Rotational Grazing for Pastured Livestock

By Joel Salatin
Published on March 5, 2015
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Photo by Benjamin C. Tankersley
Managed grazing provides fresh forage and gives pasture a needed rest on this dairy farm near Culpepper, Va.

Many years ago, the livestock on our farm consisted of a handful of cows and a couple dozen chickens. We’ve scaled up our livestock operations through the years with cash flow from our profits, and now our farm is home to hundreds of cows and pigs, plus thousands of chickens and turkeys. The pastured model we’ve used with our livestock has proved successful at every level of growth.

Many times, micro-farmers see approaches such as our portable poultry pens and rotational grazing as practices that might be necessary for commercial operations, but that aren’t really applicable to their small homesteads (which some might consider glorified backyards). Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this column, I address the homestead version of our farm’s commercial-scale rotational grazing system. In many ways, this type of forage management is actually easier for small enterprises than it is for large ones.

Two overriding principles drive pastured livestock operations, large or small:

  • Bare soil is not good.
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