by Heather Smith Thomas

Jim Gerrish, Department of Agronomy, University of Missouri, has been working with intensive grazing systems for more than 20 years. During that time he has accumulated good advice for cattlemen who are trying to use rotational grazing to their best advantage. Along with good grass management, there are some other tips that can help make your grazing program work smoothly.

Wheel line irrigation can be compatable with cell division fences, for instance. “Some people think you can’t fence pastures if you need to get wheel lines through. If you’re thinking of a 5 strand barbed-wire fence, it’s a challenge, but if you use electric fencing and cattle are trained to it, a two foot high electric fence will keep them contained. It becomes much easier to make subdivisions in wheel line systems. Using temporary electric fences makes managing irrigation and grazing much easier,” he says.

“You can also put up permanent single strand high tensile fence two feet tall that you won’t have to move. The wheel lines can cross right over them because these are not a physical barrier— especially if you run the fence perpendicular to the wheel line path. The pipes are tall enough to pass over the fence, as long as you don’t have the fence where the wheels have to go across. As long as there’s space between wheels, the wheel line can travel perpendicular to your fence lines. Then when it’s time to move the cattle around them, your wheel lines never actually go to the ends of the pasture anyway, so you can just move the cattle around the ends of the lines to get them to a paddock on the other side of the wheel line if you need to,” he explains.

Temporary electric fencing can be inexpensive and efficient (fast and easy to move), because no gates are needed. Cattle can be easily moved without gates, just by putting two tall sticks or pieces of PVC pipe in the fenceline for a moment to raise the electric wire to an elevation that the cattle can easily go under and into the next newly created paddock. Once cattle learn they can do this, it is very simple to move them, without gates.

“We’ve had people come to our school, who said this one idea was worth the trip for them, because they would never have thought of doing something like that,” he said. This makes your temporary fencing doubly efficient because you never have to put in gates.

Regarding water, Gerrish says that if animals are within 500 to 600 feet of water, the tank size needed for watering 100 to 150 head of cattle can be a lot smaller than people think. “You don’t need an 8 foot diameter tank. We’ve run 125 steers with just a 20 gallon tank all summer long.” They are close enough to water that they aren’t all trying to drink at once, and the recharge capacity is adequate; you don’t need a lot of storage space.

“If you tap your water lines into the irrigation heads, you have tremendous water pressure and recharge capacity. Those water tanks won’t dry unless animals can drink the water out faster than the system can put it back in—like a large group hitting it all at once. If only two or three can get their heads in those small tanks at once, they can’t drink it dry,” he said.

“They can generally drink about two gallons per minute. So if you have three head drinking, they’re taking in six gallons per minute. As long as you can put back about eight, the tank will never go dry. If you use the temporary fence and the moveable water tanks, your costs for setting up a system is much lower than if you try to put it all in as permanent tanks and fences. Plus, if you need to occasionally get in there and hay the field, you don’t have a lot of little paddocks with permanent fence and tanks in the way.”

Travel distance to water can vary with the situation. “The figure we’ve come up with, based on our research in the Midwest on flat ground—we like to keep the animals within 800 feet of waer. In range country in north Texas where it’s flat, a half mile to a mile is acceptable travel distance. This can vary even more in mountain rangeland. There haven’t been studies yet in controlled grazing situations in these conditions. It could be a lot farther because in that climate the cattle don’t have the heat load and water demand that our cattle have,” said Gerrish.

The value of shade in a paddock is also variable, depending on geography and climate. “In our part of the country (Missouri) where we have high nighttime temperatures and it doesn’t cool off, shade is more important than in a dry climate with low humidity and cool nights. I doubt you’d see a production response to shade in a low humidity enviroment, because you don’t get the heat build-up in the cattle.” Excess body heat can dissipate at night.

Basic ideas for pasture management can be gleaned from many sources, but always must be fine-tuned to fit your own situation, grasses and cattle. There is no substitute for getting out there and seeing first hand what is happening—walking your pastures. As Gerrish sums it up: the most important thing to find in your pasture is your own boot tracks. ©