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West Central Illinois | I don't do the sacrifice paddock deal like a lot of people do. Maybe it works better on farms that aren't so choppy with ditches and steep slopes where a guy could go in and drag it later in the spring and interseed the sacrifice paddock to fix it. If I did that on my farms it'd take a decade or better to fix 1 winters worth of damage.
I just do the same rotation like i do in the summer but i'm unrolling hay as long as i can get them to eat it usually until middle of april. My rotation's usually around 50-60 days give or take. But yes, right now this time of year i'm unrolling hay on a new paddock but they do take the new growth grass down to around 4" or so but it bounces right back once we leave that paddock. Usually move to a new patch and backfence them out of the old one about 2x per week this time of year, more frequent of course during the grazing season. Another thing I do that i feel helps some keeping them distracted from taking to the new grass growth too much is i save some of the better hay to feed this time of year waiting on new grass.
I think the biggest key to it all is just let them get as much rest as possible. A lot of people say 30 days but depending on soil type 30 days might not be near enough on some pastures. | |
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MIG
