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watering system design and paddock design

G

Gomez

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Aug 28, 2010
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Sask
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
: )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.
 
Make the separate paddocks pie shaped.

They'll be easy to funnel into a catchpen/working facilities at the center where the water is.
 
Mike said:
Make the separate paddocks pie shaped.

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

Mike, the waggon wheel layout gives this effect, with the "spokes" narrowing to the gates in the central corral where the water is also situated.
Gomez; the centre for holistic management has been working on grazing stratergies longer than anyone else I know of, and are working in the USA, Africa and Australia, well worth looking into.
http://www.holisticmanagement.org/
 
Gomez said:
: )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.
Click to expand...

One of our systems where we have dugouts we have a Honda pump we start once a day and pump into two holding tanks on the highest hill in the field and is then gravity feed to supply two of the 40ac paddocks at time.

The pasture is divided into 40 ac paddocks with high tensile so the outlets are essentially in the center of each 80ac piece with the 40ac cross fence over the center of two portable poly troughs.

The main gravity line runs down along the fence in the center of the field with four arms out along the 40 ac fences.

We then divide the 40ac pieces into 20 with poly wire and just swing the reel end to allow access to water.

Starting the pump every day is a bit of a pain and algae will grow in the holding tanks, the system needs to be blown out for winter and the valves need to be left cracked open but not too far some mice and other unwanted obstructions get in.

Each system we have is different as water source and topography change, but when you said you have dugouts I thought of this one, for what it is worth....
 
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.
 
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 :D anyhow,
Life is good and gettin' better,
Bootheel
 
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
 
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
 
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
 
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. :wink: :-)
 
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. :lol: As Don Campbell says in Holistic Management - There are no mistakes, only learning opportunities.
 

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