Rotational Grazing Equipment and Setting Our First Temporary Fence.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 มี.ค. 2021
- We are going to setup our first temporary electric fence to start rotational grazing our feeder steers. I need first get all the temporary fencing equipment setup and ready. Then I will setup a training fence to make sure the cattle know this is electric fence. Then will we setup our first pasture division and have the steers in a small paddock. I am using taragate geared reels, powerflex mixed metal poly braid, and o'brien tredaline step in posts. These are all suggested by Greg Judy to use for rotational grazing temporary fence.
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We live in southeastern Illinois on a 41 acres homestead. We just finished building our log cabin overlooking our pond. We are trying to grow our own food and raise livestock. Follow us on our journey living the rural life and developing our property and becoming more self sufficient.
Evan, call your cows anything you want to. They are yours. May God bless you and your farm.
Thinking out loud is how my dad did it. If you speak it you can hear your flaws. Your mind will always find the exception to the rule. You then only have to decide if the exception is worth the chance of screwing things up. If it's a no go at least you have learned something. 😃 Many blessings from New Orleans.
Love the channel. You are very informative and it's always fun to watch you tackle projects.
Well I've always respected those guys, who are dedicated livestock farmers .. there is so much equipment you need to get everything done .. and if the machinery is old it tends to break .. money just melts in your pocket when goes for spare parts and fuel .. you need a lots of land to graze and harvest hay .. farming as such is enormous amount of work .. you're simply the slave of your animals. I've dome farming as well in the past, but finally became a beekeeper .. less work .. more income and freedom .. sweeter life :))
Rotational grazing...good move. 😎
Set up some kind of handling facility. You never know when you'll need it. You can set up some gates as a temporary measure but I wouldn't feel comfortable until I had one.
Yes you did! Cows are cows and you haven't got any! 😂😂 Steers, you have! 👌👍
Talking out loud is how I approach every project. Helps me hear what I'm thinking. Of course the wife thinks I'm a little crazy..... I enjoy how you try different methods to see which works best. Always looking for improvement.
LOL you have no idea how many times my wife had asked me, Just who are to talking to? I say some one who has just as many good ideas as I do.
I appreciate your method of sharing this information with the rest of us newbies.
1\4 mile long polybraid! Wow, that would make a neat HF antenna, receive only! 73
You’re doing great, read, learn try and see what works.
Looks great Evan. Keep up the good work and videos, we are all enjoying your videos. Fred. 👍👍👏🏻👏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Greg Judy is a great resource regarding rotational grazing and the equipment/materials needed to build implement such a system. Tim
Looks good. As far as starting small goes, one of Mr. Judy's favorite sayings comes to mind, "just start". Good job.
Thanks for that video Evan. I like what you're learning and sharing your knowledge with us all. I appreciate you and the time and effort you take to educate us all. 👍🏆❣️❣️❣️
Great to see your plans coming to fruition your going from strength to strength
Hi..... Evan, thank you for sharing your video homestead 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 🎥👍👍👍
They will be alright even without a tree. Love watching your activities.
Thank you. It's the first time that I understood how this system works.
WE LIKE TO SEE IT AS IT GETS BUILT!
Keep up the good work!
👋 Good morning.
Thanks for sharing this video. 👍
👋
Cows are curious creatures, so are steers.
As always a great video! Thanks.
Nice! That equipment looks excellent.
I think it's great that you do the research then choose what you think would work best for you. It's clear you are excited for this venture!
I was wondering about the pole barn. Thank you for the update
Looking good. Greg Judy won’t lead you wrong.
We love those electric fence reels they will treat you well 👍
Very helpful thank you!
I was always told that it is better to give the cows a salt block a sulfur block and a trace mineral block. So that they can eat what they want and not have to waste the other minerals.
Great video, very interesting and informative. Thanks for providing such great content.
Looking pretty good and some great planning!!! Thanks...Peace!!!
Bill
Moving forward! There’s a great deal to learn, and you will.😊
Best use of the land you have available. Good job and yes good for the land.
I learned to put my posts on first then cane tgrough with the wire.
Life is a learning experience You are doing fine Alot better than I thought you would when I first started watching you Keep going I am impressed All the best from Allenford, Ontario, Canada
Like what you are doing. We just started this past summer using reels & poly wires for rotational grazing here in Manitoba, Canada. Works great!
Re rod post are stronger and in the long run cheaper
Great video. Considering a similar set up for rotating pigs. I love those reals.
Hey Evan and Rebecca...love y'alls vlog.
That go new building
you will have to start picking the pats up
You can get one of those portable carports that you can slide from padock to paddock... a lot of them come with three canvas sides...
Rotating your grazing is not a new thing when on the farm in the 1960s my grand father had his 90 head of poled Hereford cattle between his six pastures and still had enough pasture to cut hay and keep them fed in the winter months he was able to figure that one acre of ground would support one head of cattle this was grazing as well as cutting hay off of it I dont recall the size of each filed but he would change off or move the cattle every two weeks and at one point only use 3 of the six fields so as to allow the hay to grow for cutting for the winter of course back then there was no systems of moving electric lines around creating different pa decks for grazing it was all barbed wire fencing and gates every 3rd year he would also spray liquid chicken manure on the 3 of the fields and then alternate allowing time before putting the cattle back on it I truly miss the farm you are in a learning state right ow and I think you are doing great keep up the good work and of course keep in mind work smarter not harder :)
We use to say 1 acre per steer. For the growing season. So we stripped 10 acres for 10 head and moved every week all summer worked ok. But then I am a little lazy.
Great going. My electric fence kills the squirrels trying to get into the garden, I need the fence to keep the deer out. 6ft, 6 wire around the garden
If you’re in a situation where your poly braid is already tight and you need to add a post, can you wiggle the post onto the line before you put it in the ground. As you say, we can’t see the white on white very well, but I’d think you could do that. Tightening after the posts is probably easier for first setup, and necessary if your run has a bend, but once the line is tight it would be handy to be able to add or replace a post without having to slack the wire first. Keep on learning! And teaching us, of course!
great idea on training the cows to electric. That's all we have for our cattle is a single strand of electric. They learn as calves electric 101 and never challenge it now. you should be able to easily fence them in now wherever you like with that temporary fence.
Great job. I would say that with such small areas it might only take several days for those boys to graze down the grass and it will be time to rearrange things. One other point is that I would highly recommend getting a chain drag. After a while you will have piles of manure all over the place. Each pile is a place grass won't grow. After we switch our horses to a new pasture, we drag the one they just finished with to smooth out and break up the piles they left. It has improved the quality of our pastures a great deal. Just a thought.
When moving livestock to new pasture, Joel Salatin puts chickens on the plot the cattle just left and pigs on the plot the chickens just left. The chickens will scratch and spread around the cattle manure and eat the seeds and bugs. The pigs will root around and "plow" the field, looking for underground edible roots. Once buried by the pigs, the cattle and chicken manure fully decomposes into the soil and will fertilize the plot for the next time the cattle are set out to graze.
You should watch what Art and Bri's channel they do this and it is also on a small acreage.
...good one, fatten up those walking steaks...lol...nice work, stay safe..
Thx
Something that helps with visibility on your hot wire is some of that vinyl reflective tape like they use on elevation posts around construction sites. It’s inexpensive enough and tears very easily. I always tied it in 1 or 2 spots between the posts. Great visibility for the “cows”, lol as well as you and your wife. Added bonus is the “cows” will get so trained on it, they won’t cross it even if you forget to re-energize it for whatever reason. Looks awesome!
Good point--we always use surveyors tape between posts so our horses could "see" the wire better.
@@andyrobinson339 “surveyors tape” Thank you! I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name, lol. All I could do was describe it. Of course I’m old and retired and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it 😁.
@@jacktomberlin7976 I’m right there with you! Tim
Hi. For what it’s worth, if you’ve not heard of mob grazing, have a little gander on the subject. Apparently you use less space and the grazing gets lusher. “A few acres farm” uses the method. It’s rotational grazing too.
Mob grazing is just a high stocking rate for short periods of time. Usually moving cattle 2 or more times a day. I can't do anything like that working a full time job. Once a day moves would be the most I could do.
When we lived on the farm I carried a Volt meter and check the hot fence so that I knew that the fence was active. I purchased a fence charger at a farm sale and rebuilt the machine and installed a capacitor and found that my wire was 50,000 v. It would burn the grass and weeds that would touch it. It also would leave a mark if you happened to touch it by accident.
With the two feeder calves you can draw up you land outline and divide it how ever you want. If they eat to much open up the the wire let em thru and keep good records on how long each paddock was in use. Dates, moisture, heat or cold etc....I went through this on our farm we used to have only difference was we had a lot of weeds where you have grass. So I ran goats through first and fast....then the cows rather quickly to get them used to the movement from one paddock to the the next and then back to the first one to start again. Good luck just don't forget to keep good records. They will help you year after year.
There are calculators on line to figure out how much pasture is needed per steer per day based on size and age.
Hi Evan👋🏻
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Geared reels are the best choice you could of made expensive but well worth it do some research into New Zealand dairy farming they do rotational grazing with dairy cows mind you lots of people doing it the UK and Ireland now too
You should top off your paddocks with the mower to get rid of the yellow grass and the grass will come up much stronger and greener
Knowing your heart beats is a good thing. 😀
My grandpa did that with about an acre of land with a bull and 2 hefers just watch the grass
Hey man u should also spread some some fertiliser on the paddocks they have grazed and u will have lovely lush grass on each paddock
The bullocks are doing that! Following with chickens spreads it out nicely (and gets rid of parasites), but I'm sure Evan knows that :)
@@sroberts605 chicken dung can kill cattle
@@sroberts605 The 'beauty' of mob grazing--fertilizer is 'free' & built into the method, no additional input required..
@@Cc87812 They follow on behind - by the time the cattle come back I don't think there is any problem. Anybody?
You could have walked it back 1/8th mile (660 ft, 220 strides) and then reeled it in. Next time!
On my reels, the metal hook has continuity with the polywire. If yours does as well, hooking it on the field fencing will electrify it which will short to ground at every t-post and put your polywire voltage extremely low.
On These reels the hook is insulated from the poly wire.
Draw up a diagram of your pasture, divide it into the number of paddocks you want to use. Keep good records of your rotations so you know what your individual paddocks can handle. We did that when we had cattle. The catch pen was circular with post and cattle panels two high, to stop jumpers, a swing gate in the middle so as the cattle were entering the swing gate reached the panels a small separate gate on the far side the led to a 16 foot shout to a head gate. I could do what ever needed done.
Good job with your fencing. Any plans for building a covered shelter for your Steers ...
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I am trying to figure out how to do something like this for my goats. Right now they just free range during the day. But I would like to have a little more control with where they go.
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Going to be a fun summer, wonder if steers like bruised vegetables?
How were the tacos btw?
bol
Single half-hitch plus quick-release.
Good idea.
I've never used poly but many things cross over : tight enough you dont have too big of sags, enough posts for same. I made a electric winder from an old drill fill 12 v motor geared down with a pulley system, a large chain link on a sliding rod to run the wire through to move it back and forth on the spool. of course i was spooling up several miles of wire but usually only a little more than a 1/4 mile just gets too heavy to handle when you get close to a 1/2 mile of steel wire
A very interesting and enjoyable video. Could hear you huffing and puffing. You’re too young for that. A stationary bike on the porch, or wherever you wish, will keep you fit with increased energy.
It is just where the mic is positioned, it picked up my breathing. Sometimes I even hear my heart beat in the microphone.
This looks like a great plan. Moving the around will also keep them from tearing up the pasture so much hen it is thawing out., or wet from days of rain. Looking forward to seeing the progress on the pole barn. What did Rebecca think of the fish you caught the other day? Envious I'll bet, since she loves to fish also. Have a Blessed day.
I used her favorite fishing spot. She may have been a little envious.
@@CountryViewAcres Oh Oh. . I hope she catches some the next time out or you will be in the dog house. LOL
In the future you might want to install a lightning resistor to protect your fence charger
That's a good idea. I still need to setup a permanent fence charger.
Learn the bowline knot. This from a sailor since 1957; I watched three US Navy sailors tie a bowline to secure an 800-foot-long ship to a dock. The knot will never slip; it can be untied no matter the force that is put on the knot. It may well save a life - even yours. Make sure you can tie it on a bite as you may need to share a load- a friend helped me pull a load on a yard trailer last week. Kindly list in the fencing area at your website the items recommended by Greg Judy as they are not currently posted and included other items you purchased. P&TYVM. BTW, on rotational grazing: check out Joel Salatin ("do NOT talk to me until you move every day") and Justin Rhodes. I appreciate your candor- you crack me up; more power to you.
You need to call Justin Rhodes and talk to him and talk to people at VW Homestead because they do the same thing they rotate the cows around and they know quite a bit of it and Service just wrote above you tubers the good people and I’ll help you out if then if you need it search afternoon God bless you from Indiana
Nice video; Thanks for dropping tips on where you found information and resources... I was curious what size fence charger you went with? Did the voltage stay consistent on the permanent fence when you hooked up the poly wire rolls?
I didn't test it. I can do that sometime. Would be nice to know.
When are you going to do an up date on the pole building?
Hopefully they will finish the pole barn metal today. Then I may have a video up Sunday or Monday.
@@CountryViewAcres Thanks, can't wait to see it!
I thought you was going after jaws with that reel. Are you giving them a name ?
Big fishing reel. LoL. The steers are named T-bone and chuck.
I looked in your amazon shop and none of that is in there. Where did you buy all your goodies? Rural King or Tractor Supply perhaps? Thanks for the help and keep up the good work.
I bought all this stuff from American grazinglands
Curious did you test the new fencing to make sure it is charged and how do you know it is charged ?
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🥴👍steers😁😁😁😁😁
Have you feed your land. Get a soil test done on the area Your not grazing and feed it. I think you can raise two steers just on that lot your on.
If there is any lumber left from the pole barn you could make a shelter on skids.
We’re did you buy the roles and wire and posts looking to start doing the same thing with our 65 acres have been raising Dexter cattle for 10 years
Would you ever consider using Premier1 electric fencing for rotational grazing?
I have 3 rolls of premier one. I wouldn't want to move it on a daily basis. These reels of fencing is much easier.
so how would they get to the hay feeder if you keep moving the temp fences?
The hay feeder is going to move with them.
🐊🇺🇸🦅👍
Where did you get the electric fencing kit? I have looked without any luck for some of that same product...
I bought it for American grazinglands.
@@CountryViewAcres Thx
How's the barn/garage/workshop doing?
Hopefully they will finish the metal today
I am asking because I don’t know how your reels are made. But the hook on your reel you are hanging on your fence power the wire ? Most geared reels the metal hook will energize the wire. Those 2 metal wires you tied off to are hot on mine. The plastic hook on the end is not obviously. If yours is made like mine, you are grounding out your fence by hanging on the staple. If it isn’t made like mine then all this is for not. Just curious! Good vid my friend
The metal hook is insulated from the reel. You have to wrap the poly braid around the metal hook, then hang it on. But I don't think my electric fence is stout enough to hang the reel on. So I hung it on the field fence and used the jumpers to electrify it.
Got ya. Thanks for responding
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What has happen to your pole-barn?
Rain delays. Hope all the metal is complete tomorrow.
I've read dozens of Greg Judy's articles in the Stockman Grass Farmers magazine. If you are interested in sustainable farms it's a good resource. Joel Salatin is the editor.
& polyface farms another 👍
What company did you buy thru?
I brought everything from American grazinglands.
First?