Electric fencing and pasture management
Good pasture management will ensure your animals are grazing fresh, high energy, palatable pasture. The key benefit of this is increased milk and meat production.
Pasture management relies on three basic areas of animal control which are fundamental to any pasture management programme.
- Control of the area to be grazed.
- Control of the number of animals to be grazed.
- Control of the grazing time.
Control of the area to be grazed
You can economically achieve control of a grazing area by using Gallagher power fence systems - either permanent or portable fences. Fencing allows specific areas of pasture to be grazed and lets other pasture areas rest and re-grow.
When a pasture is rested, the plants " tiller ", producing high quality palatable pasture for your animals. Tillering is when leafy shoots emerge from the base of the plant. Regular but controlled grazing is needed to encourage these shoots to grow.
Control of the number of animal numbers to be grazed
Stocking density in a grazing area is another commonly used control method which determines how efficiently the available pasture is grazed. The stocking density is the number of animals in a given grazing area for a stated point of time.
Control of the grazing time
How long animals are allowed to graze within a specific area of pasture determines the annual production of the pasture area. Controlling the grazing time ensures that the plants are not grazed down too low. Grazing too low reduced the number of leaves required by the plants for the process of photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis, the plant struggles to grow and feed its own root system. Good root reserves provide healthy tillering and leaf growth.
Benefits of good pasture management
- Pasture is maintained at the tillering stage, providing young, lush, green pasture with high protein and high energy levels.
- Pasture is kept at optimum palatability for farm animals. (Their very acute sense of taste and smell means they will only eat pasture 4-6 weeks after dung and urine have been deposited).
- Animal manure is spread more evenly over the whole grazing area, through subdivision managing high stocking density of pasture.
Find out more about the overall benefits of electric fencing.
Pasture management methods
The preferred method to achieve quality pasture is rotational/controlled grazing . Rotational/controlled grazing involves shifting the power fence regularly in grazing paddocks to rotate their use by stock and allow the animals an allocated ration. The stock are contained by both a front and a back fence. The back fence protects the recently-grazed area to allow it to recover so it can be grazed again at a later stage.
Another method is 'set stocking' numbers. This can be used to successfully manage pastures, however, care must be taken to achieve the right balance between the number of animals contained in a grazing area and the length of grazing time. The grazing area or paddocks generally vary in size. Set stocking should be done for each individual paddock. Large paddocks, can be fenced off into smaller more manageable grazing areas, with a portable power fence.
More information
Find out more about how electric fencing can be used for garden protection and keeping out wildlife and predators.
See our electric fencing overview page for more information about:
- the benefits of electric fencing
- types of fences
- getting started on your fencing setup
- designing your fence using our fence calculators
- electric fence power sources including Energizer batteries.
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