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WC Illinois | I am slowly building a herd of fall calving cows (up to 15 currently) and have very limited pasture. That in itself is crazy, but I feel I can use the cows to add some value to our row crop farm (and myself trying to build my own business within my family's row crop farm) by grazing them on stalks/covers in the off season. My issue becomes what to do with them for the summer. I could dry lot them, but really don't like how that is going this summer. I could possibly find some pasture to rent, but it would be a few miles from home, I would have to build fence on someone else's ground and it would cost me around $125 per acre. So my latests idea is to take some of the crop ground, rent it from dad for going rate (might be able to get it for $250….*family deal*) and intensively rotationally graze it through the summer. Probably graze rye then plant sudan or Japanese millet, then back to rye. Below is a picture of the field I have to work with. Only 8ac, blue square is some of my current pasture, red would be new fence and yellow would be paddocks. Just a crazy idea at this point, I'm sure when I run the numbers I will talk myself out of it. Please chime in with any suggestions! | |
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Am I Crazy: Converting 200bpa corn ground to rotational grazing?
