Rotating Pasture System

Hi everyone,

I run an agriculture program at a school and am seeking some ideas about how to best set up a rotational grazing system for our sheep. This is hardly a farm; we only have two sheep, and the goal is hands-on education, not food production. Here's my situation:

We have a small pasture area (probably about 100 x 75 feet) on campus. In the past, I simply zip tied together some cattle panels and created a 16x16 grazing pen. I would take them out there from a dry lot  and pull it to fresh grass every day. After that, the sheep moved out to the pasture full time, so I created a new cattle panel pen that is 16 x 48 feet and gets moved about every 4-5 days. I keep a small shelter on skids for them to take cover.

The problem with these systems is 1) it is too heavy for my students to help much 2) 16x16 is too small for a permanent home but 16 x 48 is cumbersome and takes too long to set up

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to set up a series of pastures that we could rotate the sheep through. I know that rotational grazing is typically every 4-5 days, but I'm wondering if we could get away with 7-10 days. Again, there are only two and I think we could mitigate some parasite issues by growing taller fodder and running chickens behind them. My other major concern is that I would really like to give these animals some room to run, so something like 15x40 would be ideal.

However, due to the school setting, some conventional methods are off the table. For example, I can't use electrified netting.

Anyway, just brainstorming right now. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forum!

Is it possible to source free pallets to divide the pasture into several paddocks?

If free pallets are not available could you do the same with goat fencing?

This thread might help you or others with paddocks:

https://permies.com/t/26230/goats-acre-paddock-shift-system

Maybe a Goat tractor could be made out of those cattle panels:

https://permies.com/t/75843/Sheep-Tractor

I second Anne's suggestion.

If you can even get a permanent fence on each side and down the middle, then you could just move two sides of the paddock up each of the strips. That should be lighter to move.

Thank you so much for the ideas. The paddock post is very helpful; I think that's basically what I'm envisioning--4 big paddocks to rotate every 10 days or so. I would like to outline the paddocks with some nice round posts.

Now, I'm wondering...what would be optimal for the fencing? Again, electrified netting and barbed wire are out because of the students. Does anybody have ideas for a fencing material that I could connect quickly from post to post? This might be crazy, but I've thought about using the Premier One netting but just not electrifying it. We've had these sheep since they were babies, and they are incredibly docile and don't really test their fencing much. Other than that, I'm wondering if I could get some big spools of wire and run them from post to post. It would be especially nice if it was something that students could easily work with.

Thanks!

A couple thoughts, although I am by no means an expert. To my understanding, you're supposed to rotate every 2-3 days, if possible. The reason being that after 3 days, the grass starts regrowing. If the animals are still on the same spot, you start overgrazing the pasture. Mind you, we rotate a ton of animals and some days...you just leave them on longer. But the general idea is 2-3 days. If you go 4-7, the grass has tried to regrow at least once, if not more. If you're only trying to have them stay for 2-3 days, you can get away with a much smaller pasture for just two sheep, especially if you supplement them with alfalfa or hay (although I wouldn't recommend doing that). Super cool that your school is letting you do that!
If you use hog or cattle panels, you should be able to run them in 16x16 paddocks without issue, and those aren't too hard to work with. That would also make it easier to speed up or slow down given pasture conditions. You could even move them multiple times a day if needed.

We use electric netting, but we set up paddocks in a pattern that could be duplicated with cattle panels. I would connect driveable fiberglass posts to the corners of the panels and maybe the center if needed and then move the panels every day in the pattern shown in the picture. You could do the system with 9 panels. This system will allow you to get away with leaving the shelter in one place a little longer since they aren't focused on grazing that part.

Jr Ross wrote: This might be crazy, but I've thought about using the Premier One netting but just not electrifying it. We've had these sheep since they were babies, and they are incredibly docile and don't really test their fencing much.

Totally not crazy - so long as these are "interior dividers".  Sort of what Matt said - build a permanent and safe exterior fence, then put light weight, easy to move dividers inside it, with enough divisions, that you can move them every 1-3 days either completely, or following some of Elena's patterns.

Some people have a central "hallway" down the middle or a central "hub" which has water and shade and then open a different paddock every 3 days. I like the idea of a "hallway" that would be mulched with bedding as it would likely get a lot of traffic and not grow well, but it would give a long stretch for "running exercise". I only have small animals (ducks/chickens/geese) and my babies are kept in portable shelters that are only 4'x8', and the lack of running space is a real issue. I have to let them out into the bigger field as young as possible (many flying predators - it's a balance) just for that exercise issue. I generally have Muscovy moms hatch out and mother the babies, which is a big help as they're pretty protective.

That said, you say they're docile. Docile enough to leash them and send a couple of students off with them for a "walk"?

Jr Ross wrote:This might be crazy, but I've thought about using the Premier One netting but just not electrifying it. We've had these sheep since they were babies, and they are incredibly docile and don't really test their fencing much.

Do NOT run the fence un-electrified!!
The electricity is as much for keeping animals in as it is for keeping predators out, but the animals inside it will only respect it if it is electrified. One year we needed to use our netting to enclose the lambing area and we didn't want newborn lambs getting shocked so we didn't electrify it. Later, when we started rotating them on pasture, they hadn't learned to respect the netting. Any time they saw something on the other side that they liked, they pushed it. The adults had figured it out previously, the lambs never knew, and it was terrible pressure every time we let them into new pasture. We ended up loosing a ewe and a ram lamb to entanglement in the fencing that summer. Please, please, please, don't leave your netting turned off! They need the shock to keep them safe. Even though they're tame and you don't think they'll push it, they will. Just as soon as you aren't looking.

Since you have the cattle panels and they respect them, use them. Moving them can be fairly easy if you can lock them into a smaller area (like the shelter with some sweet feed) so you can move the panels one by one. Keep the shelter in the panels and just release them again when done. Move the shelter later to locate it best for the next move.