Mob Grazing

MOB GRAZING =

CLIPPING

CLIPPING =

SHORT DURATION

SHORT DURATION =

QUICK RECOVERY

MOB GRAZING

Mob Grazing is the science and art of concentrating cattle while they're on pastures and moving them frequently over the pasture, never staying in one place long enough to over graze it. It has become much more widely known and offers a lot of bonuses for us.

Gets us off an area quicker so that:
- we never take more than one clip from a single plant
- the grass can begin to recover immediately
Deposits concentrated fertilizer
Cattle eat primarily the richest young leaves and have better gains
Allows us to rest pastures for longer periods which develops roots and that means more leaves in the long term

OUR APPROACH

The Objective: lots left after grazing

For Mob Grazing

1) Rest is the most important thing to give

2) Leave as much or more than you take

3) Move quickly to prevent reclipping a plant

4) Concentrate the animals - up to one million pounds of beef per acre

5) Get water on the grazed area immediately after leaving it

RULES

We have a smaller amount of land than outfits with native range and we have the advantage of having manufactured rain. That means that we while we follow the rules for mob grazing we adapt as needed. For example, in a semi arid range operation such as Ray Bannister's up in Montana a pasture might be rested for up to 18 months after grazing.

We don't want to do that. We're not saying Ray's not doing it right; he clearly is! However, he's on perennial pastures; he makes his cattle eat everything to control weeds and he's not concerned with maximizing gains. We've found that we can foster the long term growth of our base forage and any other plants that are at least semi - perennial by giving them 25 - 45 days between grazing. If we give them any more than that the plants go to seed - the problem is that cereals don't automatically reseed the way perennial grasses do - we just lose our pastures.

On top of that we end up with very mature pastures that are not nearly as rich in energy or protein as what we want. So we strive to make sure we:

1) Leave five to ten inches of plant behind us after we graze,

2) Give the plants lots of rest between grazings

3) We have plenty of regrowth before we return

The photos below show a typical grazing area after the first clipping (left photo). As can be seen the forage is denser and taller than the first grazing of the year.

Maximum 12"

Maximum 12"

Maximum 18"

Maximum 18"

To accomplish our goals we need to move fence... constantly! We use tumblewheels from Gallagher to do that. Our fences rotate around our pivots as the diagrams below illustrate. Use this link to see a video of how we move fence.

ROTATING FENCES

The diagram above is a compressed illustration, but shows how we have things set up around a pivot,

The diagram at right shows the elements of the system from above. We should note that we move the front fence throughout the day, but the back fence only moves before the cattle are settled at night. That helps prevent double clipping of plants.

We also water directly from the pivot using high pressure floats in three 300 gallon troughs. They have quick couplings that we use to move the back trough to the front each night so that the system "follows" the fences as they move