Rotational grazing setup

Good morning everyone. New to the forums here and we are finally getting a chance to put our first pasture up at the new house. We are fencing in a approximate 2.9 acre area in front of our house. It is going to be a 5 strand intellibraid that I want to break into rotational pastures. Our plan is to have 2 beef cattle at a time on the pastures with a chicken tractor coming behind to help the insect cycle. My issue that I am having is trying to get this broken down into the best layout I possibly can. I have attached an image showing the area. Area 1 is very sandy, not much forage production. I have been spreading waste hay on it over the winter to help fill in the bare area's but being sandy it doesn't hold much nutrients. Area 2 is semi-productive and area 3 is the most productive but also the wettest area when rainfall happens. You can see the small drainage ditch I made to help with run off. My idea was to try and dedicate a portion of area 1 to a sacrifice pasture for winter or time's of heavy rain. I would like to also try and rotate every fourth day if possible but I can also work around that too. I also am putting a 16' gate in for the tractor so I would like to be able to get the tractor with an implement into the pastures for aeration/seeding/breaking up manure as necessary. The dimensions of the perimeter fence is. L-200', Top-500', R-170', Bottom-500'. Any help or ideas are appreciate, thank you!

I’ve seen lots of videos showing success by unrolling hay on poor areas and then grazing the hay. Maybe that’s an option for area 1. What kind of grasses are you trying to establish?

That was my plan to unroll the round bales in area 1 to help build the top soil layer and keep one area of the paddock from being heavily used. I'm trying to establish cool season fescues, orchard, clover and rye on the whole pasture. I planted some seed a year ago in that area with no much luck, not sure why. I'm hoping that spreading the waste hay will help with some nutrients and seeding as well. Before we bought the property it was corn/soy rotation and when we bought it the local farmer tried planting it with festulolium and orchard with no much luck either. It grew very spotty.

With only two cows you will want small pens. It is common to use mobile electric fencing to keep them moving through a larger field. The objective is to make sure they have sufficient fresh forage that nothing is selectively grazed to death. Giving them access to the whole field means they will tend to forage their preferred species first, over the whole large area.

You also want the impact of their feet and dung concentrated into small, intense pressure, but over a short period of time. When you release cows onto a new patch of forage they trample a portion of the standing grass into the soil. This builds soil fertility and carbon content over time - this is potentially part of a solution to restore you sandy area, as great soil carbon content increased moisture retention, nutrients, and future growth.

So, I would suggest that rather than asking how best to lay it out, it may be better to seek options for truly mobile fencing (and water!) that you can move within your acrage. This will give you the very best flexibility, and help maximise benefits of rotational grazing.

So do you think it would be best to have a reel system that I can strip graze them essentially over a couple of days then move the reels to the next strip so on and so forth. Then during the winter time have the reels setup to the larger sandy area and roll out hay over different spots to keep the foot traffic and waste spread out?

Hello!
I would suggest dividing the whole area into long skinny strips of pasture, preferably over 40 paddocks.(long rotation breaks the parasite cycle.)
I think you could run 2 beef steers on that amount of pasture.(I would recommend a smaller breed like dexter.)
Another option would be raising sheep as they are more appropriately sized for small pastures.

Finally I would suggest rolling out hay all over the pasture, specifically in low fertility areas.
This way you won't have high fertility only built up in a sacrifice lot and instead will improve the forage more evenly across the whole pasture.

Got clipped weird, but something like this --->

Hi Richard,
Welcome to Permies.

I read a lot about rotational grazing, but I do not have much experience. So... I found a good article on Mother Earth News written by Joel Salatin (who does have tons of experience). About halfway down he talks about estimating grazing area. It seems like its best to have fencing that you can adjust sizing on, at least until you zero in on how your animals do on your land. I do know that you should bring the chickens in on the third day for the flies and parasites.

https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/small-scale-rotational-grazing-zm0z16djzmul/

PS - I like the idea Noble gave, but I would run the water line the other direction, so it touches each paddock. Then add a spigot of some kind every other paddock and you should be able to get water everywhere fairly easily.

Comments so far have covered the subject well.  To illustrate and summarize I do not give the same massage to every person or the same person every time.  So yes, having reels that go from one side to the other allows different amounts to be massaged each time depending on conditions.  Though I no longer have animals my land goes from elevated sand to flat clay flood plain.  There is great variation to wet and drought conditions, so even mowing has to be adjusted for the difference in growth and weight bearing capacity.

Noble Bowman wrote:Got clipped weird, but something like this --->

I like this idea. Is there a specific reason to the rotation you made versus going the other way? We are just trying to save money off the start and then reinvest the saved money back into the farm for future growth.

Here are some more (unsolicited) ideas to play around with:

[  ] Establish trees throughout, and along perimeter to:
 -reduce losses from wind,
 -increase animal yields through shade in hot weather,
 -establish tree hay for forage backup and drought resilience; or consider species with edible pods (honey locust) or other storable yields,
 -coppice for forage and garden crafts, etc. or to mitigate or take advantage of that wet zone in area 3 (i.e. willow)

[  ] Shorter length rolls of fencing may be quickly moved in a variety of patterns.
  -5 fencing roles (~100ft each) coupled with perimeter fencing should be able to make two shifting triangle paddocks, one for herbivores, and the second for chickens if netting is used.

[  ] Water resilience (slope permitting, designed to function if a pump breaks or goes out)
 -Rainwater capture off roof to a cistern by your house
 -Overflow to a downhill pond of your choice, used to irrigate gardens and for emergencies
 -Cistern (and/or pond) supply a single irrigation line along a ridge with a few frost free hydrants for hydrating paddocks
 -Flexible hose attaches to hydrants to supply stock tanks
 -Empty stock tanks leap frog to new paddock, varying location to adjust high compaction areas

Best wishes and welcome to the forums!

The real key to rotational grazing is the rest period. You need to know and understand what the point of rotational grazing is, and that would be pasture health. Google "The four Never Fail Rules of Grazing". They are very simple, but maybe not so simple to master. You need a minimum of 5 pastures for this. If you are wanting to rotate every 4 days, you need 8 pastures, at a minimum.

Richard Cropper, did you manage to get this set up and how effective have you been finding it?

Here's a photo of rotational grazing as it's practiced at the local dairy where I buy fresh milk and yogurt here in El Bolsón, Rio Negro, Argentina.
To the left is the previous paddock, to the right is fresh grass for the next rotation.