Comments on: Moving cows is the best! MiG

By: VABEDVAPS

VABEDVAPS — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:34:18 +0000

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By: links for 2010-08-04 « brentcu

links for 2010-08-04 « brentcu — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:18:05 +0000

[...] Moving cows is the best! MiG | Franciscan Family Farms This is worth reading to see the changes in grass quality after running cows through the pasture and resting for 50 days. This is relevant because some of the new farm will be converted into temp pasture from other crops. And vines. (tags: Farm) [...]

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:59:57 +0000

Hi Amy,
Thanks for the comment. We use one electric polywire with a pigtail post every 60′ or so. This is on 2 sides of the paddock. On the other 2 sides are a single wire of 12.5 ga high tensile and 6 wires (exterior fence) high tensile. We have a pretty big charger that is at around 5400 volts right now. I think that the key is that the cows are trained to the electric. If you have a smallish fence to keep them in you can put at electric wire close to one side and let them touch it. In this situation they will touch it and back away instead of going through it. Once they get shocked good a few times you will be able to put them back in the set up with only 1 or 2 wires of electric polywire.
Young calves will go under a 32″ fence until they are older and taller. Sheep will probably always have to have 2-3 wires.
You will have a challenge trying to uhdgraze 3 head… the more animals the better. We’re doing it now with about a dozen and it’s working but I can see where it would be better to use 200 .
Our rotation now is about 50 days or so and we’re using 10 acres. So most of our paddocks are 1/8 of an acre and some get moved through faster at twice or three times that size.

By: Amy

Amy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:44:00 +0000

I just found your blog and have two questions. We have read Greg Judy’s book and want to Ultra High Density graze. We have one Jersey and just acquired 2 dexters yesterday. Our plan is to graze dexters and churro sheep. We had two strands of electric string as our paddock divider-the dexters went right through it. What do you use for paddock changes and for cross fencing in the inside? Also, for the number of cows you have now, how much land are you moving them on before you get back to the beginning?

By: Yeoman

Yeoman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:38:00 +0000

It is a bit of a ride alright. Takes over a week.

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:13:22 +0000

That’s alot different than our small daily moves but I’d love to come help ya some day, Yeoman. Boy, I thought 9 miles was a long ride.

By: Yeoman

Yeoman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:25:36 +0000

I love moving cows. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

I do it on horseback normally. We’ll move 400 head (mine, and my in laws) all at one time. We gather and herd them.

This is the time of year we start it. Week after next we’ll gather and brand. A few days later we’ll start trailing them 70 miles to the mountains.

Darned near the best time of the first half of the year.

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:54:14 +0000

Devin, it’s good to hear from you and I hope the new little baby is growing well!
I am doing my best to implement mob grazing but Salatin says that it’s not really the same with less than 200 head. That’s why I called our herd a mini mob. Regular rotational grazing would try to keep the grass between 10 and 4 inches (approx.) and would try to keep in always lush and green… this is what is the difference with what we are doing. As Salatin and Greg Judy have been talking/writing about, the more mature grasses, mixed with new growth tends to balance their diet. I think that Greg Judy has at least 150,000 lbs of bovine / acre and some people get to .5 to 1 million lbs/acre.
To answer Rich, I just estimated all of our cow’s weights and added them up and ended up figuring 65,940lbs / acre. I was actually surprised that it was so low and it now makes me wonder if we should try cutting a paddock in half to see what happens. Chris actually mentioned today grazing 1/2 size paddocks for 12 hours so I guess we could go 1/2 size and if it’s too little, we could move them after 12 hours instead of 24 and then go back to the old timing.
Anyways….. Good memory Rich, we do have around 2 acres of bermudagrass that is alive.. (that’s a start) Because the bermuda starts growing so late in the spring here, the weeds took over and we had a field of pretty white flowers in early spring. At the end of the first rotation we rotated quickly through the bermuda and the cows ate all of the cool season grasses and weeds and got everything mowed down even and short. It will now be 50+ days before we get back to it. When the time comes, we will decided whether to graze through the bermuda or graze the cool season grasses again. I really want the bermuda to get nice and established before we graze it again because it’s supposed to be hard to establish from seed (we seeded it last summer) and we need it to be thick enough to choke out pig weed, etc.
I’ve never been told what yields the renter gets but based on what he pays us it figured to 180 bushels per acre last year (on the adjacent ground). It’s supposed to be very nice “bottom grounds” and was actually swamp land that is kept drained by a network of drainage ditches. Google “Little River Drainage District”. I’ve found journals from my grandpa where he talks about planting crops, pasture, etc. and know from that that he planted hog pastures, pastured some cattle, harvested alot of pecans, and raised crops like corn, beans, black beans, wheat, oats, etc.

By: Rich

Rich — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:37:23 +0000

It is interesting to see how a pasture responds to MiG, but I am always interested in the details and have a few questions.

What stocking density (lbs. per acre) does that work out to?

How do you plan to include the bermudagrass pasture you planted into the rotation?

Do you happen to know what kind of crop yields your pasture produced when it was cropland? (Just interested in the comparisons)

By: Devin Rose

Devin Rose — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:11:13 +0000

Steven,

Are you implementing high density “mob” grazing or just “regular” MIG?