Rotations

Layout of the Land

I bought 60 acres near Sulphur Springs, Texas in May of 2021. My neighbors to the east are a retired couple who graciously allow me to graze my cattle in the “back 20” of their property. My land is 60 acres and the area I can graze on my neighbor’s is 20 acres. My land measures almost perfectly 1000′ by 2560′. (2560′ is half a mile.) The entrance is on the north side. There is a cattle pen in the northeast corner.

The above picture is taken from Google Earth and shows my 60 acre plot with the back 20 acres of my neighbor’s property. These photos were taken in January of 2022. As you can see, there are some wooded areas on the eastern part of the 60 acres, as well as most of the back 20. In the northwest corner you can see the hay bales I had bought that the previous year.

Getting Started and Setup

I bought my cattle from another neighbor in June of 2021. I haven’t purchased any cows since then but I did sell many of them due to the drought.

It took a while for me to setup the electric fence. It took a while longer for me to figure out how to rotate the cattle, and longer still for the cattle to figure out what they were supposed to do.

In 2022, I installed a water line on the western part of my field and along the northern part of my field. I am running 1″ PEX and I have water hookups every 300′ (as that is the length the PEX pipe came in.) Before I had that working, I only had a watering station in the northeast corner in the pens, and the “stock tank” (pond) in the middle-eastern part of my field, which would run dry during the drought.

How I Rotate

The way I move the cows is rather simple. I start in the north of my field. I setup a row across the field in the east-west direction. I then setup crosswire at 150′ intervals for each move.

I move the cows twice a day, and I keep them in a row for 3.5 days, or 2 rows in 1 week. Every Monday morning and Thursday evening I move them to a new row.

Each cell is thus 150′ wide and as tall as the row I made is. For instance, if the row is 100′ wide, then we have a total of 15,000 sq.ft., which is a little more than 1/3 of an acre. Multiply that by 2 and you get how much area I give them to graze on each day.

I start a new row on the western part, where the water is. I give them loose minerals (usually) and an 80 gallon watering trough that will fill itself.

I don’t worry about backgrazing. It really hasn’t been an issue and I did try setting up backfence to prevent it, but it was a lot of work and I didn’t see much benefit. For the most part cows stay either near the water or in the new cell they are grazing. They don’t like hanging out near their manure.

Depending on how wide each row is, I get a different amount of area and a different speed of rotating through the entire field.

• 100′ wide is 1/3 acre per move and a 3 month rotation.
• 200′ wide is 2/3 acre per move and a 6 week rotation.
• 300′ wide is 1 acre per move and a 4 week rotation.
• 400′ wide is 1 1/3 acre per move and a 3 week rotation.

The Back 20

The Back 20 is a little different. While I can do twice daily moves, the woods are so thick and the field is such a weird shape that it is difficult to do. In addition, the only water available is from the ponds and so I need to make sure the cows can access the ponds.

I’ve even tried doing 3 rotations over a week and a half, but it is difficult to divide up the area properly, and it takes too much time to setup and remove the temporary fencing.

For now, I’ve decided to just give them the entire 20 acres and call them out when the grass is almost gone. Most of the pasture is really wooded area without much grass, so I can’t expect to get as much grass per acre from it as I would on my land.

Grazing Plan

Spring in NE Texas starts in mid-March, although grass will often grow a little bit throughout the winter and in February. I plan on the first spring rotation starting in mid-April. This rotation is quick, designed to just nibble the grass and move on.

The following spring rotations are a little more intensive with the goal being to keep the grass at the optimum height. I want the grass to stay in the “teenage” phase, where it is growing but not going to seed. I could try to start the rotation once I see the beginning has started the boot stage, but this is not an easy thing to do.

During the spring rotations, I set aside 1/3 of my field as a summer stockpile. Between spring and summer is a lull in grass growth. It takes a while for the summer grass to really start growing after the spring grass stops growing. This period of time typically starts in June and lasts until July. This is when I move the cows into the stockpile to bide my time.

Once the summer grasses come in, they grow slow and steady and produce plenty of forage, probably more volume and mass than I get in spring. The summer grasses keep growing often late into autumn. There isn’t much reason to set aside stockpile for autumn as the transition is generally smooth.

Depending on the weather, and from 2021-2023 we’ve had droughts, the grass will stop growing often in late summer. There is another lull between when the summer grass stops growing so much and when the cool season grasses start growing again. Thankfully, the dallis grass seems to fill this gap nicely so it isn’t as interrupting as the spring-summer transition.

Once the weather cools down, often in late November, the summer grasses stop growing altogether and the cool season grasses dominate. By the time winter comes into full swing, often in late December, there is hardly any growth at all and we are waiting again until spring the next year. For the winter, I set aside another stockpile of 1/3 of my field to graze in early spring.

The winters in the area are often moderate, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s. Occasionally we get a blast from the north and we’ll see very cold temperatures, often accompanied by bitter wind. Sometimes we get an ice storm for a few days. If we do get snow, it is typically gone within a few hours, but the worst snow storms can last a few days.

I feed hay as needed, typically starting in either late summer or autumn. If there isn’t enough grass to graze, then I put the cattle in a sacrificial area, as cows on hay will still overgraze the grass if giving the chance to.

Drought Plan

It is said that droughts are local. My area could have plenty of rain, but if the rainstorms miss my farm, I am in a drought.

We average about 36″ of rain each year, although a particular year could see 48″ or more, or even 12″ or less of rain. Thus, I need a plan to identify droughts and to prevent them from impacting my farm too severely.

Note that by rotationally grazing and leaving plenty of forage behind, my field should be completely covered with ground cover. This means that every drop of rain should fall on plants and be directed by the roots and the mycorrhizal fungi underground. This works until the ground is completely saturated, at which point the water either sits on the surface where it runs off into my neighbor’s property or waits until the sun causes it to evaporate. It is vital that every drop of rain I get is trapped and directed underground!

In addition to this, even in the middle of a bad drought, there is always water in my soil, even if it might be buried 1′ or deeper underground. By rotationally grazing, my grass and other plants should have deep, deep roots, able to tap into this reservoir of moisture even during extended periods of drought. The summer grasses, mostly bermuda grass, is known to have particularly deep roots, especially if it is not overgrazed.

These two factors should make my pasture mostly drought-proof, meaning, the occasional long periods of no rainfall should not affect my grass growth at all. Indeed, my primary concern should normally be what to do with all the excess rainfall on my pasture.

However, there are other conditions that can arise that may cause my grass to stop growing or to slow growing enough that it affects my ability to feed my animals. As such, it is important that I measure how much forage I have compared to how many animals I have on the pasture. At the first signs that I will not have enough forage, I need to stop grazing on the grass as the animals will overgraze and damage my pasture. I have, for this occasion, two emergency areas. One is the stockpile that I set aside for the seasonal transitions, and the other is my neighbor’s back 20, that I only use for emergencies.

Since I anticipate that my late autumn and winter forage will not be enough, I should have enough hay to winter my cows, with plenty of spare to feed the ground.

If my emergency pasture and hay is not enough, then I need to get rid of animals, and the sooner I do so the better. Remember, if I am in a drought I should still see my grass growing while others will already be at the limit for their forage. Thus, I need to be proactive and quickly act to move the animals off my land.

It is for this reason that I keep steer. When my forage runs low, I can sell the steer instantly for good money, as opposed to my cows and younger calves. Steer that are sold can be replaced by calves from the current crop. I can also sell my ewes, as they can be quickly replaced by keeping the ewe lambs that year.

In short, the plan looks like this:

• Use regenerative techniques to capture as much rain water in the soil.
• Use regenerative techniques to develop the root structure to tap into deep reservoirs.
• Measure the forage available and utilize stockpiles and the back 20 when necessary.
• Keep a stockpile of hay for the autumn and winter and use them temporarily to address shortfalls.
• Quickly sell steer when it becomes clear that I won’t have enough forage and hay to winter them.
• Sell ewes as a last resort.

List of Rotations

I’ve set up pages for each of the rotations I’ve done. The links are below.

• 2022-08: 100′ for each row. We started dry but had a good rain so some grass was growing.
• 2022-10: 100′ for each row. We got rain at regular intervals, but not much growth.
• 2023-01: 100′ for each row. The grass really started to grow in this rotation. Near the end I went to 200′ for each row as there was enough grass to support the cows without feed.
• 2023-03-30: 425′ for each row for a 3-week rotation. The goal is to tip graze and move quick.
• 2023-04-20: 425′ per row. Keep tip-grazing
• 2023-05-11: 425′ per row. More tip-grazing.
• 2023-06-01: Depends on how the grass is going, but I may continue a 21-day rotation. I may need to do more intensive grazing to get the cool season grass out of the way for the warm season grasses.
• The rest of 2023 I kept doing a 21-day rotation until I ran out of grass sometime in December.
• 2024-03-12: 6-week rotation. Sheep are offset by 3 weeks.