all the fence and manipulate where they graze by where you place the water source. Probably could do it with a mainline and some feeder lines too. The last thing I want to do is fence in the winter to divvy up our bale grazing so we pretty much build permanent fence now. I built a safety lane around the outside of every quarter-the horses go in there-this way if a tree falls on the fence I might have a few horses in somebodies crop instead of a few hundred cattle.