We have been utilizing a rotational grazing method for about 6 months, but only recently did I “wake up” and decide to use an intensive grazing approach.
In the past the goats/chickens/turkeys had access to a section of pasture along with their shelter and I would move the whole paddock every day. This was a lot of work for my children and me, but I felt it was necessary to give them a large grass area and move their shelter daily. Aside from the hassle of moving the shelter every day, I was frustrated by the fact that they never seemed to eat the grass down very well. I was constantly faced with the dilemma of cutting the remaining grass (to stimulate growth) or to let it go.
About a month ago, it dawned on me that I needed to force the animals to eat more intensively. I achieved this by creating a much larger paddock and only moving the shelter every 3 days. I then use fencing to create a much smaller section within the larger paddock. Rather than moving the entire shelter/paddock set-up each day, I simply move the fence barrier in the larger paddock every 18 hours or so.
The smaller sections force the animals to eat all the greenery, not just the plants they like. Liken it to forcing your children to eating their broccoli with their dinner, not just their meat and potatoes. Not only is this newer system making better use of our land, but the animals all seem to be healthier too. I also find it interesting how the birds seem to be more "in-sync" with the goats. When I walk out to the paddock, they all start to go crazy; they know they are getting fresh pasture. When I move the fence, the birds come running along with the goats.
I took this picture just after moving the interior fence and giving them new grass. If you look at the photo, you can see the line in the grass to the right of the animals where the fence had been and they had eaten most of the greenery. You can also see the section to the left where they will be eating in the morning.
I guess if I were to be an intensive grazing purist, I would be moving their shelter every time I gave them new pasture, so that they were never on the same grass for more than a day. This seems to be a good balance for us right now, they eat fresh grass every 18 hours, but we don’t have to hook up the shelter to the tractor and drag it around every day.
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It's great to see you are working out a system that works on your farm. All of the wonderful management techniques proposed by the grazing gurus are only as good as you can make them by adapting them to your own situation.
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