Backyard Beef

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although you can build permanent fences after you learn the best way to divide your pasture in your climate. I'd suggest dividing a two-acre pasture into four paddocks of 1/2 acre each. As you see how your pasture grasses and clovers grow, or realize other possibilities, you may want to increase or decrease the number of paddocks. The more paddocks, the more often you can move your beef to fresh pasture. When grass is growing fast in spring and early summer, you don't have to move as often. In June you may want to do what professional graziers do: Make hay from the grass and clover surplus in one or more of the paddocks and stack it for supplemental feed for drought or winter. You could use your lawn mower to cut small amounts of hay, but a sickle bar mower is better because you can allow the pasture to grow taller before harvesting. Many garden tillers have sickle bar mower attachments available. If you don't want hay, just mow the early summer surplus grass and let it decay into the soil for more fertility.

MOVING, MOVING, MOVING

Pen your cow and calf in a paddock until they've eaten the grass down, then turn them into the next paddock. The proper amount of time varies with rainfall and land fertility, but you'll learn. For one thing, your animals will start complaining when they notice the grass is greener across the fence. You want the animals to eat most of the weeds and less desirable grass before you move them. The few weeds they don't like, like bull thistles, you can mow or hoe after you move the animals to the next paddock. You shouldn't have to mow a paddock more than once or twice a year, and sometimes not at all.

Since the animals will spend a week or more in each paddock, you have to provide a-ater to each area. Often a water trough can be placed where the corners of several paddocks come together to serve them all. If you have two acres divided into four paddocks, you can place one waterer in the middle of the pasture where all four paddocks converge.

Plant each paddock with different grasses and clovers to ensure good pasture through the whole growing season. Bluegrass and white clover make a good combination for spring and fall, but an improved rye grass and Alice big leaf clover combination is better. Timothy and red clover make a good combination for summer and early winter in our climate.

You might find alfalfa and ryegrass or alfalfa and brome excellent for a drier climate and well-drained soil. There are many other forages you can try, especially in the South. Some graziers are planting paddocks with kale or turnips for winter forage in the North. Combining a grass with a legume is always a good idea, since the legume, especially red clover and alfalfa, will continue to grow lushly when dry weather turns grasses brown. Legumes also provide nitrogen to the soil. Along with the animals' manure, no other fertilizer should be necessary.

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