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How We Move 500 Cows Daily

written by

Liz Cunningham

posted on

February 17, 2018

It would seem like a pretty daunting task to move 500 cows on a daily basis, but in reality cows are creatures of habit and get used to being moved daily. During the winter months we move our cows every day across our stockpiled pastures. They eagerly await to be moved every morning so they can get to new feed. 

At Christmas I got a drone and enjoy flying over Sean when he is out moving the cows in the morning, so here is a short video of Sean rolling up the electric fence for the day and the cows eagerly awaiting their new pasture.


For those who enjoy the details: We management intensive graze our cattle during the winter months, meaning we move our cattle to new pasture everyday. Most ranches feed hay all winter to their cattle, which we used to do too, but we find that our cattle are much happier receiving "new" feed everyday even if it's stockpiled from the summer. By bunching our cattle together there is a much better distribution of manure over our pastures which is perfect for the spring when the grass starts growing, no need to use fertilizers! They also trample a lot of the feed which is just fine, because it adds organic matter to the soil making it more fertile and helps it to retain better moisture. Overall we have seen great improvements in our soils and cattle since we stopped feeding hay and move them every day during the winter months.

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