What is wrong with this picture? It's a nice pasture with clover and a source of water but...
...the nearby source of water is not passive (with a little work it could be - but until then it requires effort, note the hose) and it's only accessible at one place in this ~15 acre paddock (and that makes rotational grazing harder to do). In addition, the trough is low, cattle stand in it to cool down and it appears that some of them won't drink from it after it's too dirty. Another significant issue is little to no shade. The perimeter of this paddock is outside of the wood line so there is no way for the animals to escape from the sun by walking into the woods (in June it's already burning hot at 9am). Perimeter fencing should be inside the wood line to allow animals access to shade (and other forages).
Another efficiency killer is the effort required to keep growth off of electrified high-tensile paddock perimeter (look closely and you'll see three wires, the bottom one is buried in grass). An electric fence energizer positively charges the wire and negatively charges the ground the fence is on. Animals are shocked when they close the connection between the fence and ground by allow the electicity to pass thru them from simply touching the wire. When tall grass and weeds touch the wire it dissipates some of the charge and with enough growth the shock is not strong enough to convince the animals to stay in. Weed whacking is time intensive, so in this pic the problem is solved by upping the voltage so that is reads 10,000 volts + (we've been getting 3 to 6kv under the conditions above and hope to upgrade the energizer). 10kv or more will slowly kill the grass and weeds that touch the wire.
And if your wire isn't "hot" enough, as soon as the livestock want to get to new pasture they'll move themselves and sometimes tangle your $90 reel of poly wire (we use poly woven with metal wire to sub-divide paddocks and high tensile for the perimeter). Only a grandma that makes quilts will have the patience to untangle this mess.
And one more very important consideration. Make sure you place your fencing outside of flood plains. This pic shows what happens to high tensile when it's overcome by flash flooding. It can also catch enough debris so that it eventually breaks. This portion was perpendicular to the flow and was stretched, parallel portions faired better. Definitely don't use woven wire...
...this is the "velociraptor rated" paddock shown in the last pic of the previous post that had lambs inside. Note that the chicken coop floated and stopped when it hit this paddock. If you must use a floodplain to pasture animals use high tensile in the preceding pic. Woven wire captures small debris and allows resistance to build against the water flow, eventually causing the fence to topple. At least with the high tensile posts usually won't get ripped out of the ground and in general it faired better. So far all of the woven wire I've seen within a flood plane has completely failed (even with 4" steel "H" braced corner posts that were 3' into the ground).
What is wrong with this picture? The first and obvious issue is that Sammy doesn't wear lipstick (look closely at the cup's brim). Second, don't accept drinks from little kids (Calvin: "Whaaat? You mean Sammy is just handing us random drinks he takes from strangers?")
Another important but overlooked aspect of farming is fashion, or more specifically color coordination. In this pic I'm wearing a T shirt appropriate for cutting a 55 gallon poly barrel for use as a water trough to...
...help solve the problem with the cows standing in the troughs (I haven't seen them stand in the narrow one that's on its side either). Also note the 2" diameter hose. The next best thing to a passive watering system (like something that gravity feeds water and is float activated) is a large diameter hose...
...but this is preferred. Ponds at an elevation that is higher than the rest of the farm (this one is about 100' higher). With plastic tubing, troughs with floats or nipples this pond can passively provide water for a number of animals.
A good reminder that life is harsh. Imagine living before the industrial revolution and relying on your property for a large portion of your food. We were looking forward to a lot of peaches this year until a storm came a few days ago. Notice that it is still partially attached to the trunk. I asked the boys to prop it up with a folding ladder to see if we can get some of the peaches to ripen.
Keena: "Hopefully this will work."
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