SAVE MONEY AND TIME - ROTATIONAL GRAZING THE EASY WAY

How can you rotationally graze your animals every day, in just a few minutes a day? Today we show you the easy way to move animals on pasture in just a few minutes a day! Eli from Mack Farms and Kencove joins us to teach Rotational Grazing 101.
Thanks to Kencove for partnering with us on this series!
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Blackhawk Geared Reels
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Kiwitech
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Contact Eli
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[@dreamingtreefarmstead]

I love Eli and love videos like this. These reels are the way to go. I have netting for my poultry, but the thought of moving that everyday for cattle is not appealing!

[@galenhaugh3158]

Graze to the point where dirt is showing in your pasture and the sun will dry it out quickly and there goes your grass and everything else .

[@karinlindquist2192]

Great video. Lots and lots and lots of information in here, all of it really valuable. Perhaps the most valuable, in my opinion, is the comment about overgrazing, or "grazing of the roots." Timing is of the absolute essence, because plants that get overgrazed need extra time to not only grow back the lost leaf area, but also to recover their lost root energy reserves. For every time a plant gets grazed, some roots are sacrificed so that the upper half of the plant can regrow. If that plant isn't given enough time to recover, not only is that compromising leaf area and pasture yield, but it also *compromises root volume below ground.* You NEED those roots for soil biology, for nutrient cycling, for contributing to the effective water cycle, for capturing carbon, and so much more. The less roots you have, the less resilient your pasture is to changes in growing conditions. TIME is of the essence. It plays a huge factor in grazing management.

[@jlrbhj]

I’d love to see how sheep might work with electric netting. Great to see Kencove here.

[@KencoveFarmFence]

Make sure to check out our video with sheep and electric netting! kzbin.info/www/bejne/haHQYmlqdr-Ve6s

[@AgnesMariaL]

Mine like to go under fencing, so make ground anchors out of galvanized tie wire and pin the bottom line of the net to the ground. Also, make sure it stays hot! This means changing to a different enclosure when snow flies and the ground freezes - once ours noticed that the fence no longer hurt, they just mowed right through it.

[@lilacDaisy111]

The hardest thing for us is getting water up the hill DAILY, to their new spot. We live in a little valley, and the water is down the bottom. So we still haven't rot. grazed. We move them weekly, using bigger paddocks, divided with the elec fencing. Hope to figure out daily moving one day!

[@promisedjubileedaniels]

That's what I wondering in my mind. I'm only halfway through, but how do you do water? ONE of my cows drinks about 5 gallons a day, and we have three cows in the back...

[@lilacDaisy111]

@@promisedjubileedaniels Yep! All the containers and pipes and pumps makes it a very costly endeavor!

[@karinlindquist2192]

Just a thought: someone I know has solved that problem using what he calls something akin to "turkey vulture nests" which is basically a dugout at the top of the hill that is designed to catch rainwater. The water collected at the top in the dugout is then gravity-fed down to the lower part of the pasture. He has (or had) the exact issue: no water on the top of the hill, plenty on the bottom. Basically, use the rain as the means to "move water uphill"... again, just a thought!

[@thomasreto2997]

Great video! Wife and I have 4 very weedy agricultural zoned acres in tropical rainforest. We hope in the very near future, to put maybe a mini Jersey and a couple feeder hair sheep on it. Realistically we will both have jobs and also be tending to our livestock. For now we are also in Pennsyvania and hope to see you and yours at the HOA conference in Frontroyal va come October. 🌈😃🤙

[@LadysFarm]

Thank you for the video

[@twc9000]

Excellent video.

[@sansomspressurecleaningpoo9519]

Thank you for sharing

[@alliboogaloo]

Netting please for wool sheep. It takes me at least 30 minutes to move it. Any tips would be awesome.

[@KencoveFarmFence]

Check out this video on moving sheep with electric netting! kzbin.info/www/bejne/haHQYmlqdr-Ve6s

[@brittanyash8340]

Oh, I follow this guy on Instagram. Learned about him through The Shepherdess. Great video.

[@frontporchpickin289]

Such a helpful vid. Thank you. Does the herd just sit out in that current zone when the storms come or do you open up the temp line and let them get back to a main shelter?

[@lleestimer2547]

what I find amazing is when looking at a pasture from a drone, it looks like no grass, from eye level, the same piece looks like alot of grass.

[@galenhaugh3158]

Cows don't like full-grown grass or other plants. I move my cows into a paddock when the graze is about a foot high and move them to the next paddock when the cows have reduced it to about half that. Most of the nutrients in pasture plants is concentrated in the upper 6 inches.

[@Dawna_Potter]

Also, do we need to reseed yearly, bi-early? Do we let the grass go to seed. We started we all weeds this past year. We seeded with orchard and rye for the winter and Buffalo for the summer. The grasses have come in nicely, but we still have lots of room for improvement. I’ve thought about adding some legumes and clover. We are in zone 9b Southern California?

[@ShepCantDance]

Hi Aust and K! We are planning to add a family milk cow, probably next year. We're on just 12 acres, and have been planning our high density rotational grazing systems with our sheep, chickens, and the cows we hope to have. I wanted to ask, how do you work rotational grazing in conjunction with a family milk cow, especially when calf sharing? Do you bring the cow and calf in off the grazing paddock at night and keep them in the barn, separated, then milk in the morning and walk them back out? Put a halter on her, unhook the electric, sneak her and the calf out without the other cows pushing out behind you? I've been trying to visualize how it would work rotating a milk cow and a beef steer or two through the field I have designated for the purpose, *and* calf sharing and milking, and I'm having trouble seeing it. #askhomesteady

[@taktakoriginal]

Electric Netting with sheep would be great to see! Help, those woolly critters are so hard to contain. Ewes are ok but the rams/wethers are soooooo bratty.

[@jenniferr2057]

Yes, nets! Sheep, goats, chicken, pigs!

[@KencoveFarmFence]

Make sure to check out our video with sheep and electric netting! kzbin.info/www/bejne/haHQYmlqdr-Ve6s

[@jenniferbunker2757]

How do you know what animals need to follow another animal? We have goats, horses, kune kune pigs, rabbits, chickens. How big should each pen be and how often do we move them ? How many days do all animals need to be off the first pen they started on?

[@LovelyBones168]

You mentioned you follow with chickens after the cows have used the land, could ducks be used instead of chicken?

[@Kberrysal]

What using a using a grazing stick to help you decide when to move

[@ashtopham3130]

Alpacas!

[@AgnesMariaL]

I NEED THAT REEL!!! Omg, the sticks... my poor arms and wrists! My least favourite part of fencing is taking the lines down.

[@lilacDaisy111]

You asked, what animals to try and contain with netting -- GEESE! That would be great!

[@mckennahicks5259]

How many joules energizer and distance of line do you use

[@thatcrazytaylor]

Really like your guys videos. Subscribed a while ago, and always give a thumbs up, but man there were a LOT of commercials in this video. makes it frustrating to watch when there's an ad every 2 minutes

[@Homesteadyshow]

Hi Taylor, thanks for the heads up! We don’t set the ad spots, KZbin does that automatically, but I can adjust them, I didn’t realize this video was so bad! I’ll check it out! Thanks for letting me know 😁

[@tammiealexander7102]

I'm new to all of this. Can you do goats?

[@jamesking1033]

Whose gorgeous horses?

[@troybishoppthegrasswhisper3703]

Rotating=money$$$$

[@Dawna_Potter]

Please show us how to contain chickens with netting and also protect them from overhead hawks - we are super small, just 1.5 acres available for grazing.

[@AB-ol5uz]

yt channel justin rhodes - he puts a guard goose in with the chickens when rotationally grazing. You can see it on his older vlogs if you do a key word search on his you tube page. He uses premiere 1 electric nets and a mobile chicken coop.

[@galenhaugh3158]

Is single strand electric fence so expensive that it has to be wound up and moved each time the cattle are moved?? My paddocks are defined by permanent, six-strand barbed wire with an electrical strand at 30" because I have Black Angus!

[@AB-ol5uz]

depends on the property - and how long people have had cattle/how many. People invest in infrastructure as their budget allows. If you can set a long perimeter fence and then have secondary lines to break it up into smaller paddocks that is one thing but the grass quality/quantity will vary according to time of year, amount of rain, etc. so having the flexibility to customize the size the paddocks is important.

[@donovanmedieval]

Do electric fences work with Highland Cattle? I would have thought their coats would protect them from getting shocked.

[@PrimalHealthGuy]

Nope they respect electric fence

[@donovanmedieval]

@@PrimalHealthGuy I have been lead to believe that electric fences don't work with sheep..

[@PrimalHealthGuy]

@@donovanmedieval that’s incorrect. 5 stand high tensile electric works great as perimeter fence for sheep and 3 stand works as movable inner fence. Cattle can easily get used to single stand high tensile electric. Watch Greg Judy, he’s great

[@donovanmedieval]

@@PrimalHealthGuy OK.

[@CMVBrielman]

Ok, ultimate lazy man’s rotational grazing system. Someone tell me why this wouldn’t work: A center pivot irrigation system, but instead of sprayers, it’s a fence. It slowly rotates around, giving the animals however many degrees of the circle you want. Add in some cameras, maybe a collision detection system (so you don’t drag a sick/wounded animal), or just have it be manually operated. Oh, and the whole system should be mobile along the center point, so you can drive it around to various points in the pasture.

[@wendyjennings1502]

Pugs with netting

[@karinlindquist2192]

Pugs?? You mean pigs, right? 🤣😂

[@galenhaugh3158]

Cows eat their favorite food first and their least favorite last. Make them eat their spinach!

[@orlandogarcia7043]

Alabama has less democrats so thats a plus!