Why the Old Ways of Grazing Need a Rethink

Anyone who keeps sheep in the dales knows the pattern. The same field, the same flock, the same gateways churned to brown soup by February. It has worked for generations, but the dales weather has shifted — wetter winters, heavier downpours on already saturated ground — and set-stocking a few permanent fields is asking for trouble. Rotational grazing, sometimes called cell grazing or paddock grazing, is simply the practice of moving stock regularly through smaller parcels of land and letting the rest recover. It is old wisdom dressed up in new language, and it suits our hillside farms remarkably well.

Get it right and you will see fewer muddy patches, lower worm burdens, more grass in July, and ewes that hold condition through the wet months. Get it wrong — moving too fast, resting too little — and you will simply make more work for yourself. Here is how to make it pay.

Start With Paddocks Sized to Your Flock

The single most common mistake is making the paddocks too big. A useful rule of thumb for lowland and upland fringe grazing is to give the flock enough grass for three to five days, no more. On a dales holding of, say, 40 ewes with lambs, that might mean paddocks of one to two acres in spring, shrinking to half an acre in a flush of May growth and stretching out again in August.

You do not need permanent fencing for every division. A single strand of electric netting or a reel of polywire on pigtail posts will do the job, moved as you go. What matters is that the water trough is reachable from every paddock, ideally on a gateway corner so you are not dragging a trough about the field every few days.

• Aim for 8 to 12 paddocks as a minimum, so each one gets a decent rest.
• Keep a sacrifice field near the buildings for the wettest weeks, so the rest of the farm stays intact.
• Walk the ground first — rush clumps, flushes and steep banks need different treatment to a level riverside flat.

Let the Grass Dictate the Rotation

Rest periods are not fixed dates on a calendar; they are a conversation with the sward. In the growing season, aim for 21 to 30 days between grazings. In a cold, slow spring or a dry spell in June, that may stretch to 40 days or more. In October, when growth has all but stopped, the flock may simply move onto foggage or onto a rested block of standing grass and stay there.

The practical test is the grass itself. Move the sheep on when the sward in front of them is roughly 8 to 10 centimetres, and let it come back to the same height before they return. If you are grazing a paddock down to the bone and the bare soil is showing, you have stayed too long — that is exactly how you get poaching and how you invite weeds to move in.

Carry a stick, a notebook or a phone note. Record the date each paddock is grazed and rested. After a season, you will have a genuine farm record, and patterns will emerge that no textbook can give you.

Break the Worm Cycle Without Extra Dosing

Most sheep worms have a simple lifecycle: eggs pass out in dung, hatch into larvae, crawl up the grass blades, and get eaten again. The larvae can only climb a few centimetres, and they hate hot, dry, open ground. Long rests help because by the time stock return, the larvae have largely died off.

The trick is to keep the flock on the move, ahead of the build-up. This is especially valuable for lambs, which are far more susceptible than mature ewes.

• Move lambs onto the cleanest, longest-rested paddocks first — they need the best grass and the lowest challenge.
• Follow with dry ewes or mature stock, who cope far better with a slightly higher larval burden.
• Never graze the same paddock twice in a short cycle during a warm, damp summer.
• Use faecal egg counts to check what is actually happening, rather than dosing on a fixed calendar. Your vet can set up a simple pooled sample routine.

You will almost certainly reduce drenching, which saves money and slows the spread of resistant worms — a problem that is quietly growing on many dales holdings.

Save Your Ground From Poaching

Mud is more than an eyesore. Poached ground loses its structure, sheds water badly, and can take two seasons to recover. It also damages sheep feet: standing in wet, dirty conditions is the classic route to footrot and scald.

When the weather turns, move stock off the wet fields and onto the driest ground you have. Keep the same discipline as in summer but stretch the rest periods considerably — 60 to 90 days in a wet autumn, not three weeks. If you have a hard-standing area or a well-drained sandy bank, use it. On heavy clay, some farmers run a strip-grazing system with a fresh move every single day, which spreads the dung and keeps the damage shallow rather than deep.

Gateways are the worst offenders. Put down a bag of stone, or move the gateway a few metres each year, and you will save yourself a great deal of misery in January.

Tuning the System Through the Year

Spring calls for short, sharp grazings and plenty of rest, while growth is at its peak. Summer may need a slower rotation if the grass is dry, or faster if a wet spell sends it away. Autumn is when you decide how much standing grass you want to carry into winter, and when you must accept that some fields are better left completely ungrazed until spring.

Winter is the season for the sacrifice field and for housing if you have it. On many dales farms, the flock comes in for the worst of it anyway, and the resting fields go into the new year with grass ahead of them — a sight worth more than any spreadsheet.

Above all, watch the sheep. A flock given a fresh bite every few days will be quieter, cleaner and far less bothered by flies. That contentment, more than any diagram or formula, is your best indicator that the system is working.