Seppi and Daddy had to move the steers to the South pasture on Monday. They have been on the North Pasture since March 25th, and have been doing a good job keeping ahead of the grass.
The grass is now eaten down to an average length of about 6 inches, which is about as low as I want it to get this time of year. As the length of sunlight per day goes up, the grass growth will speed up as well, and we want plenty of leaf surface area out there to harvest all that sunlight.
Time to move the shade mobile out there. It has been unseasonable sunny for the last few days, and the steers need a place to lie down in the shade to chew their cud. This shademobile is a little skewed from getting rolled over in a wind storm this winter, but the frame is still solid.
Seppi filling up the water trough. That is gravity fed rainwater, not pumped.
The first step is setting up the central fence that runs down the middle of the pasture. This is the most time consuming part, and can take an hour or more to pick up from one pasture and move to the other. The two fences that we use for the center line are 100′ and 160′ long. They are heavy and bulky, but they have to be set up first so the shorter fences can be attached to it.
Once the center fence is set up, then it is relatively quick to set up the short 50′ sections. These are much lighter, I can hold two in one hand, and they don’t tangle as easily. It only takes about half an hour to set up 4 or 5 of them.
We are planning on putting in a semi-permanent fence to take the place of that center running electric netting, but this is not going to be complete any time soon. For now, this is the way things are.
First day in the new pasture. Grass on the east end is very short, so they have larger paddocks. About halfway up the field the grass gets thicker and taller so at that point they will be in much smaller paddocks and not be moving so quickly.
Little Farm in the Big City 