On our farm we have sheep, horses, and chickens and we use rotational grazing to keep everyone fed and happy most months of the year. In a more typical year, we won’t start feeding hay regularly until November. The year of 2024 is likely to be quite different due to the drought but that’s a whole other post.
Sheep and horses prefer different grasses so we start the horses in a paddock that is about 1 acre. They’ll eat the grass they like and about 2 weeks or so later, they’ll go to the next paddock. The sheep then will go into the paddock the horses were just in and they’ll eat the grasses the horses missed. This should prevent us from having to mow as much. Finally, we’ll put the chickens on the field last where they’ll re-fertilize the fields, eat worms, and scratch the manure around.
Sounds perfect, right? Well in theory, all of it does. In reality, we don’t have enough chickens so they only get to re-fertilize small sections of the field before everyone starts to make it back around. But, we just add some grass seed in the areas that need it each year. The other item to keep in mind is that the chickens and the sheep are prey animals and so we keep them in electro braid fencing to keep the predators at bay. Moving sections of fencing within each 1 acre paddock can be time consuming, but with the fencing chute we added to the farm this year, it makes it a little easier.
At the end of the day though, this is the best way to keep the animals on the farm and maintain the soil and grass health. Really, we are grass farmers providing sustenance for our farm critters. If we look at this way, though it does create a bit more work for us, it will be worth it in the long run.