Information about how much pasture a Scotch Highland Cattle needs?

[Nichole Olie]

I was reading up on the amount of grazing land i would need and i read, since they're good grazers, i would only need about 1 - 1.5 acres. But im curious if this is per rotation? So say I have 4 padlocks, I need about 1 acre per cow in each padlock?

So.... 4 acres = 1 cow? Or it's 1 acre all together, because that doesn't sound right at all! Sorry if this sounds so silly, i'm extremely new to all this and trying to do as much research as I possibly can. Thanks!!

 

[WildRoseBeef]

[deleted due to highly inaccurate info I had provided...]

 

[Nichole Olie]

Hmmmm... "I have 3 adult Highland cows, 3 yearling bulls and one new calf. I have a 5.5-6 acre pasture split into two paddocks and they aren't even making a dent in the new growth." That was information I was finding in Homesteading Today, with a person in PA. I'm in Ohio, which i know can be a big difference in animal to acres, but 10 acres seems like A LOT. That means i'd need 50 acres for just 5 cattle?




I was hoping to do rotational grazing, into 4 different pastures. I was going to do 7 acres per padlock, with 28 acres all together. And i was thinking that was a lot of land. Haha

 

[Bossroo]

Location, location, location ... In California's Sierra Nevada mountains , about 1 mile down the road from my 20 acre ranch is a 3,000 acre ranch. They run a 300= / - beef cow operation and they have to feed hay + grain for 90 days in their feedlot to finish that year's calves for market. Let's see... 3,000 divided by 300 cows = 100 acres per cow ( not including that year's calves in their feedlot ).

 

[bcnewe2]

I don't do cattle so I'm just surmising....
Let's say you have 10 acres for 4 cattle and cut it into small 1 acre plots. You might not be making a dent in it now but in a few months they will pick each lot clean rather quickly. I'm thinking 10 acres cut into 2 tracts might get you a while if you were letting them graze 1 tract per week but then you'd get to the summer slow down or winter no growing and you'd be left supplementing your cows. Which isn't that bad a thing if you can find cheap hay.
I think you said you have 6 acres. With 2, 3 acre tracts. If you watch closely, move them as quick as you need to, as soon as you see them eating more than is growing. I'll bet less than a week at a time.

No matter what, when you hit your dry season and winter with those numbers and that small a spot you are going to have to supplement. And I'd bring them off so that you didn't over graze as needed. August is always a sucky month for us. Hot and burning grass.

I ran 13 ewes and 2 rams on 17 acres with no fencing but 2 separate fields, one warm weather grass and 1 cool weather grass. They naturally rotated from the cool weather clover field in the spring and early summer to the one with the warm weather grass later. This spring I had 25 lambs with those ewes and like you they aren't making a dent.

I ran out of anything to eat about November and had to supplement till April. Really I ran out sooner than that but they would still pick at it without leaving dirt and I didn't feel I had to pull them off to save my pastures till about Jan.
I live in MO and we're having a rainy season that is making up for our loses last year. We also had an early growing spurt which gave us grass early. Everything came back nice but I kept them dry lotted in Jan, Feb and most of March to keep them from picking it clean.

I think without the drought we might have made it a bit longer but you have to plan on the worst happening anyways and be happy when it doesn't.

Hope that makes sense!

BTW....I love highland cows! Cows with bangs!

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Hmmmm... "I have 3 adult Highland cows, 3 yearling bulls and one new calf. I have a 5.5-6 acre pasture split into two paddocks and they aren't even making a dent in the new growth." That was information I was finding in Homesteading Today, with a person in PA. I'm in Ohio, which i know can be a big difference in animal to acres, but 10 acres seems like A LOT. That means i'd need 50 acres for just 5 cattle?

No, no, I meant 10 acres in total for all your animals, not per head. (I was REALLY out to lunch when I wrote that first post...sorry! ) Ten acres isn't a whole lot for a handful of livestock, not if you're keeping them throughout the year from one grazing season to the next and need room for a sacrifice area to keep them off the pasture until grazing season's on again. It is if you're buying only a few head, grazing them for a couple of months then selling them.


I was hoping to do rotational grazing, into 4 different pastures. I was going to do 7 acres per paddock, with 28 acres all together. And i was thinking that was a lot of land. Haha

There's a guy on that other forum you mentioned that lives in NC and is able to rotationally graze over 100 head of cattle on only around 120 acres of pasture land. And that's year-round...not in a 4 to 6 month grazing season.

Now, you've already mentioned your stocking rate for your area, which is around 1 to 1.5 acres per cow, but you never mentioned whether this was per month (like I assumed it may be and may be wrong) or per grazing season. But I think we can figure it out using a little common sense:

Let's say we use the figure of 1 acre per cow per grazing season. This means you just need around four acres for your entire cow-herd for that grazing season for good to excellent pasture. If you want to divide your pasture into quadrants, that means dividing it up into one acre quadrants for your animals to graze in for that grazing season.

BUT, if the figures mean one acre per cow per month of grazing, that means you may need five to six acres per cow per grazing season. For your area, that seems a bit out-to-lunch for me. Up here in Alberta, in my area, the stocking rate for cattle on good quality pasture is an average of around 1.25 to 1.5 acres per cow per grazing season. That means that if I have 10 cows, I can have around 12.5 to 15 acres of grazing space for those cows from the grazing season lasting from May to September.

Now remember you may want to try to graze your cows for an entire year. This means more land base, and an area you will want to rest for an entire season to have them graze in fall going into winter. You may want to consider keeping a separate sacrifice area as well if need be to supplement them in with hay if there's no pasture left. Those few extra acres, in addition to the probable 4 to 6 acres for your entire herd, may save you in the long run.

 

[Nichole Olie]

That is exactly what was confusing me, Karin. Everything i was reading was simply stating "1 - 1.5 acres" and that's what i was asking (though i guess i worded my question wrong, sorry!) was wether or not that number of acres was per week/month or per grazing season or per year....


I thought when i saw "1 - 1.5 acres per cow" they meant by week. I was doing 7 acres (for 5 or so cows + calfs) for only a week at a time. Meaning i needed four separate padlocks with 7 acres in each. So by the time i rotated back to the first pasture a month has been up. So... all together 28 acres, which i thought seemed like a lot for only 5 cows.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

Gets confusing, doesn't it?

I'd like you to read up on a page I created (not my writing though) on grazing that may be of interest to you and may answer some burning questions of yours:
http://www.backyardherds.com/web/viewblog.php?id=236-grazing-methods

There are many many websites, blogs, pdf files and scientific articles about these sort of things, I know there's a few links kicking around here that might be around if you use the Search function long enough to give you more information. Not everything can be covered in one thread such as this one.

 

[Nichole Olie]

Yes it does! But thank you so much for all your help and that link, it helped a lot. I really appreciate it!

 

[WildRoseBeef]

No problem.