We have been managing our pastures with rotational grazing for the last few years. I was out moving our ram lambs this morning and took a few photos that I thought I would share.

Rotational grazing is not a difficult thing to learn or to do. It is more time intensive than open grazing (i.e. no subdivisions of a pasture… all animals in one area all the time). But it is significantly cheaper than conventional animal management. We do not own a tractor. I do not hay my pastures. I believe I fed our sheep one and a half square bales of hay in total for the last 365 days. And that was just because we had a few days that were extremely wet, and I didn’t have time to move them to a new paddock. Our local price for a square bale of hay is about $5.50. So, my hay cost for the last year was less than $10.

We do provide a kelp-based mineral supplement from New Country Organics, but we feed nothing else. As you can see from the photos below, the pastures are improving. And, our sheep are doing exceedingly well.

 

Photo 1

• To the far left is an area that has not been grazed since we bought the farm 3 years ago.
• There are three hills in the background that are up against the treeline. The far right hill was grazed a few months ago. The center hill was grazed a few weeks ago. The left hill is where the ram lambs are right now.
• The big green area in center front is where we had our ewes in early-Winter, about 4 months ago. It does look particularly good since we’ve had some warm weather and good, early Spring rains.

 

Photo 2

• This is the same area as Photo 1, but a different angle. I was standing at the far left of this image to take Photo 1.
• The brown hill in the back is the area that has not been grazed since we moved here 3 years ago. The rams are currently in square-rectangular paddocks almost dead center in the photo. This is what we call “standing hay”. The sheep love it. It’s what they eat all Winter.
• The green hills in the foreground is where our ewes were in early-Winter.
• The shrubs in the center of the green hill area are Prairie Rose (Rosa setigera). I intentionally let some areas of the pasture stay a bit un-managed for a few reasons. I want to keep some wildlife habitat for birds and rabbits and other animals. Also, a little variety in the sheep’s diet is great. I try to expand the diversity on the farm instead of reduce it. I have been slowly documenting the wildflowers, trees, birds, mammals, and mushrooms on the farm.

Photo 3

• This paddock is not the result of only rotational grazing with sheep. Here is what we did for this paddock:
  • First our sheep grazed it.
  • Then our mobile chicken coop was parked here.
  • Then our pigs tore it all up.
  • Then I reseeded it with a mix of pasture seeds and clover.
  • Then our mobile chicken coop was parked here again.
• This area was an almost dead, rocky mess. Now it is one of the most lush areas on the farm.
• I call this Rotational Grazing Plus.

 

All photos in this article are ours. If you would like to use one, please let me know!

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