Subscribe to the Angus Beef Bulletin

Subscribe to the
newly redesigned
Angus Beef Bulletin

by clicking the
image above.


Sign up!

Quick links:

Share the EXTRA

Connect with
our community:

Follow us on twitterJoin us on Twitter









Bookmark and Share


Strip Grazing Fencing Techniques

Cattle eat a corn, soybean and turnip salad every day.

For good utilization of turnips or other brassicas, or some of the new cocktail mixes of forage species, it works best if you use portable electric fencing to move the cattle across the field in small strips, according to Tom Larson, who farmed for many years in Nebraska. Larson used polywire, and it worked well.

“This is the key to grazing forage turnips, for example, being able to divide the field into small portions and move the fence daily. I had an 8-acre rectangular field. Along one side I ran a hot wire along the existing fence. Perpendicular to that I ran a polywire to split the field. [The pasture] was about 600 feet (ft.) wide and I’d use 700 feet of polywire, since you don’t want a straight line. It works best if the dividing fence is a bit crooked,” he explains.

To make it simple to move the cows to the next section, always put up the next increment of electric fence (farther into the field) before you take out the old one. This way the cattle are contained in the next portion. Larson used a piece of plastic pipe (6 to 8 inches long) tied to the polywire for his gate. He says using the pipe, he could charge and uncharge the wire when he needed to open and close the gate.

He kept all the polywire on two extension cord reels. These plastic reels are insulated and won’t carry electricity, so when you get to the other end of the field, you can hang that reel on the little step-in post.

“If you make things as simple as you can, it saves time. At the other end, you can hook it around the hot wire a couple of times and then set it on the post, and that’s your gate. You can unwind that and start walking to reel it up, because the wire isn’t electrified when it’s unhooked, and keep picking up fence posts because the cows are behind you, coming into that little strip. You have the other polywire already set up, so they won’t go any farther. They are so eager to eat it; they happily stop in that next section. You wind that wire up, carry the post along and then go to the next section (for tomorrow’s grazing), and step in another batch of posts to set up that next portion.”

He’s also used several varieties of soybeans for forage, including Derry soybeans, and corn in a strip-crop system (a strip of each).

“They didn’t mature here, but the leaves will grow up to shoulder high in height, and calves love to eat those leaves. The cows eat the corn and the stalk. You can turn the cattle into the patch any time before tasseling. I grew turnips in the other four rows, so the cattle had a green salad every day,” he says.

About every three days to make a path for his fence, Larson mashed down a few rows with his tractor. The cattle still cleaned up the crushed plants, so nothing was wasted.

“I could get a couple weeks’ grazing with 50 animal units on that small 3-acre patch by strip-grazing. The feed was cheap, and equipment costs were low,” he says.

comment on this story

Editor’s Note: Heather Smith Thomas is a freelance writer and a cattlewoman from Salmon, Idaho.



 

 

 

 





Use this keyword search to find more articles like this one:


[Click here to go to the top of the page.]