Our Rotational Grazing Routine

I rotationally graze my animals here at the homestead. Sheep ingest many parasites when they graze that affect horses, and the parasites are killed because they’re not ingested by the desired host. The horses do the same for the sheep. All the while, different nutrients are added to the soil through manure.

Most often, the sheep follow the horses. You can see my rotation plan I put together when I was in school in the second slide. In these shots, however, the horses and sheep are lumped together, tandem grazing the backyard. My recent travels affected my pasture schedule so we’re using the backyard as a buffer while it all comes back in.

​Animals are introduced to a space when forage grasses reach 8-10” high, and forage legumes reach 10-12”. All animals are pulled from a space and it’s allowed to rest at 4”. Anything under that is considered over-grazed, and grows back much more slowly.