Intensive Grazing Project

Davis Charolais

This blog was created to follow our progress in land and herd production improvement.

Currently our cattle graze approximately 65 acres. We have several small ponds and one large spring fed pond where the cattle water. Our plan is to section the property into 9 plots and begin an intensive grazing program. We have purchased automatic waterers to eliminate the use of the ponds.

This is a picture of the farm in 1978. It was once used as a "pay lake." Fish were raised in the smaller ponds and then placed in the large lake for public fishing. We purchased the property in 1996. We cleared most of the trees and filled in the small ponds. A tornado in 2003 also helped clear the trees!

Every spring we artificially inseminate (A.I.) approximately 15 Charolais cows. We hope to improve our herd and replace some of our older cows with replacement heifers..

The land improvement project started in May 2011. Please feel free to add comments and suggestions as we move through this project.

Next are pictures of the farm as it exists today:

Some of the old fencing has already been replaced and poles have been set for fencing for the grazing project.

 (If you look closely you can see posts in the field - above. You can also see them across the lake - below)

A lot of old fencing still has to be torn out!

In some areas we will put up new fence before we tear out the old.

We purchased materials today to start laying waterlines for the automatic waterers.

We will run a waterline to the field on the other side of the lake and to the fields on the east and north sides of the property. In the picture below you can see the cows are up in the field grazing. Soon they won't have to walk so far to get to water.! 

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