rotational grazing hutch pens idea!

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ohiogoatgirl

ohiogoatgirl

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Skimmin the net i found a pic of a hutch that Gave me an idea.

Imagine a sort of hutch... Except the wire is 1/2 x 1 inch thick gauge, decent on the feet and keep most nasty critters out.
And the legs only keep it up about four inches from the ground. The hutch house part would each be about five foot across and two foot front to back, maybe 16inch tall or so with sloped roof to shed the weather. A little door hole at each end for em to go in and out.
The wire pen part would be about five foot across and about ten foot long.

The low height keeps em from killin an area or gettin any possible nasty from the soil or manure. The grass will grow up through the wire bottom and they can eat it fine. And it will have a wire bottom for protection from snakes or whatnot nasty critters.

You could have a long row of the pens with a door from one to the next. Keep em in one pen until they eat it down then open the next pen and they will move to it to eat and shut the last pen behind em.

This would be for probably one doe and litter or to rotate growouts through to finish feedin out.

Thoughts?
 
The guinea fowl farm does similar. They have giant wire floored pens just off the ground with a sloping tarp roof so the guineas can eat through the wire in each pen. Their pens are so huge they don't move them as often as you would a little rabbit pen.
 
Ya it would be expensive. But so far this seems to me the best way to do any grazing without worrying over tractors and escapees or predators... and it would give em space and you could even make it bigger and rotate a couple.does and litters.
 
It sounds like pretty good idea, but I am worried about cocci and parasites building up underneath... just like when you have horses, sheep, or goats in a pasture the animals have to be wormed routinely because they pass the parasite eggs in their feces and then graze the plants. Even if hypothetically the eggs are at the base of the plant, eventually it will grow up and into the pen bringing the eggs with it.

ohiogoatgirl":25ez4bkz said:
Ya it would be expensive. But so far this seems to me the best way to do any grazing without worrying over tractors and escapees or predators
Click to expand...

This reminds me of when we first got chickens. We spent $600 on materials alone for our chicken coop. About 6 months later, when we got our first egg, we joked that it was the $600 egg! :roll:

I guess this is my roundabout way of saying if you are trying to save costs by providing a grazed diet, it will probably take years to "graze off" the initial cost of the set up... at which point, your wire will probably be rusted and sagging and be about ready for replacement.
 
Rotational grazing is the main way to reduce parasites. Many who go organic rely heavily on it. You just have to make sure you have enough space and places to use for all the animals so you don't get waste and parasite buildup. Raking the "pastures" also helps but more so with animals that leave a pile of poop to be broken up and exposed to the sun.
 
akane":1bzftfmt said:
Rotational grazing is the main way to reduce parasites.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but don't they need to be off the pasture for a while? I think a doe with a litter would mow down the feed in a 5' x 10' pen within a couple of days, so you would need an awful lot of pens...
 
For parasites it doesn't matter how much they eat. It matters how much they poop. With raking to even it out I would think 5x10 would be good for a few weeks, possibly a month or 2 depending how much break you can give each pen. Keeping them fed in grass would be another matter. That may require pens on a much larger scale. The pens I've seen for poultry were more like 20x20' over a couple acres. I'm not sure how they supported the wire floors.
 
I don't think I was clear... say OGG has four pens that size for a doe with a litter, and it takes them 2 or 3 days to graze it. So in 7-9 days they would be back into pen one again.

The other part I can't quite wrap my head around is how the animals can move about the cage without crushing and damaging the plants that grow through the wire. Or how the waste will be able to flow freely through the wire with the plants taking up space.
 

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