I plan to worm this week and multi/min mineral dose. My question is when I bring them out of the chute, I'm sending them across the road to a small pasture for a spell. How long or how many days do they need to stay in the new pasture before I move them out. I was thinking maybe 2-3 days then move them out to large pasture. That way I can let the small pasture dry with nothing on it for a couple of months. What do you think?
Days on pasture
- Thread starter Tomcolvin
- Start date
Dave
Well-known member
Not near enough information to give any kind of an opinion. What is the size of the "small" pasture? How many cows? How tall and thick is the grass?
wbvs58
Well-known member
Is this to wait to clear all the viable worm eggs out of them before going onto new pasture? I don't have any specific information on that but suspect it would only be a couple of days. Email the manufacturers of the wormer if this is the information you want.
Ken
Ken
kenny thomas
Well-known member
Should be fine for a couple days.
Mark Reynolds
Well-known member
I had to read that a couple times to get an idea of what I think your objective is. You using the term 'let the pasture dry' told me what I think you are getting at. I am much more familiar with worms/parasites being a problem in sheep up here in Ohio, although I know they are a problem/increasing problem in cattle the further south you go. It largely depends on the species of the parasite/worm as the eggs have variable viability time spans between species. 30 days of no grazing is typically suitable around here to break parasite cycles, but it depends on the parasite.
In terms of 'grass health', don't graze a pasture longer than 7 consecutive days or the cows will start grazing 'new growth' that has grown on the forage that was grazed on day one in that pasture before grazing the older, tougher stuff. You don't want the cattle grazing this new regrowth as doing so will stress the plant and hamper growth and how healthy the plant itself is. Always let the pasture recover for at least 28 days. The exception to this is if the grass is growing so fast that it begins to produce seed heads sooner than 28 days pos grazing. In that case, graze the pasture sooner, OR, mow the seedheads off. You gust don't want the seedheads to develop as that will slow plant growth (volume production) considerably. Lastly, don't graze the grasses shorter than 3 inches. This ends up requiring plants to use an excessive amount of stored reserves from the roots which in turn, weakens the plant. Grazing shorter than 3 inches also results in hotter soil surface temperatures which increases evaporation and makes the pasture more drought prone, which also means slower growth of plants as well.
farmerjan
Well-known member
The idea is that the majority of the worms, and eggs and all will clean out of the gut and intestines in 36-72 hours.
We will worm and put them in a "dry lot" for 2, or 3 days tops... then move out to grass that is at least 12 inches tall... the larvae are mostly found in the bottom 6 inches of the grasses... so for them to get reinfected through consuming larvae, they would have to be eating shorter grass. The only problem with that if it has been exceptionally wet, they seem to pick up worms more as they seem to have an explosion of larvae hatch... Sheep are very susceptible to that... plus they graze much closer too...
We will worm and put them in a "dry lot" for 2, or 3 days tops... then move out to grass that is at least 12 inches tall... the larvae are mostly found in the bottom 6 inches of the grasses... so for them to get reinfected through consuming larvae, they would have to be eating shorter grass. The only problem with that if it has been exceptionally wet, they seem to pick up worms more as they seem to have an explosion of larvae hatch... Sheep are very susceptible to that... plus they graze much closer too...
