Here at Sunny Acres, we have a group of weaned kids that are in need of highly nutritious forage to maximize their potential for growth. They are not getting any supplemental grain to support their growth. They have hay and minerals available in the shed at night and whatever they can eat from the pasture during the day. The second group is the dry does who need to restore their body condition to prepare for the upcoming breeding season. They also have free choice hay and minerals in their shed at night, but no grain is available to them either. The does raised their kids without any grain supplementation and were a bit on the thin side at weaning.
The pasture, as you can see in the photos, has a lot of legumes in it. We are fortunate to have quite a bit of trefoil along with the red clover. This pasture was grazed early in the summer and has had a couple of months of rest. There is lots of feed here, and hopefully not a lot of parasites!
We make the paddocks with a 3 strand polywire fence and step in posts. The paddocks are 32.5 feet wide and 225 feet long. That works out to about .17 acres each. The kids get the lead paddock for 1 day and then move forward. The does follow the next day on the same paddock as the kids have already eaten from. This way the kids get to eat the most nutritious parts of the plants and the does come in and finish it off. When the does leave, the paddock is fairly trampled and ready for another rest.
The kids began feeding in this pasture when they were weaned and the does were at the pond to separate them until the drying off process was complete. The kids couldn't utilize the forage very effectively though, since they couldn't eat enough in a day. The outcome was that they would stay in the same paddock for multiple days. The performance (ADG) suffered as a result. The pasture was also having animals on it for up to a week at a time. With leader/follower, the pasture only sees animals for 2 consecutive days and then rests. This should help stimulate better regrowth of the forage in preparation for one more quick pass at the end of fall.
Of course, this rotation is very intensive for us to manage. It requires leapfrogging a fence every day. We have 3 paddocks set up at any given time. One for the kids, one for the does and one being moved. The kids respect the 3 strands for the most part. Someone sneaks through on occasion to visit mom, but that is rare. They do have to be moved back and forth from the barns to the pasture separately though. That keeps the Farmwife and I in shape as we walk the 2 herds up and down the hill each day. Perhaps in the future they would stay put for the night and not return to the barn, but until we install predator proof fences we will not take the chance and they will sleep at night in the barn.
This weekend we plan to take everyone across the scale to see if this is really paying off. The does are all gaining in condition, that is very obvious and we should see significant gains from their weaning weights. Hopefully the kids will be increasing the average daily gain (ADG) over what we saw when they were first on pasture and only rotating every few days. The pasture looks like it is rebounding. If you look at the pictures of the pasture you can see the progression of new growth right up the hill. There is already nice feed available at the top of the of the hill with lots of nice new growth showing.
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