The heart of the multi-annual pasturing setup is pasture rotation.  By "mob-stocking" lots of animals in a small space, the livestock are forced to eat everything rather than just nibbling on their favorite plants.  Then you move the animals to a new paddock quickly, before they can eradicate those favorite plants.  Your animals are healthier because they eat better food and don't pick up diseases from their own waste, and the pasture is more productive and diverse because the least tasty plants don't take over.

That sounds great, but how do you make the animals graze one small area and then move them to a fresh spot quickly and easily?  Chicken tractors are Joel Salatin's method of mob-stocking broilers, but he relies on electric fences for most other livestock.  Each type of animal requires a specific type of electric fencing --- two strands close to the ground are plenty for the tender-nosed pig, but Megan relies on electrified netting to keep her lambs in bounds.

Electric fencing has the benefit that it's easy to rearrange --- Erek takes about eight minutes to move the lambs to a new paddock each day --- so you can graze the whole pasture evenly without getting weedy plants growing up along permanent fencelines.  On the other hand, electric fence has some major disadvantages too.  Megan admits that the netting is nearly impossible to deal with in the woods since it tangles up quickly, and, of course, you have to keep weeds from growing high enough to touch the wires or they'll drain the electricity out of the fence.  And startup costs are steep (although startup labor is low.)

I have a feeling that electric fencing is one of the aspects of Salatin-style pasturing that carries over least well to the small homestead.  But more on that topic tomorrow!

This post is part of our Salatin-style Pasturing lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Salatin-style pasturing Colonizing livestock: Pigs and goats Maintainer livestock: Chickens, sheep, and cows Electric fences for pasture rotation Bringing Salatin's methods to the backyard

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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