How did u decide on 200' wide strips?
Well, honestly, I had put my crop farm into strips of about that width right from the start when I moved here 20+ years ago... a carryover from the farm I grew up on down on the bluffs above the Mississippi, and the contour strips we ran there. Because that ground was alot steeper, those strips couldn't be more than about 80' wide... my farm here is still rolling (more than most of those around me), but nothing like we had down there. My strips "kind of generally" are laid out on the contour here... but they run straight from one end to the other. I converted 140 acres this spring to pasture, and when I did that I took out the last of the actual "contour strips" that I had. Fencing a straight run is SO much easier!
The strips that I put in now I try to achieve a width that will work out with my 12 row equipment... so the last ones I did were 215' wide.... but that's not set in stone by any means.... just works out for the width across the farm evenly, and for my equipment. Ideally a little more wiggle room would be nice... or else my "Ought to Steer" system had better learn to drive a little more accurately
! That being said, I LIKE that 200' or so width.... really easy to work with, and when I'm moving the front lead fence, I can really easily carry everything I need... 3-4 step ins and a poly reel. How long does it take you to put in a 200' run of fence? Simple! Nice even number for calculating how much area you're giving the cows each day too. I put my line posts on the subdivision fences spaced at 50', so each span on those is about 10,000 sq. ft., or around 1/4 acre (the 215' width is even closer... 50 x 215 = 10,750 x 4 = 43,000 sq. ft... so 217.8' would be right on!). Sometimes I'm giving them 2 spans a day, sometimes 10... just depends on how it's growing and what your goal at the time is. But this gives you a really easy way to "calibrate" your speed across, and to calculate how much you've still got ahead of them. I'm not anal about "measuring" post spans... 20 paces.... hits it about right. This isn't rocket science.
I leave BOTH ends of my strips open on the subdivision fencing... WIDE... wider than I would normally keep as a headland on my cornfields (I typically put 24 rows = 60', and so I usually go 80' from the end with my subdivision fenceline)... that way I have plenty of room to turn around when cropping it, and, if I want, I CAN still put a headland on the ends of a cornfield, without having to remove my subdivision fences that run the length of the field. Then I can just farm lengthwise between the subdivision fences. I close off any strip I want at anytime with polywire. And then I can use that 80' "headland" as a lane to move the cattle anywhere on the farm I need to. If not grazing it, I hay it generally... unless I would decide to put a cash crop as a headland.
Obviously, any "width" will work. This is just a really workable width that I've landed on.
Disadvantage to running up and down the hill is the cattle
will tend to make cowpaths the length of the strip if they have to walk anywhere... mine have had to walk back across what they've already grazed within a given strip, and then use that headland "lane", to get to water. Makes for a fair amount of traffic. I intend to put a buried waterline in the lane, with an outlet on every other subdivision fence this next year, to eliminate the traffic in the "lane". That's where the most impact has been happening, because they have had to use that "lane" no matter which field they're on, all summer long. On the specific strip they're grazing on, I only let them be on any one strip for no more than 3-4 days, to avoid "backgrazing" on the regrowth. Then it has time to recover again for 30-60 days or more before they'll be back on that one again, so it's not TOO bad there. If I ran a surface line under the subdivision fence, I could avoid all that traffic and potential backgrazing, and that's probably the best. Would have water right with the cattle all the time then.... and I expect it might improve rate of gain some too.
It's not an issue to walk the cattle to water... they've been doing that since the beginning of time. The exercise is good for them. The issue is the damage that they do to the field when walking, and the cow paths, that form a channel for water to run in. Having multiple watering spots will reduce the impact around each one of them as well, and give "time" for recovery there then too. The issue I see with putting a waterline under the subdivision fence MIGHT??? be that you'll potentially end up with a "dead area" at every one of them. Maybe if you had them placed like every 100' along it, that would pretty well disperse the traffic patterns and eliminate/really minimize it.... might have 3 or 4 or 5 even watering spots on any given day then, right where they're grazing........ Gets to be alot of water pipe though...................
