[TheCaptain]

I've just spent the last month post and railing our 10 acres into manageable chunks as we found everything was being grazed but not very well, plus we'd had a few incidents with ponies and lambs (another, expensive, story). Anyway, I now want to know what the best way would be to rotate the land so that it is grazed as efficiently as possible, i.e. what animal should follow on from what animal.

We have sheep (21), cattle(2) and ponies (3).

[Dougal]

I'd graze the cattle first (need the longest grass), followed by the sheep and then lastly the ponies (want the least grass for lameness problems) for the best grass and weed management.
For parasite management you want to alternate anually between the cattle and the sheep (during the growing season) becuase some of the parasites that affect one won't worry the other. Sheep are good to kill out the red worm found in horse ground and they will stop frost damage during the winter so should be grazed over all the ground as the winter progresses.
If you can try to spit the sheep into ewes with lambs and sheep without lambs. Ewes and lambs going onto the ground after the cows with the dry sheep folowing them. This means that the ewes that are milking are getting the best grazing so making the feed costs and lamb growth better.
If you have any question I'm happy to help, just pm me. Best o luck.

[Hopewell]

I'd think about a paddock or two for hay and probably put your sheep on it after it is cut.

[Rosemary]

I'd think about a paddock or two for hay and probably put your sheep on it after it is cut.

I wouldn't. We're almost the same as you - 3 ponies, two cows (hopefully in calf), 20 sheep including this years lambs, going up to 12/13 breeding ewes on about 10 acres of grass. We've loads of grass this year but we'll have more stock next year.

To make hay, we either need to do it by hand (not going to happen) or invest in quite a lot of machinery (tractor, mower, tedder, baler) or try and get someone to do it for us. With only an acre or two, we'll be bottom of the contractor's list and will probably end up with poor hay. We've decided it's better to stock to summer capacity and buy hay - at least then we can buy good stuff.

Also, if you take hay off, you will probably have to apply fertiliser at some point.

Just my opinion though.

[TheCaptain]

We put it to hay the last two years and have kept the ponies and the sheep - the only addition this year being the cattle.  We find that the livestock fetilise it just fine - must be doing something right as it won second at the Gillingham and Shaftesbury show last year and this years was every bit as good, if not better.  The animals have to rough it for 6 weeks or so but it seems to have worked well so far.

[Hopewell]

I guess we've been fortunate to have a friendly contractor in the village who has been willing to make a small amount of hay for us, as long as he can do it when he's making hay for himself or another neighbour, so he's not having to put the tackle on the tractors especially for us. We also have relied on our animal's manure to fertilize it - perhaps we get less hay but it's almost organic.
I appreciate that in may not always be possible but the original question was about land rotation and in principle it is good practice to include a period without livestock - it helps with recovery of the land as well as being useful for reducing the challenge from worms.

[SallyintNorth]

Great answers.  What a resource this forum is!

I completely agree with Dougal's rotation and reasoning.  Each species nullifies the others' parasites and other bugs, so you should need to do very little routine dosing (apart from fluke if you are in a flukey area and minerals if you are in a mineral-poor area.)  After the dry sheep the grass will freshen up with nothing on for a while; let it get a couple or three inches long for the cattle to go in and start the rotation again.

The dung of the grazing animals should provide enough fertiliser but if you are taking an annual hay crop you may want to spread some muck every once in a while to repay the soil for the nutrients you remove.  You don't want to use very much artificial fertiliser if you are making hay - it makes the grass too soft to work as much as hay needs to be worked.  Depending on your soil, you may need to lime every few years to rebalance the acidity of the animal dung.

If you do take a hay crop it's usual to let sheep or cattle in immediately for a day or two, before the 'fog' (new grass) regrows, to eat up the longer stuff around the edges, then clear the livestock out and as soon as the field greens up nicely, put your weaned lambs on the fog to fatten.

[white-blazes]

Be careful putting ponies on grazing after the sheep.  My mare got laminitis for the first time 4 years ago aged 14. She had a 50% of surviving.  The possible reason is that I rented fields previously rented by a sheep farmer for several years.  Four years later and she's never had it since (touch wood).  It appears the sheep poo was too good a fertilizer, so the grass was too rich for her.

Now I keep the horses on their own paddocks which are usually bare, and we just rotate them on their own designated paddocks.

Of course, your ponies might not be prone to lamintis, but it's just something to bear in mind

[waterhouse]

We move our animals frequently to manage the grazing because of our drought conditions relative to you chaps up north and we have the poo checked for worms so we haven't had to use chemicals this year.  As other people have suggested the ponies get last shot at the grass, but we also limit their grazing using reels of electric tape to restrict them further.

As an example we divided an acre paddock in two and put a dozen sheep in half.  When they'd been on a couple of weeks we moved them to the other half and brought the horses in, but the ponies were limited to an L shaped section , our big hunter having the majority (he's 26 and doesn't hold condition easily).  As the ponies grazed down their bit we extended it into a U section surrounding the big chap.  That meant that they had to work harder for their food but remained a social unit.  After a while we moved the sheep out of the second half and gave it to the big guy while the ponies got the first half.  Finally we took down all the temporary fencing and it's like a billiard table - green but very short grass with no weeds.  

Sometime we let the sheep overlap with the horses by having just a high electric tape which the sheep can walk under but not the horses though they actually seem completely unbothered by each other.

[ellied]

I was taught that cattle always get first as they pull long grass and can't nibble the short growth like the rest do, but then horses/ponies and then sheep to tidy the pony dunging areas, end the equine redworm cycle and refertilise the land quickly along with tedding the grass back into level where bigger feet have dug in, then rest for cattle to go back on..

I understand about the laminitis worry but as someone has said, the sheep dung is a powerful fertiliser and they are the best green keepers, eat the shortest grass teeth wise, and the grass between cattle and sheep can be strip grazed if some of the ponies are prone to lami but generally more space and less close grazing of unfertilised land might be better for them than standing on bare ground stripped by sheep and desperately regrowing as that will produce the fructans that cause lami.

[SallyintNorth]

I understand about the laminitis worry  ...   generally more space and less close grazing of unfertilised land might be better for them than standing on bare ground stripped by sheep and desperately regrowing as that will produce the fructans that cause lami.

Hear hear, ellied!

Not to mention the lack of exercise contributing to lami...