01/28/2026
Been a busy winter so far with up and down weather. Feels like 2 winters with a spring in the middle.
We had a goal of grazing our cowherd up to January 1st on our cow buffet we planted back in August.
Well we exceeded our goal and made it until January 18th. We did feed them 2 days after we had a .75 inch rain event in January. They also had very low quality marsh grass round bales avaliable to them. They went through 4 of those. In total we grazed 70 additional days after our perennial pastures. We did this on 30 acres.
We were able to do this by giving them small amounts of the field in strips, what we call strip grazing. We would make these strips with polywire. Usually they would have little less than an acre for 2 days.
The main benifet of this system is cost. Lot cheaper to have cattle grazing than feeding feed that cost money to make. Other added benifets is a good dispersion of manure. Some of the plants also added nitrogen to the soil, broke up compaction, and attracted pollinators.
This is the second year we have done this and look forward to doing it next year. Some people asked what happens when it snows a lot? The cows will dig through it for feed. In the pictures you will see the snow beards they get.
