I had a commentator on one of my YouTube videos get confused over how I am doing things. I admit it is confusing, and even my kids who come to the field from time to time get confused.
Let me try to describe the situation in detail.
My field is a rectangle, about 1,000′ wide in the E-W direction and 1/2 mile (2560′) long in the N-S direction.
I rotate the herds through the field, or at least I will once the grass starts really growing, in 12 rows running in the E-W direction. The animals spend 1/2 a week in each row, so we do 2 rows in a week. Doing the math for that, that means that each row is about 215′ tall in the N-S direction, and takes the whole width of the field 1,000′ in the E-W direction.
Since we have 12 rows, we will be taking 6 weeks to move a herd all the way from the north of the field to the south. Since I have 2 herds, and I want to keep them separated, I have them offset by 3 weeks. So when one herd is starting at the north, the other herd is halfway done with the rotation.
The reason why I keep 2 herds is because I want one herd to be predominately sheep and the other to be predominately cows. The cows will create cow manure, and the sheep will create sheep manure. Since the cow and sheep parasites do not cross-contaminate, that means that the cows will eat the sheep parasites and vice-versa, and the overall parasite count should be greatly reduced.
Parasites are the big problem around here. Worming or rather deworming your cows and sheep is of the utmost concern. I don’t worm or deworm my animals, though. I rely on nature to do her thing, and I rotate my animals so that they are not on the same bit of land for more than 3 days at a time, and I don’t come back to that land for 6 weeks, plenty of time for the parasites to die off (as well as plenty of time for the grass to grow back.)
Here’s a video of the bull-sheep herd I keep, right now in the northern half of the field:
And here’s a video of the cow herd I keep in the southern half right now: