This is a really awesome video. I hate giving advice to people who are clearly rocking it... But here it is anyway. Build something that can hold about 50 hens, and move them 3 days behind the paddock the cows were in. The hens will dig through the cow patty's.... this not only spreads the manure out in the pasture... but at 3 days, the fly eggs that were laid in the cow patties will have hatched and grown to be full size maggots. This provides a TON of good food for your hens, but also really cuts down on the amount of flies that are bothering your cows. The hens cut down on the flies, spread out the manure which will improve your pasture, and will give you a few dozen eggs every day. Based on my experience, about 15 hens per cow, and the cow patties are destroyed each day.
We love this advice! This is one of our goals for next season. Now that we have a tractor, a mobile coop for this is so much more doable! Thanks for watching.
@@definitelyadarkangel9225 Yes! I always tell friends and family that chickens are the best thing for a homestead, you can run them in your gardens weekly and you will have no bugs, run them behind livestock whether its cows, pigs, or sheep/goats. Chickens and even runner ducks are amazing. Bugs will be completely gone after a few seasons since they won't grow past the larvae stage. eventually the adult bugs will die out. I have even heard of people setting up runs next to porches and patios with a few dozen hens and they have no mosquitos bothering the family in spring/summer
Beautiful video. It left me teary eyed hearing one of your children crying as you loaded June into the trailer. But gosh, it’s real and so in touch. The cost to feed your family and do it right. You and your children will never take it for granted! Thanks for sharing!
Hey! It was a tough decision with June and we went back and forth a lot. She probably would have made a fine milk cow. We had a lot going on in our lives personally earlier this year and we missed our ideal window to get her bred. We also didn't do a great job of halter training her early enough on, so that would have been tricky to try and start with now. There were other factors too, but that's where we landed with all of it. Thanks for watching!
Great video! We are smaller than yall but grow enough beef for our family of four on only 1 acre of grass. Some folks say you can’t do what we are doing but when I put up 350 pounds of beef annually for much cheaper than grocery store cost I feel like I’m doing something right. For reference, we are located in North Alabama so rainfall is good annually and we grow plenty of grass in the summer months. For our setup, we are on a 2 year rotation buying a calf every fall and taking a heifer to butcher every fall. We only keep 2 head at a time so this provides 2 years to take a 250-300 pound calf and grow them out to a 1,000 pound animal ready to butcher. We normally receive around 350 pounds of beef back from the butcher. As stated, we don’t have any problems growing grass in summer but I understand that might not be the case in all areas. We do keep hay available year round but its consumption goes down drastically during the summer when grass is growing. I normally use around 10 4x5 round bales annually and can normally purchase these for $50-$60 per roll in my area. One of the best things I did was build a small run-in shelter with hay feeding area. This prevents the cows from wasting any hay which definitely helps keep costs lower. I also spend a little money on grain to finish them out. Our local co-op sells a mix I buy in bulk for .18 cents per pound. Total costs come in around $1750 per animal. This includes $400 for the calf, $550 for hay, $300 for grain (corn mix) to finish and $500 for butcher cost. Getting back approx 350 pounds of beef puts me at roughly $5 per pound of beef. That’s $5 for ground beef AND steaks/roast. Just posting to help inspire others. There are definitely some up front costs to start including fencing, panels, water trough etc but once you get started the costs annually are very reasonable considering the beef you get back.
Thanks for your comment! It was more like a mini feasibility and cost analysis. I had no idea you could do all that on only 1 acre of grass. Is there anyone on YT doing all that on 1 acre? Please make a video!
As I watched this amazing video, it struck me how urban/suburban our lives have become. Our meat comes in neatly packaged containers, far removed from the reality of where the meat actually comes from. I was also reminded how important it is to buy the cleanest, antibiotic free meat we can afford. As ultra processed meat can cause health issues. I'm now thinking about sharing the purchase of a cow and buying a small freezer, to know we are getting the highest quality meat possible. Thank you for sharing your lives with us!!
The beautiful thing about ruminants is their 4 chambered stomach which filters everything most if not all toxins out. Yes pasture raised pasture & finished is the best, but even conventionally raised ruminants are healthier than anything else in the supermarket.
This one was just what i needed!!!! I was doubting the space i have and not having a permanent fence up... but im just going to go for it! Thanks as always!
Hey guys! This is great and so helpful as we are trying to learn how to rotationally graze our handful of cows as well. Just wanted to mention something I learned owning our milk cow for over a year now. Before we bought her I watched one of your milk cow videos and we were inspired. However I find that telling people “just get a halter and milk bucket and you are good to go” can be a little bit misleading. We tried to follow your advice, but as a newbie I didn’t realize that unless your cow comes already halter trained and is used to being milked this way it wouldn’t work! We had a horrible time getting her milked until we finally built a stanchion with a head lock. It’s also important to mention to look for a cow with hand milking teats! Ours has very small teats, small orifices, and produces over 7 gallons at peak. We just couldn’t do it by hand and ended up having to borrow and then buy a milking machine, which cost us over $1000. All of this makes rotationally grazing harder (having to bring her into the barn and needing a milker). Anyway, my husband and I love your videos and we always learn something new. Thank you!
Hey there! Thanks so much for sharing all this. It's a good reminder for us on the amount of detail to share with our experiences and I think this will be really helpful for others to see. And while we were "doing it", that doesn't mean everything was all rainbows and sunshine either :) There was plenty of hard and lessons learned in all of it. Thimble was a pretty ideal and well broken in cow to start with, but she was not as calm then as she is today and there was a lot of relationship and routine that still needed to be established over the following years. We get nowhere near 7 gallons daily, but Thimbles teats are pretty small and not ideal for hand milking, so we can relate there. Thanks again for sharing! Everyone's experince and setup is going to be different and I think this can can be a helpful example for others to consider.
Thank you for this. I'm 49 years old and my fiance is 50. I have health problems and he works outside the home full time. We are looking to buy land and are considering what would be reasonable to add to our lives to work toward partial homesteading. One of the things I'm looking at is what I'm physically able to do since my fiance will continue working outside the home. It's extremely useful to me to see what's actually involved in raising dairy cows. And one thing my fiance pointed out too is how hard it would be for me to have to turn away someone I've raised to the butcher. I honestly don't think I could. As much as I really, really want to have the fresh dairy available. I think I will have to find another way to do so. Maybe someone nearby will sell us some of theirs. And my fiance will still want meat so maybe someone will want to sell us some of their beef, too. If you have any videos about keeping chickens or ducks I'd love to see. I would really love to raise our own birds for eggs and occasional meat if I'm able to.
Hi there! Love hearing about your dreams to raise and grow your own food! Glad the video was helpful. I might have been in the same boat previously about not being sure if I could bring one of our animals to the butcher. The first time we did it was SO SO hard. It might not be for everyone, but there's also an element of joy in all of it knowing that you raised them super well. We do have some videos on both laying hens and meat chickens if you dig through our old ones. I'm sure we'll have some updated ones in the future too. All the best to you and thanks for watching!
Read Comeback Farms by Greg Judy. He has a really wonderful system setup for temporary paddocks for his multi hundred head herds. Poly wire with geared reals, O’Brien’s step in posts, tricks for watering points. He really has a good system worked out. One other thing to consider is co-grazing chickens with the cows to eat flies and larvae from the cows and their manure. Multi species grazing can present significant improvements to the system as a whole
I absolutely loved how you took a large scale principle and down-scaled it to something that worked for you. This is really inspiring as I am trying to find ways to keep livestock on our 1.8HA, or 4.5 acre, piece of land. Thanks for a great video 🌻
I grew up around electric fencing in the 70's, and the fencing then carried a lot more jolt. It won't harm even a child, but they'll definitely learn quickly about the properties of electricity.
Makes me happy to see this video as my husband and I are considering downsizing to a smaller, more manageable property and were sad to forego our dreams of owning a milk cow. Thank you ❤
I just discovered your channel this evening. I'm sure I will enjoy it. I'm about an hour north of Eau Claire, WI and the granddaughter of 2 small dairy farmers. Love your land and your beautiful brown eyed cows! And I share a similar name to Joelle.
Can’t wait to have my own milk! The cheese looks amazing! Waiting til my girls are 3 to breed, got my own bull this year that will be daddy. Grew up dairying, excited to get back to it on my own terms, own rules for treating the animals ❤
Great job!! We do a lot of rational with our beef cows. I've been wondering how you can wrap the wire on the post, but fiberglass makes sense now. We do polywire 1 or 2 strands with metal posts. It would ground out if we did that. Lol It's so fun taking a section of land and rotating. To watch it come back and get better. You will be a 1/3 longer on moving fence now. Great video! Hope it encourages others to try. It's so easy and fun and better for the land. Viewers go for it!
❤ so helpful🔑 The end part is really a challenge to try to process, especially when its so close. 😢I suppose as you said it’s all part of the process of having a farm and feeding the family, and at least she had a peaceful & love filled & cared for life.
It's hard for sure. But I'd much rather do it this way than be disconnected from the process. We value our food in such a different way. Thanks for sharing and watching!
I am doing a similar set up for 25 goats. We have 20 acres. 10 of it usable for pasture grazing. We have them on the front 5 acres and rotational graze them, but the back five we reserve for hay to feed them during the winter and share with our neighbor as well as put on our garden (Ruth stout method is amazing for weed control!) I wish I had your video 3 years ago when I started rotational grazing. I did it all wrong at first and still 3 years later there’s plenty of room for improvement. I got lymes disease last year and it put me out for 6 weeks. I realized then that I needed a management system that was doable if I was down. I do 10 of the netting fence panels (I use Gallagher) for the perimeter and then have slowly acquired poly wire and step in posts to section off 7 paddocks. They graze on each paddock for 4 days before moving to the next paddock. We have one central area for their shelter, milking stanchion, and catch pen. They stay up there at night and then are let out to graze during the day. I plan to further section of each paddock to come down to a 2 day rotation and eventually one day rotation. It is a work in progress. It’s making a huge difference in their health as goats are susceptible to parasites if they’re not rotated enough. Thank you for this video. You’ve given me some wonderful ideas in how to improve our system. Btw, we use our goats for dairy and meat, so I get it. Processing days are hard. We process them ourselves too.
It sounds like you've been through a lot and are doing an amazing job!! I love this space so that we can all learn from each other. Really appreciate you sharing! It's definitely a work in progress but so worth it! Keep it up!
Curious...have you thought about running chickens behind your cows to eat some of the fly larva from the cow patties to help eliminate some of the fly pressure?
Hey there! Yes, we've thought about it a decent amount! It's really what I wanted to do from the start, but we never had anything that could pull that large of a mobile coop. Now that we have our tractor, I may try and get something up and running with that next season. Stay tuned! Thanks for watching!
I would love an update video on your dairy cows and also would love tips on how you got yours so calm to be milked on pasture and with no treats! Would also love to know what you supplement your cows with mineral wise and any treats ! We have a 3yo jersey rn and we love her, rotational graze, grass fed only , with some treats while she is milked in the stanchion but she is a bit dansy and not as patient as yours! I would love tips!
Hey! Good ideas... I'm sure we'll do some updated videos around milk cows at some point. We got Thimble when she was 3 yo too and she was not as calm for us at that age. We had a lot more kicked buckets then and she'd be shifting around more. We were milking her in a barn stall at a different farm at that point and I'm not sure we could have tied her to a flimsy fence post. She's mellowed out with age, but she was also being fed some grain when we initially got her. Once we transitioned her off of grain so she wasn't eating anything during milking she calmed down a bunch. I'm not sure there's any real tips there, but hopefully she continues to calm down with age for you and as you establish more routine over time. Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for another great video. You are very inspiring for me. I love your videos and I learn a lot. With kind regards Torben Gram, a homesteader from Denmark
Great info. Thank you so much! Trying to start my own beef cattle system on 7 acres but possibly the whole family farm which is 100 acres currently row crop land.
We use one poly wire on spools with fiberglass rods(non step ins) amd it contains our cows and pigs.. for goats we use 2 wires....they learn fast what a hot wire is if you can train them to it inside a walled structure they cant blast through once they get shocked..I use a golf bag with shoulder straps to hold 75 rods as i walk aroind moving paddocks...grewat system 👍
So awesome to see you cooking & making things. Can we see egg collection & how many you get in a day? God bless you all and many prayers 🙏🏻 Nurse Judi in AZ and E Minister 🙏🏻 ❤️
Thanks Judi! It really depends on the time of the year. In the peak of spring/summer, we may get up to 25-30 eggs a day. Now that the days are shorter and several of our chickens are molting, it's only around 10-15. Thanks for watching!
Hi, just found your channel while lookng for "just a few acres" & Pete&Hilary. Thanks for the detailed information. I subscribed and look forward to hear more
I am amazed that the cows stay within the “flimsy” fencing. The shock from electric fencing is just something that happens on a farm. Premier One is a great company. I used to have a small herd of Registered dairy goats and bred my girls to kid in February. I pulled the babies to bottle feed,so the new buyers could buy them super early,to get them ready to show. I used Premier One heat lights for my babies stalls. Never ever worried about fire with their heat lamps. Although I did “modify” them by splitting an old water hose and placing it around the electric cord,taping it back together. I did that to prevent any goat from chewing on the cord and accidentally being electrocuted. Blessings ❣️ P.S. Just wondering….. are there any steers for sale nearby you? Around here,cattle farmers sell baby steers for almost nothing to get rid of them. Granted,raising a bottle baby is tiresome,but you have the fresh milk handy. Might be worth looking into for your next butcher day.
What you meant to say is you ran the electric cord thru *metal conduit* so the goats could not chew through and create an electrical short & fire....right? 🤦
Hey! Yes, it is amazing how much the cows respect the single-strand fencing. And that's a good tip to check out premiers heat lamps. I get nervous just using the stock ones from the farm store so I bet there's are much safer. I have heard of farms in the area having steers for sale you can raise for meat. We've not done it yet, but that could be a good option to look into for the future when the freezer needs a restock. Thanks for watching!
Your baby is pigeon toed . You can fix that now by getting a perscription for special shoes that lean her little feat the opposit of what you think. But it works. Her feet will straighten up by the time shes 7.😊❤ adorable family. Wonderful life, God bless
How old was June? I used a Premiere electric netting for my sheep and loved it. It kept neighborhood dogs out and sheep in. I highly recommend it. I’m just a happy, satisfied customer, not paid to promote.
Thank you for the video, great information. I am curious why you processed June? Was she not able to produce milk for you? I am wanting my own milk cow and want to do the rotational grazing. Thanks again😊
You're welcome! We could have gotten June bred and used her as a dairy cow but we weren't ready to take on a 2nd cow to milk right now. Since we know exactly how she was raised and how healthy she is, she will provide us with a significant amount of beef for our family, which is also very helpful. It was a hard decision for us. We are planning to make Hazel, Thimble's newest calf a dairy cow :).
Great info! Although I’m still not sold on electric fencing - I always look for the simplest ways of doing things on the farm and usually I’m led to how humans did things for centuries before technology you can’t repair within your local community. For example, can you repair the solar panel without going online or traveling long distance?
Hear you on that! I'd be really interested in learning more of those practices too. The other thing to consider in that is that land and liability has changed exponentially too. You used to be able to graze animals without any fence at all... some parts of the world still do. In our semi-rural area, this is the best and most reliable option I've found that's not permanent. Thanks for watching!
I must have missed it, but How often are you moving the perimeter fence? You move them everyday, but how long is the space you’re giving them for the day?
Hey! Woops, I think I forgot to mention that. Good catch! So I move the perimeter fence every 1-2 weeks depending on rain/weather, how many cows we have currently, etc. Since we're down one cow now, I might actually have them in their current area for longer than 2 weeks since it's just our milk cow and her calf isn't really eating much pasture yet and it's a big section. But if there's a dry stretch and the grass isn't growing much, I might need to make their daily paddocks bigger which means they'll move through it all more quickly. Nothing is fixed with it and you just kind of assess and adjust the timing and setup of things constantly. Thanks for watching!
Hey there! Thank you! I really should know my grasses better by now but I’m honestly not sure what we have 🙂. We didn’t plant the pasture initially but planted over some more bare spots in the last year with an organic pasture mix from Albert Lea Seed. Thanks for watching!
About how large of a space do you use for a paddock? We have 3.5 acres and I’ve been trying to figure out how to have 1-2 cows while using the 30 day rule and I just can’t wrap my head around how to do this without having to bring in much hay
Each individual paddock is around 20x150 feet. It definitely takes some experimentation and trial and error but definitely doable. Thanks for watching!
Was it difficult for your bodies to adapt to the change from store milk to raw? We have people with lactose issues in our family, and I feel like we'd have a hard time if we tried it lol
I’d love to know how you trained your dogs to be safe around your livestock. I’ve got 2 doodle mixes that are very high energy and I’m nervous about the introduction process
We got her as a puppy so she just grew up with them, didn't need to do much in the way of training. She's a maremma, a LGD, very loyal to her herd. Thanks for watching!
Cool video. Do you have any deers or similiar wild animals around? We keep repairing our permanent fences because of deers (central Europe). I'm asking because I'd like to switch to electronetting. Also what about heat and cows? I see they don't get any shade where they could hide from sun
Hey there! We do have deer but they haven’t been an issue with the electro netting. I’ve seen a deer leap over our fencing when it was turned off but never get tangled in it or anything. I would definitely love some more trees in our pasture for shade. There are a couple spots they get shade at times. But there are some hot days for them in the summer. They manage ok. Milk production goes down during hot stretches. You can build some sort of shade structure but it’s hard to move and then they congregate there mostly. All the best to you and thanks for watching!
The more you move them the easier it gets but it’s a big chore. Maximizing your setup to go as long as possible between moves is key. I do think we’ll get a permanently fence setup someday and then I’ll use some form of fencing to create smaller paddocks within it. But for now, it’s nice to have something that works without a big investment or commitment on a long term fencing layout. Thanks for watching!
You mention this system for people with less land can you tell us how big the land is that you have these cows on? We want to do something similar but only have 2 acres of lush pasture.
I think he said it is 3 acres. But I was wondering if it is three acres, they would have to get about 10 days per acre in order to have 30 days to rotate through the whole thing. I was thinking it would have to be bigger per rotation area, but maybe that is enough.
Hey! We have about 5 acres total. The back pasture the cows graze on is around 3.5 acres. I'd say if your 2 acres is lush pasture, you'd be able to do something similar. Our pasture is lush in certain areas, but not so much in others. If you can divide it up into smaller daily paddocks and also have a separate sacrifice area that they can go in if the pasture needs a break, you should be able to make it work. Thanks for watching!
What is the reason for not making a more permanent fencing solution, so that you wouldnt have to spend as much time every day rearanging the fence. Is it the cost, or are there some benefits I am missing?
Good question! The cost is a big factor, but we also like the flexibility that this gives us. If we got sheep or goats, we could adjust paddock sizes accordingly. Or if we moved, we could take our fencing with us. Thanks for watching!
Normal, yes. But also something we'd love to improve on down the road. This year in particular was much worse for flies than past years. Thanks for watching!
Fair enough! Definitely a lot of work, and definitely not for everyone. Our hope is to incorporate some other animals like sheep into the mix in the future to get a little more bang for our buck. Thanks for watching!
3 cows on 5 acres in a rainfall heavy climate is not anything to brag about. Honestly with such a small number of animal units per acre rotational grazing is a waste of your time. Rotational grazing is meant for mob grazing. If I were you I would consider continuing your system but buying a feeder cow in the spring that you plan to put in the freezer in the fall. You get to take advantage of the most grass productive time of year on your land, add fertilizer, mob fast growing fields more efficiently and keep all your heifers. Next year you sell feeder cows from your cows to other people. Small acreage should be raising feeder cows for sale while keeping the dairy for yourself. Put more young steers on your acreage.
Hey there! Appreciate the suggestions. We’re definitely not trying to say 3 cows is maxing out the 3.5 acres we’re grazing them on. Though depending on seasons and if we hit a dry stretch sometimes it is. The goal was more just showing our method for making it work on a few acres. That’s a good thought with adding a feeder cow to mix and we’ll have to consider that more. The other thing we’re looking into is going multi species with it and likely adding sheep to the mix down the road. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead I am considering elk. I need to look into the economics of it more but as far as I can tell you can fit more meat on your land if you use elk and you can sell the antlers as a health supplement. I'm not sure yet but I'm leaning more and more toward giving it a try
I had to stop watching after only 5 minutes. I know you are new to cow farming but the massive amount of flys on your cows and dog were upsetting. There are NATURAL fly deterrents that you can wipe onto the cows skin to keep them flies from biting them. YES, there will always be flies around and on cattle. But you can reduce it significantly. Please, help them cows and your herd dog.
This is a really awesome video. I hate giving advice to people who are clearly rocking it... But here it is anyway. Build something that can hold about 50 hens, and move them 3 days behind the paddock the cows were in. The hens will dig through the cow patty's.... this not only spreads the manure out in the pasture... but at 3 days, the fly eggs that were laid in the cow patties will have hatched and grown to be full size maggots. This provides a TON of good food for your hens, but also really cuts down on the amount of flies that are bothering your cows. The hens cut down on the flies, spread out the manure which will improve your pasture, and will give you a few dozen eggs every day. Based on my experience, about 15 hens per cow, and the cow patties are destroyed each day.
We love this advice! This is one of our goals for next season. Now that we have a tractor, a mobile coop for this is so much more doable! Thanks for watching.
@@PeterSedesse would this work with sheep as well? Parasites are a big issue.
@@definitelyadarkangel9225 Yes! I always tell friends and family that chickens are the best thing for a homestead, you can run them in your gardens weekly and you will have no bugs, run them behind livestock whether its cows, pigs, or sheep/goats. Chickens and even runner ducks are amazing. Bugs will be completely gone after a few seasons since they won't grow past the larvae stage. eventually the adult bugs will die out. I have even heard of people setting up runs next to porches and patios with a few dozen hens and they have no mosquitos bothering the family in spring/summer
Beautiful video. It left me teary eyed hearing one of your children crying as you loaded June into the trailer. But gosh, it’s real and so in touch. The cost to feed your family and do it right. You and your children will never take it for granted! Thanks for sharing!
Hey! It was a tough decision with June and we went back and forth a lot. She probably would have made a fine milk cow. We had a lot going on in our lives personally earlier this year and we missed our ideal window to get her bred. We also didn't do a great job of halter training her early enough on, so that would have been tricky to try and start with now. There were other factors too, but that's where we landed with all of it. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Thanks for taking us along your journey. It’s moving to see a family so in touch with animals and where food comes from.
Great video! We are smaller than yall but grow enough beef for our family of four on only 1 acre of grass.
Some folks say you can’t do what we are doing but when I put up 350 pounds of beef annually for much cheaper than grocery store cost I feel like I’m doing something right. For reference, we are located in North Alabama so rainfall is good annually and we grow plenty of grass in the summer months.
For our setup, we are on a 2 year rotation buying a calf every fall and taking a heifer to butcher every fall. We only keep 2 head at a time so this provides 2 years to take a 250-300 pound calf and grow them out to a 1,000 pound animal ready to butcher. We normally receive around 350 pounds of beef back from the butcher. As stated, we don’t have any problems growing grass in summer but I understand that might not be the case in all areas. We do keep hay available year round but its consumption goes down drastically during the summer when grass is growing. I normally use around 10 4x5 round bales annually and can normally purchase these for $50-$60 per roll in my area. One of the best things I did was build a small run-in shelter with hay feeding area. This prevents the cows from wasting any hay which definitely helps keep costs lower. I also spend a little money on grain to finish them out. Our local co-op sells a mix I buy in bulk for .18 cents per pound.
Total costs come in around $1750 per animal. This includes $400 for the calf, $550 for hay, $300 for grain (corn mix) to finish and $500 for butcher cost. Getting back approx 350 pounds of beef puts me at roughly $5 per pound of beef. That’s $5 for ground beef AND steaks/roast.
Just posting to help inspire others. There are definitely some up front costs to start including fencing, panels, water trough etc but once you get started the costs annually are very reasonable considering the beef you get back.
Wow, thanks for sharing all that! Super helpful!! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for your comment! It was more like a mini feasibility and cost analysis. I had no idea you could do all that on only 1 acre of grass. Is there anyone on YT doing all that on 1 acre? Please make a video!
Awesome info here! Thank you! I’m also from Alabama!
I would do backflips if I found out you were getting south polls from Teddy Gentry in Fort Payne!
@mightyminifarm You didn't mention...vacinations....cow trailer...4x4 truck....maure management....supplies.
Your family is amazing and I love how you live! Blessings to you all!
😊 Thanks so much for watching!
Thank you for sharing your experience! We are looking to buy a property just under 10 acres, and this is quite the encouragement.
Awesome! Glad it was helpful and we're rooting for you in your journey!!
@@FromScratchFarmstead thank you!!
As I watched this amazing video, it struck me how urban/suburban our lives have become. Our meat comes in neatly packaged containers, far removed from the reality of where the meat actually comes from. I was also reminded how important it is to buy the cleanest, antibiotic free meat we can afford. As ultra processed meat can cause health issues. I'm now thinking about sharing the purchase of a cow and buying a small freezer, to know we are getting the highest quality meat possible. Thank you for sharing your lives with us!!
Amen to all of that! Thanks for watching!
The beautiful thing about ruminants is their 4 chambered stomach which filters everything most if not all toxins out. Yes pasture raised pasture & finished is the best, but even conventionally raised ruminants are healthier than anything else in the supermarket.
This one was just what i needed!!!! I was doubting the space i have and not having a permanent fence up... but im just going to go for it! Thanks as always!
Awesome! You got this!!
All that walking changing the fences Isa great workout, and such a beautiful place to walk.
Agreed 😊 Not all farm tasks are fun, but this one is really enjoyable. Thanks for watching!
Hey guys! This is great and so helpful as we are trying to learn how to rotationally graze our handful of cows as well. Just wanted to mention something I learned owning our milk cow for over a year now. Before we bought her I watched one of your milk cow videos and we were inspired. However I find that telling people “just get a halter and milk bucket and you are good to go” can be a little bit misleading. We tried to follow your advice, but as a newbie I didn’t realize that unless your cow comes already halter trained and is used to being milked this way it wouldn’t work! We had a horrible time getting her milked until we finally built a stanchion with a head lock. It’s also important to mention to look for a cow with hand milking teats! Ours has very small teats, small orifices, and produces over 7 gallons at peak. We just couldn’t do it by hand and ended up having to borrow and then buy a milking machine, which cost us over $1000. All of this makes rotationally grazing harder (having to bring her into the barn and needing a milker). Anyway, my husband and I love your videos and we always learn something new. Thank you!
Hey there! Thanks so much for sharing all this. It's a good reminder for us on the amount of detail to share with our experiences and I think this will be really helpful for others to see. And while we were "doing it", that doesn't mean everything was all rainbows and sunshine either :) There was plenty of hard and lessons learned in all of it. Thimble was a pretty ideal and well broken in cow to start with, but she was not as calm then as she is today and there was a lot of relationship and routine that still needed to be established over the following years. We get nowhere near 7 gallons daily, but Thimbles teats are pretty small and not ideal for hand milking, so we can relate there. Thanks again for sharing! Everyone's experince and setup is going to be different and I think this can can be a helpful example for others to consider.
I’m grazing 10 cows on a 5 acres pasture. There grazing a 50x50 spot each day. Moved every day. We have videos too
Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
We’re up to 14 head now. We had calves. So we’re moving any dry cows or heifers into silvo pasture or harvested fields. 30 hair sheep are on the way.
@@Earth_Care_Cowboythat is very interesting I'm surprised
What about winter?
@@Yogo73731 they get bale grazed on other pasture to improve it. We roll round bales on top of snow if it’s too deep for the cows to dig through.
Thank you for this. I'm 49 years old and my fiance is 50. I have health problems and he works outside the home full time. We are looking to buy land and are considering what would be reasonable to add to our lives to work toward partial homesteading. One of the things I'm looking at is what I'm physically able to do since my fiance will continue working outside the home.
It's extremely useful to me to see what's actually involved in raising dairy cows.
And one thing my fiance pointed out too is how hard it would be for me to have to turn away someone I've raised to the butcher. I honestly don't think I could.
As much as I really, really want to have the fresh dairy available. I think I will have to find another way to do so. Maybe someone nearby will sell us some of theirs. And my fiance will still want meat so maybe someone will want to sell us some of their beef, too.
If you have any videos about keeping chickens or ducks I'd love to see. I would really love to raise our own birds for eggs and occasional meat if I'm able to.
Hi there! Love hearing about your dreams to raise and grow your own food! Glad the video was helpful. I might have been in the same boat previously about not being sure if I could bring one of our animals to the butcher. The first time we did it was SO SO hard. It might not be for everyone, but there's also an element of joy in all of it knowing that you raised them super well. We do have some videos on both laying hens and meat chickens if you dig through our old ones. I'm sure we'll have some updated ones in the future too. All the best to you and thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Thank you. 😊
Thanks so much for sharing your story. This has given me hope for the potential of raising my own food on a small, affordable acreage.
So glad this was helpful!
Read Comeback Farms by Greg Judy. He has a really wonderful system setup for temporary paddocks for his multi hundred head herds. Poly wire with geared reals, O’Brien’s step in posts, tricks for watering points. He really has a good system worked out.
One other thing to consider is co-grazing chickens with the cows to eat flies and larvae from the cows and their manure. Multi species grazing can present significant improvements to the system as a whole
Thanks for sharing! We'll have to check it out! One of our goals for next year is to add chickens behind the cows. Thanks for watching!
Very informative. You are a great teacher too!
Thanks so much!!
I absolutely loved how you took a large scale principle and down-scaled it to something that worked for you. This is really inspiring as I am trying to find ways to keep livestock on our 1.8HA, or 4.5 acre, piece of land. Thanks for a great video 🌻
So glad this was helpful!!
I grew up around electric fencing in the 70's, and the fencing then carried a lot more jolt. It won't harm even a child, but they'll definitely learn quickly about the properties of electricity.
So many aspects to homesteading. There's the husbandry, the slaughter, the storage. Each aspect is different in a homesteader's skill set.
Makes me happy to see this video as my husband and I are considering downsizing to a smaller, more manageable property and were sad to forego our dreams of owning a milk cow. Thank you ❤
So glad this is helpful! The quality of the pasture definitely makes a difference but it’s very possible! 😊
I just discovered your channel this evening. I'm sure I will enjoy it. I'm about an hour north of Eau Claire, WI and the granddaughter of 2 small dairy farmers. Love your land and your beautiful brown eyed cows! And I share a similar name to Joelle.
Hey neighbor! 👋 I’m just north of highway 8. Grandparents were also dairy farmers 😊
Hi Joelle!! So fun "meeting" another. We actually lived in a tiny town between Eau Claire and La Cross for a year! Thanks so much for watching!
Can’t wait to have my own milk! The cheese looks amazing! Waiting til my girls are 3 to breed, got my own bull this year that will be daddy. Grew up dairying, excited to get back to it on my own terms, own rules for treating the animals ❤
That's so exciting!!!
The flies were totally annoying me 😂 great idea, add chickens!!!😁🥳🎉🙌❤️
Great job!! We do a lot of rational with our beef cows. I've been wondering how you can wrap the wire on the post, but fiberglass makes sense now. We do polywire 1 or 2 strands with metal posts. It would ground out if we did that. Lol It's so fun taking a section of land and rotating. To watch it come back and get better. You will be a 1/3 longer on moving fence now. Great video! Hope it encourages others to try. It's so easy and fun and better for the land. Viewers go for it!
Love all this! Thanks so much for watching!
❤ so helpful🔑 The end part is really a challenge to try to process, especially when its so close. 😢I suppose as you said it’s all part of the process of having a farm and feeding the family, and at least she had a peaceful & love filled & cared for life.
It's hard for sure. But I'd much rather do it this way than be disconnected from the process. We value our food in such a different way. Thanks for sharing and watching!
I am doing a similar set up for 25 goats. We have 20 acres. 10 of it usable for pasture grazing. We have them on the front 5 acres and rotational graze them, but the back five we reserve for hay to feed them during the winter and share with our neighbor as well as put on our garden (Ruth stout method is amazing for weed control!)
I wish I had your video 3 years ago when I started rotational grazing. I did it all wrong at first and still 3 years later there’s plenty of room for improvement. I got lymes disease last year and it put me out for 6 weeks. I realized then that I needed a management system that was doable if I was down. I do 10 of the netting fence panels (I use Gallagher) for the perimeter and then have slowly acquired poly wire and step in posts to section off 7 paddocks. They graze on each paddock for 4 days before moving to the next paddock. We have one central area for their shelter, milking stanchion, and catch pen. They stay up there at night and then are let out to graze during the day. I plan to further section of each paddock to come down to a 2 day rotation and eventually one day rotation. It is a work in progress. It’s making a huge difference in their health as goats are susceptible to parasites if they’re not rotated enough.
Thank you for this video. You’ve given me some wonderful ideas in how to improve our system.
Btw, we use our goats for dairy and meat, so I get it. Processing days are hard. We process them ourselves too.
It sounds like you've been through a lot and are doing an amazing job!! I love this space so that we can all learn from each other. Really appreciate you sharing! It's definitely a work in progress but so worth it! Keep it up!
Curious...have you thought about running chickens behind your cows to eat some of the fly larva from the cow patties to help eliminate some of the fly pressure?
Hey there! Yes, we've thought about it a decent amount! It's really what I wanted to do from the start, but we never had anything that could pull that large of a mobile coop. Now that we have our tractor, I may try and get something up and running with that next season. Stay tuned! Thanks for watching!
Your lovely children have better life than most kids in urban area. They live with nature.
I'm so grateful! Thanks for watching!
We give them safe and happy lives and in turn they provide for us in life and death. Because of this next generations are born and life continues on.
I would love an update video on your dairy cows and also would love tips on how you got yours so calm to be milked on pasture and with no treats! Would also love to know what you supplement your cows with mineral wise and any treats !
We have a 3yo jersey rn and we love her, rotational graze, grass fed only , with some treats while she is milked in the stanchion but she is a bit dansy and not as patient as yours! I would love tips!
Hey! Good ideas... I'm sure we'll do some updated videos around milk cows at some point. We got Thimble when she was 3 yo too and she was not as calm for us at that age. We had a lot more kicked buckets then and she'd be shifting around more. We were milking her in a barn stall at a different farm at that point and I'm not sure we could have tied her to a flimsy fence post. She's mellowed out with age, but she was also being fed some grain when we initially got her. Once we transitioned her off of grain so she wasn't eating anything during milking she calmed down a bunch. I'm not sure there's any real tips there, but hopefully she continues to calm down with age for you and as you establish more routine over time. Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for another great video. You are very inspiring for me. I love your videos and I learn a lot. With kind regards Torben Gram, a homesteader from Denmark
Hello! Thanks so much for your kind words and for watching!
I would love to live in Denmark.
Great info. Thank you so much! Trying to start my own beef cattle system on 7 acres but possibly the whole family farm which is 100 acres currently row crop land.
We use one poly wire on spools with fiberglass rods(non step ins) amd it contains our cows and pigs.. for goats we use 2 wires....they learn fast what a hot wire is if you can train them to it inside a walled structure they cant blast through once they get shocked..I use a golf bag with shoulder straps to hold 75 rods as i walk aroind moving paddocks...grewat system 👍
Thanks for sharing what you do!
I've really been enjoying your videos! Thank u for sharing your family life. :)
Thanks so much for watching!
This was great and informative. Ty so much. I love all your videos.
Appreciate the feedback and thanks for watching!!
So awesome to see you cooking & making things. Can we see egg collection & how many you get in a day? God bless you all and many prayers 🙏🏻 Nurse Judi in AZ and E Minister 🙏🏻 ❤️
Thanks Judi! It really depends on the time of the year. In the peak of spring/summer, we may get up to 25-30 eggs a day. Now that the days are shorter and several of our chickens are molting, it's only around 10-15. Thanks for watching!
Hi, just found your channel while lookng for "just a few acres" & Pete&Hilary. Thanks for the detailed information. I subscribed and look forward to hear more
Wow, amazing content at [5:15]! Totally agree with your point. Keep it up
Thank you!
I am amazed that the cows stay within the “flimsy” fencing.
The shock from electric fencing is just something that happens on a farm.
Premier One is a great company. I used to have a small herd of Registered dairy goats and bred my girls to kid in February. I pulled the babies to bottle feed,so the new buyers could buy them super early,to get them ready to show. I used Premier One heat lights for my babies stalls. Never ever worried about fire with their heat lamps. Although I did “modify” them by splitting an old water hose and placing it around the electric cord,taping it back together. I did that to prevent any goat from chewing on the cord and accidentally being electrocuted. Blessings ❣️
P.S. Just wondering….. are there any steers for sale nearby you? Around here,cattle farmers sell baby steers for almost nothing to get rid of them. Granted,raising a bottle baby is tiresome,but you have the fresh milk handy. Might be worth looking into for your next butcher day.
What you meant to say is you ran the electric cord thru *metal conduit* so the goats could not chew through and create an electrical short & fire....right?
🤦
Hey! Yes, it is amazing how much the cows respect the single-strand fencing. And that's a good tip to check out premiers heat lamps. I get nervous just using the stock ones from the farm store so I bet there's are much safer. I have heard of farms in the area having steers for sale you can raise for meat. We've not done it yet, but that could be a good option to look into for the future when the freezer needs a restock. Thanks for watching!
Where I’m at, a week old bull calf or steer has been going for $800 😮
Your baby is pigeon toed . You can fix that now by getting a perscription for special shoes that lean her little feat the opposit of what you think. But it works. Her feet will straighten up by the time shes 7.😊❤ adorable family. Wonderful life, God bless
I enjoyed your video very much. Very informative. I liked the way you explained things and showed the steps. Thanks for sharing.
So glad this was helpful! Thanks for watching!
Great video. Lots to consider for me to start this journey.
Great video. I am just starting on this journey and preparing some neglected land for livestock. Someday, I hope to be where you are.
That's awesome! A little bit over time adds up to a lot!
I love your farm! ❤ i hope one day in future i have farm like you
Thank you! All the best to you!
Thanks for sharing this!! Subbed
Thanks so much for watching!
How old was June?
I used a Premiere electric netting for my sheep and loved it. It kept neighborhood dogs out and sheep in. I highly recommend it. I’m just a happy, satisfied customer, not paid to promote.
June was 2.5. Thanks for sharing your experience!
@ will the meat from June last your family 2 yrs which is when I imagine your calf will be ready to harvest?
So helpful ❤
Thanks for watching!
This dude's voice is ASMR lol. Super great video, but now I'm far too relaxed to get chores done😅. Just subscribed lol
Thank you for the video, great information. I am curious why you processed June? Was she not able to produce milk for you? I am wanting my own milk cow and want to do the rotational grazing. Thanks again😊
You're welcome! We could have gotten June bred and used her as a dairy cow but we weren't ready to take on a 2nd cow to milk right now. Since we know exactly how she was raised and how healthy she is, she will provide us with a significant amount of beef for our family, which is also very helpful. It was a hard decision for us. We are planning to make Hazel, Thimble's newest calf a dairy cow :).
So great! Thank you
You're welcome!
Great info! Although I’m still not sold on electric fencing - I always look for the simplest ways of doing things on the farm and usually I’m led to how humans did things for centuries before technology you can’t repair within your local community. For example, can you repair the solar panel without going online or traveling long distance?
Hear you on that! I'd be really interested in learning more of those practices too. The other thing to consider in that is that land and liability has changed exponentially too. You used to be able to graze animals without any fence at all... some parts of the world still do. In our semi-rural area, this is the best and most reliable option I've found that's not permanent. Thanks for watching!
I’ve had a Zareba solar fencer for 5 years now. Also love Premier
They had shepherds back then. This is how they did it;)
Well done.
Thank you
You're welcome!
Great video thanks
Great family
I must have missed it, but How often are you moving the perimeter fence? You move them everyday, but how long is the space you’re giving them for the day?
I'm sure he mentioned it toward the beginning of the video (in the first third, I think?). Maybe watch again?
Hey! Woops, I think I forgot to mention that. Good catch! So I move the perimeter fence every 1-2 weeks depending on rain/weather, how many cows we have currently, etc. Since we're down one cow now, I might actually have them in their current area for longer than 2 weeks since it's just our milk cow and her calf isn't really eating much pasture yet and it's a big section. But if there's a dry stretch and the grass isn't growing much, I might need to make their daily paddocks bigger which means they'll move through it all more quickly. Nothing is fixed with it and you just kind of assess and adjust the timing and setup of things constantly. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmsteadthank you for responding! This helps a lot!!
What species of grass do you have? It’s beautiful and so great for the cows nutrition. Did y’all plant anything?
Hey there! Thank you! I really should know my grasses better by now but I’m honestly not sure what we have 🙂. We didn’t plant the pasture initially but planted over some more bare spots in the last year with an organic pasture mix from Albert Lea Seed. Thanks for watching!
About how large of a space do you use for a paddock? We have 3.5 acres and I’ve been trying to figure out how to have 1-2 cows while using the 30 day rule and I just can’t wrap my head around how to do this without having to bring in much hay
Each individual paddock is around 20x150 feet. It definitely takes some experimentation and trial and error but definitely doable. Thanks for watching!
Great video...subscribed..
Thanks for being here!
Our cows aren't for dairy. What do you have to do with your milk before you consume it?
Raw is law
@@readyfuels17 Cool
@@CreativeMoments92 Strain the milk when you get it inside. Then load it into your containers and refrigerate.
Hey! Yep, as someone else mentioned, we just strain it, put it into jars and refrigerate. So yummy! Thanks for watching!
Was it difficult for your bodies to adapt to the change from store milk to raw? We have people with lactose issues in our family, and I feel like we'd have a hard time if we tried it lol
I’d love to know how you trained your dogs to be safe around your livestock.
I’ve got 2 doodle mixes that are very high energy and I’m nervous about the introduction process
We got her as a puppy so she just grew up with them, didn't need to do much in the way of training. She's a maremma, a LGD, very loyal to her herd. Thanks for watching!
Can you do a scetch it of the fencing systems please
We don't have a sketch of our systems but this post might be helpful. fromscratchfarmstead.com/rotational-grazing-on-a-small-scale/
You should get some fly paper, those cows will thank you
அழகான பதிவு வாழ்த்துக்கள் இந்தியாவில் இருந்து தமிழ் நாட்டு வாசகி அங்கு வேலை இருந்தால் சொல்லவும் பெண் வயது 43 தோட்டத்தில் வேலை பசுக்கள் பாதுகாப்பு
Thanks for watching!
❤
New Sub by the way!!
Thank you!!
Amazing video, me and my wife want to start homesteading in NC. i have a question, how many cows do you have on those 5 acres?
We've always had 2-3. Thanks for watching. All the best to you!
Cool video. Do you have any deers or similiar wild animals around? We keep repairing our permanent fences because of deers (central Europe). I'm asking because I'd like to switch to electronetting.
Also what about heat and cows? I see they don't get any shade where they could hide from sun
Hey there! We do have deer but they haven’t been an issue with the electro netting. I’ve seen a deer leap over our fencing when it was turned off but never get tangled in it or anything. I would definitely love some more trees in our pasture for shade. There are a couple spots they get shade at times. But there are some hot days for them in the summer. They manage ok. Milk production goes down during hot stretches. You can build some sort of shade structure but it’s hard to move and then they congregate there mostly. All the best to you and thanks for watching!
It seems like it could get pretty annoying to move around those electric fences. Do you ever plan on getting permanent fences?
The more you move them the easier it gets but it’s a big chore. Maximizing your setup to go as long as possible between moves is key. I do think we’ll get a permanently fence setup someday and then I’ll use some form of fencing to create smaller paddocks within it. But for now, it’s nice to have something that works without a big investment or commitment on a long term fencing layout. Thanks for watching!
Can you please share how you separate the calf at night? Also do you rent a bull or have AI?
We separate them for about 12 hours, just whenever we do evening chores and have always used AI. Thanks for watching!
You mention this system for people with less land can you tell us how big the land is that you have these cows on? We want to do something similar but only have 2 acres of lush pasture.
I think he said it is 3 acres. But I was wondering if it is three acres, they would have to get about 10 days per acre in order to have 30 days to rotate through the whole thing. I was thinking it would have to be bigger per rotation area, but maybe that is enough.
Hey! We have about 5 acres total. The back pasture the cows graze on is around 3.5 acres. I'd say if your 2 acres is lush pasture, you'd be able to do something similar. Our pasture is lush in certain areas, but not so much in others. If you can divide it up into smaller daily paddocks and also have a separate sacrifice area that they can go in if the pasture needs a break, you should be able to make it work. Thanks for watching!
Id love to have a cow but its illegal to keep cattle on less than 5 acres in my state
Oh interesting! I'm curious what state that is?
@FromScratchFarmstead VA, it's possible I misinterpreted the code section but ive asked farmers around me and that is their understanding as well.
What is the reason for not making a more permanent fencing solution, so that you wouldnt have to spend as much time every day rearanging the fence. Is it the cost, or are there some benefits I am missing?
Good question! The cost is a big factor, but we also like the flexibility that this gives us. If we got sheep or goats, we could adjust paddock sizes accordingly. Or if we moved, we could take our fencing with us. Thanks for watching!
What state are you in ?
They live in Illinois.
We're in Illinois. Thanks for watching!
hello. where can i order that kind of fence? what do you call that fence sir?
It’s premier1 electro netting!
Thật tuyệt vời 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤
Is it normal for the cows to be so covered with hundreds of flies and bugs nonstop??? There HAS to be a way to give them some relief. 😢
Yes! It is very normal! I think that is why they have those long, swinging tails!
Normal, yes. But also something we'd love to improve on down the road. This year in particular was much worse for flies than past years. Thanks for watching!
In my opinion it is too much work for 3 cows.
Fair enough! Definitely a lot of work, and definitely not for everyone. Our hope is to incorporate some other animals like sheep into the mix in the future to get a little more bang for our buck. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Sheeps are great animals. I love eating sheep meat and they are not crazy not like goats.
3 cows on 5 acres in a rainfall heavy climate is not anything to brag about. Honestly with such a small number of animal units per acre rotational grazing is a waste of your time. Rotational grazing is meant for mob grazing.
If I were you I would consider continuing your system but buying a feeder cow in the spring that you plan to put in the freezer in the fall. You get to take advantage of the most grass productive time of year on your land, add fertilizer, mob fast growing fields more efficiently and keep all your heifers. Next year you sell feeder cows from your cows to other people.
Small acreage should be raising feeder cows for sale while keeping the dairy for yourself.
Put more young steers on your acreage.
Hey there! Appreciate the suggestions. We’re definitely not trying to say 3 cows is maxing out the 3.5 acres we’re grazing them on. Though depending on seasons and if we hit a dry stretch sometimes it is. The goal was more just showing our method for making it work on a few acres. That’s a good thought with adding a feeder cow to mix and we’ll have to consider that more. The other thing we’re looking into is going multi species with it and likely adding sheep to the mix down the road. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead I am considering elk. I need to look into the economics of it more but as far as I can tell you can fit more meat on your land if you use elk and you can sell the antlers as a health supplement. I'm not sure yet but I'm leaning more and more toward giving it a try
I had to stop watching after only 5 minutes. I know you are new to cow farming but the massive amount of flys on your cows and dog were upsetting. There are NATURAL fly deterrents that you can wipe onto the cows skin to keep them flies from biting them. YES, there will always be flies around and on cattle. But you can reduce it significantly. Please, help them cows and your herd dog.
Please brother, I follow you on RUclips and Instagram. Help me find a work contract on a farm. May God bless you.🇲🇦🇺🇸🇲🇦🙏🙏
Thanks for following along!