question: managed grazing and water supplies

[Lenajo]

When using larger tracts of land with no water/shade what are some options? I've got a 12 acre former corn field (flat, hotter than hades rioght now) on one side of the big pasture that I could push quite a bit more if intensively grazed. Hauling water is not an option because the ground is so wet in most of that pasture that we'd be stuck every other time we tried it.

 

Can you have MLM if the stock is funneled between the paddocks back to the same shaded/water area regardless of which of the paddocks are in use? I was thinking this would defeat the purpose of always being on clean ground.

 

For heavy, established stands of Bahia grass what would the estimated stocking rate be for adult ewes?

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I can't address the stocking rate, but we have a large field with the same issue. Last year we simply walked them to water a few times a day. Fun for the dogs, not as convenient for the sheep (but we also had hauled some water in the field, just a few buckets).

 

What I figured we'd do if we ever had the money to spend on oodles of fencing, would be to create three seperate alleyways for the three paddocks (our field is about 14 acres also and we could only realistically divide it in three). It's a long narrow field so you have to imagine the fields connecting. The first field would border the pond, so no problem there. Field two would have the alleyway on the north side of field one, and field three would have the alleyway on the south side of field one. These alleys would go through woods so no grass is lost and the trees would keep the ground stable. There's actually a fourth potential field and the path to the water for that one is already set up, on the far side of the treeline at the very top of our field. That's how we got the idea for the multiple alley system. These would also allow for set stocking seperate flocks during the winter.

 

It's hard to resist the temptation to imagine that if we were rich, we'd save a lot of money doing this. But I suppose the reality is that if we were rich, we'd just spend more money! How do you make a small fortune farming . . . . .?

[Mark Billadeau]

We're leasing about 3 acres next door to our property. There is very little shade and no water. We're using 3-4 runs of electronet to contain about 30 sheep. We bring them back onto our property a couple of times a day for water (typically during the heat of the day) and we leave them next door overnight (no predator problems). Typically, we need to move the electronet every 3 days based upon how much the section has been grazed.

 

Mark

[Bill Fosher]

Access to water is the dirty little secret of management intensive grazing. You really have three basic options: 1.) Install a water system that allows you to pipe water to the paddocks, b.) truck water to the animals or III.) let the animals run back to water. In practice, most operations seem to do a little of all of these. I would consider taking the animals to water to be essentially the same as letting them run back from a grass management standpoint, but much more labor intensive and for sheep, much less effective than figuring out some way to let them have constant access to water. Sheep, unlike cattle, generally don't all want to drink at the same time, and they don't want to drink big slugs of water. An occasional, solitary sip is more like it for them.

 

Greg Judy, author of a few books on mob stocking and low-risk ranching, spoke at a grazing conference I attended last winter. He was adamant that the back fence was the most important fence in any grass operation, but when pressed he admitted that he sometimes left a laneway back to a water source. On one farm, this was nearly a mile long and 60 feet wide, which is more than 7 acres that's being back grazed.

 

What I have done in places where I could really mob stock the sheep was to set water where four paddocks meet and rotate the sheep around the water point for four days. In a strip-grazing setting, you could set the water at the front of the first day's paddock, fudge the fence so that they have access to the same water point for the second day, and then let them run back to it for days three, four and perhaps even five depending on how the grass is regrowing. Remember, the idea is that you should not let the animals graze new growth.

 

Since the ground is too wet to allow truck access, you might have the answer to your water problems right under your feet for as little effort as a few turns of a spade.

 

Afraid I can't help you on the stocking rate question. Are you considering using this land to expand your flock, and wanting to know how many animals you could add? Or just trying to figure out how many to put there to start with? Stocking density is a little easier to discuss. Here in New England, I would start with 70,000 to 80,000 lbs liveweight per acre (approximately 500 ewes per acre) and figure on moving them daily. I don't know your climate or enough about bahia grass and its growth habits and needs for rest, but if you were moving 70,000 lbs per acre of animals daily over 12 acres, that would give 100 ewes enough feed for 60 days, at which point you could start to recycle over the paddocks again. Again, this is based on improved pasture in New England. Your milage will vary considerably.

 

I would not go that dense for ewes with lambs at foot, as I believe there would be some pretty serious competition for good feed at that level and the lambs would lose out. But for either dry ewes or weaned lambs, that's how I would approach this piece.

[kajarrel]

In the more remote pastures we graze, we haul a 200-gallon water tank on a cart with our Kubota Lawn Tractor. When it's really wet, I only fill the tank partially. This works for our ~ 80 sheep (plus lambs) for at least 24 hours, and even longer this summer when we have had rain every single day (no hay in yet - talk about stress ). The tractor rarely gets stuck (and if it does - one time this summer - I empy the tank and pull it out). Like Bill, I'll rotate the paddocks around the tank to minimize movement.

 

In the fields adjacent to our house/barn, we installed an irrigation system with a grazing grant we received. It's spring-fed and has worked pretty well, except one summer when it was very dry and we had to use our tank set-up.

 

Kim