Portable fence through six foot tall grass?

Recently we shared the photo below of a white poly wire portable fence disappearing into a paddock full of 6 foot tall stockpile.  If you were wondering how in the world we get that done, we give some more info here.

It is actually fairly simple, we drive our ATV through the grass to push it down and the poly wire unrolls behind the ATV in the wheel track.  The tough part is walking back through the grass to put in our posts.  Watch this process in action, video below:

So how do the cows know the fence is there or even find it?  With 5,000+ volts surging through this wire, our herd takes good care in knowing where this wire is at all times.  This little white wire is not a physical barrier but a mental barrier.  This simple technology (portable poly wire) allows us to:

• Easily move cattle
• Maintain frequent moves to fresh forage, cattle are calm
• Manage forages to very precise areas
• Time of graze is highly regulated for proper forage recovery

We moved 20 head of cattle into this patch.  The patch was only about 30 feet wide from fence to fence.

The results of this paddock move is shown below.  The goal was to stomp most of this grass to the ground as it was next to one of our permanent fence lines.  The permanent fence is along the left side of the photo below.

As you can see, the portable poly wire fence did it’s job in keeping the herd exactly where we wanted.  The standing stockpile that remains in this paddock will be grazed later this winter.  The herd was on this patch for just under two days and we were glad we had the forage we did as two inches of rain came before and during this move.

Feel free to stop by any time to see the herd in MOO-tion!