Techno grazing ..

unlacedgecko

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Fife
Occasionally I have 100m or so of fence to tidy up, small job and not worry getting the bike for That situation is main downside of a rappa. I imagine the video will be a hard watch for some of the electric fencing perfectionists


You absolute heathen! You're not even using your hand to evenly distribute it on the reel or anything!

I need a cold shower and a lie down in a dark room after watching that...
 

Karliboy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Yorkshire
plenty of food for though for me planning for this coming year,
just need to plan my water next dunno how i am going to work that one maybe some 12v water pumps with flow switches and big tractor battery to run both fence and pump off with a solar top up
 

Agrispeed

Member
Location
Cornwall
I know someone who's made thier own solar pump with solar charged batteries. Its nothing particularly special, but it coughs up something like 5l/min 24hrs a day with virtually zero maintenance.

It wouldn't do for stock, but could fill a header tank. I've seen those "pasture pumps" that cattle can pump water with but they seem expensive to me.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
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went for a look at an impressive technograzing setup today, 7000 cells
 

exmoor dave

Member
Location
exmoor, uk
View attachment 759080 View attachment 759082 View attachment 759084 View attachment 759086 went for a look at an impressive technograzing setup today, 7000 cells


Do they run the system as 7000 actual physical cells all the time or are cells often grouped up?

We've just had much of the farmed mapped for lanes and cells, although the map looks like a huge number of cells, in practice given stock numbers in different groups and keeping everything moving within the magic 3 days at most.....and also allowing for how much electric fencing I really want do (code: not do), in most cases i think we'll be running a few cells at a time.
Also trying to allow different shelter for different stock and times of the year will be a head scratcher.
I'm really not keen on stock fenced in on all 4 sides with either electric fence or stock net in the middle of a blazing summer.
 

unlacedgecko

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Fife
Do they run the system as 7000 actual physical cells all the time or are cells often grouped up?

We've just had much of the farmed mapped for lanes and cells, although the map looks like a huge number of cells, in practice given stock numbers in different groups and keeping everything moving within the magic 3 days at most.....and also allowing for how much electric fencing I really want do (code: not do), in most cases i think we'll be running a few cells at a time.
Also trying to allow different shelter for different stock and times of the year will be a head scratcher.
I'm really not keen on stock fenced in on all 4 sides with either electric fence or stock net in the middle of a blazing summer.

Moveable stock shades are available for this reason.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Do they run the system as 7000 actual physical cells all the time or are cells often grouped up?

We've just had much of the farmed mapped for lanes and cells, although the map looks like a huge number of cells, in practice given stock numbers in different groups and keeping everything moving within the magic 3 days at most.....and also allowing for how much electric fencing I really want do (code: not do), in most cases i think we'll be running a few cells at a time.
Also trying to allow different shelter for different stock and times of the year will be a head scratcher.
I'm really not keen on stock fenced in on all 4 sides with either electric fence or stock net in the middle of a blazing summer.
Yeah, they are about as permanent as it gets.
Each mob has 2 lanes, of about 60 cells, that make up its "racetrack"
So they basically jump straight into a 60 day round, but of course they can soon give them 2 cells at once simply by raising the wire.
So can easily be 30 60 or 120 days, (or in between by mixing it up).
They've a micro trough per 4 cells, and can then plug portables in as well if needed.

But those bulling cows have about 4 cells at a time.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
He said for a start they tried to incorporate the techno system inside their existing infrastructure, but that didn't last very long!
Looking at what I have here, it'd be a bit of a sod to setup inside my existing layout, so I'm looking at doing a more temporary setup for a start.. probably turn 17 paddocks into 100, 1 acre cells, and subdivide further as I get fences pulled out.
 

Agrispeed

Member
Location
Cornwall
Moveable stock shades are available for this reason.

This summer I spent quite a lot of time and effort altering break sizes and giving cows a runback to shade. Not one of the buggers lay in the shade :rolleyes::facepalm:

I do fence calves to give them shelter though, but for wind and rain - even they would rather lie out in the open cooking than somewhere nice and shaded:cool:

Perhaps sheep are more sensible? :eek:
 

unlacedgecko

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Fife
This summer I spent quite a lot of time and effort altering break sizes and giving cows a runback to shade. Not one of the buggers lay in the shade :rolleyes::facepalm:

I do fence calves to give them shelter though, but for wind and rain - even they would rather lie out in the open cooking than somewhere nice and shaded:cool:

Perhaps sheep are more sensible? :eek:

Tackers don't get a choice. But it's pretty rare for them to not have a hedge on at least 1 side, although there will be a fence a couple of feet off it.

I lambed in Herts last year. There were always groups of ewes and lambs enjoying the shade of trees.
 

Crofter64

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Quebec, Canada
He said for a start they tried to incorporate the techno system inside their existing infrastructure, but that didn't last very long!
Looking at what I have here, it'd be a bit of a sod to setup inside my existing layout, so I'm looking at doing a more temporary setup for a start.. probably turn 17 paddocks into 100, 1 acre cells, and subdivide further as I get fences pulled out.

It seems a bit rough pulling out decent fences just to put new ones back in. Is there no way to use what you already have?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
It seems a bit rough pulling out decent fences just to put new ones back in. Is there no way to use what you already have?
Not easily.
Ideally I'm thinking 6 or 7 systems/lanes/racetracks would be ideal for our acreage - 42ha - as the number 6 is divisible by 1,2, or 3 then it makes the maths easy... say 6 mobs would mean a 35, 70, or 140 day recovery is simple.

But I would like to keep what I can, obviously sheep are a bit of a headache and a lot of work for what they really achieve, but I would like to keep some form of control over them as well.

When it comes to cattle vs sheep - the easiest analogy I can think of is:
You have a big pot of stew on your table and an empty bowl - what tools do we have to get to where we want to be?
A big native cow is your ladle, sheep are more like chopsticks, or teaspoons - a lot of work to achieve the same results, still doable but make much more work of an easy task.

So we're reassessing; it could be easier to "round down" our existing paddock's areas to accomodate the sheep, get rid of the sheep, or simply set it up for cattle and use the time savings to mess about with the sheep.

Noone said it was easy...
 

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