Reasons to Use Rotational Grazing on a Homestead

I never really gave pasture management and rotational grazing any thought when we first started raising livestock. You just throw them in a pasture and they’ll eat and grass will grow back and repeat, right? Same as a lawn mower. (Except you’re new mower doubles as fertilizer.) I’ve spent most of my life living in farm country, that’s what it looks like all the other farms are doing, so it must be right.

After struggling with marginal pasture because we weren’t managing our livestock for good grass growth, we began to see the quality of our pasture go down… and when you’re working on a small scale, every inch counts. Over the years we learned about the rotational grazing systems that were being used on small farms and wondered if we could transfer those management techniques to an even smaller scale and reap any benefits. It turns out there are many advantages to using rotational grazing on a homestead. We’ve come to see that it follows patterns of rest that can be seen in creation and have watched our pastures improve a little more every year.