watering system design and paddock design

[Gomez]

I am wanting to take my 640 acre paddocks and making them significantly smaller and was thinking 40 acres in size. I was going to use a pasture plow to put pipe 1.5" pipe 24" in the ground. I need advise on:
1. Fencing system
2. water trough system
3. Paddock shape

Any thoughts or directions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

[PureCountry]

Pretty tough to give advice without knowing your land. Is it flat, rolling, hilly? Open or treed? Are you grazing yearlings or pairs?

I'm grazing quarter sections in 1-4 acre strips that are open and mostly flat. I have a perimeter fence that's either barbed wire or hi-tensile, then make the strips run east and west with Powerflex Polywire and step-posts. I have 1 wire in front of the herd and 1 behind to keep them from overgrazing stuff so it can recover. At the west side of these quarters closest to the road, we built a new perimeter 100' in from the property line. This 100' laneway is where we drive the water truck and move the water tank from south to north along with the herd as they move a few acres at a time. The 100' lane also gets used for grazing hogs and chickens in portable cages that are moved daily, and will have shelterbelts planted in it next year.

This system is planned for us and may work for others, it may not. By having the laneway on 1 side close to the road it gives us a water system that is easily manageable. THese pastures are all within 1 mile of home on 6 quarters and have no water, so the fencing and paddock design had to accomodate trucking water. We had priced out drilling a well, and if we had done that I would probably have done the paddocks the same, just had risers with spigots at intervals where I could move the water tank to as the animals moved adjacent.

For a larger system or to avoid moving a water tank, you could plan things with alleyways so that there are permanent tanks that the cattle can walk to. At any rate, alot of money and labor can be saved by keeping as much fence portable as possible. Perimeters permanent, cross fencing portable and water holes easily accessible is usually my guidelines. Doesn't make sense to me to have water tanks and fence all over the place that only get used for a few days or weeks of the year. By going with 1 tank skid and 1 good set of portable fence materials instead of doing permanent hi-tensile fences, I saved enough to buy the water truck and tank.

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

[Bootheel]

1. fence---High tensile in combination with temporary poly wire

2. Water---HDPE pipe, with buried quick couplers...assuming pressurized sysem...in combination with temporary above ground. Some winter waterers needed but not near as many as most think.

3 Paddock shape-- the squarer the better, water in the middle of each would be perfect---seldom can afford perfect, utilize as much temporary water and fence as possible to hold down cost.

Books are written on the subject, read all you can, see all can, learn all you can, and laugh all you can.

Have a good one there Gomez

Bootheel

[andybob]

In the 70's when we started using the 'Savory grazing system" in Rhodesia, we set up gated 'hubs' of gates, with the water in the hub, with paddocks radiating in a waggon wheel pattern out from the central hub.
This helped in utilising limited water resources in an efficient way, with several paddocks able to access water in the hub area, by using a system of gates within the hub to access the trough at different points without mixing the herds. The system also facilitated easy paddock rotation.

[Gomez]

: )hank you bootheel and pure country. A little more information is a good idea. I have about 10 - one section paddocks each section seeded to grass of CWG/alf, smooth brome/alf, meadow brome alf, or other mixed grasses with alf and cicer MV. The topography is flat to rolling with sloughs in spring and a few trees. Our current water source is dugouts, 2 per section. Currently we are a Cow Calf operation. I would like to incorporate a grasser component and intensify the operation with out adding to the land base. Each section is perimeter fenced with barbed wire.

In the future i will plow in pipe to each new paddock with a riser. Pure country you used an alley, I can't picture how that works? Do the animals walk out of the each paddock and down the alley to a permanent water spot? I agree that temp fence is the way to go as permanent fence will be expensive at 6 miles per section paddock.

I would appreciate any other advice or sites to look at to come up a plan>

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum.

[Mike]

Make the separate paddocks pie shaped.

They'll be easy to funnel into a catchpen/working facilities at the center where the water is.

[andybob]

[Hilly]

[Gomez]

Thank you for all your insights.

[Soapweed]

Save a lot of work and expense, and leave it like it is.

[Justin]

you're wanting to make you pastures smaller, i wish mine were bigger. with that said i'll have to agree with Soapweed.

[RSL]

We use alleys and a few permanent electric fences and then split paddocks with polywire. The portable ones are nice. If you want a holiday you make a bigger paddock. Electric crossfence has let us make our farm more than double its' previous size without buying land and dropped our costs. We haven't crossfenced any native, although we are thinking about dividing some 1/2 and section parcels into 3 and rest deferring 1/3 each year.